“But doesn’t that make me scattered?”
I hear it almost every week, usually from someone running something impressive. Their family wants them to settle down and focus on one thing. They have started to believe the word.
Here is the distinction that changes the conversation. A dabbler touches something for a week and moves on. A multipotentialite goes deep into many fields across a lifetime, then carries what they learned in one world into the next. That is not a lack of focus. That is a different operating system.
I have a client running a multimillion dollar business who also holds a recording contract. One who is a serious athlete and a trained gourmet chef. One who designs commercially and builds intricate dollhouses by hand. Different fields, same wiring. The range is exactly why they solve problems other people cannot.
The word for it is not scattered. It is multipotentialite.
Where has someone talked you out of your range by calling it a lack of focus?
Transcription:
What Is a Multipotentialite or Polymath?
Another term that is becoming more popular, not quite as old, is multipotentialite. And again, it’s just explaining a person who goes seriously deep into many fields across one lifetime. So it’s not somebody that just like dabbles in something for a week, it’s somebody that actually dives in, learns quite a bit, and then just steps back and is “Oh, I wanna explore this now.
I wanna travel into that now.” And then compounding that together with all of that learning, that’s where that is so important. And why it’s important to bring this terminology into it, because quite often, like I said, unconventional and different thinkers will do this, will study multiple things, will go deep on a variety of things.
And for other people that aren’t like that, it looks like there’s… And they, I’ve had this term projected onto me quite often. I hear it often when clients come in. They’re like, “Yeah, but then aren’t I scattered? Or aren’t I… my family just really wants me to just settle down and get really focused on this thing.”
And I’m like, “But that’s not how your brain works. That’s not how you’re wired. You actually do best to be studying a couple things at once and allowing them to mix.” I have clients that are running multimillion-dollar businesses and have recording contracts in the music industry. I have clients that are athletes that are also a gourmet chef.
I have clients that are incredible interior designers that also make mini, teeny, tiny dollhouses that are, like, unbelievable. They’re different. They’re utilizing different parts of their brain, and what they’re finding, they’ve done a bunch of studies, like I said, that deep dive is over in the blog.
There’s a link. You can go to that article. But what they found is Nobel laureates, a majority of them studied and drilled deep into one particular thing, but they also had some very diverse hobbies and very diverse other things that they dove into. They’ve also found this with athletes. The most successful athletes that had lifetime of success in their lives, not just as athletes, but overall, didn’t dive into their sport until a little bit later.
They played a variety of sports, and that allowed them to actually be a better athlete because they had that variety and experiences from other places. So polymath, that’s what we’re talking about today is a term that I want you to explore a little bit more for yourself. See if it might be a term that might describe part of how you’re living your life, and if it is, I highly recommend you teach the people around you about this word.
Just take it as a fun thing. “Hey, I got a word for today. Here’s today’s word.”