In continuing with the reflection theme of the past couple pieces, I will begin this week’s with another lesson learned from this past year of Becoming Polymathic. Fair warning, it is nothing earth shattering. There are few universal themes in life. I can hear the “no shit” comments ringing in my ears.
The genesis of this piece started approximately six days ago while traveling to Dallas on business. I spent the entire three hour flight speaking to the sage old woman next to me. We covered a lot of topics in that time, and yet at flight’s end the entire gamete was summarized perfectly in a single sentence:
“In the end, it’s about what you want.”
Our Universal Pieces (Thus Far)
The reduction of all that conversation down to a few words initiated the following question – what are the universal themes of our pieces? To analyze, I leveraged a simple KPI from my days as a fledgling SEO agency owner – internal links. What pieces are referred to the most in other pieces? Here were the top five pieces with the greatest number of links, the date they were written, and a brief summary of each:
- The Iterative Nature of Human Evolution – 5 Links, written March 31, 2024. Discussed the real, iterative nature of human evolution and how accepting it is beneficial to personal advancement and that of humans in general.
- Sparks, a Story of Interest – 4 Links, written October 1, 2023. Discussed the genesis of our interests and how to position ourselves to enable the underlying neurological processes to advance them.
- The Danger of Being a Pure Idea Generator – 3 Links, written April 21, 2024. Discussed the categories of idea generators and idea executors, and how the two entities require each other to exist.
- Conversing With and Leveraging the Shadow – 3 Links, written November 13, 2023. Discussed the history of Carl Jung’s “Shadow” concept and its role in our psychological development.
- Learning Styles and Personality Tests. Why? – 3 Links, written November 6, 2023. Discussed the history of several popular personality assessments and why relying on their conclusions too heavily is detrimental.
Our Universal Themes (Thus Far)
The results of this analysis weren’t surprising, especially the first two, as qualitatively speaking they are the two pieces I bring up most when amongst colleagues, friends, and family. The next obvious question is why is that so? What are the universal themes of these five pieces? I identified the following three:
- Great positioning isn’t everything, but it’s damn close
- Don’t use labels as an excuse to stop working towards your goals
- Developing self-awareness is the first step to every venture
In the past, I’ve stated the ethos of Becoming Polymathic is that of curiosity, discipline, and resourcefulness. Certainly the connections between these three three traits and the aforementioned three themes are noticeable, and, again, not surprising. As to where we go from here, that answer remains largely unknown, but the origination of this analytical, thematic piece does provide a clue.
Subtle Changes, Effective Results
At the beginning, I explained how the idea for this piece came to be. Historically, I would’ve annotated the idea in the notes on my phone for newsletter ideas. This time, I immediately wrote it down as the title for the next piece along with a small note explaining where the idea came from in the document in which I draft all pieces. It proved effective to such an extent, I already wrote down next week’s title while drafting this one.
Honestly, in leading up to the one year milestone, the writing quality was lacking, and it was a chore to complete some pieces. Anybody who’s put consistent effort into something for significant time experiences this phenomenon. Not an excuse, merely an observation.
In the absence of originality, one needs process to continue. When process fails, one needs originality to update the process. A subtle change such as where and when the “spark” is annotated was the process update not just to write this week’s piece, but to ensure the story of Becoming Polymathic continues in the proper direction – forward.
Be More.
Become Polymathic.
Quote of the Week: “Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots.” – Victor Hugo