How to Manage Multiple Interests

TL:DR | A quick response post to a well made video about managing multiple interests. As a polymathic person this is a skill that we must learn, and this post shares two people's experience doing that.


2 min read

This response post was inspired by this video.

A fine video explaining how to manage your multipotential, and realizing that sometimes you have to choose. A jack of all trades, and mastery of some.

Pushing through the hardship and sticking with an interest even when it is hard.


Shiny Object Syndrome versus just simply Switching

A lot of polymathic people suffer from this, and I have had my fair share. However I also have had experiences where on the outside that is what it looked like, but the actual truth was I NEEDED To change what I was doing/using.

For example one of my main topics is Knowledge Management, using tools like Notion or Obsidian, in order to organize your life. Last year I found myself moving between tools a lot, and wasting a lot of time because of it. Although I left some tools for really good reasons, like Notion legitimately NOT working, and Obsidian I wasn't able to plan my content at all. So while yes I was looking at all of the shiny objects or tools in this case, it wasn't because of lack of commitment. Rather a strong need for change.

Now Odysseas talks about SOS a couple times in the video, and I really like what he has to say about it. I'd definitely listen to his advice as well.


He calls is a "Hierarchy of Interests"

By listing them out and prioritizing you can see things from a macro view, and explore the more important options. Almost like using the Eisenhower Matrix. Being able to declare this interest isn't worth my time as much.

Giving you more time to work on what matters most, and managing your time more effectively.

I see it as Multiple Phases

Phases are essentially "niches", interests, or areas of expertise. They may be all 3 or just simply one.

By looking at them in this way you can then start to sort the phases into an ordered list. Quite like how he described the prioritization. I sometimes see it as the pareto principle, 80/20 rule, where I split my attention in that way. Or the 20 is split to 10% previous endeavor back burner, and 10% future endeavor sowing the seeds.

You could probably use both mindsets quite well, and that might help with the order of when you want to accomplish those phases/interests.


Managing isn't the right word.

Me and him both used the word managing in regards to organizing our interests. However it is more of orchestrating the flow of your life.

Sure you need to manage which phases you work on each year, but it is more like curating the sequence of which ones you are doing at a particular time over the course of your entire life. Some phases may only be a year, and others upwards of a decade or more. Just depending on your mastery in it.


"We Are Generalists"

Now this is a warcry I can get behind, one of his timestamps said this, and it stuck out to me.

The level of detail he put into his video I think helps exemplify the points he is making. Even one moment where he is showing 3 of his skills at once, I really liked that part.

That is the mindset of why I created the Polymath PolyCast as well. To exemplify people's polymathic life.


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