How having too many ‘interests’ is holding you back
Since I was a boy I’ve been fascinated by many different subjects: human biology, astronomy, dinosaurs (who isn’t?), drawing, soccer, and so on. What would often happen in my studies is that I would commit myself to a topic, achieve a surface level knowledge that satisfied my interest, and then I’d get bored. In other words, I dabbled. I was given art and sporting equipment or musical instruments for areas I’d said I wanted to learn, then I’d try for a while and eventually abandon them like so many new years gym memberships.
I would occasionally force myself to pick the equipment back up and practice when I was ‘inspired’, getting bored after a week and moving on, then coming back and using it for another week before losing motivation again. Eventually I started to notice that this created some problems: I started to miss out on being chosen for any teams that needed skilled players, I didn’t fit into any social groups, and worse, I struggled to feel any sense of accomplishment! Even when I practiced something for months(!), I’d find specialised positions like high school music and soccer programs put me in the ‘maybe’ category, in case one of their better candidates fell through.
As I got older, I had the same habits with my studies. I accrued huge debts in tertiary education through journalism, filmmaking, teaching English and graphic design. I put in average efforts across all my courses and, consequently, my lack of commitment in competitive job markets made me a less desirable candidate. I’d easily give up on applying for work in something I’d studied for years and the absence of success pushed me to move onto the next pursuit, hoping that the next skill would carry the passion and focus I was chasing.
Is anyone seeing a pattern here? Yes, my friends, I was what is now being called a multipotentialite (MP), someone who somewhat enjoys many subjects but truly commits to none. Over time, I’ve worked on myself to focus on becoming a polymath, someone with a high degree of skill or expertise in more than one subject. In doing so I’ve found much greater success, quietly regretting I wasted so many years dabbling. Yet to my horror, I’ve seen people continue to promote the idea of the dabbler as something wonderful and aspirational, rebranding it with a sexier name and the promise that it’ll make you more successful and wealthy.
Anthony Rahayel’s talk in 2014, On being a multipotentialite, is the earliest example I could find of the term MP. Rahayel is a successful dentist, food writer, photographer and hypnotherapist, what looks like a random assortment of jobs that he has upskilled through passion and entrepreneurship. But Emilie Wapnick’s TED talk from 2015, Why some of us don’t have one true calling, actually popularised the term and it’s also where the biggest problems with this mindset have, in my view, been created. Namely, the problem of moving from one unrelated study to the next once something, as she puts it, ‘isn’t challenging anymore’ and you ‘get bored’.
Rahayel’s thesis that ‘all you have to do is pursue unrelated topics you are passionate about until you find success in them’ falls apart when reinterpreted by Emilie to suggest you should ‘do whatever you want until you get bored’. Imagine studying chemistry and becoming bored of understanding the underlying structure of our universe, or practicing Chopin’s Nocturnes and feeling they were too simple to challenge you. Imagine studying physics and saying to yourself ‘you know what? Knowing how every molecule is held together is just not that interesting’, or reading ancient hist- well you get the point. If you were Dr. Manhattan I might be willing to give you a free pass, but for argument’s sake let’s say you’re not.
Sure, there are hugely successful self-titled multipotentialites like Rahayel, Wapnick, or Sarah Cummings (who has written for Medium and used Wapnick’s talk). But I would argue that this is possibly the wrong term for these people, as even they specialise in fields like media, consultation and events. They have likely expanded their expertise to various fields and become polymaths, also known as Renaissance people, and somehow decided to choose more… humble terminology. Even Rahayel’s successful food blogging career reveals the limitations of his unfocused approach once he diverges to hand out bogus diet advice (which is thankfully minimal).
Isaac Newton, Hedy Lamarr, Alhazen, Marie Curie, to name a few, are some of the highest performing polymaths who revolutionised our world. They used their almost superhuman capacity to understand or interpret complex information across various fields and come up with new systems and ways of looking at the world. But you don’t have to be in Mensa to be a polymath, you just need to have a high degree of skill or expertise in more than one area. To be a polymath, basic competency just doesn’t cut it or else everyone would be called one. Emilie conflates the term MP with polymath, making the invention of the word virtually pointless while giving it undue credit.
To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with someone with many interests and creative pursuits. People are driven by curiosity and the need to know more about the world we live in. I’m sure many of us here on Medium would even call ourselves MPs, that’s why we read articles regarding social media, international relations, business, mathematics, scientific breakthroughs and so on. That’s why we’re here on Medium itself, this is the perfect space for us! At heart, I believe humans love to learn about the incredible universe we’ve been given to explore. As we move further up the hierarchy of needs we’re given more opportunities to dive further into our various interests. Being well-read allows us to contribute to the world in ways that were previously impossible. For the many of us who remain curious, we resent having to specialise to the exclusion of all other knowledge, to be subjected to what Aldous Huxley called the “celibacy of the intellect”.
No, the reason I think MP is a problematic term worth discussing is that it is created to intentionally differentiate someone from a polymath in the context of a career. Rather than trying to debate the semantics of what is and isn’t a MP, I’d like to settle on the most popular definition used by Emilie in her talk of an individual that dabbles, achieves basic competency and becomes bored with a subject. Ostensibly, this is someone who never aims to achieve a high degree of skill and moves from one field of study to another with the same vagueness of intent.
Wapnick’s version of the term and her talk on it is a massive success precisely because it removes accountability. It sounds like she’s telling the audience that they no longer have to commit to the painful part of learning but can expect to become popular and successful by never being uncomfortable. Millions of people probably felt very validated and excited by that idea, but you cannot build a great career on a half-arsed effort. The term ‘multipotentialite’ excuses low proficiency in its very language, suggesting ‘potential’ without results. I think we should be very careful in using it to describe ourselves.
And just so there’s no confusion, this isn’t a mission to debate individual words, I’m using this word to warn against a lack of focus and effort. The term MP has been used to conceptually appropriate the idea of a polymath while specifically telling people to do less. Millions of people around the world have seen this idea and latched onto the belief that you can do great things without a true calling; that you can be great without surpassing mediocrity across a wide range of subjects. In my view, that’s a hugely damaging perception. Not only is learning the subtle intricacies and complexities of any field the place where the brain is most highly stimulated - the space where the mind synthesises the most useful parallels, finds new ways to see the world and devise progressive ideas - but to exist without aim is an entirely depressing thought.
As Viktor Frankl, psychologist and Nazi concentration camp survivor said, “life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.” The reason so many people believe they don’t have a true calling is likely because they haven’t defined one for themselves. Having been there myself, I have thoughts on how to resolve that, but that subject would require its own article.
For now, I can only encourage you to forget the empty promise of a career as a multipotentialite. If you want to use the word, use it to describe your various hobbies and subjects of interest that don’t speak to your core values. For matters of career, become a polymath in those that do speak to your core values. Take your time to truly learn a subject before moving onto another and endure the discomfort of consistent effort. Become an expert, wrestle with difficult questions, understand the minute details, the nuanced curvature of your chosen field and use what you learn to find new ways to give back to the world. Learning is eternal, boredom only comes through reductionism and the simplification of an art into its basic elements. The universe is beautiful, complex and waiting to reveal itself in the details of every pursuit, so long as you make the effort to look closely enough.
If you’d like to go further and learn how to find your calling, I provide a guide to building those foundations in part 2.
