A polymath is a person who has mastered multiple skills. Polymathics is Robert Twigger’s term of making such mastery possible. When discussing simultaneously mastering multiple skills my Dad recently asked :

“If there’s only so much willpower available to an individual, is mastering multiple skills at the same time even possible?”

So far this blog has been all about habits and skill mastery, but what has emerged is the concept of effortless change. That is, emphasizing techniques to offload the weight of change from willpower, effort, or strength of character. Techniques like building a Tiny Habit or my tally clicking system accomplish this by making the change as easy as possible. The more offloaded the change is from brute willpower, the more likely it will stick. Furthermore, this type of self-help is egalitarian, likely to work just as well for people who, for whatever reason, have less gas in the tank.

But what I’m really going after is effortless polymathy. Or at least preserving enough willpower to make it as easy as possible. But how do you do that, especially if you’re a regular person?

I believe there are methods, both theoretical and tested, to do this. Here are 4:

Unzippered Habits. One thing that surprised me about habits is that they don’t need to be done every day to form. Let’s say you’ve got a simple, daily habit you’re starting - say, flossing. When graphed, the initial habit formation curve is incredibly steep. Several of the habit researchers have stated that missing any one day doesn’t mess up that curve’s trajectory. As long as it’s not a long streak, your mind doesn’t register missing instances that closely. If you’ve got a clear trigger-response, your flossing habit will form up whether or not you miss days 3 or 8. And it will form at the same rate.

So theoretically, you might be able to miss every other day, replacing those days with another habit, pulling the two habits apart when they approach full habit status.

As the two habits become fully formed, their automaticity goes up, and willpower expenditures go down. In this manner, it may be possible to form two habits for the price of one.
Spaced Learning. Another big issue regarding polymathy is that there isn’t enough time in the day. The assumption is that to master something you have to cram as much practice time in as possible. That might not be true.
In studies on accelerated learning researchers found that distributing practice sessions across a longer amount of time (rather than massing them all together) resulted in more efficient and long-term learning.

The research is changing and rather confusing. But if that is true in any form, that space might give enough time to not only learn multiple skills together, but do it better.
Priming Tasks. A massive “leak” in the system is task switching costs. When the mind moves from one type of activity to another it lags. This is a particularly irksome issue when you’re stacking habits, and I’d imagine it would become more pronounced when learning different skills.

However, priming the next task at the end of the previous one taps into a sense of excitement and motivation. While motivation isn’t my go to for long-term change, it is incredibly useful for “interstitial” issues like this. I found that watching a quick video online helps shift my mental gears to the next task at hand, significantly decreasing lag time.
Ego Repletion Techniques. As the day progresses my energy dies. There are, however, a few methods to refuel the tank. I’ve written about methods that have worked for me in this blog post, including harnessing momentum, changing mood, exemplar priming, and meditation. When cycled and tested with a rudimentary before and after scale, I found I could recover almost all of my energy back.

An overlapping and related issue relates to energy. I think that ensuring good sleep and proper diet can really help with this. There are also activities that contribute to stable energy levels throughout the day - like this writer who found that 30 second bursts of exercise gave him the same boost as coffee.

I imagine this system as a really well tooled engine - you have to contend with friction costs and fuel efficiency and energy loss. With a behavioral science engine to drive multiple skill advancement, the system has to be incredibly efficient, and even more so if you want that change to be as effortless as possible.

If this sounds complicated, it is – and I think it should be. What we are discussing is the equivalent of sending someone to the moon. I think it’s time we view the complicated mechanics of behavior just as seriously as aeronautics instead of simply defaulting to talent and motivation.

photocred: Gary Danvers Collection