WEBVTT

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Raise your hand

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if you have ever been asked
the question,

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"What do you want to be
when you grow up?"

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(Laughter)

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Now, if you had to guess,

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how old would you say you were
when you were first asked this question?

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You can just hold up fingers.

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Three, five, three, five, five; OK.

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Now, raise your hand if the question

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"What do you want to be when you grow up?"
has ever caused you any anxiety.

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(Laughter)

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Any anxiety at all.

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I'm someone who's never been able
to answer the question,

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"What do you want to be
when you grow up?"

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See, the problem wasn't
that I didn't have any interests

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it's that I had too many.

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In high school I liked English,
and Math, and Arts, and I built websites,

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and I played guitar in a punk band
called Frustrated Telephone Operator.

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(Laughter)

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Maybe you've heard of us.

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(Laughter)

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This continued after high school,

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and at a certain point,
I began to notice this pattern in myself,

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where I would become interested in an area

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and I would dive in,
and become all consumed,

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and I'd get to be pretty good
at whatever it was,

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and then I would hit this point
where I'd start to get bored.

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And usually, I would try
and persist anyway

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because I'd already devoted
so much time and energy,

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and sometimes money into this field.

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But eventually, this sense of boredom,
this feeling of, "Yeah, I've got this!

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This isn't challenging anymore,"

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it would get to be too much,
and I would have to let it go.

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But then, I would become
interested in something else,

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something totally unrelated,

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and I would dive into that
and become all consumed,

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and I would feel like,
"Yes, I found my thing!"

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And then I would hit this point again

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where I'd start to get bored
and eventually I would let it go.

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But then I would discover
something new and totally different,

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and I would dive into that...

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This pattern caused me
a lot of anxiety for two reasons:

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the first was that I wasn't sure

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how I was going to turn
any of this into a career.

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I thought that I would eventually
have to pick one thing,

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deny all my other passions
and just resign myself to being bored.

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The other reason
it caused me so much anxiety

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was a little bit more personal.

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I worried that there was
something wrong with this

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and something wrong with me

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for being unable to stick with anything.

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I worried that I was afraid of commitment,
or that I was scattered,

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or that I was self sabotaging,
afraid of my own success.

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If you can relate to my story
and to these feelings,

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I'd like you to ask yourself a question
that I wish I had asked myself back then.

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Ask yourself where you learned

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to assign the meaning of wrong
or abnormal to doing many things.

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I'll tell you where you learnt it.

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You learnt it from the culture.

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When you were first asked the question,

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"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

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you were about five years old,

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and the truth is that no one really cares
what you say when you are that age.

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(Laughter)

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It's considered an innocuous question

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posed to little kids
to elicit cute replies.

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Like, "I want to be an astronaut,"
or "I want to be a ballerina,"

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or "I want to be a pirate,"
- insert Halloween costume here.

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(Laughter)

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But this question is asked of us
again and again

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as we get older in various forms.

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For instance,

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high school students might get asked

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what major they are going to pick
in college.

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And at some point,
what do you want to be when you grow up

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goes from being
the cute exercise it once was

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to the thing that keeps us up at night.

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Why?

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See, while this question inspires kids
to dream about what they could be,

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it does not inspire them to dream
about all that they could be.

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In fact, it does just the opposite.

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Because when someone asks you
what you want to be,

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you can't reply with 20 different things.

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The well meaning adult
will likely chuckle and be like,

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"Oh, how cute, but you can't be
a violin maker and a psychologist.

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You have to choose."

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This is Doctor Bob Childs.

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(Laughter)

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And he's a luthier and a psychotherapist.

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And this is Amy Ng, a magazine editor,

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turned illustrator, entrepreneur,
teacher, and creative director.

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But most kids don't hear
about people like this.

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All they hear is
that they are going to have to choose.

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But it's more than that.

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The notion of the narrowly focused life
is highly romanticized in our culture.

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It's this idea of destiny
or the one true calling.

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The idea that we each have one great thing

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we are meant to do
during our time on this Earth.

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And you need to figure out

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what that thing is
and devote your life to it.

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But, what if you are someone
who isn't wired this way?

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What if there are a lot
of different subjects

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that you're curious about?

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And many different things you want to do?

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Well, there is no room
for someone like you in this framework.

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And so you might feel alone.

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You might feel like
you don't have a purpose.

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You might feel like
there is something wrong with you.

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There is nothing wrong with you.

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What you are is a multipotentialite.

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(Applause)

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A multipotentialite is someone

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with many interests and creative pursuits.

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It's a mouthful to say.

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It might help if you break it up
into three parts:

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multi - potential - ite.

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You can also use one of the other terms
that connote the same ideas,

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such is the polymath,
the Renaissance person.

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Actually, during the Renaissance period

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it was considered the ideal
to be well versed in multiple disciplines.

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Barbara Sher refers to us as scanners.

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Use whichever term you like
or invent your own.

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I have to say I find it sort of fitting
that as a community,

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we cannot agree on a single identity.

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(Laughter)

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It's easy to see you multipotentiality

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as a limitation or an affliction
that you need to overcome.

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But what I've learned
through speaking with people

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and writing about these ideas
on my website, Puttylike,

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is that there is some tremendous
strengths to being this way.

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Here are 3 multipotentialite super powers.

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One; idea synthesis.

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That is combining two or more fields

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and creating something new
at the intersection.

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Sha Hwang and Rachel Binx

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drew from their shared interest
in cartography,

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data visualization, travel, mathematics,
and design when they founded Meshu.

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Meshu is a company that creates
custom geographically inspired jewelry.

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Sha and Rachel came up
with this unique idea

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not despite, but because
of their eclectic mix

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of skills and experiences.

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Innovation happens at the intersections.

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That's where the new ideas come from.

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And multipotentialites
with all of their backgrounds

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are able to access
a lot of these points of intersection.

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The second multipotentialite
superpower is rapid learning.

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When multipotentialites become
interested in something - we go hard.

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We absorb everything
we can get our hands on.

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We're also used to being beginners

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because we've been beginners
so many times in the past.

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And this means that we're less afraid
of trying new things

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and stepping out of our comfort zones.

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What's more, many skills
are transferable across disciplines.

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And we bring everything we've learned
to every new area we pursue

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so we're rarely starting from scratch.

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Nora Dunn is a full time traveler
and freelance writer.

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As a child concert pianist,

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she honed an incredible ability
to develop muscle memory.

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Now she's the fastest typist she knows.

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Before becoming a writer,
Nora was a financial planner.

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She had to learn
the finer mechanics of sales

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when she was starting her practice,

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and this skill now helps her write
compelling pitches to editors.

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It is rarely a waste of time
to pursue something you are drawn to,

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even if you end up quitting.

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You might apply that knowledge
in a different field entirely

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in a way you couldn't have anticipated.

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The third multipotentialite
super power is adaptability.

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That is the ability to morph

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into whatever you need to be
in a given situation.

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Abe Cajudo is sometimes a video director,
sometimes a web designer,

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sometimes a Kickstarter consultant,
sometimes a teacher,

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and sometimes, apparently, James Bond.

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(Laughter)

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He's valuable because he does good work.

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He's even more valuable

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because he can take on various roles
depending on his client's needs.

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Fast Company Magazine
identified adaptability

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as the single most
important skill to develop

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in order to thrive in the 21st century.

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The economic world is changing
so quickly and unpredictably

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that it is the individuals
and organizations that can pivot

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in order to meet the needs of the market
that are really going to thrive.

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Idea synthesis, rapid learning
and adaptability.

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Three skills that multipotentialites
are very adept at.

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And three skills that they might lose
if pressured to narrow their focus.

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As a society, we have a vested interest

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in encouraging multipotentialites
to be themselves.

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We have a lot of complex, multidimensional
problems in the world right now,

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and we need creative,
out-of-the-box thinkers to tackle them.

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Now, let's say that you are
in your heart a specialist.

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You came out of the womb

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knowing you wanted to be
a pediatric neurosurgeon.

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Don't worry, there's nothing wrong
with you either.

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(Laughter)

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In fact, some of the best teams

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are comprised of a specialist
and a multipotentialite paired together.

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A specialist can dive-in deep
and implement ideas

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while the multipotentialite brings
a breadth of knowledge to the project.

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It's a beautiful partnership.

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But we should all be designing
lives and careers

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that are aligned with how we are wired,

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and sadly, multipotentialites
are largely being encouraged

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simply to be
more like their specialist peers.

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So, with that said;

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if there's one thing
you take away from this talk,

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I hope that it is this:

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embrace your inner wiring
whatever that may be.

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If you are a specialist at heart,
then by all means, specialize.

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That is where you'll do your best work.

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But, to the multipotentialites in the room

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- including those of you
who may have just realized

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in the last 12 minutes that you are one -

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(Laughter)

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to you I say: embrace your many passions,

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follow your curiosity
down those rabbit holes,

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explore your intersections.

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Embracing our inner wiring
leads to a happier, more authentic life

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and perhaps more importantly,

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multipotentialites,

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the world needs us.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)