30 Days to a Renaissance Man (or Woman)
Living a Full Life
One of our goals here at Hardihood Books is creating a community of modern renaissance men and women. We want subscribers and fans who actually live lives of hardihood, adventure, and polymathy. To that end, today I want to begin exploring the topic of becoming a modern renaissance man or renaissance woman.
Of course, nobody can become a true renaissance man or renaissance woman in 30 days. But, in 30 days you can start the process of enriching your knowledge and expanding your horizons. Here, I will provide some suggestions for you to begin doing so, but these are by no means exhaustive. To that end, I invite reader feedback. Please comment with your own suggestions and opinions.
Perhaps in a separate post, I will explore the question of why a person should strive to cultivate a renaissance lifestyle. For now, I will simply say that, here at Hardihood Books, we believe every person should create their own rich and fulfilling life. In order to do that, we encourage readers to become autodidacts. By expanding your knowledge, skillsets, and cultural horizons, you add dimensions to your life and personality. In a world of specialization, you should strive to become some level of generalist, partly to oppose the grain and partly for your own edification. In a rapidly-shifting world, a renaissance knowledge will allow you to adapt to new opportunities, avoid obsolescence, and increase your value in the marketplace.
Furthermore, while we at Hardihood Books certainly endorse developing skills to improve your market value, we also believe that everyone should develop skills and knowledge that have no market value at all. We do not believe that any person should simply be their job. Everyone should have a rich life outside of what they do for money. We embrace learning for the sake of learning, developing skills that have no “use,” pursuing hobbies unrelated to day jobs, and living a well-rounded life. We believe that is a rich life.
In order to cultivate this renaissance life, you will need to develop both breadth and depth of skill and knowledge. A renaissance woman has both a wide general knowledge of many subjects, and a detailed knowledge of her own specialties. A renaissance man has a variety of skills, and a few areas in which he is an expert. To become a renaissance individual, you will need to choose a few focus areas to specialize in, while at the same time continuing to expand your horizons in completely different areas.
As we have alluded to already, a renaissance lifestyle encompasses both knowledge and skills. Both what you know, and what you do. Both the practical and the intellectual. The mental and the physical.
Renaissance education means educating the whole person. Mind and body. As you no doubt know, at Hardihood Books, we believe in their inseparability. Mens sana in corpore sano is after all one of our mottos. Therefore, we believe that becoming a renaissance woman or man requires not only developing a breadth and depth in your intellectual life, it requires developing a wide range of physical competencies.
A Partial List:
This list is meant to spark ideas rather than offer a prescription. I strongly recommend working on developing skills and knowledge across each of the following categories:
- The Creative Arts: Literature, painting/drawing, sculpture, photography, poetry, music, dance, theatre/acting, playwriting, architecture, oration/rhetoric, graphic design, etc.
- The Sciences: Medicine, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, biochemistry, anatomy, geology, environmental science, zoology, botany, engineering, materials science, mathematics, etc.
- Cultural Knowledge (which admittedly has some overlap with the creative arts): Writing, foreign languages, philology, history, economics, politics/civics, geography, architecture, archaeology, etc.
- Physical Culture: Strength/strength training, endurance athletics, ball sports/games, speed, physical health (posture, agility, flexibility, stability, mobility, coordination, balance, etc.), gymnastics, self-defense/martial arts, dance, physical courage, etc.
- Physical Skills: Mechanical aptitude (ability to fix cars, toilets, faucets, machinery, etc.), woodworking or carpentry, juggling, the ability to swim, wilderness survival and other outdoor skills (building a fire, pitching a tent, etc.), preparedness (first aid, shooting, emergency preparedness, etc.), ability to drive and operate other machinery (no self-driving cars), ability to save lives, situational awareness, etc.
- Business Skills: Marketing, presentations and public speaking, data analysis, modeling, coding, typing, speedreading, financial aptitude (understanding stocks, trading, portfolio management, risks, investments, market forecasts, etc.), personal finance (budgeting, saving, tracking spending, etc.), business writing, copywriting, technical writing, software tools (MATLAB, SolidWorks, TruckSim, Excel, Scrivener, Powerpoint, Trello, Teams, ERP, etc. – depending on what career field you are in), social media (for business - including using tools like HootSuite or SproutSocial), etc.
- Social Skills: Small talk, making friends, presentation skills and public speaking, eye contact, posture (around other people), leadership, meeting efficiency, reading cues, sizing someone up, reading a room, giving feedback, taking feedback, raising a family, apologizing, initiating (romantic or nonromantic) meetups, etc.
Utility and Aesthetic:
Ideally, you will develop a combination of useful skills and skills that enrich your life without being useful.
Many skills and many types of knowledge cross those lines. They combine usefulness with pleasure and fulfillment, helping you to live a flourishing life. For example, certain physical competencies can help you to solve problems (for example the ability to fix your plumbing) or save your own life (for example the ability to swim), but they also make you healthier and they are enjoyable.
Learning a foreign language not only improves your mind, it gives you the ability to communicate with more people, and to more easily navigate in foreign countries.
Learning about civics and history is not only interesting, it will actually make you a better citizen. (Or rather, a lack of historical understanding or any knowledge of how government operates often leads to poor citizenship.)
Scientific understanding not only enriches your knowledge, it also helps you to better understand health or scientific issues in the news.
I want to emphasize this last point, because too many people struggle to understand health and science reporting, and I believe many of them sell themselves short. If you take the time to learn basic scientific principles, including about human health, you will more easily evaluate new diets, claims about disease (X causes cancer…), and even contentious scientific topics such as vaccines, climate change, pandemics, renewable energy, and self-driving cars.
(For example, some basic understanding of the differences between bacteria and viruses would help the average person to not only navigate the coronavirus pandemic, but also to know when antibiotics should or should not be prescribed to them.)
In the next 30 days, I recommend picking one skill or topic area in each of the categories above. Spend some time each week actively attempting to improve your knowledge and ability in each category.
For instance, you might choose to study Shakespeare, to learn about black holes, to read Democracy in America, to begin deadlifting, to learn how to shoot a bow and arrow, to take a course on QuickBooks, and to ask a friend for honest feedback on your relationship. Or you might learn a new instrument and a new language, brush up on quantum computing, take up yoga, learn how to drive a motorcycle, attend executive coaching, and have coffee or lunch with a new person every day.
You do not need to go out and buy textbooks or pay for classes. Plenty of free or inexpensive resources exist online and in your communities. You can listen to a podcast on astronomy, read papers on JAMA, head to your local library for a copy of Tacitus’ Annals, read Moby Dick for free on projectgutenberg.com, sign up for a Jiu Jitsu class at your local gym, ask your friend to teach you magic tricks, ask your boss for honest feedback, start making eye contact with strangers you meet, etc.
Start Today and Start Small:
The key is consistency. Do something every day. Take small bites. If you put off a project, you may never start. So start now. When you are first starting out, start with what you enjoy, because – until you develop habits - the only way you will get yourself to do something is to pick something you will actually do.
You could do something small for each category every day. But conveniently, there are 7 categories listed above. Which means you could pick one for each day of the week. For my own part, I tend to follow a more organic approach. At times, you may focus exclusively on one skill or adventure or area of knowledge. Other times, you may broaden out. Given the time involved in diving in to some activities or research topics, you may need to focus narrowly for some time to actually accomplish your goals. Strive for true knowledge, true aptitude, real adventures, and actual activities over dalliance.
If you want to actually take the next 30 days and begin putting this into practice, choose small activities over large ones. At this stage, better to do something small every day (read a page, watch a 10-minute video course, lift weights for 10 minutes, etc.), just to start building the habits. Down the line, you can dive in more deeply.
Report back with your progress. Post about it in the comments. Ask other members (or me) to keep you accountable. Share what you have learned and resources you have come across. As always, thank you for your support. Please share the site with other people who you think might enjoy it.