Why was Leonardo Da Vinci the most greatest thinker and achiever of all times

People Voted for the individuals they thought had the most influential ideas throughout history.

List of the Greatest Minds of All Time, throughout history. This list represents the most influential thinkers across various disciplines, ranked in a way that represents the power of their ideas and their impact on the world. The wisest men and women include top philosophers, physicists, famous poets, thinkers, teachers, physiologists, artists, inventors, engineers, the most irreplaceable CEOs in the world, economists and politicians and those whose talents span across many fields of study.

This list takes a historic perspective, so the greatest thinkers who are included on this list come from many different eras. The greatest minds of the 21st century may be quite different from great geniuses from the distant past, but each person should be judged within the context of the time that they were living. For example, inventing a new type of telephone in 2013 would not qualify one as "the most brilliant mind of all time," but in 1876 when Alexander Graham Bell first patented the telephone, it was an act of genius not seen before.

So the person who stood out from all other geniuses the world has ever seen , was  “Leonardo Da Vinci”.

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was born on 2nd May 1519 , his areas of interest included invention, painting, sculpting, architecture, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, writing, history, and cartography. He has been variously called the father of palaeontology, ichnology, and architecture, and he is widely considered one of the greatest painters of all time. Sometimes credited with the inventions of the parachute, helicopter, and tank.

According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent in recorded history, and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, while the man himself mysterious and remote". Marco Rosci notes that, while there is much speculation regarding his life and personality, his view of the world was logical rather than mysterious, although the empirical methods he employed were unorthodox for his time.

Leonardo is renowned primarily as a painter. The Mona Lisa is the most famous of his works and the most parodied portrait, and The Last Supper is the most reproduced religious painting of all time. His drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also regarded as a cultural icon, being reproduced on items as varied as the euro coin, textbooks, and T-shirts. His painting Salvator Mundi sold for $450.3 million at a Christie's auction in New York on 15 November 2017, the highest price ever paid for a work of art. Perhaps 15 of his paintings have survived. Nevertheless, these few works compose a contribution to later generations of artists rivalled only by that of his contemporary Michelangelo, together with his notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of painting.

Leonardo is revered for his technological ingenuity. He conceptualized flying machines, a type of armored fighting vehicle, concentrated solar power, an adding machine, and the double hull. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or even feasible during his lifetime, as the modern scientific approaches to metallurgy and engineering were only in their infancy during the Renaissance.

My assessment

I think there’s a lot we can understand and learn about success and how to be successful from Leonardo’s life. There are few things that stand out that are clearly elements we need to adopt while trying to pursue success.

Creativity – It is ironic how one man can have so many talents and as well be great at all of them. This shows us that a true creative mind begins to apply skill at different levels keeping the curiosity of intrigue and new always at the forefront

Objectivity - While Leonardo had the same 24 hours you and I have he was very well versed with setting objectives for every second of the day , making sure that time consumed was all time used to serve and deliver an objective.

Focus – He lived in times where social life and lifestyle meant a lot for one to be part of a social class within society. We today are struggling with this as social media has taken over our lives, strangely by our choice. Leonardo managed to isolate himself while he worked to make sure that his clarity of vision and determined efforts were not disturbed or interrupted by opinions of others or good advice.

Resource – While most startups entrepreneurs today depend heavily on investor funding or skills or mentors, Leonardo made sure that the only resource he needed was himself and then he backed that resource up with loads and loads of confidence. This is only possible if you are completely sure about your skills and competence which seems to be lacking in today's world. Most people believe in starting something and then seeing where it goes…..if it works…it works…if it doesn’t…”well at least I tried”

Patience – Nothing can work or be achieved if you push it harder or if you give up early.  It took Leonardo 4 years (1503-1507) to paint Mona Lisa, although it was unfinished, it took another 3 years to complete, up to the year the painter died in 1519. Around 7 years of painting. It would be interesting to see how many of todays thinkers and entrepreneurs are willing to be patient.    

Two decades before he became the richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos was just another employee on someone else's payroll. It was 1994, and Bezos was a senior vice president at D.E. Shaw & Co., a Wall Street-based investment banking firm. Eight years out of college, Bezos was 30 years old, and while his career in finance was lucrative, he was personally unfulfilled

Learning -  While Leonardo did not receive any formal education , his interest in painting came in his teenage years when he was sent to Florence to serve as an apprentice for a prominent Florentine painter. And it didn't take long for the student to become the master. Rumor has it that after da Vinci painted one of the angels in Verrocchio's work "The Baptism of Christ," the much more experienced artist was so humbled by the young man's talent that he vowed never to paint again.

To be good at something you need to first learn it and then find within yourself the desire to complete it and then master it. This is evident today when we have so many startups failing as most of them have not spent enough time learning about their idea and then not sufficient efforts in mastering that idea to reach a point of total excellence as Leonardo did.

So how does Leonardo Da Vinci end up topping the Rankers list of most influential people ever lived. A list that include Gandhi , Einstein , Edison , Lincoln , Henry Ford etc…….In my view Leonardo was far more creative than all of them and hence he reached the peaks that he did ….so its creativity that leads you to heights of success.

Assessment Published by Abdulla Hassan