The New "Renaissance Man"

A guide to interdisciplinary learning for modern times

Apr 22, 2025

This is a chapter I wrote for my book “Learn, Improve, Master” but ended up not including it.

“Renaissance man” is a term used to refer to polymaths, people who excel at different skills. The term derived from the historical period of the Renaissance as it gave us some of the most famous polymaths in history.

One example is Michelangelo, a master sculptor, painter, architect, engineer, and poet. And likely, the most recognized example is Leonardo da Vinci. He was a painter, sculptor, engineer, inventor, and scientist, among other things. He was remarkable not only for mastering several skills but also for how he combined them for new creations and new techniques and even evolve the very crafts he pursued. Leonardo leveraged his knowledge of one field to do great work in another. In his notebooks, we see sketches of weapons and machines that look like works of art. And his plans for paintings resemble architectural drawings.

Many of us wish we could master several skills as the Renaissance men did. But as knowledge evolves and fields develop, it gets increasingly difficult to become a master in more than one. It can now take a lifetime of dedication to become an expert at even a sub-subject or branch of a complex domain. And even if we were interested in less intricate ones, most of us don’t have the time, energy, or resources to pursue several in our lifetime. Our choice, it seems, is to be a master of a single craft or a “jack of all trades, master of none.”

This choice has been a frustration throughout my life. There are too many interesting skills, and I want to learn them all. But I also want to be great at something. I know many others feel the same way. We want to excel at a craft but also learn about several. The problem is that committing to mastering one skill keeps us from the variety we crave, but jumping from one to another makes it impossible to master any.

Most of us end up falling into a familiar pattern. We take on a craft and become obsessed with it. But once a new one catches our attention, we redirect that obsession toward it and neglect the one before. We go over this pattern again and again, jumping from one craft to another, never staying long enough with any to become great at it.

We want the best of both worlds, mastery and variety, but they seem to contradict each other. We can’t become masters of many crafts, yet we don’t want to be confined to one. So, what can we do? How can we pursue mastery in one field (and enjoy the deep knowledge and proficiency that comes with it) while satisfying our curiosity for others? That will be the subject of this discussion, a guide to becoming a new breed of ‘renaissance man/woman.’

The concept is simple: we’ll have a main craft but allow the study of others to complement it. We’ll learn from different fields but only in relation to—and to integrate with—our preferred one. This means we won’t be jumping from one skill to another, but we won’t be restricted to a single one, either. Instead, we’ll give ourselves space to delve into various fields, though only to take the knowledge that improves or complements the craft we chose as our main one.

A good example of this approach is the evolution of mixed martial arts. In the early days of the UFC and other combat organizations, fighters specialized in a single martial art. We would see fights between boxers and wrestlers, for instance, or judokas and Muay Thai fighters. These mixed fights exposed the strengths and weaknesses of the different martial arts. Strikers realized their skills could be neutralized on the ground, and grapplers found out it’s difficult to take someone down while being punched, kicked, kneed, or elbowed in the face.

After the first years of these events, it became obvious that no single martial art was the be-all and end-all—though Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu came close as a dominant one. All of them had weaknesses, and fighters had to learn parts of other styles to become more competitive. Striking martial artists started to learn grappling and vice versa. Fighters didn’t switch their main martial art; they picked up what they needed from other disciplines to improve their own. They started mixing martial arts, and now we know this interdisciplinary training as MMA (mixed martial arts). All fighters are now expected to be proficient on the ground and on their feet. And though they usually have either striking or grappling as their core, they use knowledge from different fighting styles to improve and complement their own.

At this stage in the sport, the training of many fighters has gone beyond learning from other martial arts and into skills that seem unrelated. Georges Saint-Pierre, one of the greatest fighters of all time, took on gymnastics training to improve his fighting. His goal wasn’t to become an Olympic gymnast but to use gymnastics to get better at his main craft, fighting.

And with the way MMA evolved as part sport and part entertainment, we could say it’s an advantage for some fighters to learn public speaking to add theatricality into promoting their fights. An example is Conor McGregor. Despite being a great fighter, he can attribute a great part of his success to his ability to polarize the public and create drama around his fights. Those who loved him tuned in to cheer, and those who hated him tuned in, hoping to see him fall. This made him a popular fighter, and he’ll always be considered one of the greatest in the sport, though most will remember McGregor for his showmanship skills rather than his fighting ones.

Just like these fighters, in the new Renaissance man approach, we’ll focus on one domain and expand only to parts of others with the goal of influencing, improving, or adding possibilities to our main one. In this approach, we can be curious, we can explore, we can venture beyond our main craft, but always remaining connected to it. We are learning from other domains but with the purpose of transferring the new knowledge or skills to the one we’ve chosen as our core.

Let’s look at another example. Let’s imagine that your main field is finance, that’s your core, but you also like history. History is a broad subject and could suck you in if you start studying it without a specific purpose. So, instead of going aimlessly into the study of history, you would stay connected to your core, finance, and expand into history in a way that can relate back to it. One option would be learning about the history of finance and economics or the economic models of ancient empires. In those cases, you would not be learning everything you can about history, just parts of it—the ones that complement or relate to finance the most.

With this form of study, we get to explore outside our core—satisfying our need for variety and novelty—but we also get to add to it for doing so. Every new subject we learn from becomes an extension of our main skill, giving us more depth and new creative or executive possibilities for it.

Sometimes, the connections between fields happen organically. We unconsciously combine new knowledge with what we already know. But this is not a given. Much of what we learn remains context-dependent, meaning we only think of it in the context we learned it (or learned to use it for). To get the best out of different fields, we need to look for connections between them.

Here’s where traditional higher education fails us. Few classes are tailored to specific majors. Instead, they are purposefully made neutral to be shared among students of different fields. Staying with our earlier example, let’s imagine you are a finance major and want to take a history class. Most likely, the only choice available is the same for any other major: some version of History 101—an introduction to history. Though It may be an interesting class, it’s not tailored to your main field of study, finance.

In an ideal scenario, there should be a class that connects directly to your major. For example, a class such as “The History of Finance.” And if you wanted to expand into art instead, a class such as “The Business of Art.” Even more specifically, if you wanted both history and art, a class such as “The Role of Finance and Patronage in the Art World of the Renaissance.” In every case, you would expand into new subjects, either history or art, while keeping a connection with your main one, finance.

Here’s a real-world example of a connection between subjects done right. Earlier in my life, I had the opportunity to attend a great music school. Among the classes offered, there was one for my instrument (guitar) that caught my attention, “Hard Rock/Metal Lab.” Here’s the description:

“Exploration of technical innovations provided by three decades of classically influenced, hard-rock players. In-depth study of the early pioneers of the style (Ritchie Blackmore, Uli-Jon Roth, Michael Schenker) and the more recent guitarists (Yngwie Malmsteen, Jason Becker, Joe Stump) who helped to redefine the genre known most commonly as shred.”1

The class is not about all musical instruments nor about all music styles or music history in general. It’s about a specific part of music history from a specific style for a specific instrument: the history of Hard Rock and Metal for guitar players. Do I like the guitar? Yes. Do I like Metal? Yes. Do I like history? Yes. So what do you say to a class like that? Hell Yeah!

By going into new subjects with a direct link back to our main one, we get to maximize the transfer of knowledge between them. And though it’s rare to find classes or courses that resemble the scenario above, we can create our own. For our earlier example, we could ask: what would a “history for finance people” class look like? What would it cover? Then, we can create an ideal “curriculum” for it and start learning the pieces we need on our own.

Let’s change the example and imagine your core interest is bodybuilding. But let’s also say you love food and want to learn how to cook. In this case, you would ask, what would a “cooking for bodybuilders” class look like? What would it focus on? Then, instead of going into cooking head-on and learning it as a separate craft, you would only focus on what connects best to bodybuilding.

Here’s how it would work at a practical level. Taking an average cooking class could interfere with your bodybuilding goals. Bodybuilding takes calculated nutrition plans, so learning to make traditional French pastries or crêpes would throw off your macros fast. Instead, you could focus on learning tasty vegetables and lean protein dishes. You could also prioritize learning various cooking techniques and the use of herbs and spices so you could add variety to what seems like a highly restrictive diet. Getting into cooking with this approach not only satisfies your interest in culinary arts but also enriches your work in bodybuilding.

Let’s look at one final example, one where the two subjects seem too far to connect: Martial Arts and music. We’ll take martial arts as your main interest and music as the one you want to expand to. How would a class called “Music for Martial Artists” look like? What would it cover? The subjects seem to be far apart, but there are already examples of the combination. There’s capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian martial art that incorporates elements of dance in its moves, and it’s deeply connected to music. There’s also Muay Thai, the Thai discipline also known as the “art of eight limbs.” Though in most places Muay Thai has been stripped of its connection to music, in Thailand, fights are still fought at the pace of traditional tunes.

Our study of “Music for Martial Artists” could include learning about those martial arts and exploring how music provides pacing in their practice and execution. Another option would be studying the use of music as a psychological anchor for accessing peak states. Martial artists and athletes from different fields use music before a competition to hype themselves up. Here, we would be going into music as an element of sports psychology and peak performance, something we can also incorporate into martial arts.

The connections between music and martial arts exist, we just have to make a conscious effort to find them. And the same applies to connecting other fields. We need to create the link as we expand from our main craft into a new one and not treat them separately.

Expanding into new subjects with the intention of integrating the new knowledge with our main interest offers two important benefits. On the learning side, it’s easier to learn something new if we connect it to what we already know or see it as an extension of it.

Also, when we approach new subjects with a clear purpose or use for them, we learn them faster. Purpose primes our mind to learn. It makes us more receptive to process and internalize new information. And on the lifestyle side, we get to explore other fields—and satisfy our curious nature—while staying committed to our main one.

With this new Renaissance man approach, instead of jumping from one domain to another, we are only taking short trips outside our core to gather new knowledge we can use to complement it. Incidentally, getting influence from other fields improves our creativity and gives us a new range of possibilities for how we think about and apply our main craft.

In a time when mastering many skills is unrealistic for most of us, for either increased complexity in domains or for personal circumstances, the “new renaissance man” approach is the closest we can get to the best of both worlds: variety and novelty from expanding into new fields, and depth and proficiency from staying with one as our core. We’ll get to learn from many domains without sacrificing our pursuit of mastery in our main one and, instead, will get to enhance it for stepping beyond it. We can become ‘Jack of some trades, master of one.’

“To attain the Way of strategy as a warrior, you must study fully other martial arts and not deviate even a little from the Way of the warrior.”—Miyamoto Musashi

You can read the first two chapters of my book, “Learn, Improve, Master” here: