How to Be Everything: A Guide for Those Who (Still) Don't Know What They Want to Be When They Grow Up
Written by Emilie Wapnick
Narrated by Allyson Ryan
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
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.
You'll discover:
• Why your multipotentiality is your biggest strength, especially in today's uncertain job market.
• How to make a living and structure your work if you have many skills and interests.
• How to focus on multiple projects and make progress on all of them.
• How to handle common insecurities such as the fear of not being the best, the guilt associated with losing interest in something you used to love and the challenge of explaining ""what you do"" to others.
Not fitting neatly into a box can be a beautiful thing. How to Be Everything teaches you how to design a life, at any age and stage of your career, that allows you to be fully you, and find the kind of work you'll love.
Editor's Note
Reach your full potential…
Find out if you’re a multipotentialite with Emilie Wapnick’s book, which features exercises and conversation prompts to help you explain your diverse interests and your windy, head-scratch inducing career path. Design the life you want and don’t apologize for it.
Emilie Wapnick
Emilie Wapnick is a speaker, career coach, blogger, and community leader. She is the founder and creative director at Puttylike.com, where she helps multipotentialites integrate all of their interests to create dynamic, fulfilling, and fruitful careers and lives. Unable to settle on a single path, Emilie studied music, art, film production, and law, graduating from the Law Faculty at McGill University in 2011. Emilie is a TED speaker and has been featured in Fast Company, Forbes, The Financial Times, The Huffington Post, and Lifehacker. Her TED talk, “Why Some of Us Don’t Have One True Calling,” has been viewed over 3.5 million times, and has been translated into 36 languages. She has been hired as a guest speaker and workshop facilitator at universities, high schools, and organizations across the United States and internationally.
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Reviews for How to Be Everything
231 ratings16 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book has set me on an ever-clearing path to at least personal success. After having been almost aligned to a specific occupation by others' questioning of my future, Emily has brought about the realisation within me that I can be whatever I WANT to be and that it doesn't have to be a single commitment. I have been opened up to a community of people like me and I feel more motivated than ever to just go out and live my life.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nothing too new but at the same time a refreshing one as it tackles multipotentiality.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5After completing this books I know more about myself than anyone was ever about to tell me.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fun, light, eye opening and informative! I enjoyed the humor.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great book. Made me feel so much better about being a person that loves several things and is not an expert in one particulair field. Good tips and examples. Exercises to get you started, so a very practical guide on how to incorporate your multi interested mindset in your life.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book helped me understand myself so much better, I have always been a multipotentialite. I always have multiple projects going on and I feel secure that, that it's self is my calling.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Love it. Thank you for your help today felt better
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Excellent resource. Will definitely read again. Highly recommend this book.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great book. Great insight. Thanks for the insight love
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great book that will help give people a "life framework" for doing everything
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Just what I needed ! Recommended Extremely useful information ??
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5It's well written but there's not really a new concept here for me.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I have followed Emilie's blog for years and have identified as a "multipotentialite" ever since I first watched her TED talk. I was so excited when I first saw she was releasing a book and it didn't disappoint! The most useful part of this book for me was reading about the different work models for multipotentialites, but the book as a whole is inspiring and reassuring. I also love how Emilie reminds the reader that the concepts and models she mentions are completely malleable.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5So glad to have insights from someone who can explain clearly what I have failed to convey to others and myself. So excited for a little more understanding about myself and know that I’m not alone in my way of thinking and living.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Interesting theories on work and change presented. Got me thinking about my own career paths and the different shifts and jobs I've tried.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Modern culture sometimes has hard-to-shake core beliefs. The social mores tend to suggest that workers specialize (or sub-specialize) in one thing. We expect people to define themselves by their work, and their work must consist of one main task or calling. That’s easy for people who are good at only one thing or favor/enjoy only one thing.However, some of us have trouble fitting into that mold. We do multiple things well and enjoy the variety. Specialization can seem like an albatross around our necks instead of a stable source of happiness. Few resources exist for this personality and career type. Career counselors do not often suggest this path when people plan their lives. Yet as Wapnick describes in this book (and my life exemplifies), a multifaceted career path can lead to happiness, financial stability, and interesting products.Being unusual is tough. People often describe me as “brilliant,” but don’t see how traditional roles usually lead me to dead ends. They idealize “the road less travelled,” but don’t see how difficult it sometimes is. Wapnick writes for audiences just like me. I develop software and lead a community of users at work, read books and write reviews as a hobby, teach and coordinate a impactful Sunday School class, and engage in interesting play with my family. And like Wapnick, I’m happy the way I am, thank you.Her book is broken up into three main parts. The first part describes what a “multipotentialite” is – someone who has multiple talents or does multiple things well. Tradition has described this path in many ways, including genius, polymath, jack of all trades but master of none, among others. The second part describes different ways that people have pursued this lifestyle. Key aspects are how much variety is needed in a week and how sequentially versus simultaneously one pursues various interests. She then describes several successful strategies people have historically taken to express themselves. Finally, the last part consists of more of a self-help handbook for this personality type. Living as a multipotentialite in a world where so many people define themselves by just one thing can be difficult. Wapnick offers some helpful suggestions she’s learned along the way.This book seems to help a need in an original way. Few books address this topic and focus on financial stability along with personal happiness, like Wapnick does. Central is redefining one’s understanding of career. This book is practical and focused on those of us who live a bit differently than the rest. It also should receive an audience with career counselors, human resource professionals, and career mentors to understand differences in people. Those groups are specific niches, but they are successfully filled in this examination about how being multiple and plural can actually aid one through life.