Trying on different hats II

The pros and cons of being a multipotentialite

After an unintended hiatus my daily non-fiction reading habit is hitting its stride again. My reading queue was up to 2 full shelves and trips to the bookstore were starting to involve a lot of internal dialogue. The Japanese have a term for this - “tsundoku” - that means stockpiling books that will never be read. It’s a bit like collecting cars just to look at them. I use non-fiction reading (and podcasts) to try on different hats, widen my perspective, for personal betterment, and to inform my creativity: without it I’m stagnant.

I just finished Michael Easter’s excellent “Comfort Crisis” and it has me in a tizzy (tired: sitting, snacking, TV, social media, phone; wired: time in Nature, being bored, walking, rucking, fasting, eating less, hunger, personal challenges, doing new things, carrying weird loads). I’m ready to change everything. Now I’ve started reading Jacqueline Novogratz’ “Manifesto for a Moral Revolution” and it has me amped to take on philanthropy and view my life as someone working to change the world. These attention swings are a microcosm of my life: the desire to always learn and do different things is both a blessing and a curse.

I’m a generalist - a multipotentialite - and always have been. As with my reading choices, there’s this innate feeling that the world is full of things I can do and I want to try all of them. (Except endeavors involving heights … or insects … or tigers.) Play one musical instrument? Too limiting: I’ll try to play them all. Buy furniture? But I could make that. Build my website in Wordpress? Nope, I’d rather write something that’s faster and simpler. Endurance sports? Sure, I’ll do triathlon and get OK’ish at 3 sports at the same time. I have yet to find a balance between trying something on for size and making it part of my life.

A one-man band (courtesy Midjourney AI)

The struggle is real

The wikipedia entry for Multipotentiality lists lots of advantages that sound like things everyone wants - “fast skill acquisition”, “idea synthesis”, “concocting new solutions”, etc. - but very few disadvantages. It can be exhausting to always want to jump to the next bright, shiny thing, questioning whether it is a worthwhile expenditure of creativity, energy, and time. Exciting and interesting skills and areas of focus either get left behind with untapped potential or I keep carrying them in the background where they steal mental cycles. If a musical instrument is calling to you to play it, what does it mean when you have 10 of them? Just mastering one thing and sticking with it - plumbing, gardening, exobiology, running, whatever - starts to sound nice.

There are some behaviors adjacent to this desire to tackle everything that constantly trip me up:

Procrastination. When Minette was doing more business coaching, Bright Shiny Object Syndrome was endemic in her creative clients. They bounced from one interesting thing to the next, never focused on the core business. At its worst we use our tendencies as generalists to excuse procrastination and distraction from our most important work.

Chameleon, Shape-shifter. Jim Rohn famously said that we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with. Let’s widen that to include the information and media we consume the most. The generalist’s lot - and gift - is to be able to try all of those things on for size. And to want to do many of them. We have to be particularly focused on the quality of what we are exposed to. We can also use that “idea synthesis” ability to apply learnings from other disciplines to our current creative work … as opposed to fully trying out the other disciplines.

Paralysis, Don’t be a Donkey. This discussion between Derek Sivers and Tim Ferriss introduced me to the story of Buridan’s Ass, fatally stuck in a state of indecision in choosing between eating the hay or drinking the water. The multipotentialite always has many things to decide between. Sivers’ advice is perfect: “realize that you can do one of these things for a few years, and then do another one for a few years, and then another. You can do everything you want to do. You just need foresight and patience.”

Realizing our potential

The “potential” part of “multipotentialite” is key here. It’s always valuable to see things from a fresh perspective and learn new skills. It challenges our brains, widens our perspective, reactivates unused muscles … but we need to sanely turn the potential of those new ideas into creative work. Strong99 is about thriving longer, not just living longer. For multipotentialites to thrive we must manage and guide our impulse to bounce around learning every new thing we’re exposed to.