Multipotencialidad y creatividad. ¿Por qué algunos de nosotros no tenemos una fuerte vocación?

En esta charla de TED talks, Emilie Wapnick (life and career coach) habla de las virtudes de la multipotencialidad en relación con la creatividad y la adaptabilidad a nuevos y cambiantes escenarios. Defiende este especial "don" frente a la generalizada sobrevaloración de la especialización y explica cómo las dos modalidades, multipotencialidad y especialización, se conjugan para crear los mejores proyectos: las personas con multipotencialidad aportamos una bocanada de aire fresco , una mirada interdisciplinaria, mientras que los especialistas tienen la misión de desarrollar e implementar los proyectos. Lamentablemente, muchas personas con multipotencialidad somos "empujadas" por la cultura dominante a ser y desarrollar carreras "unifocales", de especialista, lo cual produce frustración en nosotros y pérdida de creatividad para la sociedad en su conjunto.

Me he sentido profundamente identificada con el relato de Emilie. Este blog es expresión de mi multipotencialidad.  Creo que he sabido encontrar el hilo conductor de la mayoría de mis intereses: la creatividad.  Escuchar esta charla ha reforzado mi confianza en este proyecto y en otros que están en camino.

Transcripción de la charla, solo traduzco textos en negrita (próximamente en castellano en la web www.ted.com)

Alcen sus manos si alguna vez les han preguntado "¿Qué quieren ser cuando sean grandes?"

Yo soy alguien que nunca ha sido capaz de responder a la pregunta "¿Qué quieres ser cuando seas grande?"  El problema no era que no tuviera intereses; es que tengo muchísimos.  Este patrón me causaba mucha ansiedad, por dos razones.  La primera era que yo no estaba segura sobre cómo podría transformar todos mis intereses en una carrera.  La segunda razón era que me preocupaba la cuestión del compromiso o de que yo estuviera dispersa o que me autosaboteara, con miedo de mi propio éxito.

Se nos pregunta por primera vez la pregunta "¿Qué quieres ser cuando seas grande?" cuando tenemos más o menos 5 años.  Esa pregunta es considerada una pregunta inocua.  Mientras que esa pregunta inspira a los niños a soñar acerca de lo que ellos pueden ser, no los inspira a soñar acerca de TODO lo que ellos podrían hacer.  Este es Dr. Bob Childs.  Es luthier y psicoterapeuta.  Y esta es Amy Ng., una editora de revistas que se convirtió en ilustradora, maestra y directora creativa.  La mayoría de los jóvenes no oyen acerca de gente como estos. Todo lo que oyen es que tendrán que elegir.  Pero hay más.  La noción de una vida estrechamente enfocada está teñida de mucho romanticismo en nuestra cultura. Se trata de la idea del destino o de una única y verdadera llamada.

¿Y qué si hay muchos temas diferentes sobre los que tienes curiosidad y si hay muchas cosas que quieres hacer?  Puede que te sientas solo.  Puede que sientas que no tienes un propósito determinado.  Puede que sientas que hay algo mal contigo.  No hay nada malo en ti.  Tú eres un/a multipotencial.  Darle un nombre a lo que nos sucede nos ayuda a comprenderlo y a explicarlo a los demás. Una persona con multipotencial es alguien con muchos intereses y propósitos creativos.  La persona del Renacimiento.  Es fácil ver la multipotencialidad como una limitación o una aflicción que necesitas superar. (Dice el refrán popular: aprendiz de mucho, maestro de nada").  Pero lo que he aprendido hablando con gente y escribiendo acerca de estas ideas en mi página web is que hay tremendas fortalezas en ser de este modo.  Aquí van los 3 superpoderes de la multipotencialidad.

Uno: síntesis de ideas.  Combinar dos o tres campos y crear algo nuevo en la intersección.  La innovación sucede en las intersecciones. Y las personas con multipotencial, con todos sus conocimientos, tienen la capacidad de acceder a muchos de esos puntos de intersección.  Sha H. y Rachel B. tiraron de sus intereses compartidos en cartografía, visualizacion de datos, viajes, matemáticas y diseño, cuando fundaron Meshu.  Meshu es una compañía que crea joyas personalizadas inspiradas geográficamente.

El segundo superpoder es el aprendizaje rápido.  Cuando l@s multipotenciales nos interesamos en algo,  nos sumergimos en ello.  Observamos todo aquello sobre lo que podemos poner las manos (somos como scanners, según Barbara Shers).  Asimismo, estamos acostumbrados a ser iniciadores; no tenemos miedo de empezar cosas nuevas y salir fuera de nuestra zona de confort.  Y lo que es más, muchas competencias son transferibles a otras disciplinas; nosotr@s traemos todo lo que hemos aprendido a toda nueva área que persigamos, rara vez comenzamos desde cero.

El tercer superpoder de la multipotencialidad es la adaptabilidad, la habilidad de convertirte en lo que sea que necesites en una situación dada.  Abe Cajudo es a veces un director de video, a veces un diseñador web, a veces un consultor de Kickstarting, a veces un maestro, y a veces, aparentemente, James Bond.

Síntesis de ideas, aprendizaje rápido y adaptabilidad: tres competencias que son muy habituales en l@s multipotenciales y tres competencias que se podrían perder si ell@s acotaran su foco de atención. Como sociedad, tenemos fuertes razones para alentar a los "multipotenciales" para que sean ellos mismos. Tenemos en el mundo muchos problemas complejos, multidimensionales y necesitamos gente creativa, "out-of-the-box thinkers" para hacerles frente.

Raise your hand if you've ever been asked the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

0:17 Now if you had to guess, how old would you say you were when you were first asked this question? You can just hold up fingers. Three. Five. Three. Five. Five. OK. Now, raise your hand if the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" has ever caused you any anxiety.

0:38 (Laughter)

0:40 Any anxiety at all.

0:44 I'm someone who's never been able to answer the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

0:49 See, the problem wasn't that I didn't have any interests -- it's that I had too many. In high school, I liked English and math and art and I built websites and I played guitar in a punk band called Frustrated Telephone Operator. Maybe you've heard of us.

1:05 (Laughter)

1:08 This continued after high school, and at a certain point, I began to notice this pattern in myself where I would become interested in an area and I would dive in, become all-consumed, and I'd get to be pretty good at whatever it was, and then I would hit this point where I'd start to get bored. And usually I would try and persist anyway, because I had already devoted so much time and energy and sometimes money into this field. But eventually this sense of boredom, this feeling of, like, yeah, I got this, this isn't challenging anymore -- it would get to be too much. And I would have to let it go.

1:49 But then I would become interested in something else, something totally unrelated, and I would dive into that, and become all-consumed, and I'd be like, "Yes! I found my thing," and then I would hit this point again where I'd start to get bored. And eventually, I would let it go. But then I would discover something new and totally different, and I would dive into that.

2:14 This pattern caused me a lot of anxiety, for two reasons. The first was that I wasn't sure how I was going to turn any of this into a career. I thought that I would eventually have to pick one thing, deny all of my other passions, and just resign myself to being bored. The other reason it caused me so much anxietywas a little bit more personal. I worried that there was something wrong with this, and something wrong with me for being unable to stick with anything. I worried that I was afraid of commitment, or that I was scattered, or that I was self-sabotaging, afraid of my own success.

2:56 If you can relate to my story and to these feelings, I'd like you to ask yourself a question that I wish I had asked myself back then. Ask yourself where you learned to assign the meaning of wrong or abnormal to doing many things. I'll tell you where you learned it: you learned it from the culture.

3:21 We are first asked the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" when we're about five years old. And the truth is that no one really cares what you say when you're that age.

3:30(Laughter)

3:31 It's considered an innocuous question, posed to little kids to elicit cute replies, like, "I want to be an astronaut," or "I want to be a ballerina," or "I want to be a pirate." Insert Halloween costume here.

3:43 (Laughter)

3:45 But this question gets asked of us again and again as we get older in various forms -- for instance, high school students might get asked what major they're going to pick in college. And at some point, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" goes from being the cute exercise it once was to the thing that keeps us up at night. Why?

4:08 See, while this question inspires kids to dream about what they could be, it does not inspire them to dream about ALL that they could be. In fact, it does just the opposite, because when someone asks you what you want to be, you can't reply with 20 different things, though well-meaning adults will likely chuckle and be like, "Oh, how cute, but you can't be a violin maker and a psychologist. You have to choose."

4:35 This is Dr. Bob Childs --

4:36 (Laughter)

4:39 and he's a luthier and psychotherapist. And this is Amy Ng, a magazine editor turned illustrator, entrepreneur, teacher and creative director. But most kids don't hear about people like this. All they hear is that they're going to have to choose. But it's more than that. The notion of the narrowly focused life is highly romanticized in our culture. It's this idea of destiny or the one true calling, the idea that we each have one great thing we are meant to do during our time on this earth, and you need to figure out what that thing is and devote your life to it.

5:22 But what if you're someone who isn't wired this way? What if there are a lot of different subjects that you're curious about, and many different things you want to do? Well, there is no room for someone like you in this framework. And so you might feel alone. You might feel like you don't have a purpose. And you might feel like there's something wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with you. What you are is a multipotentialite.

5:51(Laughter)

5:53(Applause)

6:01 A multipotentialite is someone with many interests and creative pursuits. It's a mouthful to say. It might help if you break it up into three parts: multi, potential, and ite. You can also use one of the other terms that connote the same idea, such as polymath, the Renaissance person. Actually, during the Renaissance period, it was considered the ideal to be well-versed in multiple disciplines. Barbara Sher refers to us as "scanners." Use whichever term you like, or invent your own. I have to say I find it sort of fitting that as a community, we cannot agree on a single identity.

6:40(Laughter)

6:44 It's easy to see your multipotentiality as a limitation or an affliction that you need to overcome. But what I've learned through speaking with people and writing about these ideas on my website, is that there are some tremendous strengths to being this way. Here are three multipotentialite super powers.

 7:06 One: idea synthesis. That is, combining two or more fields and creating something new at the intersection. Sha Hwang and Rachel Binx drew from their shared interests in cartography, data visualization, travel, mathematics and design, when they founded Meshu. Meshu is a company that creates custom geographically-inspired jewelry. Sha and Rachel came up with this unique idea not despite, but because of their eclectic mix of skills and experiences. Innovation happens at the intersections. That's where the new ideas come from. And multipotentialites, with all of their backgrounds, are able to access a lot of these points of intersection.

7:58 The second multipotentialite superpower is rapid learning. When multipotentialites become interested in something, we go hard. We observe everything we can get our hands on. We're also used to being beginners, because we've been beginners so many times in the past, and this means that we're less afraid of trying new things and stepping out of our comfort zones. What's more, many skills are transferable across disciplines, and we bring everything we've learned to every new area we pursue, so we're rarely starting from scratch.

8:33 Nora Dunn is a full-time traveler and freelance writer. As a child concert pianist, she honed an incredible ability to develop muscle memory. Now, she's the fastest typist she knows.

8:46 (Laughter)

8:48 Before becoming a writer, Nora was a financial planner. She had to learn the finer mechanics of saleswhen she was starting her practice, and this skill now helps her write compelling pitches to editors. It is rarely a waste of time to pursue something you're drawn to, even if you end up quitting. You might apply that knowledge in a different field entirely, in a way that you couldn't have anticipated.

9:13The third multipotentialite superpower is adaptability; that is, the ability to morph into whatever you need to be in a given situation. Abe Cajudo is sometimes a video director, sometimes a web designer,sometimes a Kickstarter consultant, sometimes a teacher, and sometimes, apparently, James Bond.

9:36 (Laughter)

9:38 He's valuable because he does good work. He's even more valuable because he can take on various roles, depending on his clients' needs. Fast Company magazine identified adaptability as the single most important skill to develop in order to thrive in the 21st century. The economic world is changing so quickly and unpredictably that it is the individuals and organizations that can pivot in order to meet the needs of the market that are really going to thrive.

10:08 Idea synthesis, rapid learning and adaptability: three skills that multipotentialites are very adept at, and three skills that they might lose if pressured to narrow their focus. As a society, we have a vested interest in encouraging multipotentialites to be themselves. We have a lot of complex, multidimensional problems in the world right now, and we need creative, out-of-the-box thinkers to tackle them.

10:40 Now, let's say that you are, in your heart, a specialist. You came out of the womb knowing you wanted to be a pediatric neurosurgeon. Don't worry -- there's nothing wrong with you, either.

10:53 (Laughter)

10:54 In fact, some of the best teams are comprised of a specialist and multipotentialite paired together. The specialist can dive in deep and implement ideas, while the multipotentialite brings a breath of knowledge to the project. It's a beautiful partnership. But we should all be designing lives and careers that are aligned with how we're wired. And sadly, multipotentialites are largely being encouraged simply to be more like their specialist peers.

11:23 So with that said, if there is one thing you take away from this talk, I hope that it is this: embrace your inner wiring, whatever that may be. If you're a specialist at heart, then by all means, specialize. That is where you'll do your best work. But to the multipotentialites in the room, including those of you who may have just realized in the last 12 minutes that you are one --

11:51(Laughter)

11:52 to you I say: embrace your many passions. Follow your curiosity down those rabbit holes. Explore your intersections. Embracing our inner wiring leads to a happier, more authentic life. And perhaps more importantly -- multipotentialites, the world needs us.

12:18Thank you.

12:20(Applause)