A lot of things.
Some became masterpieces. Some became sketches. Some became questions. Some simply stayed open.
Pick one.from his notebook, below. tap any open item.
Five centuries later, some boxes are still open.
Leonardo didn't finish this one.
Would you like to continue?
Something you keep meaning to understand, make, test, draw, ask, or finish.
* "finished" remains debatable. he kept her until he died.
His notebooks are not compelling only because he was Leonardo. They are compelling because someone can open an unfinished thought five centuries later and continue thinking from it. You can do the same with yours.
Finish some things.Leave some things open.Keep asking better questions.
A good life's work may look less like a completed checklist and more like a notebook worth inheriting.
The woodpecker's tongue, measuring Milan, Benedetto Portinari and the ice of Flanders, and the master of arithmetic are entries from the surviving notebooks. "Understand flight" and "the movement of water" summarize decades of studies, including the Codex on the Flight of Birds; they are paraphrase, not quotation. The Gran Cavallo's clay model was destroyed by French troops around 1499; a bronze cast from his plans was unveiled in 1999. The Adoration of the Magi was abandoned around 1482 and hangs in the Uffizi unfinished. The Mona Lisa stayed with him until his death in 1519. Roughly 7,200 notebook pages survive, an estimated quarter of what he wrote. He wrote to himself in mirror script: tap the notebook's heading to read it the easy way. He never did.