Surprising Merits of Scattered Interests
Those of us who have scattered interests are often left feeling like “less than” those that pursue and achieve mastery in just one area. However, this diversity could actually be both sources of your sanity and your superpower!
A few years ago a new employee at my work asked me about my hobbies. The question surprised me — I didn’t think anyone asked me about my hobbies since high school. I tried to answer, and came up with… absolutely nothing!
Yes, I did lots of things for fun. My calendar was always packed with things I enjoyed doing. I was always trying to fit one more thing into my leisure time. There were weekends away, yoga and pilates classes, lots of social catch-ups, weekend brunches with my husband, fun runs, book reading time, fundraising, park visits, various workshops, museums, book club meetings, volunteering, international travel (and travel planning!), long hikes and so on.
My free time was a mesh of many many things I enjoyed doing.
But, none of that I felt really deserved to be called a hobby. And, given this was pre-children, I definitely had free time and no valid excuse why not to have a hobby.
This was not for lack of trying — I did want to find myself a hobby. I liked the idea of really applying myself to something, and getting really good at it.
I admire my friend who, in addition to a very demanding job, is also an accomplished swimmer and a violin player — even the president of her concert orchestra. Sitting in the audience watching her do her thing, and do it so well, I kept thinking to myself:
I should find something like that. Something substantial outside of work. Something I can call “my thing”, something that I show up to week in week out.
At face value, this makes sense. I see how one is unable to get really good at something if their attention and time are not scattered across many different things. Heck, there was even a whole bestselling book written about it — One Thing by Gary Keller.
But, my attempts of finding my thing were spectacularly unsuccessful. I couldn’t understand why. I am a committed person in many other ways. Yet, committing to doing one thing in my leisure time just didn’t seem to work for me.
I kept thinking:
I just haven’t found the right thing. I need to keep searching for it, and when I finally find it, I will be able to stick with it.
So I tried a few things — learning Spanish, baking, long-distance running. There were also some project-type interests that consumed my brain space like wedding planning or introducing solids to my baby. But, when I look back, those efforts followed the same pattern:
- Find a new “thing” and get excited, thinking “This could be IT!”
- Obsessively pursue that “thing” for a period of time
- Achieve some basic competency level
- Get bored and move on to the next thing
Interestingly, the same pattern was echoed by Emilie Wapnick in her multi-million-view TED talk on multipotentialites “Why don’t some of us have one true calling”. She also talks about the anxiety that comes from having to pick just one thing — the same feelings I’ve had on the topic.
After a number of my own failed efforts at finding and committing to one thing, I had a conversation that was a true breakthrough for me. A very insightful psychologist said to me:
Some people enjoy pursuing deep mastery in one (or a couple) of areas. But some people get enjoyment out of pursuing many areas of interest at the same time — and that is perfectly valid.
This was it! I finally had permission to accept that I am just not the “one thing” type.
My interests might be a bit scattered, and that means I will never reach a certain depth and mastery.
However — that is perfectly ok. In fact, for people like me, it might even be better. Depth and mastery might have their merits, and I certainly appreciate that. But, there are benefits of pursuing a lot of different things, many of which have been well researched and written about — albeit often with a career/finding your calling bend.
In the same TED Talk, Emilie talks about three super-powers of “jugglers” — adaptability, idea synthesis & rapid learning. Kathyrn Montbriad in a series of her Medium articles talks about what it means to be a generalist, and provides guidance on how to communicate the strengths of generalist wiring to enable career opportunities. Similar was tackled by Pamela Slim in her fantastic book “Body of Work” — she pushes the concept even further and talks about finding a common thread in diverse pursuits. Once the thread is found it can be crafted into a story of how all the diverse interest build on each other to be more than the sum of their parts.
However, all of this thinking is mostly focused on thriving in one’s career.
I argue that the merits of being scatter-brained (or a multipotentialite or a generalist) extend beyond one’s career, and into leisure time.
Some potential merits, as I see them, are:
- A diversified portfolio of interests decreases the risk of boredom — If one pursues just one type of activity in their leisure time, for example, long-distance running, a bad injury could quickly put a stop to that and leave them feeling unmoored. However, having a rich portfolio of interests means there is always something available and possible to do. When COVID shut down the entire world, I could still keep tapping into my love of books because they were easily accessible and book clubs could continue — albeit virtually.
- More efficient use of leisure time by combining activities. One can do two or even more of the activities of interest at the same time to get even more bang for leisure time buck. For example — a hike with friends ticks physical activity & social connection boxes.
- Opportunity to connect and strengthen one interest area by tapping into others. For example, a couple of years ago I was able to tap into my diverse social circles to accelerate fundraising for a cause I believe in strongly.
Have you noticed any other merits in your life and leisure pursuits? I would love to know!
