I've decided to become a polymath.

The more comfortable role in my life is the life as a student. I could never outgrow being a student. All I ever felt fit for doing is learning, learning, and more learning.

I don't remember ever consciously apply what I learned. But at 40, I think I'm aging gracefully and becoming a better person because of all the learning I was doing throughout. 

My life is a serial misadventure - personal life, work everything. At 40, I feel I got a grip and settling in my life. A very late boomer. Figures why at 40, suddenly polymath has interested me.

As far as I can remember, I read everything I can get my hands on. My family reads a lot, but the problem was none of them bothered to get me comics in my early years. so, I started studying novels and fiction directly from 10. Though they are social novels, there won't be any violence or sleaze in that; all are classical in that respect. I grew up reading all the Tamil novels and Vedanta treatise, only those kinds my family had. 

At 12 or 13, during a school holiday, I could find only Kato Upanishad, an Upanishad which portrays the conversation between God of death(Yama) and a young man(Nachiketas) which is full of philosophy on human nature, soul, the ultimate liberation. I can never put down a book without completing it, so thought I couldn't understand most of the concepts I completed it fully to my uncle's astonishment, who owns the book.

I was always interested in theoretical knowledge on any subject, logic, coding, technology, and analytical problem-solving. I'm not an expert but just curious about anything that I come to know. 

Recently I read a few chapters on The republic of Plato. It's really engrossing.

The big mistake I'm planning to rectify and the new way of my learning involves lots of note-taking. Previously I used to learn and whatever stayed in my brain stayed. Now I'll be making a conscious effort to meticulously take notes. and try to retain as much as possible.

As part of this endeavor,  started with Khan Academy's Algebra

I was a math student, I think it would be a little easier.

TIL, Rene Descartes, the Philosopher, mathematician created cartesian methods to relate algebra to geometry and proved it as a linear algebra. And the surprising part is he coined the most famous philosophy phrase. "I think, therefore I am". which is as loaded as the Sanskrit word Tatvam Asi.

The tutor gave an intro on algebra with Al-Khwarizmi's book. He praised him as the original inventor of algebra. But I believe Al-Khwarizmi borrowed most of his math ideas from Indian mathematicians, which is obvious from his other book on the algorithm.  Al-Khwarizmi also wrote, "Kitab al hisab al Hindi"( "book of Hindu numerals"). This was translated into Latin by the name "Algorithmi de Numero Indorum" ("Al-Khwarizmi's Indian numerals").