Ever Wish You Came With Instructions? How To Create Your Own “Me-Manual”

Ever wish your life came with a set of instructions? Just imagine how much easier it would be if we each came with a user guide that was full of tailor-made techniques and strategies to help us handle ourselves and our natural tendencies.

Since we weren’t born clutching instruction manuals, how do we go about figuring out our multipotentialite tendencies?

Mostly, we do this through a combination of trial and error, with the support of like-minded pluralists here on Puttylike and in the Puttytribe. We experiment and tweak our approaches as we go, learning more and more about ourselves and how we function best.

But I propose that there’s another important step that many of us might be missing. Once we’ve learned something new about ourselves, we should record it. Once you find another piece in the complex jigsaw of you, hold onto it so that you can keep filling out the bigger picture.

What is a Me-Manual?

Here are a few things you might like to include in your manual:

• Your overarching theme
• A list of all your interests (past, present, and future)
• A record of your achievements (an overview of your body of work)
• Ideas for your future business(es), career(s), and lifestyle choices
• Insights into what makes you tick and the results of your experiments (for example, whether you’re a lark or an owl)
• Your results for any psychological or personality tests (for example, the Myers-Briggs test)
• Self-help remedies for your multipotentialite patterns (for example, how to tackle overwhelm or reminders as to how to avoid the comparison trap)

Recording your lightbulb moments

Do you remember when you realised you were a multipotentialite and that you no longer had to fit into a specialist mold that didn’t fit you? That was likely a moment of absolute clarity – a Eureka moment. We all have these Eureka moments from tie to time, but how often do we record them?

Keep a Me Manual, so that you can keep your realisations and observations safe and in one place, so you never have to struggle to remember them or forget them completely.

From now on, whenever you have a lightbulb moment and think “Aha! So that’s why I… ”, and something that puzzled you before suddenly begins to make sense, make a note of it in your Me Manual.

Where to keep this information

Your Me Manual should be easy to access whenever you need it. Instead of learning to use a completely new system (unless you want to, of course!) think about how you already store or log important information. Where do you keep your bucket list, for example? Or your list of interests to explore?

Your Me Manual could take the form of a notebook or journal, a spreadsheet, or an online note capture system. Choose whatever system works for you.

If you’re likely to need access to your notes when you’re on the go, a digital or cloud-based system might suit you best. If you like to doodle or sketch your thoughts out, find an interface that works well with capturing images or screen grabs.

Keeping it safe

It’s worth considering how you can back up your Me Manual, whether you keep it as a digital resource or as a hard copy. You’re creating a one-of-a-kind guide that’s unique to you, so you won’t just be able to buy another copy if anything were to happen to the original.

If you choose to host your Me Manual in the cloud, backing it up should be a no brainer. But if you decide to go the traditional route, by scrapbooking or using a notebook, for example, consider photocopying, scanning, or photographing each page just in case.

Your Turn

Do you keep anything like this already? What other resources could you include in your manual?