What My Unconventional Career Taught Me About Multipotentialite Life

Before I was a multipotentialite (or at least, before I knew I was a multipotentialite), I was a multi-instrumentalist. While I started learning piano at the age of eight, I didn’t remain just a keyboard player for long. My passion quickly led me to begin learning other instruments, with my love for music divided almost equally between all of them. I started playing guitar around age 12, and began flute at school soon after. This eventually led me to pick up piccolo, alto saxophone, ukulele, bass, and drums.

I devoted the most time to learning advanced techniques on flute and piccolo throughout high school and college, and flute (specifically rock flute!) still plays a major role in my style as a musician and producer. But I continue to feel a strong affinity for all of the instruments I play, especially now that I have the opportunity to teach them to others.

Reflecting on how being a multi-instrumentalist is such an important part of my life, I realized that my experiences as a multi-instrumentalist have guided how I conceptualize being a multipotentialite as well. Some of these lessons relate to outward aspects of self-identity, like how other people perceive multipotentiality or assumptions they might make about us. Other intersections involve inward self-identity: like feeling coherent in how we think of ourselves, or achieving a sense of balance in our multifaceted lives.

There are five key areas where my experience as a multi-instrumentalist has helped to guide me in creating my multipotentialite life so far. My hope is that some of these takeaways reflect your experience in other areas of your life as well, and serve as examples for how to extrapolate from one multifaceted pursuit to arrive at insights about yourself and your life more broadly.

1. Overcoming pressure to specialize in one thing

Throughout high school and college, flute and piccolo were my “competitive” instruments, meaning that I focused on preparing for auditions and competitive ensembles on those instruments. I would still identify myself as a multi-instrumentalist during that time, other musicians would often try to clarify or narrow that by saying, “…but flute is your primary instrument.” The phrase “primary instrument” is one that I’ve never really been a fan of, at least with respect to my own practice. In my mind, my primary instrument is the one that I am practicing, teaching, or gigging with on any given day! (That framework would still leave me with two or three “primary instruments” for each day…)

Depending on the projects or performances I am preparing for, my skills might be stronger on a certain instrument for a period of time, but this doesn’t mean that I suddenly lose my abilities and technique on the others. Multipotentialites might experience similar reactions as our interests shift or as we change career priorities. When you are focused on using and developing one of your skill sets, it might appear to be your “primary” skill, while in reality it’s just something you’re focusing on for a period of time. As you pivot to something different, it might temporarily dominate your focus, but that doesn’t necessarily make it your singular specialty either.

2. Embracing how your skills translate

As I started to practice more advanced techniques on my instruments, I found that aspects of playing each instrument translated to the others in some way. Playing wind instruments helps me to develop my phrasing when playing guitar or keyboard, and guides me in structuring melodic lines when I’m writing. Playing drums, practicing rudiments, and learning beats in a variety of genres has helped my rhythmic precision and use of syncopation on my other instruments.

While our multipotentialite pursuits might not always translate to our other roles in such a direct way, being aware of how skills from one area might help us in another and actively seeking out that overlap can be one of our core strengths as multipotentialites. Actually, the idea of trying to apply what I’ve learned as a multi-instrumentalist to other areas of my life as a multipotentialite is a result of looking for these types of intersections! Taking time to think through how some of your talents and hard-earned skills in one area might translate to other parts of your life can be valuable and help you recognize strengths you didn’t even realize you had.

3. Dealing with misconceptions about your abilities

Identifying as a multi-instrumentalist can also come with some of the same challenges that multipotentialites face in terms of how other people perceive us. Some people hear the term “multi-instrumentalist” and assume that people who describe themselves that way are somewhat competent on several instruments, but not great at any of them. I encountered this misconception in school when I was younger. People were often surprised by my ability to, well, play the instruments I said I could play. (“Wow, you’re actually good!” and “I didn’t realize you could actually play!” are not the compliments people might think they are.)

As I’ve grown up and gotten more self-assured in my ability to keep learning and improving professionally on all of my instruments, these types of remarks have become kind of humorous to me. But when I first started teaching lessons, I would feel an added sense of pressure if a new student’s family expressed any doubt about my abilities because they saw me listed as a teacher for several instruments. A comment like, So, you play a little bit of everything? might have led me to feel like I need to demonstrate my chops on whatever instrument I was teaching before beginning the actual lesson.

I now feel more confident that my ability to play and teach with enthusiasm during lessons is evidence enough of my competency as a musician and teacher. But comments like that can still sting a bit, because they’re inadvertently dismissive of the effort and commitment necessary to build skills in multiple areas.

The misconception that we can’t be dedicated and skilled in several disciplines directly translates to the “jack of all trades, master of none” perspective that multipotentialites often have to reckon with in our professional lives. It might be easy to assume that someone who is passionately pursuing several career paths—or several instruments—can’t really excel at any of them because, after all, there are only so many hours in the day. But in actuality, there are ways that both multi-instrumentalists and multipotentialites can manage our time to work toward growth and excellence in whichever areas we choose.

4. Seeking & creating balance between all of your pursuits

Organizing my practice routine as a multi-instrumentalist was one of my first attempts at creating a sense of balance between all of the things I do as a multipotentialite. I now build my practice schedule and routine around the instruments I teach on each day of the week and the instrumental needs of production projects I am working on, but as a kid in school trying to learn all of my chosen instruments it was a bit more complicated!

The process of building a balanced routine and sticking to it when I was first learning my instruments helped to prepare me for my multipotentialite lifestyle, and introduced me to the discipline required to balance several projects at once. In particular, one of the hardest parts of keeping a balanced routine was giving attention to all of my instruments, when I might feel a stronger passion for one more than the others at any given time. I found that I could devote a bit more time to one instrument when I felt drawn to do so, while still maintaining a steady routine to develop my abilities on my other instruments in rotation.

Honestly, being consistent and intentional about how I schedule and balance my time is still a work in progress, as it is for many multipotentialites. But my experiences organizing my multi-instrumental practice routine have provided me with an effective framework for creating balance in the other areas of my professional and personal life.

5. Becoming comfortable with describing yourself differently depending on the situation

In the last year or so especially, I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable with describing myself based on the context of an interaction. If I am teaching ukulele and guitar on a particular day, I might introduce myself simply as an uke and guitar teacher. If I’m playing drums at a gig with an indie singer-songwriter, I introduce myself as his drummer.

The reality is that people don’t need to know everything that we do, all of the time. I’ve found that being comfortable momentarily describing myself as “one thing” is easier and more comfortable when I am not feeling insecure or seeking outside approval.

It can be an amazing feeling to arrive at the overarching titles that seem to encompass all that you do. But it can also be empowering and rewarding to realize that you are comfortable with identifying as just a part of your big, overarching identity in some moments.

For me, feeling confident to describe myself by just one instrument or just one job title in certain interactions has helped me to appreciate how I have grown in my skills and intrinsic sense of self-identity. Regardless of what your work and hobbies look like as a multipotentialite, cultivating the confidence to describe yourself by all of them or just one of them depending on the situation can be freeing and empowering. It shows that you have a strong sense of your own identity and don’t need to prove it to anyone else!

Your turn

What did your early experiences balancing your multipotentialite pursuits look like? Is there a particular part of your background that helps to guide all of your other interests and passions?