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Raise your hand if you've ever
been asked the question
00:00:15
"What do you want to be when you grow up?"
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Now if you had to guess,
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how old would you say you were
when you were first asked this question?
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You can just hold up fingers.
00:00:25
Three. Five. Three. Five. Five. OK.
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Now, raise your hand if the question
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"What do you want to be when you grow up?"
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has ever caused you any anxiety.
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(Laughter)
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Any anxiety at all.
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I'm someone who's never
been able to answer the question
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"What do you want to be when you grow up?"
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See, the problem wasn't
that I didn't have any interests --
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it's that I had too many.
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In high school, I liked English
and math and art and I built websites
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and I played guitar in a punk band
called Frustrated Telephone Operator.
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Maybe you've heard of us.
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(Laughter)
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This continued after high school,
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and at a certain point, I began
to notice this pattern in myself
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where I would become interested in an area
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and I would dive in, become all-consumed,
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and I'd get to be pretty good
at whatever it was,
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and then I would hit this point
where I'd start to get bored.
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And usually I would try
and persist anyway,
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because I had already devoted
so much time and energy
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and sometimes money into this field.
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But eventually this sense of boredom,
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this feeling of, like, yeah, I got this,
this isn't challenging anymore --
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it would get to be too much.
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And I would have to let it go.
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But then I would become interested
in something else,
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something totally unrelated,
and I would dive into that,
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and become all-consumed,
and I'd be like, "Yes! I found my thing,"
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and then I would hit this point again
where I'd start to get bored.
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And eventually, I would let it go.
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But then I would discover
something new and totally different,
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and I would dive into that.
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This pattern caused me a lot of anxiety,
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for two reasons.
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The first was that I wasn't sure
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how I was going to turn
any of this into a career.
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I thought that I would eventually
have to pick one thing,
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deny all of my other passions,
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and just resign myself to being bored.
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The other reason it caused me
so much anxiety
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was a little bit more personal.
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I worried that there
was something wrong with this,
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and something wrong with me
for being unable to stick with anything.
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I worried that I was afraid of commitment,
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or that I was scattered,
or that I was self-sabotaging,
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afraid of my own success.
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If you can relate to my story
and to these feelings,
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I'd like you to ask yourself a question
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that I wish I had asked myself back then.
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Ask yourself where you learned to assign
the meaning of wrong or abnormal
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to doing many things.
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I'll tell you where you learned it:
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you learned it from the culture.
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We are first asked the question
"What do you want to be when you grow up?"
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when we're about five years old.
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And the truth is that no one really cares
what you say when you're that age.
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(Laughter)
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It's considered an innocuous question,
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posed to little kids
to elicit cute replies,
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like, "I want to be an astronaut,"
or "I want to be a ballerina,"
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or "I want to be a pirate."
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Insert Halloween costume here.
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(Laughter)
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But this question gets asked of us
again and again as we get older
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in various forms -- for instance,
high school students might get asked
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what major they're going
to pick in college.
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And at some point,
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"What do you want to be when you grow up?"
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goes from being
the cute exercise it once was
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to the thing that keeps us up at night.
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Why?
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See, while this question inspires kids
to dream about what they could be,
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it does not inspire them to dream
about all that they could be.
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In fact, it does just the opposite,
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because when someone asks you
what you want to be,
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you can't reply with 20 different things,
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though well-meaning adults
will likely chuckle and be like,
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"Oh, how cute, but you can't be
a violin maker and a psychologist.
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You have to choose."
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This is Dr. Bob Childs --
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(Laughter)
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and he's a luthier and psychotherapist.
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And this is Amy Ng, a magazine editor
turned illustrator, entrepreneur,
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teacher and creative director.
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But most kids don't hear
about people like this.
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All they hear
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is that they're going to have to choose.
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But it's more than that.
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The notion of the narrowly focused life
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is highly romanticized in our culture.
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It's this idea of destiny
or the one true calling,
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the idea that we each have one great thing
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we are meant to do
during our time on this earth,
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and you need to figure out
what that thing is
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and devote your life to it.
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But what if you're someone
who isn't wired this way?
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What if there are a lot of different
subjects that you're curious about,
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and many different things you want to do?
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Well, there is no room for someone
like you in this framework.
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And so you might feel alone.
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You might feel like you don't
have a purpose.
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And you might feel like
there's something wrong with you.
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There's nothing wrong with you.
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What you are is a multipotentialite.
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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A multipotentialite is someone
with many interests and creative pursuits.
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It's a mouthful to say.
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It might help if you break it up
into three parts:
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multi, potential, and ite.
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You can also use one of the other terms
that connote the same idea,
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such as polymath, the Renaissance person.
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Actually, during the Renaissance period,
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it was considered the ideal
to be well-versed in multiple disciplines.
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Barbara Sher refers to us as "scanners."
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Use whichever term you like,
or invent your own.
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I have to say I find it sort of fitting
that as a community,
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we cannot agree on a single identity.
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(Laughter)
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It's easy to see your multipotentiality
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as a limitation or an affliction
that you need to overcome.
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But what I've learned
through speaking with people
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and writing about these
ideas on my website,
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is that there are some tremendous
strengths to being this way.
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Here are three
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multipotentialite super powers.
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One: idea synthesis.
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That is, combining two or more fields
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and creating something new
at the intersection.
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Sha Hwang and Rachel Binx drew
from their shared interests
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in cartography, data visualization,
travel, mathematics and design,
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when they founded Meshu.
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Meshu is a company that creates
custom geographically-inspired jewelry.
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Sha and Rachel came up
with this unique idea
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not despite, but because of their eclectic
mix of skills and experiences.
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Innovation happens at the intersections.
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That's where the new ideas come from.
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And multipotentialites,
with all of their backgrounds,
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are able to access a lot of these
points of intersection.
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The second multipotentialite superpower
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is rapid learning.
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When multipotentialites
become interested in something,
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we go hard.
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We observe everything
we can get our hands on.
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We're also used to being beginners,
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because we've been beginners
so many times in the past,
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and this means that we're less afraid
of trying new things
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and stepping out of our comfort zones.
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What's more, many skills
are transferable across disciplines,
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and we bring everything we've learned
to every new area we pursue,
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so we're rarely starting from scratch.
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Nora Dunn is a full-time traveler
and freelance writer.
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As a child concert pianist,
she honed an incredible ability
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to develop muscle memory.
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Now, she's the fastest typist she knows.
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(Laughter)
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Before becoming a writer,
Nora was a financial planner.
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She had to learn
the finer mechanics of sales
00:08:54
when she was starting her practice,
00:08:56
and this skill now helps her
write compelling pitches to editors.
00:09:01
It is rarely a waste of time
to pursue something you're drawn to,
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even if you end up quitting.
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You might apply that knowledge
in a different field entirely,
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in a way that you couldn't
have anticipated.
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The third multipotentialite superpower
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is adaptability;
00:09:19
that is, the ability to morph
into whatever you need to be
00:09:22
in a given situation.
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Abe Cajudo is sometimes a video director,
sometimes a web designer,
00:09:31
sometimes a Kickstarter consultant,
sometimes a teacher,
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and sometimes, apparently, James Bond.
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(Laughter)
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He's valuable because he does good work.
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He's even more valuable
because he can take on various roles,
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depending on his clients' needs.
00:09:47
Fast Company magazine
identified adaptability
00:09:50
as the single most important skill
to develop in order to thrive
00:09:54
in the 21st century.
00:09:56
The economic world is changing
so quickly and unpredictably
00:10:00
that it is the individuals
and organizations that can pivot
00:10:03
in order to meet the needs of the market
that are really going to thrive.
00:10:09
Idea synthesis, rapid learning
and adaptability:
00:10:13
three skills that multipotentialites
are very adept at,
00:10:17
and three skills that they might lose
if pressured to narrow their focus.
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As a society, we have a vested interest
in encouraging multipotentialites
00:10:29
to be themselves.
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We have a lot of complex, multidimensional
problems in the world right now,
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and we need creative,
out-of-the-box thinkers to tackle them.
00:10:41
Now, let's say that you are,
in your heart, a specialist.
00:10:46
You came out of the womb knowing
you wanted to be a pediatric neurosurgeon.
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Don't worry -- there's nothing
wrong with you, either.
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(Laughter)
00:10:55
In fact, some of the best teams
are comprised of a specialist
00:10:58
and multipotentialite paired together.
00:11:01
The specialist can dive in deep
and implement ideas,
00:11:04
while the multipotentialite brings
a breadth of knowledge to the project.
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It's a beautiful partnership.
00:11:11
But we should all be designing
lives and careers
00:11:13
that are aligned with how we're wired.
00:11:16
And sadly, multipotentialites
are largely being encouraged
00:11:20
simply to be more
like their specialist peers.
00:11:24
So with that said,
00:11:27
if there is one thing
you take away from this talk,
00:11:30
I hope that it is this:
00:11:33
embrace your inner wiring,
whatever that may be.
00:11:37
If you're a specialist at heart,
00:11:39
then by all means, specialize.
00:11:41
That is where you'll do your best work.
00:11:44
But to the multipotentialites in the room,
00:11:47
including those of you
who may have just realized
00:11:49
in the last 12 minutes that you are one --
00:11:52
(Laughter)
00:11:53
to you I say:
00:11:55
embrace your many passions.
00:11:58
Follow your curiosity
down those rabbit holes.
00:12:02
Explore your intersections.
00:12:06
Embracing our inner wiring leads
to a happier, more authentic life.
00:12:12
And perhaps more importantly --
00:12:14
multipotentialites, the world needs us.
00:12:19
Thank you.
00:12:21
(Applause)
