Lessons in Learning and Creativity From Da Vinci

There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when shown, and those that do not see.

- Leonardo Da Vinci

No doubt. We are big fans of great thinkers. Our top thinker of all time? It has to be Da Vinci. Why do you ask? For his abilities in learning and creativity, without a doubt. A mathematician. A scientist. An engineer. An anatomist. A creative learner. Always learning and creating.

Do you see? Maybe the lessons from Da Vinci will help. So what would be the lessons in learning and creativity derived from Da Vinci? Here are the ones we continually come back to:

Sketching and note-taking

Over his lifetime Da Vinci created 13,000 pages of sketches and notes. 13,000 pages. By hand, on individual sheets of paper. A sketch in the center, simple and done quickly, the label on top, annotations along the sides, arrows pointing to key content. Sometimes a short summary is at the bottom.

Divergent thinking first

Alone for the first few iterations divergent thinking. Time to generate lots of ideas, and to reflect. Incubate ideas. Ask himself lots of questions. Always observing and studying. Think about the age of Da Vinci … no computers, few books, and few experts in fields of his interests. Just his ability to see and observe using notes to record for further study.

Convergent thinking later