How to Learn Multiple Things Fast — The Theory of Multiple Arts

Multiple arts, from its name, means more than one thing or more than one art — a concept inspired by historical figures such as Leonardo da Vinci.

Mastering different things is often taken as the action of great effort these days. However, it can be done in less time with some knowledge of how to start and how to sustainably carry on practice, while keeping watch on what you are getting out of your practice and where it will take you next.

If you are the kind of person who wants to learn a lot of things — cooking, programming, writing, gardening, blogging, videography, photography — and you have limited time but are still spending hours on the Internet to find ways, then this article is the best place for you, with a simple, step-by-step learning technique.

The secret ingredients to multiple arts are connection, expansion, disruption. But before getting into this art, a question needs to be addressed.

Why really do you want to learn it?

Categorize things into three simple parts:

• Cool stuff — things that make you feel cool in your circle (e.g. solving a Rubik’s cube).
• Important stuff — necessary things with a limited time frame (e.g. learning calculus and shipping an app that uses it within a week, or a school project to build a blog).
• Immediate stuff — a mix of cool and important that you need to finish soon (a week, a month, this year).

This categorization helps you figure out why you want to learn. Take out your notepad and jot down a bunch of things — like 5 or 7 — then proceed. You’ll get a more productive outcome by the end.

Basic steps to multiple arts

Map creation, designing a top-down model, the action.

Map creation is the first step. Write down what you should be able to do at the end of learning each thing. Have a final image of the result. For example:

• Making an application → a To-Do-List app for my phone
• Starting a blog → a blog with 10 articles, in a week
• Making a garden → 10 flower pots, two trees, and grass

Recovered from my old blog (2020–2021) via the Wayback Machine.