It’s not every day that a book comes out about how to combine many interests into one career. In fact, when I first heard about Ian Sanders and his new book Mashup!, I was a little stunned…
Ian uses “mash” where I use “smoosh,” and “personal unifier” where I use “overarching theme,” but we’re basically talking about the same thing.
I knew I had to get in touch.
The interview
I don’t do author interviews very often on Puttylike, but this one had to be done. In this interview, Ian and I talk about combining many skills in one career, positioning yourself in the job market, and coming up with a personal unifier or overarching theme.
I had a blast talking with Ian about these ideas, and I think you’ll really enjoy this.
Thanks Ian, for sharing your ideas with the Puttylike community!
Getting in touch with Ian
You can reach Ian over at iansanders.com, and on Twitter at @IanSanders.
And make sure to check out his awesome book, that I wish I had written, and that every multipotentialite should read.
Your Turn
How have you mashed together your multiple skills?
Nice interview. I found his discussion of how people’s inability to put labels on multi-skilled individuals very interesting. People want to be able to label you. He’s a doctor. She’s a lawyer. Not so easy to label someone like you or Ian.
Thanks for sharing.
Dan @ ZenPresence.com
Thanks Dan. Yeah, you’re right. People really want to figure out what your THING is, so they can have an easy, compartmentalized way of thinking about you. Life outside/between labels is way more fun and fulfilling though.
(at least for me. 🙂
cheers for this, interesting and useful and yes it’s a shame that a lot of creativity still tries to squeeze people into boxes 🙂 Jo
Emilie,
I really enjoyed this interview. Way to go for reaching out to Ian! I took notes on the conversation. While I listened and jotted down things that resonated, insights started popping like flash bulbs from a camera taking a series of shots. I wish I could show you the page. It’s filled with randomly scribbled impressions that I know I can work with. Here’s a little sample:
KILL THE RESUME!
Innovation happens at the intersections: and then I thought, YES! but once you drive through the intersection, those new ideas and inspirations often require a series of rapid skill acquisition sessions. This is the exciting part for me. Building new skills because I want to explore something, despite the fact that I am not a specialist in that area and may come to it with little or no knowledge of the terrain. The experience of diving into something new as a regular habit of life is scary at first, but eventually with practice a feeling of empowerment and trust for the process arrives. I’m learning to keep trying new stuff because even momentary focus has rewards. I feel myself becoming “trail fit” and ready to take on new paths, not worrying about my lack of a singular direction. I am now very inspired to write my story in one page.
Here is the page I wrote after watching the interview: http://kneesandpaws.blogspot.com/p/shop.html
Emilie, thanks for posting this.
Dan, Jo, Jenny – thanks for sharing your feedback. Jenny, loved what you said about ‘insights popping like flash bulbs from a camera taking a series of shots’. That sounds cool 😉 I will check out your story……
I love what he says about multipotentialites presenting themselves with a story.
I definitely struggle with how to present myself (on a resume, or on a blog or web profile, or meeting people), like WHAT out of the millions of aspects of me should I mention?
I’m going to work on communicating my story (long version and short version).
Loved this interview. It’s exciting to see this multipotentialite/masher/scanner/renaissance soul trait being uncovered, explored and embraced.
Had to laugh about Ian trying to pick subjects at school, because I had recently traced the emergence of my own multipotentialite nature to high school. My school had history and geography on at the same time and you had to do at least one of them. My thinking at 14 was if these topics are so significant, why make us choose between time and place? Fortunately there was an extra history class at another time slot so I was able to do both. It was a small class of interesting people – possibly populated by budding peeps and mashers?