As a young­ster, when asked what I want­ed to be when I grew up, the role at the top of my agen­da was farmer’s wife. Not doc­tor, not teacher, not astro­naut — farmer’s wife.

What Do You Want To Be When You’re Older?

Rea­son­ing: My friend’s mum was a farmer’s wife and as far as I could see, her life involved piglets and sheep­dogs, doing the school run whilst lis­ten­ing to the Lion King sound­track on repeat, bak­ing and hav­ing a house per­fect for hide-and-seek. What more would adult me pos­si­bly want?

My fam­i­ly quick­ly brought me back to the real­i­ty that she prob­a­bly had a lot of ear­ly morn­ings, a lot of mud­dy wash­ing and lambs that still need­ed clean­ing out on Christ­mas day; and very soon I was brought back to the draw­ing board of what I want­ed to be when I grew up and there I remained.

Multipotentialites

In her 2015 TED talk, career coach Emi­lie Wap­nick iden­ti­fied two types of people:

1. Those who know what their call­ing in life is — spe­cial­ists; and
2. Those who will have mul­ti­ple call­ings in life — multipotentialites.

Mul­ti­po­ten­tialites go on to have many careers, hob­bies and call­ings; some­thing that once upon a time (and still often is) frowned upon — but why? Wap­nick goes on to chal­lenge our per­cep­tion of mul­ti­po­ten­tialites and high­lights a num­ber of qual­i­ties that can make their ‘career-hop­ing’, ‘been-there-done-that’ pasts, lead to great successes:

Multipotentialites & Great Content Writers

1. Many interests

Mul­ti­po­ten­tialites have many inter­ests. Their curios­i­ty is eas­i­ly sparked and knows no bounds;  mak­ing writ­ing about dif­fer­ent top­ics (ecom­merce, fish­ing, choco­lates, A/B test­ing etc.) not only easy but inter­est­ing. This leads to great con­tent because an author gen­uine­ly inter­est­ed in the top­ic at hand, pro­duces con­tent that is gen­uine­ly inter­est­ing for the audi­ence in mind.

2. Rapid learning

Hav­ing had a vari­ety of hob­bies and careers, mul­ti­po­ten­tialites are used to being the begin­ner. Not scared of the unfa­mil­iar, they eas­i­ly research, pick up and under­stand new and com­plex top­ics. Accu­rate copy, cre­ative con­tent ideas and well-researched work is pro­duced with lit­tle input from you, mean­ing that you can spend your time on oth­er busi­ness matters.

3. Variety of skills and experiences

Dif­fer­ent inter­ests, hob­bies and careers bring dif­fer­ent skills, per­spec­tives and expe­ri­ences, enabling mul­ti­po­ten­tialites to morph into what­ev­er the sit­u­a­tion calls for. My legal back­ground allows me to approach top­ics from an ana­lyt­i­cal and log­i­cal mind, whilst writ­ing in a high­ly pro­fes­sion­al and for­mal man­ner. On the flip-side, my com­mu­ni­ty event work enables me to approach top­ics from a fun and cre­ative mind, whilst writ­ing in a friend­ly, tongue-in-cheek tone. Whatsmore, I can broad­en my focus to blend styles and approach­es and pro­duce cre­ative con­tent ideas, dif­fer­ent from the norm.

Yes; I found my thing!