I was watching a documentary on Thomas Jefferson the other weekend. This one to be specific: http://www.pbs.org/jefferson/

We all know he was a polymath who had a strong influence on the basic foundation of the U.S. that is still relevant today- hundreds of years later. But he was cool to me for another reason.

Despite his sometimes obvious shortcomings, Jefferson knew one thing. He knew how to study.

In school, I was a smart kid who had been taught by the system to do the minimum. Studying never occurred to me; I either absorbed info while I was doodling, or throwing things at classmates, or I crammed, cheated, and faked my way to a C. Jefferson had it right though. To pseudo-quote the documentary, Jefferson lived life to its fullest, he had no fear of learning, and no fear that he could not be good at everything.

He woke before sunrise each day and wrote letters to famous scientists, poets, statesman, and architects. Then he read books, sometimes 8 at a time. He was a consummate gardener, author, father, grandfather, vintner, astronomer, and of course politician. He just did not quit.

I’m 34 now. I only wish I had learned early on what it meant to apply myself instead of skate by. There is a sort of nobility to minimizing your effort through school. It demonstrates that you’re too cool to have to work hard. But once you hit the real world, (which I did about a decade ago) doing the minimum is decidedly uncool. I’ve been learning that lesson yearly, monthly, daily. Sometimes to the minute.

You can do more. Are you the best at your profession? Why not? Do you want to be? What are you doing to get there?

Oh. I’m sorry, that episode of Futurama kept you from reading about HTML5 last night. And last weekend when you had a near 60 hours to brush up on your early swiss design grids, it just didn’t seem to get done because you needed a nap and to catch up on your Netflix Q. Aw. Too bad.

Jefferson himself would not have told you to sacrifice family time, or the love of those dear. He was a devoted lover of life and those around him. He was a gentle and engaged father, grandfather and husband. But he just did not F* around with anything that was not enriching his own life, or that of humanity. He wasn’t perfect; he failed often at politics, fidelity, and even contradicted the very tenets he laid down. But he worked hard regardless of his successes and failures. He tried desperately hard to be good at everything. Like… everything. He was better at more professions than most people who practiced an individual trade all their life. Jack of all trades- master of all trades.

So you have no time. Kids, family, a chest cold, hobbies, whatever. Have you ever totaled up what 30 minutes a day adds up to over the course of your average life expectancy? For most of us that’s almost two years. How much do you think you can learn in two years? Now what if you found the five hours a day that Jefferson found each day (7 days a week) usually before anyone else in his house was awake- to read, think, and study…

Let’s put it this way. At the age of 83, Jefferson didn’t count being president of the United States among his three biggest achievements.