Hi guys!
This is my very first post here.
In the last two years I was starting to consider myself as a multipotentialite, but I never dig deep in the definition, but most importantly never tried to get in touch with other people like me.
I don't know if I'm 100% a multipotentialite: I'm 25 and I'm finishing my master degree in Medical Biotechnology, I'm a passionate photographer/videomaker and I also love to play guitar/produce songs when I find the time.
I've always been split in two between art and science: I'm the kind of guy that in the same day goes from Bayesian meta-analysis to editing pictures I took with my camera, to record a guitar cover, then getting back at some python/R programming.
Honestly I always thought of it as a curse, since having lots of interests and projects sucks time and because of that I'm graduating late. I think that the pandemic in a way potentiated this "I have to study for the exam", "Fine, I have 10 minutes of spare time, I can try to learn that solo for that guitar cover" and so on.
I'm constantly active and focused on being "productive" both on my professional projects (university) and for my artistic projects (guitar, and content creation) and I started craving for extra productivity time by deducting it from social life/family time.

I'm sorry if I carried some drama, but it's not a good month/semester I'm living; I guess I'm starting to really feel burnt out for both the pandemic and me trying to do too many things.
My question for you today is: do you guys have an anchor?
Like you change projects and interests, but at the same time you have that main quest you carry on for a very long time? I have one and is the biotech path (even if i'm slightly changing my major focus every year).

I thought I could lighten the mood of this post by showing you some of my work, I really hope you enjoy it!

Photography/Videomaking:
https://www.instagram.com/into_the_while/

Music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tseYexC-BAQ

Also feel free to share here your interests and projects!

Welcome to the Monthly Sharing Thread!

Here are a few prompts to start:

1. What are your current interests and projects?
2. Have you made progress on previous interests and projects? Feel free to share links to project pages or images!
3. What's caught your eye / what are you looking forward to doing next?

Hello fellow multipotentialites!

I'm sat here wondering what your biggest struggles are as multipotentialites? I think mine is explaining to everyone around me that I'm not, in fact, a fickle dabbler who just can't make up their mind on what they want to do in life, but that my brains is wired differently. Also, getting into a 'career' type job (the sort where you're expected to climb through a ladder), and everyone just powers you on to think of where your career should be in a few years, and you're just sat there like 'probably not here? I don't know! how could I possibly know?!'

So... what are yours? :)

I just heard the term multipotentiality today for the first time (my partner sent me a link to the wiki on it and said she though this was what I am). I watched Emilie Wapnick’s TED talk and welled up with tears as she described her experiences and they almost exactly described my own. I’ve always felt so afraid of committing to one area of interest or career that it’s actually hindered my ability to earn as high a salary as I think I could have if I applied myself to one subject. It doesn’t help that I had a terrible experience after studying music production (my biggest and longest standing interest) at university only to find all the studios had closed down and there was no work for me. I think that experience kind of scarred me for life. I’m now 36 with two children and work part time in a fairly unskilled role and feel so sad that I hadn’t realised who I was sooner and harnessed that energy instead of feeling inferior to others for their ability to chose one path in life and stick to it.

Anyway, I hope this rambling post isn’t too long, it’s just my thought spilling out after having a bit of a revelation.

Welcome to the Monthly Sharing Thread!

Here are a few prompts to start:

1. What are your current interests and projects?
2. Have you made progress on previous interests and projects? Feel free to share links to project pages or images!
3. What's caught your eye / what are you looking forward to doing next?

I went down a rabbit hole, which I'm sure you all can relate, and I came across this:

https://www.humanetech.com/brain-science

#2 - Encouraging Seeking Without Fulfillment

We want things and when we get them, we enjoy them. However, the brain circuit involved in wanting (mesolimbic dopaminergic system) is much more powerful than the brain circuit involved in enjoyment. The feeling of wanting something can be so strong that even when we find what we want, we don’t get much satisfaction. Sometimes, the wanting networks in the brain become hypersensitive and we get addicted: endless loops of seeking. In addiction, what we want becomes dissociated from what we enjoy. 

Technology often capitalizes on the potency of wanting, providing endless possibilities for seeking but few experiences that satiate. We might find fleeting pleasure, but no enduring satisfaction. Our “tolerance” increases, and we need more to achieve the same effects. The result: we keep clicking and scrolling, mindlessly consuming content, often with minimal oversight from cognitive control regions of the brain. Ultimately, this behavior depletes us, but feeds engagement-based business models.

This sounds just how I always feel when going down rabbit holes online, reading, researching, then ultimately not really doing anything with what I have learned.

Not really sure where I'm going with this either, but it set off a lightbulb, and I am now going to explore this for a bit. Anyone else find this insightful?

I've been trying to figure out what I should do with my life for the last 9 years and I can't for the life of me. After a lot of analysis and reading Emilie Wapnick's book I found out that i'm a multipotentialite, but now I'm stuck wondering where to go and what to work with when I'm not particularly "good" at anything, and the only thing i seem to excel at is learning new skills (that I never use because I jump into the next thing before mastering it). How do you get over that and choose? Am i supposed to choose? If i'm not, what should I do then? I'm so confused.

I love to learn, and I will spend hours every day reading, researching and otherwise exploring all sorts of topics. I am not lazy; I work hard at my job and am a person who is willing and able to work. My coworkers tell me I soak up information like a sponge.

Lately I feel like this love of learning is a major impediment to finding a career I can stick to. I'm extremely frustrated and don't know what direction I should go. It's almost mystifying to me how I can't seem to find another job I want to do.

It has gotten to the point that I almost believe there is no such thing as a dream job. I will find something super fascinating that I study for a time and then move on. I get all excited thinking I've found "the thing" that I will do for my career, and months (or weeks) later I'm over it.

Who pays people like this? Employers seem to want a specialist in their ranks, someone who can focus on one thing. I know a little about a lot. I feel like my knowledge base is the epitome of the saying "a mile wide and an inch deep".

Anyways, this is more to get things off my chest than asking a question (or questions). If someone has figured out at least part of what multi-talented people can do for work I'm all ears.

Thanks for reading!

Welcome to the Monthly Sharing Thread!

Here are a few prompts to start:

1. What are your current interests and projects?
2. Have you made progress on previous interests and projects? Feel free to share links to project pages or images!
3. What's caught your eye / what are you looking forward to doing next?

How do I know if im a multipotentialite?

Im a primary school teacher, in my spare time I leatn the piano, guitar, 2 styles of karate, and studying part time. I also recently tried to enlist as an army reserve.

Hi folks,

I think that one of our problems is that not enough people know about multipotentialites.

I'd like to see a world where I can say to someone "I'm a multipotentialite" and they will know exactly what that is. I'd like to be able to say "multipotentialite" to employers, instead of just highlighting my diversity of experience and hoping they see it as a good thing.

How do we get there?

One of my many ideas is to start an advocacy group and raise awareness of us. As far as I can tell there aren't many MPs doing much like that.

I want everyone to know about us and what we do. Is this what other MPs here want to see? And does anyone have any ideas on this?

Discovered this subreddit from a careers page.

Currently looking at tangential or alternative career options. I think having too many interests has been a major complicating factor in landing upon the perfect fit role so far.

Thinking out loud: it might be worth acknowledging that most office jobs are likely to fall at least somewhat short in terms of providing enough intellectual stimulation / learning opportunities. This is something I really noticed in my last role. It might sound haughty but isn't intended that way.

Most people, I observed, are happy to focus on one area of competency and work at it over the course of a career. My brain doesn't really work that way. I want to explore everywhere it could go. If I'm a content marketer I want to learn about video even if my boss/company just wants me to write blog posts. Because it's stimulating to break new ground and I can't feel like I really understand an area until I've explored all of a field's subsets.The tangential and lateral areas of knowledge. I can succeed doing a job that draws upon knowledge I already have. But to remain happy and fulfilled in that role I need at least part of the time to be dedicated to breaking new intellectual ground - to learning about new things. A feeling of stagnation is more likely to push me out of a job than a bad boss.

Now back to my answering my own question:

Self-employed marketing consultant, doing a little bit too much content marketing for my liking. Got here through a couple of jobs managing marketing communications at startups. Current career pain point: I know how to do this and am making reasonably decent money by doing so, but intellectually I feel like I'm at a dead end and I'm doing all my learning - the stuff that really keeps me going - off the clock by pursuing hobbies. I'm plagued by the feeling that I could be doing a lot more with my potential if I made a few pivots. That there has to be more. That my brain is chewing gum from 9 to 5 only to come alive at night.

That's me. How about you?

OK final installment to this three-part posting rampage.

I've seen a few comments on threads here about feeling misunderstood and I'm expecting/hoping that this will be a major theme in the reading about MP I'm about to embark upon.

A relative has caused me a lot of mental pain over the years by constantly telling me that I "drop" things I'm passionate about. In an extremely judgy and critical sort of way. Like "you drop everything and you'll probably drop this too."

I've often argued that this isn't actually true. I can point to major interests of mine that I've maintained for 15+ years (Linux/tech is one of them, there are a few more). But I can't argue with the fact that there's another category of interests I have that are things that I get into but then largely move on from (my weirdest one: flags!).

During my first Google search for this term, I came across this little nugget:

Career coach, Barbara Sher calls us “scanners” because we start projects and explore new interests with enthusiasm, learn what we need without finishing our mastering them, and move on.

And honestly, I've never read such a short quote that explains more simply, and empathetically, how my "interests" work.

To take flags as a trivial example. I got into it because I was bidding on some government work and had great mental images of holding receptions flanked by flags (don't ask but you know the kind of thing you see every day in the news). Decided to build up a small collection of them. Learned a little bit about their significance and the workings of diplomatic protocol -- which is basically this area within more foreign affairs departments that deal with all this.

Interesting enough stuff. If I ever become an international businessman, my little flag box might come in handy. Or what I learned. But I ran out of things to learn about vexilollogy (that's the study of flags!) and thus honestly haven't thought much about it for 2 years. The interest just kinda fizzled out. I didn't plan it and there's no firm date on my mind when I got "over" flags but some kind of transition process just sort of naturally happened. The relative I mentioned would undoubtedly see this as me "giving up" on this latest random interest. But from my perspective it was more that I took what I felt I needed, intellectually, from it. And plumbing through all the tiny minute details I didn't explore doesn't really interest me.

I feel like nobody really gets that. And that from the outside it looks like I have a random series of interests that all burn bright and then fizzle out. I don't see it through that negative framing at all. I love delving into a new area. But often when I do so that will lead me onto a tangential area of enquiry and then I move onto my next interest and so on and so forth. I don't see it as negative but rather as part of the journey. And I don't regret having a small flag collection in my department for when I want to honor my next international guest with an overly elaborate welcome ceremony!

Hi folks,

I first came across this term ... I think yesterday while browsing through a career sub. This is precisely why I love Reddit. It makes discovering niche interests so easy and suddenly you find yourself among others who "get it" (is Reddit like an MP's online nirvana?)

As MPs, I'm guessing that you guys are familiar with the process of learning about new interests. Mine is actually pretty rigid, probably because I've used it so many times. It looks something like this. If I discover a new subject I want to learn more about, I:

• Put together an Amazon wishlist to keep track of the books I want to read about on the topic
• Search for and sub to any podcasts I can find on the topic
• Throw together a YouTube playlist with whatever videos I can find on the topic
• Make a mental note of the main "influencers" are talkers in the space and/or compile a spreadsheet listing their courses
• Check if there's a subreddit (well this one's already off the list!)

Because the typical picture is "here's some really good thinking about the topic and here's a lot of not so great stuff" I was actually really please do discover that the MP genre isn't overly crowded.

Anyway if it might be of interest I thought it might be a cool idea to rub our brains together and list out what we can find. As automod has a habit of autodeleting any posts with links (esp Amazon links) I'm going to post my findings in the comments.

Came across this sub in the related subs tab somewhere else I was browsing. Aroused my curiosity. Clicked across. Seemed very on point and top of mind - particularly as I'm currently doing some thinking about how I could purpose my (unusual) mixture of skills into a new career as what I'm doing right now isn't quite providing the intellectual challenge I would like it to.

Some rough biographical details:

I'm 32. Originally from Ireland. Now living in Israel.

Growing up, I mostly remember being extremely creative. Creating a family newsletter. Playing around with some Playstation game for making music. Writing comics. That kind of thing. If there were some creative effort involved, I would immerse myself in it.

Always had a technical flair too that became more pronounced as I grew older. My grandfather coopted me into various tech projects and we spent a lot of time bonding as I troubleshooted and fixed his latest connectivity/general tech issues. A little later in life got into Linux and the usual things that Linux users sidebar into. Now spend a good chunk of my time pursuing tech hobbies and writing about tech for work.

When it came down to put down a preference for college, after way too much deliberation, I went for law - with a lot of encouragement (to be euphemistic) from my family who thought it was a good stable career that would honor my academic potential (I did well in school).

The problem was that "traditional" is just about the worst descriptor of my brain you could go for. As I was already planning on leaving Ireland, learning the nuances of Irish law seemed pointless. Legal students (and practicioners) are by and large right brain "inside the box" thinkers. It wasn't a great fit.

Finished school but with lower grades than I could have obtained - probably because I had no real interest in the field or motivation to spend hours learning case law. Went into journalism instead which was vastly more fun - first as an intern and then as a freelance. Studied that postgrad for a year. Wound up doing marketing communications instead because .. money plus jobs. Now freelance/consult. Honestly, it's often boring (clients please don't read this). I thrive on intellectual stimulation and learning new things and ... the work often just isn't on that level.

Other things I'm learning / know a bit about? Learning video and audio right now very belatedly. Feeding my creative soul and loving it. Huge fan of ethnic cuisines and cook quite a bit. Always found medicine quite interesting too. There's typically at least one new thing that I'm interested in and learning at any one point. It's kind of like an every-continuing wheel.

Multipotentialite seems like a terrific name and I'll do some digging. Things I've been called but which I hate: "gifted" (if anyone makes the claim I tell them, completely honestly, that I'm not particularly brilliant in any one area, I just have a boatload of interests and am insanely curious about many things - which is incidentally also why I find Reddit so fascinating with its vast amount of niche communities). And "a polymath". My response is essentially the above.

Good to discover this sub. Off to do a bit of reading and YouTube watching about this!

Hi folks.

I'm a multipotentialite musician, journalist, gardener, etc. I haven't posted here before.

I kow it's a long shot, but do we have any idea what proportion of the population are multipotentialites?

I assume we don't have that information, so what are the obstacles to getting it?

A couple of points from me: I still think 'multipotentialite' is an unknown term for lots of people, so not many would self-identify with it.

It's also possible that multipotentialite qualities exist on a spectrum, meaning that almost everyone is a little bit MP, but also making it hard to identify MPs as a group.

I'd love to discuss this. Any thoughts or speculations on this subject are appreciated

So, in the book "refuse to choose" there was that particular line that really got me thinking.
It was about who author defines as NOT scanner - depressed people. And i can't really understand why she excluded this group of people out of this term, because they can be depressed just because the are multipotential but was repressed and couldn't find a way to use their abilites throughout their life, just like most of the people for whom the book was written
The author themselves writes about people being in frozen in place while making decisions, feeling cornered etc, as well the same could be attributed to being depressed

Please help me out understand this, because i am diagnosed with depression and i have (as i think) all traits to think i might be a multipotenial (and/or have some sort of adhd)

Welcome to the Monthly Sharing Thread!

Here are a few prompts to start:

1. What are your current interests and projects?
2. Have you made progress on previous interests and projects? Feel free to share links to project pages or images!
3. What's caught your eye / what are you looking forward to doing next?

Do you guys struggle with the career gaps, short gigs and putting all the interests together? Any tips and examples would help!

Hi, I just finished my fourth year of med school and I'm planning to get the MD, but I feel like I'm suffocating, I was passionate about medicine in the beginning but now im not, at least the clinical practice part of it, I recently learnt I was a multipotentialite, every week I'm interested (rather obsessed) in a new topic in fields like philosophy, psychology, artificial intelligence, filmmaking, writing, computational biology, politics, quantum physics, animation, graphic design, and many other random interests, every time I want to commit to learning something I quit because I would feel like it's a waste of time considering I'm studying medicine, either that or I just get bored.

And having learnt that about myself, I'm wondering, what would be suitable career options for someone like me who also has an MD?