I think it's easy for people to see that you (or anyone) is often defined by a single part of their life. Generally I see four ways that someone is "classified":
- Career. For many people, it's their career - some specialty in their craft, programming, data science, marketing, writing, painting, "influencer", whatever.
- Industry. For others its their industry - AI, clean tech, automotive, airlines, retail. You get the idea.
- Accomplishment. Fewer exist here, but you might be notable for some accomplishment (potentially related to your career or industry), but it could also be academic, sports inspired, a societal contribution, etc.
- Relationship/ Event. Even fewer here, but you're "someone" because you're related to someone from the above (think famous people kids, parents, siblings, cousins), or you're known because of some happenstance event (won the lottery, victim of a notable crime, caught Barry Bonds record-breaking homerun ball, etc.). Some people here will own this designation, others will hide it and try to "rebrand" to one of the above.
I say it's easy because this is how we're often setup to understand people we don't know. Go read Wikipedia or LinkedIn and within a few seconds, you can probably pin someone to one of the above.
Beyond the obvious
Now think of one of your friends. It can be a childhood friend, or maybe even a work friend. You know them from something of the above, but they've got more to them
- Hobbies. They enjoy doing something in their free time: cooking, hiking, reading, coding, surfing, working out, freelancing, photography, playing a sport, fixing cars, socializing, blogging, playing video games, etc. Some have many hobbies, others have few.
- "Activities". Something a little less defined than a hobby, but generally encompasses things you might do regularly. This might be something you know someone for even if they don't themselves. Being a full time parent/ childcare, you might enjoy cooking (but it's not a hobby), or you enjoy walking but you're not a runner, nor into fitness. Maybe your office colleagues know you to be a jokester. Lots of loose definitions here.
- Skills. This is often synonymous with hobbies, as you typically build skills and experience if you do anything long enough. You can have a hobby without skills and vise versa, though that's probably less common.
- Ambitions/ Pursuits. Everyone is in pursuit of something. Some are tangible, others are a state of mind. Some are strong ambitions that influence hobbies, skill development, career, etc. Others are fleeting. Ambition isn't quite boolean. I tried to quantify it a bit below.
I don't think any particularly position on the grid is wrong, it just attempts to add some structure to how I think people are motivated – although to be clear I'm not making a stance on motivation, just that ambition takes many shapes.
What would it look like to move around this grid?
Do a lot of things, even if you think you might be known for just one
My takeaway here is people you idolize, and look up to because they are at some place in their career, or a figure in their industry, but under the surface, those types of people often have more "happening" than you can see.
This relates a bit to the idea of "building a brand", but I find that the people that excel in one thing, often excel in others. Or that they didn't get to where they were today without some healthy obsession towards tangential things.
I'd also argue the more "things" you do, the more likelihood you have succeeding in any one of them. Partially because many skills are correlated, making it easier to do the next thing. And partially because the more times you "spin the wheel" of life, the better odds you have of stumbling onto something you're really good at, or get an immense amount of fulfilment from.
Maybe this is why more than 80% of college students end up switching majors at least once [1].
So yeah, do a lot of things. You never know what might come of it.
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