UptownOracle in Book Reviews

Uptown Oracle Reads… How To Be Everything

How to Be Everything Emilie Wapnick

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What do you want to be when you grow up? It’s a familiar question we’re all asked as kids. While seemingly harmless, the question has unintended consequences. It can make you feel like you need to choose one job, one passion, one thing to be about. Guess what? You don’t.

Having a lot of different interests, projects and curiosities doesn’t make you a “jack-of-all-trades, master of none.” Your endless curiosity doesn’t mean you are broken or flaky. What you are is a multipotentialite: someone with many interests and creative pursuits. And that is actually your biggest strength.

How to Be Everything helps you channel your diverse passions and skills to work for you. Based on her popular TED talk, “Why some of us don’t have one true calling”, Emilie Wapnick flips the script on conventional career advice. Instead of suggesting that you specialize, choose a niche or accumulate 10,000 hours of practice in a single area, Wapnick provides a practical framework for building a sustainable life around ALL of your passions.

Thoughts on Book

The term multipotentialite is a great way to explain many people who don’t fit in a typical box, and I loved that it’s explained that you can suceed in many different ways. It leans heavily on the important message that success can come in many forms and you shouldn’t look down on those who have multiple jobs, a “less successful” job where they can pursue creative pursuits outside of it, or even changing careers.

The overall principles were informative, and the approaches were a way to see different balances in life. There’s multiple levels to self-help in this book and it tells you how to plan your life yourself, and doesn’t dictate exactly what you should be doing (like waking at 6am, or running multiple side hustles etc.). Instead it’s a handy way to change your thinking to what you could do with your life.

What I didn’t like about the book is that it seems to have a privileged outlook, especially when it comes to finances. Many don’t have the saftey net mentioned at all, and most who aren’t financially secure won’t be able to pick and choose jobs to get one that is meaningful.

Key Learnings

Multipotentialites are people who have the potential to be succesful in a variety of ways. This can be through different approaches such as:

Group-Hug Approach – A single multi-faceted job which helps meet the need for different things everyday
Slash Approach – Several simultanenosu part time jobs, which meet different needs for the person.
Einstein Approach – A single stress-free job which allows the person time to focus on their other intererests outside of work.
The Phoenix Approach – Having multiple careers, where once enough is gotten out of one, the person will quit and follow another career path.

Multipotentialites are rapid learners, passionate about their interests, and sometimes risk takers but it takes some time to design a multipotentialite life as a balance is needed. Here’s what to think about to design your own life:

Financial Stability – What are your basic costs of living and how much you would need to be happy with your life? This is focusing on your necessary survival needs, write down what you value over everything else, and then what you could live without. Then what do you need in order to grow and thrive? Lastly, what are your safety nets to cover emergencies?
Meaningful Work – Find something that energises you. Think about a time when you were happy whilst working on a task, what about that moment made it special? The task itself? the people? environment?
Variety – Choose how much variety is right for you. Too much can lead to stress and you need to find the right balance.

So how do you stay productive as a multipotentialite?