Foreword: The purpose of this first post is to present myself in an interesting and hopefully insightful way. I sincerely hope you’ll get something out of it.
Have you ever known what you wanted to do with your life, what career you wanted to have? I surely didn’t! It is not because I didn’t have any interests, but because I had so many. I was good in school, all doors were pretty much open for university, I had a passion for art and I could see myself having multiple careers. At the time I didn’t know this, but I am what Emilie Wapnick call a Multipotentialite. I highly recommend watching Emilie’s TED talk on this subject:
In short, a multipotentialite is someone with many interest and creative pursuit in life. Multipotentialites like to learn new stuff, they like being beginners at something and seeing themselves becoming experts. Witnessing this progress is truly exhilarating, but once you become an expert, the fun fades away, it becomes boring, the challenge is gone… So you find another passion to start all over again.
When you are at the beginning of your life and you must choose a career that will seal your future, you can imagine how frightening it is for someone like this. Picture the intense pressure you can feel, because no matter what you choose, you are bound to be wrong. No matter what you choose you will eventually grow tired of it.
Add this to the fact that being faced with many choices does not necessarily makes things easy. There is what psychologists Barry Schwartz refers to as The Paradox of Choice. You see, when one is faced with a multitude of options, one would think it allows greater freedom and therefore happiness. Although it is true for the freedom part, it does not necessarily make you happier. Imagine yourself at the ice cream store having only two choices; vanilla or chocolate. You know which one you prefer the choice is easy and you don’t second guess it. Now imagine the same store, but with twenty choices of ice cream; vanilla, vanilla with fruits, vanilla-chocolate, vanilla with chocolate chip, double vanilla, vanilla with other fruits, vanilla new wave, etc. Not only will the decision be much harder, but you will second guess your choice the entire time that it will take you to finish your ice cream – what if I took vanilla-rainbow? Bet I would’ve liked that one better – this will result in a less satisfying experience, hence the paradox.
So now what? How do you manage all the choices in front of you? How do you choose?
My message today is the following; the choices you make are not as important as they seem, you don’t need to put that much pressure on you. I say this for two reasons;
· It is okay to make a “wrong” decision
· You can be more than just one thing, you never seal your fate
When I had to decide what field to choose for university, I was sure of very few things, but one thing I knew is that I was more the pure science type. So, I looked around and everyone in my situation were going for engineering, and so I though this is where I should go. Well that was easy! Wait a minute, there are like 20 bajillions branches of engineering! At that point, I had given up the idea of further deciding based on some rationale, so I basically toss a coin and went for physical engineering. Yeah, physical engineering. This sounded cool!
And then of course, I quit after a year.
Although I didn’t like my experience, I enjoyed the math part, as I always had. Why not get a bachelor’s degree in math? I could be a math teacher or an actuary, neither of these two options seemed that much attractive, bet hell, let’s give it a try – “follow your passion” is what they all say.
Fortunately for me, the math program has this unknown and mysterious branch call statistics. In that first statistic class I knew what I wanted to do and where I was heading. I went on to finish my bachelor’s degree and eventually completed a master’s degree in statistic. After that, I started working as a data scientist. Have been ever since and more importantly, liked it ever since. It is okay to explore, and it is okay to make “wrong” decisions. If you don’t know where to go, ask yourself why you would do such or such things, and then follow your why. On top of that, if you can find something that is valuable to others and not just you, chances are you'll end up more fulfilled.
Once we get established, there is no need for our growth to stop. I once heard; the moment you stop learning is the moment you stop growing. A week is 168 hours, let’s say 56 of them is spent sleeping and 40 of them is spent working. That leaves you with 72 hours. You can have a second full time job with this amount of time, still do activities and see your family and friends. Lately, I have been using these 72 hours to learn about photography, build my portfolio, create my website and write this blog. You absolutely can choose to be more than one thing and you can have more than one career.
My name is Alex, I am a data scientist, photographer, blogger and I refuse to be put in a box.
This blog will be a way for me to explore my multipotentiality, you can expect my posts to touch on a multitude of subjects, ranging from photography to sports, from music to artificial intelligence and many, many more.
Please, jump in if you want, I’ll be happy to have you by my side!