Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Procrastinating Like Leo

Leonardo was the kind of person we have come to call a "genius." But he had trouble focusing for long periods on a single project. After he solved its conceptual problems, Leonardo lost interest until someone forced his hand. Even then, Leonardo often became a perfectionist about details that no one else could see, and the job just didn't get done.

A friar named Sabba di Castiglione said of Leonardo, "When he ought to have attended to painting in which no doubt he would have proved a new Appelles, he gave himself entirely to geometry, architecture, and anatomy." Leonardo worked on what interested him at the moment, cultivating his energies and insights, even when those activities were not directly related to his current commissions.

From:

How to Procrastinate Like Leonardo da Vinci
By W.A. PANNAPACKER
The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle Review
From the issue dated February 20, 2009
http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=zs61txc4kwr4kd1q1rjbfxt41952gdmf