My approach to this multi-passionate life has been to cycle through my interests in a way that allows me to stay productive on the whole, whilst not boring myself with a singular pursuit. As you've mentioned, I have my anchor point, my writing, which gets priority over my other interests, but I try to divide my spare time up in a way that allows me to remain engaged in all of my interests instead of focusing too intently on one thing, which I have found to be counterproductive. This then allows me to juggle multiple interests whilst simultaneously pursing mastery.
I'm so glad I stumbled across this! I just never vibed with the mainstream push towards specialising and niching down. Now time to embrace being multi-passionate. In time, I want to become a polymath
I find myself running away from mainstream knowledge and content. Being a creative is much more deeper than we think! It has to be cultivated in the proper way.
Totally Rudiano, some people are meant to multi-specialize! On the journey from multi-passionate to polymath, an intermediate step might be being a PolyPath -- https://apoorvaadeshpande.substack.com/
This is so interesting! You've basically summed up my entire life. I’m now in my 50s and until a few months ago, didn't know what to do with my life. I have multiple passions which sometimes appear unconnected, some I’m really good at, and some I've had careers in. I just thought I had ADHD and can't concentrate on one thing for too long! I feel now it's all coming together, I've just started University for the second time in my life, and I'm going to investigate my “core” interest and see what happens. Thank you for posting this by, I'm so happy I stumbled across it ☺️
This is so phenomenal- I resonated with all of it. Especially talking about the time and patience it takes. Currently I am battling this, and I can feel how all my passions are amalgamating but aren’t quite realized yet. It’s a weird feeling to be the turtle and watching the hairs getting where I want to be so much faster than I am. This made me feel cozy and relaxed about the road I’m taking
What a fantastic article! I’m an opera singer exactly because it is a multi-passionate job. There’s the poetry, language learning, musicianship, business and negotiation, communication, movement, dance, breathwork, and athleticism… and much more. This article really resonated with me and I’m sure many artists!
Recently I’ve had lightbulb moments when I connect ideas and common themes that come from my different interests. That’s when I started to feel creative again, after feeling uninspired for a long time. I’m reassured that being multi-passionate is a strength🌿
Thank you for that! Yes I am multitasking as well and have multiple passions and hobbies. I also can see this modern hypocrisy of the so called “focusing and specialisation “ concept. Yes, they ask us not to be Jack of all trades, while they’re building modern mobile phones with multiple specialisations. Why a mobile phone has to be a camera as well and not only made for the main purpose? just to communicate ? why does it have to be a gps, a compass, a social media interaction tool and a clock in the same time? Being a photographer, I never saw a camera with a mobile phone function, never saw a photographer with the camera at the ear talking. Seeing someone like this you will definitely conclude that the person needs psychiatric help. So this narrative of “specialisation “ is made simply to limit us and to make us feeling useless. Hear this story. My background is in acting, I graduated National Drama Academy from Bucharest, Romania in 1996 and simply thought I am not too much in live with acting, being obsessed at that time with photography, but the experiment was this. I did 30 + in photography and when my former drama teacher invited me to perform in Diaries of a Madman by Gogol, a very difficult one man show, I demonstrated that what I learn and ignored once, but kept safe, stood unaltered inside of me. We rehearsed via whatsapp and finally he came to Australia from Romania to see me performing. He was the former rector of the National Drama Academy from Romania, not just someone randomly teaching acting. What does this says? I am telling you this story, not necessarily to impress you, in essence, no true love will be forgotten, even after three decades. We are where our hearts is and what our hearts desires that is the focus. Now since 2024 I left aside my photography and only focusing mainly for this play. The hard thing to do is to match or to make it matching, an activity that you love and to make business out of it. What do you think?
I really loved the way you described it as having a core focus. Maybe it shows up in multiple passions, but at its core, it’s inquisitiveness about people, the study of science, and more. It’s more than just a skill, it’s the study of something. It’s curiosity. It’s you. It’s your archetype.
I’ve seen this shift happening within the design space. More and more, it’s shifting away from skills and toward the value you bring to the space, what your archetype will be. The value you bring, almost like in the Divergent series, where individuals are defined by their core traits.
I want to say thank you for offering unconventional insight when it comes to mastery for 'Multi-Passionate' people. While reading I came across this, "For the Multi-Passionate person the path needs to be rich with overlap", and from personal experience this has been the obvious. For those who are on the outside looking in, they get overwhelmed, don't see an end and will quickly offer how you should just focus on "one thing", but what they don't understand is that when you are passionate about multiple things, there is often an overlap that keeps you grounded. I think that depending on the depth of the person, its instinct or soul understand this...it understands that you have the intellect and bandwidth to "juggle" multiple things, because your mastery is in bringing them all together and mastering a level of depth, intellect, organization, and the ability to communicate different point of views, in a way that may take others lifetimes. Lastly, when you listed some of the 'common', well known mulit-passionate people, I thought, "how dare we accept the mastery of one" when the most famous people had multiple titles and area of study trailing behind their name! Thanks once again! 🫶🏾🫶🏾🫶🏾
As a multi-passionate person, I once thought I must focus on one to be good enough, until I realised that they are in a way codependent on each other. There's knowledge to be shared across and inspiration that translates into different media. Sometimes, following your heart is way more important than following the perscripted path the society told you.
I have always believed that the ultimate mastery is taking what you love, whether that be one thing or many things, and apply them in different context with different styles. When we are able to do that, we certainly have mastered our art, and are building many other skills as well.
sooo good 🫶
My approach to this multi-passionate life has been to cycle through my interests in a way that allows me to stay productive on the whole, whilst not boring myself with a singular pursuit. As you've mentioned, I have my anchor point, my writing, which gets priority over my other interests, but I try to divide my spare time up in a way that allows me to remain engaged in all of my interests instead of focusing too intently on one thing, which I have found to be counterproductive. This then allows me to juggle multiple interests whilst simultaneously pursing mastery.
Kudos Brady! I do feel it is possible to master multiple paths as well and perhaps have multiple anchor points.
I'm so glad I stumbled across this! I just never vibed with the mainstream push towards specialising and niching down. Now time to embrace being multi-passionate. In time, I want to become a polymath
I find myself running away from mainstream knowledge and content. Being a creative is much more deeper than we think! It has to be cultivated in the proper way.
Totally Rudiano, some people are meant to multi-specialize! On the journey from multi-passionate to polymath, an intermediate step might be being a PolyPath -- https://apoorvaadeshpande.substack.com/
This was very helpful and interesting!
This is so interesting! You've basically summed up my entire life. I’m now in my 50s and until a few months ago, didn't know what to do with my life. I have multiple passions which sometimes appear unconnected, some I’m really good at, and some I've had careers in. I just thought I had ADHD and can't concentrate on one thing for too long! I feel now it's all coming together, I've just started University for the second time in my life, and I'm going to investigate my “core” interest and see what happens. Thank you for posting this by, I'm so happy I stumbled across it ☺️
And you can have multiple core interests too Julia :)
This is so phenomenal- I resonated with all of it. Especially talking about the time and patience it takes. Currently I am battling this, and I can feel how all my passions are amalgamating but aren’t quite realized yet. It’s a weird feeling to be the turtle and watching the hairs getting where I want to be so much faster than I am. This made me feel cozy and relaxed about the road I’m taking
We all have our unique strengths which create a unique path for ourselves Abby :)
What a fantastic article! I’m an opera singer exactly because it is a multi-passionate job. There’s the poetry, language learning, musicianship, business and negotiation, communication, movement, dance, breathwork, and athleticism… and much more. This article really resonated with me and I’m sure many artists!
Recently I’ve had lightbulb moments when I connect ideas and common themes that come from my different interests. That’s when I started to feel creative again, after feeling uninspired for a long time. I’m reassured that being multi-passionate is a strength🌿
Your unique interests are totally your unique strengths @jung :)
I've just been listening to you talking about multi-passionate person. How interesting to hear what I have spent my working life doing.
I have always had an almost insatiable curiosity for just about everything I come across.
Life is so much richer when one is enthused by other peoples spheres of excellence and passions.
It’s like the difference between knowledge and understanding.
Thank you for that! Yes I am multitasking as well and have multiple passions and hobbies. I also can see this modern hypocrisy of the so called “focusing and specialisation “ concept. Yes, they ask us not to be Jack of all trades, while they’re building modern mobile phones with multiple specialisations. Why a mobile phone has to be a camera as well and not only made for the main purpose? just to communicate ? why does it have to be a gps, a compass, a social media interaction tool and a clock in the same time? Being a photographer, I never saw a camera with a mobile phone function, never saw a photographer with the camera at the ear talking. Seeing someone like this you will definitely conclude that the person needs psychiatric help. So this narrative of “specialisation “ is made simply to limit us and to make us feeling useless. Hear this story. My background is in acting, I graduated National Drama Academy from Bucharest, Romania in 1996 and simply thought I am not too much in live with acting, being obsessed at that time with photography, but the experiment was this. I did 30 + in photography and when my former drama teacher invited me to perform in Diaries of a Madman by Gogol, a very difficult one man show, I demonstrated that what I learn and ignored once, but kept safe, stood unaltered inside of me. We rehearsed via whatsapp and finally he came to Australia from Romania to see me performing. He was the former rector of the National Drama Academy from Romania, not just someone randomly teaching acting. What does this says? I am telling you this story, not necessarily to impress you, in essence, no true love will be forgotten, even after three decades. We are where our hearts is and what our hearts desires that is the focus. Now since 2024 I left aside my photography and only focusing mainly for this play. The hard thing to do is to match or to make it matching, an activity that you love and to make business out of it. What do you think?
I really loved the way you described it as having a core focus. Maybe it shows up in multiple passions, but at its core, it’s inquisitiveness about people, the study of science, and more. It’s more than just a skill, it’s the study of something. It’s curiosity. It’s you. It’s your archetype.
I’ve seen this shift happening within the design space. More and more, it’s shifting away from skills and toward the value you bring to the space, what your archetype will be. The value you bring, almost like in the Divergent series, where individuals are defined by their core traits.
I like that you call it core traits -- curiosity is one, creativity can be another one too :)
I want to say thank you for offering unconventional insight when it comes to mastery for 'Multi-Passionate' people. While reading I came across this, "For the Multi-Passionate person the path needs to be rich with overlap", and from personal experience this has been the obvious. For those who are on the outside looking in, they get overwhelmed, don't see an end and will quickly offer how you should just focus on "one thing", but what they don't understand is that when you are passionate about multiple things, there is often an overlap that keeps you grounded. I think that depending on the depth of the person, its instinct or soul understand this...it understands that you have the intellect and bandwidth to "juggle" multiple things, because your mastery is in bringing them all together and mastering a level of depth, intellect, organization, and the ability to communicate different point of views, in a way that may take others lifetimes. Lastly, when you listed some of the 'common', well known mulit-passionate people, I thought, "how dare we accept the mastery of one" when the most famous people had multiple titles and area of study trailing behind their name! Thanks once again! 🫶🏾🫶🏾🫶🏾
As a multi-passionate person, I once thought I must focus on one to be good enough, until I realised that they are in a way codependent on each other. There's knowledge to be shared across and inspiration that translates into different media. Sometimes, following your heart is way more important than following the perscripted path the society told you.
Phenomenal listen. I resonate with this so much.
https://open.substack.com/pub/ayushgoenka/p/theory-of-human-relation-and-bondings?r=5fbpqp&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=post-publish
I have always believed that the ultimate mastery is taking what you love, whether that be one thing or many things, and apply them in different context with different styles. When we are able to do that, we certainly have mastered our art, and are building many other skills as well.