Want To Be Smarter? Take Up Multiple Hobbies
1 November 2006Via Consumerism Commentary comes this article on why a diverse set of interests can increase your performance in all your activities by stimulating brain growth. How can that be possible? Because when you learn new skills, different parts of your brain are forced to develop in response, even into adulthood. Speaking Spanish and managing your stocks may not use the same part of your brain - but there’s overlap, and learning one can make you slightly better at pretty much everything. Sound ridiculous? Then check out this study of London cab drivers - London is known as being particularly difficult to navigate, with tons of side streets and extremely complicated roads. Cab drivers basically have to intern for years to learn them all.
The job is complicated, and people who become London cab drivers have physical changes to the structure of their brains as a result. They get better at navigation and better at pathfinding, and they grow new neural pathways that they didn’t have before.
There’s a long-running debate about how to succeed in life that this has implications for - the metaphor of the hedgehog, who knows one big thing, versus the fox, who knows many little things. I’ve always sided with the fox, but there are people who are ardent hedgehogs. The fox theory is the same as above - learn a lot about many things, and you have a lot to draw on when you run into new problems. For example, in academia, some of the most insightful people have been those whose work straddled two fields of study - often creating entirely new ones as a result. The understanding of one field, say psychology, can be applied to problems in another field, say economics. People who just study one or the other don’t benefit from the insights the other field has to offer, even though they may be experts in their own field. Structural growth of your brain is an added benefit that can help you in life across the board.
People who are hedgehogs point to those like Warren Buffet, who was wildly successful in understanding just a few kinds of companies (for example, insurance companies). Whenever he went outside his area of expertise or tried to broaden it, he didn’t do as well. There are also lots of fields where you can carve out a tiny niche for yourself that no one else is an expert in - and use your near-complete knowledge of that subject to make yourself the go-to guy for that area.
Even though I lean towards the fox end of things, I think a lot of it is about personality as well. I get bored if I try to focus all my efforts on one thing - but some people are great at doing that and it works better for them. I’d suggest taking a look at these studies, however - you may not need to broaden your efforts at work. But learning something entirely new and different at home might help you out in ways you don’t expect.
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One Response to “Want To Be Smarter? Take Up Multiple Hobbies”
November 13th, 2006 at 8:47 pm
Having a Renaissance Personality…
I have always been one to have multiple projects on the go at all times. And in the face of all that’s out there that admonishes, “Focus on one thing and Succeed”, I’ve more or less settled into a comfortable…