I have a confession to make - I feel like I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. I know I'm not young anymore but there was so much pressure when I was younger to choose a career, choose a field of study, choose something that I felt that I ended up choosing something that I didn't really love (I did like it a lot though). That in itself isn't a problem - as Cal Newport says in his book So Good They Can't Ignore You, following your passion is not the best advice in finding a career that you love. That's why I picked up this book by Emilie Wapnick called "How to be everything - a guide for those who (still) don't know what they want to be when they grow up".
The book is broken down into a number of major sections: the first section is an argument from Emilie talking about the concept of being a generalist vs. a specialist - the world these days apparently rewards or wants people to become specialists. She then cites the 10,000 hour rule made popular by Malcolm Gladwell but she argues that if somebody spends 10,000 hours on their craft, they may have better skill but that does not mean that they are better than someone who devotes say 2,000 hours in five different areas. For one thing, the person that diversifies has increased potential for creativity and better potential for utilizing different skills in unique ways. She defines these individuals that have multiple potentials as, surprise surprise, multi-potentialites.
Next, and what I will look at further, is the fact that out of the many multi-potentialites that she has looked at or talked to, Emilie has found that they primarily have four types of careers:
Slash career
The first type of career that multi-potentialites have is a slash career. You probably have a few friends that are like this - they may work at a non-profit organization for two days a week, and then work as a freelance marketer for another two days a week, and then for one day a week, goes off to do keynote speeches at conferences.
Each of your 'slashes' fulfills a different part of you. You aren't working full time at a job where you may only focus on one or two things but you get a week full of variety where you are doing multiple part time jobs. Most people in slash careers tend to be employed / self employed - they may have both a stable job and some seasonal or part time work to fill in the gaps.
What I really like is that Emilie also goes into the pros and cons of a slash career and how to make the jump to a slash career (assuming that you are in a full time job now) - sometimes we are presented with part time opportunities, other times we just dive in and tweak as we go.
Group hug approach
In a way, I'm lucky because as a management consultant, I get to do a variety of projects where I use different skills and focus on different industries or sectors. The group hug approach is having one job where you often get to wear different hats in that one job. This can be something like artificial intelligence (which relies on math, physics, vision, computer science, design, philosophy, etc.). In this way, you can fulfill some of your many interests as a multi-potentialite by the one job that you have.
How do you get a 'group hug' job? You can either find jobs in interdisciplinary fields OR sometimes you can get a job with the one amazing skill that you have and then start to volunteer for other types of work within the same job. For example, I remember my good friend Shawn Kanungo, as he was working at Deloitte, he started to volunteer to modify different slide decks for Partners and other Service Lines and quickly became the go-to guy for design and innovation as opposed to just being another consultant.
Einstein approach
Einstein worked for almost 10 years as a patent officer for the Swiss government - during this time, he produced lots of scientific articles and research, including his Theory of Relativity. How did he manage to do this while working a full time job? Emilie says that it was because of how he approached his work model - i.e., he found a full time, stable job that paid the bills and did not require significant effort that allowed him the time and energy to pursue his passion projects outside of the job.
Maybe this same approach would work for you? If you feel like you are interested in many things that your full time job does not allow you to do (say like in a group hug approach), then see your job the same way that Einstein saw it - as a full time job that gives you the stability to pursue other interests outside of work.
Phoenix approach
The Phoenix is a legendary bird (Fawkes in Harry Potter!) that, when it grows old, will burn up in ashes and a baby phoenix will rise from the ashes, reborn. You can take a similar approach with your career - maybe you work for a few years in the government, then you work for a few years in something completely different such as a pipeline engineer, and then after that, a few years in something again different such as a not for profit manager. You can find related fields of work or you can completely abandon your previous job to find something new to work on.
Do one of these careers speak to you? Or more importantly, do you feel like you have multiple interests that your current job / situation does not fulfill?
For me, I like the idea of having a group hug approach (which I'm sort of doing right now as a consultant) or perhaps an Einstein approach (having a full time job that allows you the stability to pursue your interests outside of work) but most importantly, this book for me, made me evaluate what my interests are, what a perfect day might look like for me and in thinking about what kind of work that I would like to do if I had the choice. I hope it does the same for you.
About the author:
Wang is a management consultant, self-published author, Distinguished Toastmaster, co-host of a podcast, Udemy teacher, former Uber driver and all around hustler. He is also obsessed about books and he reads books so that you don't have to. Want a list of Wang's top ten formative books in his life and career? Interested in book summaries and recommendations every month? Subscribe to Wang's e-mail newsletter!