Emilie Wapnick

How To Be Everything

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How to be Everything helps us to plan our professional lives based on our many passions and interests. Emilie Wapnick interviewed hundreds of happy and fulfilled ‘multipotentialites’ to get to know what they all had in common, in spite of the very different paths they had chosen and their wide range of experiences. She discovered that they all had one thing in common: they had planned a life which could guarantee them not only an income but also variety and self-fulfilment. This book explores the four working models that can provide all multipotentialites a with guide on how to build a fulfilling career: The Group Hug, The Slasher, The Einstein and The Phoenix.

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Analysis and key concepts

01.

A Multipotentialite is a person with many interests who is not fulfilled by pursuing one single, specialised career

02.

The superpowers of a multipotentialite: idea synthesis, rapid learning and adaptability

03.

To live happily we need a project that can guarantee us an income whilst offering us meaning and variety

04.

The Group Hug Approach is a work model that brings together multiple interests and passions in a single professional activity

05.

The Slash Approach involves a person having two or more part-time jobs

06.

The Einstein Approach: just one full time job that is enough to pay the bills and leaves us some free time to pursue our passions

07.

The Phoenix Approach: working in a single industry for a few months or years and starting a new career in a new industry

08.

Productivity means knowing what to focus on and taking action to achieve our objectives

09.

Time management that takes into account the importance of routine and allows us to respect our energy levels

10.

The need for change comes when things begin to become predictable, boring and no longer stimulate us

11.

Some tricks to help get going: start when you are in a good mood, use a timer and divide the projects into small parts

12.

The biggest challenges for multipotentialites: lack of security, always feeling like a newbie and impostor syndrome

13.

Criticisms should be dealt with first and foremost by understanding the true intention of the critic

14.

Quotes

15.

Take-home message

01. A Multipotentialite is a person with many interests who is not fulfilled by pursuing one single, specialised career

A multipotentialite is someone with many interests, talents and creative pursuits, who doesn’t subscribe to the idea that one career path is enough. They don’t believe that choosing to specialise in one subject can be the only option to feel fulfilled both professionally and personally, and they think that it is possible to successfully pursue different avenues. A multipotentialite is attracted by things that are completely unrelated to one another, and knows how to easily adapt to different tasks. The different ways that we see this characteristic are varied; to get an idea, it’s something like a cook experimenting with different recipes. They might choose to put several saucepans on the hob at the same time, and cook all of them with the same heat, or they might decide to prioritise one dish and simmer the others, without rushing. We could also picture a chef standing over a bonfire with one giant cauldron.

However they may decide to express this tendency in their personal lives, in their careers, multipotentialites do not operate in a straight line; the lines that they follow tend to be somewhat transversal, and they will make the most of their skills by applying them to various disciplines, and in novel ways.

02. The superpowers of a multipotentialite: idea synthesis, rapid learning and adaptability

03. To live happily we need a project that can guarantee us an income whilst offering us meaning and variety

04. The Group Hug Approach is a work model that brings together multiple interests and passions in a single professional activity

05. The Slash Approach involves a person having two or more part-time jobs

06. The Einstein Approach: just one full time job that is enough to pay the bills and leaves us some free time to pursue our passions

07. The Phoenix Approach: working in a single industry for a few months or years and starting a new career in a new industry

08. Productivity means knowing what to focus on and taking action to achieve our objectives

09. Time management that takes into account the importance of routine and allows us to respect our energy levels

10. The need for change comes when things begin to become predictable, boring and no longer stimulate us

11. Some tricks to help get going: start when you are in a good mood, use a timer and divide the projects into small parts

12. The biggest challenges for multipotentialites: lack of security, always feeling like a newbie and impostor syndrome

13. Criticisms should be dealt with first and foremost by understanding the true intention of the critic

14. Quotes

15. Take-home message

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Many useful tips to:

Accept that you might be a ‘multipotentialite’ and use it to create original and satisfying careers.
Understand the characteristics of a multipotentialite, and how they can be of great use in an unstable economy in constant evolution.
Learn how to successfully juggle multiple projects, identifying the best way to manage them and base them on your own personal characteristics.

The author

Emilie Wapnick is an artist, a blogger, a consultant and an entrepreneur. She founded puttylike.com to help people with many interests and passions to achieve professional fulfilment. She studied music, art, and cinema and has a degree in law; her written work has featured in many publications, including Forbes, The Financial Times, and The Huffington Post. Her TED talk, in which she speaks about ‘multipotentialites’ has had over 7.6 million views.

Edition

Publishing house:

Harper Collins

Year:

2018

Pages:

240

ISBN:

978-0062566669