-
Raise your hand if you've ever
been asked the question
-
"What do you want to be when you grow up?"
-
Now if you had to guess,
-
how old would you say you were
when you were first asked this question?
-
You can just hold up fingers.
-
Three. Five. Three. Five. Five. OK.
-
Now, raise your hand if the question
-
"What do you want to be when you grow up?"
-
has ever caused you any anxiety.
-
(Laughter)
-
Any anxiety at all.
-
I'm someone who's never
been able to answer the question
-
"What do you want to be when you grow up?"
-
See, the problem wasn't
that I didn't have any interests --
-
it's that I had too many.
-
In high school, I liked English
and math and art and I built websites
-
and I played guitar in a punk band
called Frustrated Telephone Operator.
-
Maybe you've heard of us.
-
(Laughter)
-
This continued after high school,
-
and at a certain point, I began
to notice this pattern in myself
-
where I would become interested in an area
-
and I would dive in, become all-consumed,
-
and I'd get to be pretty good
at whatever it was,
-
and then I would hit this point
where I'd start to get bored.
-
And usually I would try
and persist anyway,
-
because I had already devoted
so much time and energy
-
and sometimes money into this field.
-
But eventually this sense of boredom,
-
this feeling of, like, yeah, I got this,
this isn't challenging anymore --
-
it would get to be too much.
-
And I would have to let it go.
-
But then I would become interested
in something else,
-
something totally unrelated,
and I would dive into that,
-
and become all-consumed,
and I'd be like, "Yes! I found my thing,"
-
and then I would hit this point again
where I'd start to get bored.
-
And eventually, I would let it go.
-
But then I would discover
something new and totally different,
-
and I would dive into that.
-
This pattern caused me a lot of anxiety,
-
for two reasons.
-
The first was that I wasn't sure
-
how I was going to turn
any of this into a career.
-
I thought that I would eventually
have to pick one thing,
-
deny all of my other passions,
-
and just resign myself to being bored.
-
The other reason it caused me
so much anxiety
-
was a little bit more personal.
-
I worried that there
was something wrong with this,
-
and something wrong with me
for being unable to stick with anything.
-
I worried that I was afraid of commitment,
-
or that I was scattered,
or that I was self-sabotaging,
-
afraid of my own success.
-
If you can relate to my story
and to these feelings,
-
I'd like you to ask yourself a question
-
that I wish I had asked myself back then.
-
Ask yourself where you learned to assign
the meaning of wrong or abnormal
-
to doing many things.
-
I'll tell you where you learned it:
-
you learned it from the culture.
-
We are first asked the question
"What do you want to be when you grow up?"
-
when we're about five years old.
-
And the truth is that no one really cares
what you say when you're that age.
-
(Laughter)
-
It's considered an innocuous question,
-
posed to little kids
to elicit cute replies,
-
like, "I want to be an astronaut,"
or "I want to be a ballerina,"
-
or "I want to be a pirate."
-
Insert Halloween costume here.
-
(Laughter)
-
But this question gets asked of us
again and again as we get older
-
in various forms -- for instance,
high school students might get asked
-
what major they're going
to pick in college.
-
And at some point,
-
"What do you want to be when you grow up?"
-
goes from being
the cute exercise it once was
-
to the thing that keeps us up at night.
-
Why?
-
See, while this question inspires kids
to dream about what they could be,
-
it does not inspire them to dream
about all that they could be.
-
In fact, it does just the opposite,
-
because when someone asks you
what you want to be,
-
you can't reply with 20 different things,
-
though well-meaning adults
will likely chuckle and be like,
-
"Oh, how cute, but you can't be
a violin maker and a psychologist.
-
You have to choose."
-
This is Dr. Bob Childs --
-
(Laughter)
-
and he's a luthier and psychotherapist.
-
And this is Amy Ng, a magazine editor
turned illustrator, entrepreneur,
-
teacher and creative director.
-
But most kids don't hear
about people like this.
-
All they hear
-
is that they're going to have to choose.
-
But it's more than that.
-
The notion of the narrowly focused life
-
is highly romanticized in our culture.
-
It's this idea of destiny
or the one true calling,
-
the idea that we each have one great thing
-
we are meant to do
during our time on this earth,
-
and you need to figure out
what that thing is
-
and devote your life to it.
-
But what if you're someone
who isn't wired this way?
-
What if there are a lot of different
subjects that you're curious about,
-
and many different things you want to do?
-
Well, there is no room for someone
like you in this framework.
-
And so you might feel alone.
-
You might feel like you don't
have a purpose.
-
And you might feel like
there's something wrong with you.
-
There's nothing wrong with you.
-
What you are is a multipotentialite.
-
(Laughter)
-
(Applause)
-
A multipotentialite is someone
with many interests and creative pursuits.
-
It's a mouthful to say.
-
It might help if you break it up
into three parts:
-
multi, potential, and ite.
-
You can also use one of the other terms
that connote the same idea,
-
such as polymath, the Renaissance person.
-
Actually, during the Renaissance period,
-
it was considered the ideal
to be well-versed in multiple disciplines.
-
Barbara Sher refers to us as "scanners."
-
Use whichever term you like,
or invent your own.
-
I have to say I find it sort of fitting
that as a community,
-
we cannot agree on a single identity.
-
(Laughter)
-
It's easy to see your multipotentiality
-
as a limitation or an affliction
that you need to overcome.
-
But what I've learned
through speaking with people
-
and writing about these
ideas on my website,
-
is that there are some tremendous
strengths to being this way.
-
Here are three
-
multipotentialite super powers.
-
One: idea synthesis.
-
That is, combining two or more fields
-
and creating something new
at the intersection.
-
Sha Hwang and Rachel Binx drew
from their shared interests
-
in cartography, data visualization,
travel, mathematics and design,
-
when they founded Meshu.
-
Meshu is a company that creates
custom geographically-inspired jewelry.
-
Sha and Rachel came up
with this unique idea
-
not despite, but because of their eclectic
mix of skills and experiences.
-
Innovation happens at the intersections.
-
That's where the new ideas come from.
-
And multipotentialites,
with all of their backgrounds,
-
are able to access a lot of these
points of intersection.
-
The second multipotentialite superpower
-
is rapid learning.
-
When multipotentialites
become interested in something,
-
we go hard.
-
We observe everything
we can get our hands on.
-
We're also used to being beginners,
-
because we've been beginners
so many times in the past,
-
and this means that we're less afraid
of trying new things
-
and stepping out of our comfort zones.
-
What's more, many skills
are transferable across disciplines,
-
and we bring everything we've learned
to every new area we pursue,
-
so we're rarely starting from scratch.
-
Nora Dunn is a full-time traveler
and freelance writer.
-
As a child concert pianist,
she honed an incredible ability
-
to develop muscle memory.
-
Now, she's the fastest typist she knows.
-
(Laughter)
-
Before becoming a writer,
Nora was a financial planner.
-
She had to learn
the finer mechanics of sales
-
when she was starting her practice,
-
and this skill now helps her
write compelling pitches to editors.
-
It is rarely a waste of time
to pursue something you're drawn to,
-
even if you end up quitting.
-
You might apply that knowledge
in a different field entirely,
-
in a way that you couldn't
have anticipated.
-
The third multipotentialite superpower
-
is adaptability;
-
that is, the ability to morph
into whatever you need to be
-
in a given situation.
-
Abe Cajudo is sometimes a video director,
sometimes a web designer,
-
sometimes a Kickstarter consultant,
sometimes a teacher,
-
and sometimes, apparently, James Bond.
-
(Laughter)
-
He's valuable because he does good work.
-
He's even more valuable
because he can take on various roles,
-
depending on his clients' needs.
-
Fast Company magazine
identified adaptability
-
as the single most important skill
to develop in order to thrive
-
in the 21st century.
-
The economic world is changing
so quickly and unpredictably
-
that it is the individuals
and organizations that can pivot
-
in order to meet the needs of the market
that are really going to thrive.
-
Idea synthesis, rapid learning
and adaptability:
-
three skills that multipotentialites
are very adept at,
-
and three skills that they might lose
if pressured to narrow their focus.
-
As a society, we have a vested interest
in encouraging multipotentialites
-
to be themselves.
-
We have a lot of complex, multidimensional
problems in the world right now,
-
and we need creative,
out-of-the-box thinkers to tackle them.
-
Now, let's say that you are,
in your heart, a specialist.
-
You came out of the womb knowing
you wanted to be a pediatric neurosurgeon.
-
Don't worry -- there's nothing
wrong with you, either.
-
(Laughter)
-
In fact, some of the best teams
are comprised of a specialist
-
and multipotentialite paired together.
-
The specialist can dive in deep
and implement ideas,
-
while the multipotentialite brings
a breath of knowledge to the project.
-
It's a beautiful partnership.
-
But we should all be designing
lives and careers
-
that are aligned with how we're wired.
-
And sadly, multipotentialites
are largely being encouraged
-
simply to be more
like their specialist peers.
-
So with that said,
-
if there is one thing
you take away from this talk,
-
I hope that it is this:
-
embrace your inner wiring,
whatever that may be.
-
If you're a specialist at heart,
-
then by all means, specialize.
-
That is where you'll do your best work.
-
But to the multipotentialites in the room,
-
including those of you
who may have just realized
-
in the last 12 minutes that you are one --
-
(Laughter)
-
to you I say:
-
embrace your many passions.
-
Follow your curiosity
down those rabbit holes.
-
Explore your intersections.
-
Embracing our inner wiring leads
to a happier, more authentic life.
-
And perhaps more importantly --
-
multipotentialites, the world needs us.
-
Thank you.
-
(Applause)