Embracing the Multipotentialite Mindset: My Journey to Unapologetic Creativity

I recently came across several creators on TikTok who talked about a certain kind of way of engaging with the world and with their work. While the word was more or less new to me, the description immediately struck me as 100% personally relatable: chasing passions, pouring focus and energy into things that are grabbing my attention, and then shifting to the next interesting project, wanting to do all of the things.

And often to the point where you are frustrated with not finishing any of the things because you’re always off after the next interesting and engaging project.

The word was multipotentialite and I instantly knew that this was me, that this angle of looking at how I’ve historically and consistently engaged with my creative work was so immediately accurate. It didn’t take much, I was thoroughly convinced.

They convinced me even more quickly than how TikTok has me convinced that I have ADHD. 🤣

What is a multipotentialite?

After that initial lightning bolt moment, I wanted to dive in a bit deeper and learn more about what it actually means to be a multipotentialite and, probably more importantly, how I can use that information to engage with my creative work even more effectively.

I’m not always one to run to Wikipedia for information (probably a symptom of my public school upbringing in the early ’00s decrying it as unreliable and inaccurate), but I found its page on multipotentiality and the definition there to be pretty helpful:

Multipotentiality is an educational and psychological term referring to the ability and preference of a person, particularly one of strong intellectual or artistic curiosity, to excel in two or more different fields.

It can also refer to an individual whose interests span multiple fields or areas, rather than being strong in just one. Such traits are called multipotentialities, while “multipotentialites” has been suggested as a name for those with this trait.

By contrast, those whose interests lie mostly within a single field are called “specialists.”

Multipotentiality, Wikipedia

The definition of “an individual whose interests span multiple fields or areas, rather than being strong in just one” is immediately recognizable to me as someone who bounces from web design to sewing to software development to sketching, an endless list of interesting hobbies and techniques.

Multipotentialite versus Multipassionate

There was another term that I learned on that same day, which is essentially just a slightly different lens on the same idea: multipassionate.

While these two terms might be essentially interchangeable, I think the distinction between multipassionate and multipotentialite does offer a bit more specificity and context.

I asked Annie Petsche, a coach for multipassionates on TikTok whose content was one of the early lightning bolts for me, how she views the difference between the two terms, and she offered this context:

I use them pretty much synonymously, but I use multi-passionate as the broader term. Multi-passionate more toward all the things you WANT + CAN do, multipotentialite more toward what you CAN do.

Then ‘modern polymath’ touches on the ability to develop top tier skill sets in multiple disciplines.

@Annie | Multi-Passionate Coach on TikTok

I’m not sure where I fall between those terms, though I’ve tended to gravitate more towards multipotentialite for the time being. I do think “multipassionate creative” as a descriptive term might “fit” better, but at least for now when I’m at the beginning of this exploration of the new view of my process and how my brain works I’ve tended to fall back on the more commonly used term.

How multipotentiality and the intersections between disciplines drives innovation and creativity

This is all, again, just from my initial foray into learning about multipotentiality, but one thing is already clear: the ability to pull from a wide range of disciplines means that multipotentialites are exceptionally good at working along the intersections of their various knowledge groupings and skill sets, seeing new paths forward and creating unique things in those spaces.

I’ve seen this in my past work, a process of constantly looking for how the things I enjoy, the things I’ve taken the time to gain skill in, intersect and connect. Where can I mix my marketing in with my nonprofit background? How can I use software development to build something amazing for my tabletop roleplaying game group? Could I use algorithmic art to generate embroidery patterns I could use in my sewing machine? How can I use what I’m learning about sonification (using code to turn data into sound) to make music from the data in the apps I build?

Being able to pull a wide range of tools and ideas together from all of my different past efforts always feels like a superpower, like one day I’m going to find a truly magical mix of skills and take the world by storm.

Deals of Opportunity: An Intersectional Project

An example of where this intersectionality between interests has turned into something cool is my website Deals of Opportunity. This project brought my interest in tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs) together with my interest in software development and allowed me to create something really neat.

Essentially this app lets users take their wishlists from the popular TTRPG marketplaces DriveThruRPG and The Dungeon Master’s Guild and get notified when any of the titles on their wishlists go on sale.

A simple idea, but as those sites don’t offer any kind of notification of discounts from your wishlists, one that 80+ people have already found pretty useful.

If I weren’t playing in the intersections between my passions, I might never have come up with the idea in the first place, much less found the motivation to build it, test it, release it, and continue to update and enhance it.

How being a multipotentialite has been a lifelong challenge

While right now this concept of multipotentiality is feeling more and more like embracing who I am and how I work, starting the process of regarding it as a superpower to be wielded rather than a hindrance, it hasn’t always been that way.

Over two decades of chasing ideas and learning new skills has been frustrating, and to realize that you don’t have a ton to show for it can feel disheartening. After a while it starts to make you doubt, you know? What’s the point if it never leads to anything solid, anything finished?

But this perspective shift brings all of that back into focus in a new way. Did I put a lot of the things I had planned out into the world in a finished form? No, but a lot of those ideas were shit anyway and would have been a waste of my time if I had continued to pursue them. I was learning all that time, building up a store of diverse bits of knowledge that no one else has in the same configuration, collecting and refining and experimenting.

Towards what end, I have no idea, but at least now I can focus on enjoying the hell out of it.

Further reading on multipotentiality

@Annie | Multi-Passionate Coach on TikTok recommended the book “How To Be Everything” by Emilie Wapnick and I’ve already devoured a lot of it.

The first few pages where Wapnick describes the multipotentialite approach and how we operate was one of the only times I’ve read a book and realized that the author was talking to ME. She described so succinctly the experience I’ve had all my life, and it was so invigorating.

There are a lot of exercises in the book I think are great if they’re useful to you, but the information she’s sharing and the way she does so definitely helped me answer a lot of those questions without diving much more through the exercises.

I’ve gone on to learn that I tend to operate in the “Einstein Approach,” named for Albert Einstein who worked a stale but stable day job to free him up to create in all of the rest of his time. I’m someone who appreciates the stability of a solid day job and allowing my creative work to thrive in the rest of my time.

Luckily I enjoy my day job as a software developer as well, which is far more of a creative career than I think most assume it to be, but that’s a blog post for another day.

I’m interested to finish reading “How to Be Everything” as I have two more recommended books to crack into next; “Reach” by David Epstein and “Your Rainforest Mind” by Paula Prober, both recommended to me by Annie.

How knowing I’m a multipotentialite is helping me grow

While all of this feels super meaningful and exciting, I’m waiting to see how it truly shapes how I work. I’ve been focusing a lot lately on building more foundational ways to help me direct my focus a little more effectively, so I imagine this all happening together is going to be pretty serendipitous timing. I’m already opening up the hood to tinker around, so I might as well change the oil while I’m in there, right?

I think that, at minimum, this helps me to better know how my brain works, how I engage with the work I know to be meaningful and give myself a little more grace. This is all new, but I think that leaning into how my brain truly operates versus constantly trying to change it seems like… more common sense than I’d like to admit to not having.