As Waqas Ahmed, author of The Polymath, puts it: "In order for you to make a novel contribution to any given field, you need to look at that field through the broadest possible lens and to draw in as many sources of inspiration as possible." The mastery of different fields trains you to look at problems from multiple viewpoints, which makes original insight more likely. He points to Maya Angelou – the poet, journalist, actor, filmmaker, and civil rights activist who also enjoyed work as a dancer and singer – as a modern example of a polymath whose multiple interests offered much more than the sum of their parts and together fuelled her astonishing creativity.
