Multipotentiality: Why Having Several Callings Can Be a Strength

If you have ever felt behind because you could not pick one career, one subject or one passion, you are not broken. Psychologists and educators have a word for people who are drawn to, and capable in, several different fields: multipotentiality. The writer and career coach Emilie Wapnick gave it a friendlier name, the multipotentialite, and argued that a wide range of interests can be a real strength rather than a lack of focus.

Below we look at where the idea comes from, what Wapnick actually says, what the strengths and pitfalls are, and how people with many callings can build work and a life that fits them.

What multipotentiality means

Multipotentiality describes a person who has the interest and the ability to do well in two or more very different areas. The term began in gifted education: in the early 1970s, counsellors such as R. H. Fredrickson used it for bright students who could develop a number of competencies to a high level and who often struggled when forced to choose just one.

It overlaps with older ideas. A polymath or Renaissance person is someone known for real mastery in several fields, such as Leonardo da Vinci. A multipotentialite is defined more by range and curiosity than by achievement. Other labels you may meet include scanner, generalist and multi-passionate. None of these is a clinical category; they are ways of describing a pattern of interests.

The "one true calling" problem

Most of us are asked as small children what we want to be when we grow up, and the expected answer is a single noun: doctor, teacher, astronaut. The question keeps coming back in new forms. Schools ask us to choose subjects, universities ask us to choose a major, and employers expect a CV that tells one tidy story.

For many people that works well. For others, it creates a nagging sense of failure. They throw themselves into a field, learn quickly, then feel the spark fade and move to something new. Relatives call it flakiness; the person often calls it something worse. The proverb "jack of all trades, master of none" sits quietly in the background.

Emilie Wapnick and the multipotentialite

Wapnick, a Canadian writer, artist and coach, founded the website Puttylike to support people with many interests. Her own path is a good illustration. She moved from music and songwriting to web design, filmmaking and writing, graduated in law from McGill University in 2010 without wanting to practise, then started a business and became a coach. In an earlier version of her About page she described the common thread as curiosity, and frames moving on as growth rather than quitting.

Her talk "Why some of us don't have one true calling," given at TEDxBend in 2015, has been played more than nine million times on TED.com. In it she names three strengths she sees again and again in multipotentialites:

Idea synthesis: combining two or more fields to create something new at the intersection.
Rapid learning: being used to starting from scratch, and so becoming comfortable with being a beginner and picking up new skills fast.
Adaptability: being able to change roles as a situation, a team or a market demands.

She expanded these ideas in her 2017 book How to Be Everything, which looks at how people with many interests can earn a living without forcing themselves into one box.

What the evidence does and does not say

It is worth being honest here. There is little hard research on multipotentialites as a group, and much of what is written about them comes from coaches, blogs and personal stories. Still, several lines of thinking support the general idea.

Studies of creativity have long noted that new ideas often appear where fields meet, when someone brings a method from one area into another. Writers on careers, most notably David Epstein in his book Range, have collected examples of people who sampled widely before settling, and argue that broad experience can be an advantage in fast-changing, unpredictable fields. Economists also point out that technology keeps blurring the boundaries between jobs, which rewards people who can connect specialists.

There is another side. Specialists build deep expertise that many problems need, and in fields such as surgery or air-traffic control depth matters most. The counselling literature on gifted students also describes a real downside: some people with many abilities feel paralysed by choice, delay decisions for years, or carry pressure from others who keep telling them they are wasting their potential. Seeing multipotentiality as a strength helps only if it comes with ways of acting on it.

Practical ways to work with many callings

In her book, Wapnick describes four common work models. You can try them in any combination:

The group hug. One multifaceted job or business that lets you wear several hats, such as a small-business owner, a science communicator or a designer who also codes.
The slash approach. Two or more part-time roles side by side: teacher/illustrator, nurse/photographer.
The Einstein approach. A stable job that pays the bills and leaves energy for other projects, named after Einstein's years at the Swiss patent office.
The Phoenix approach. Going deep into one field for a few years, then switching to another, carrying skills across.

A few habits help whichever route you take. Keep a running list of interests so new ones do not crowd out projects that matter. Look for the themes that link your interests, since they often point to the kind of work that will satisfy you. Finish a meaningful version of a project before moving on, so you leave with proof of what you learned. And describe your path to others as a story with a thread, not a list of unrelated jobs.

Range as a strength

Not everyone needs a single calling. Some people find their meaning in one deep channel; others find it in the connections between many. If you belong to the second group, the useful question is not "what is my one thing?" but "how can my interests support each other?" Answering that is what turns a scattered CV into a distinctive one.

This piece builds on an essay by writer Raven Fon, first published by I Heart Intelligence in 2015.

Sources: Wikipedia: Multipotentiality; TED: Emilie Wapnick, Why some of us don't have one true calling; Puttylike: About Emilie Wapnick.

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