The One Person Theater: On Wearing Many Hats

Glancing at some of the older posts on FourthEye I thought that it might be valuable to create a follow up to my piece on polymathism, something that I personally interact with a fair amount. In this article, I’d like to go over some of the things that I think are paramount for those that are looking to pursue various different passions concurrently.

The first thing that I think is most important when donning many hats is a combination of energy and self-expectation management. One of the things that I personally run into a lot for myself is expecting everything that I work on to be a 14/10 the first time I do it, and my energy to match my enthusiasm. In my experience this can get us into some trouble because when one is really pushing and putting a lot of time and effort into creating something, it’s natural that this will heavily deplete our resource reserves, and also keep us from being able to be excellent at a number of other things on a given day or time period. A mantra of sorts, that I think about a decent amount, is the idea that when you want something to be a 14/10 you’ve got to be able to choose what your 7’s are going to be. In other words expect to be adequate at things that don’t create that big a difference but are obligatory, such as back projects, chores etc so that you don’t burnout by casting absurd self-expectations. In tandem with that, doing everything one can to maximize the “yin reserve” of energy, to borrow a term from the late Charles Poliquin, can help us to achieve the work quality and satisfaction without the burnout. These things might include thinking about how we eat, sleep, move and so on.

The second thing that I think is super important for polymaths, is having a good system for selecting the projects that you want to work on. I’ve covered this in another piece on “setting the stage for quality work”, but my system is to ask what my ultimate goal or goals are, or what am I optimizing for, and then select projects where I like the idea, process and destination. This in my experience helps to keep projects anchored not only to enjoying the ride, but also to making sure what you’re doing is aligned with your ultimate goals. In part, one of the most important aspects of this piece, is learning how to say no effectively, something I am absolutely working on all the time, because one of the greatest taxes I tend to pay comes from my struggle to turn down things that I’m lukewarm about or that aren’t really aligned with what I want. Since I’m far from an expert on that particular aspect, I’ll leave the “how to”, to your own research, but perhaps I will write a piece on that super important topic at some later point. As an aside the financial or time viability of the things one works on will probably be a big player in determining what things you do or don’t work on.

Lastly, as more of something to keep in mind, I think one of the biggest costs when trying to be a polymath is that we are living in a world that generally doesn’t seem to accommodate it particularly well. This might mean that your family or friends will struggle to understand or accept your way of seeing or doing things and that’s okay, I think that’s pretty normal. One of the biggest things I grappled with besides trying to make myself a path I can thrive on in life, rather than following one often traveled, is the decision of how much to share about what you do with the people around you. There are some people who are accepting and some not, and I think gauging when to unload or not is really key. The other thing is that frankly how financially successful you are in many cases determines how people perceive you more than how happy you are. While being happy and free is of greater ultimate importance, obviously so too is finance for practical reasons. Being free and happy, with 20 dollars to your name is not really an ideal scenario.

All that said, these are some of the things that I think have been most crucial in my personal journey. I hope you find this useful in some way or thought provoking and I hope you will be well.

Orion Aeneas Webster,

FourthEyeBlog Author