埃米莉·瓦普尼克（Emilie Wapnick）是一位音樂家/作曲家，一名網頁設計師，電影製片人，作家，法學院學生和企業家。她寫道：「這就是我一直生活的方式，從一個興趣轉移到另一個興趣，建立我在不同領域的技能，並綜合我在此過程中獲得的知識。」
你長大後想成為什麼？好吧，如果您不確定一生只想做一件事，那麼您並不孤單。在這個富有啟發性的演講中，作家兼藝術家埃米莉·瓦普尼克（Emilie Wapnick）描述了被她稱為「多能人」的那種人一生中都有各種各樣的興趣和工作。你是嗎？
你也許會覺得自己沒有目標， 你也許會覺得自己是不是有問題？你沒有問題，你是一名「多重潛力者」。接受你的眾多愛好，保持你的好奇心，探索不同領域的交叉地帶，讓真實的自我引領我們去過更快樂、更真實的人生。
譯文
如果你們曾被問過這個問題，請舉手「你長大之後想幹什麼？」現在大家回想一下，你們第一次被問這個問題是多大？你們可以舉手指頭來一點一下。三歲，五歲，三歲，五歲，五歲，好的。接下來，如果剛剛說的這個問題，「你長大之後想幹什麼？」曾經讓你感到擔心，請舉手。哪怕一點點擔心。我永遠無法回答這個問題，「你長大之後想幹什麼？」並不是說我沒有興趣愛好，而是我的興趣愛好太多。
高中的時候，我喜歡英語，數學和藝術，建過網站在一個叫「失意電話話務員」的朋克樂隊當吉他手。也許你們還聽說過我們樂隊呢。高中畢業後我也依舊興趣廣泛，某些天，我發現自己有一個行為模式，我可能有人一個領域感知，然後一頭扎進去，認真鑽研，變得越來越優秀長，但到了某一個階段，我就會開始覺得無聊。通常我會繼續堅持下去，因為我已經付出了很多時間和收益，有時候還有金錢。
但是最終這種無聊的感覺，就像在說，哦，這事我已經會了，已經沒有任何挑戰了，再繼續也不會有多大成就了。我必須要放手。但之後我可能又涉嫌另外一些事感興趣，跟之前完全不同的領域，我又會一頭扎進去，認真鑽研，然後說，「太棒了！這就是我的菜！」之後我又會達到那個階段，開始覺得無聊。最後，我又會放棄。之後我又會發現新的興趣，不同的領域然後一頭扎進去。
這種模式讓我非常擔心，原因有兩點。一是我不確定如何才能將這些興趣變成我的職業。我覺得自己最終會從（這些興趣）裡面挑一個，而對其他愛好忍痛割愛，做好將來一定會無聊的心理準備。讓我非常擔心的第二個原因，跟我自身有關。我擔心自己的這種行為模式是錯的，自己這麼朝三暮四，是不是錯了。我是不是害怕做出承諾，或者自由散漫，破罐子破摔，懼怕成功。
如果你能理解我的故事和我的感受，請你們問自己一個問題，這個問題我早就該問自己的。就是，你是從哪裡學到該如何判斷我們的造成所為是錯誤的或者不正常的。我來告訴你答案：是從我們的文化中學到的。我們第一次被問到「你長大之後想幹什麼？」是在差不多五歲的時候。其實像你那麼大的時候沒有人會真的關心你說了什麼。這一點一個無傷大雅的問題，為的是讓小朋友做出可愛的回應.
諸如，「我想當太空人」，或者「我想當演員」，或者「我想當海盜」。此處應加萬聖節服裝的特效。然而這個問題，在我們成長的過程中會不斷被問到形式多樣，例如，高中生會被問到，你們在大學準備選什麼專業。突然有一天，「你長大之後想幹什麼？」從原本一種秀可愛的方式變成了讓我們寢食難安的難題。
為什麼會這樣？儘管這個問題鼓勵小朋友想像自己將來要做什麼，但它卻又給小朋友充分想像的自由。恰恰相反，它限制了小朋友想像的自由，因為有人問你長大後想做什麼，你不可能回答20種不同的職業，儘管有些善良的大人會笑呵呵稱為，「哦，你太可愛了，但是你不能同時成為小提琴製作家和心理學家啊。你必須選一個。」這位是鮑勃·柴爾茲博士，他是一名弦樂器工匠和心理醫生。
這位是艾米·恩，之前是雜誌編輯，後來成為插畫作家，企業家教師和創意總監。但大部分孩子都沒聽說過他們。他們聽到的事情遠不止這麼簡單。一生都心無旁騖的這一觀念，在我們的文化中被過分浪漫化了。這種命運論或說「命中注定的職業」的概念，意思是我們每個人都有一份命中中註定的偉大事業，我們需要找到它，並為之奮鬥一生。但如果你不是這樣的人呢？
如果你對很多事都有好奇的心，想去嘗試各種的職業呢？那麼在現有體系中，你很難有容身之處。你也許會感到孤獨。你也許會覺得自己沒有目標。你也許會覺得自己是不是有問題。你沒有問題。你是一名「多重潛力者」。「多重潛力者」擁有多種興趣並且追求創新。聽起來很費解吧。如果把它拆成三部分可能比較好理解：多重的，有潛力的人。
可以用其他詞來表述類似的意思，比如「博學者」，或者「文藝復興者」。實際上，在文藝復興時代，精通多個學科是非常被推崇的。芭芭拉·謝爾稱我們為「掃描儀」。你可以選擇一個我自己喜歡的詞，或者創造一個新的。我感覺自己找到了組織，因為我們無法接受只有一種身份。很多人們容易把多重潛力視為一種局限或者痛苦，需要克服。但我通過與人們交流，以及把這些觀點發到我的網站上，我發現多重潛力者有很多優點。
多重潛力者擁有三種「超能力」。首先是產生創意。就是說，結合兩個或兩個以上領域從結合處尋求創新。黃沙和瑞秋·賓克斯找到了共同的興趣愛好，像製圖，數據可視化，旅行，數學和設計，之後他們創辦了Meshu。Meshu是一家定製珠寶公司，專門製作具有地域特色的珠寶。黃沙和瑞秋之所以能產生這個獨特的創意，正是因為他倆博學多才，經歷豐富。創新來源於交叉處。新創意（大都）層次。而多重潛力者，擁有豐富的（知識）背景，能夠在各領域交叉處找到突破點。
潛力多重者的第二種超能力的英文快速學習。當多重潛力者對某件事產生興趣時，我們會全身心投入。我們仔細觀察，勤於實踐。我們已經習慣於當初學者。因為我們過去曾當過無數次初學者，我們不怕嘗試新事物，勇於走出舒適區。除此以外，很多能力在各個學科都是通用的，我們將之前所學使用的新領域，而不用從零開始。
作為一名兒童鋼琴演奏家，她磨練出了非凡的能力來發展肌肉記憶。因此，她是她所有認識的人中打字加速的。在當作家之前，諾拉是一名代理理財師。在初入這行的時候，她不得不學習一些高明的銷售技巧，現在這些技能被她用來給編輯寫精彩的推薦語。追求你感興趣的東西並不是浪費時間，甚至最後你並沒有堅持到底。也許將來你會把這些知識用在一個完全不同的領域，用一種你完全預料不到的方式。
第三種「超能力」是適應性。也就是說，如果有需要，你能變成任何角色，以適應不同的情況。艾比·卡胡多有時候是視頻導演，有時候是網站設計師，有時候是眾籌顧問，有時候是老師，有時候，很明顯，是詹姆斯·邦德。他擁有出色的工作能力。更重要的是他可以隨時切換自己的角色，來滿足客戶的需要。
《快公司》雜誌認為，要想在21世紀取得成功，適應性是最重要的一項技能。經濟界的變化如此迅速且無法預測，那些能夠根據市場需要進行調整的個人和公司才有可能取得成功。產生創意，快速學習和適應性是多重潛力者非常優秀長的三種能力，如果強迫他們縮小自己的關注範圍，這三種能力也許就會喪失。
作為一個社會，鼓勵多重潛力者保持本色對我們有利。我們如今面臨許多複雜問題，涉及許多方面，我們需要有創意的，能破除思維定式的思想者來解決這些問題。我們假設，內心深處，你是一名專家。你從打娘胎裡出來就知道你想當一名兒童神經外科醫生。別擔心，即使這樣你也挺正常的。實際上，一些頂尖團隊就是由專家和多重潛力者搭配組成。
專家可以深入研究，實踐想法，而多重潛力者可以為項目帶來更廣泛的知識支持。這是一種美妙的合作。但是我們都應該根據自己的天賦來規劃與之相適應的人生和職業。不幸的是，多重潛力者往往被要求成為（剛剛提到的）團隊中的那個專家。所以，如果你從今天的演講中學到了一件事的話，我希望會是：接受你內心的真實想法。如果你是專家型的人，那就用盡一切辦法，成為專家。
你會幹得非常不錯。但對於在座的多重潛力者們，包括那些在過去的12分鐘裡剛剛宣布自己是多重潛力者的人，我要對你們說：接受你的眾多愛好。保持你的好奇心。探索（不同領域的）交叉地帶。讓真實的自我引導我們來到更快樂，更真實的人生。也許更重要的是，（我們是）多重潛力者，這個世界需要我們。
英文原文：
（向上滑動啟閱，來自TED.com）
Why some of us don't have one true calling
Emilie Wapnick
00:12
Raise your hand if you've ever been asked the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?"
00:18
Now if you had to guess, how old would you say you were when you were first asked this question? You can just hold up fingers. Three. Five. Three. Five. Five. OK. Now, raise your hand if the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" has ever caused you any anxiety.
00:39
(Laughter)
00:41
Any anxiety at all.
00:45
I'm someone who's never been able to answer the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?"
00:50
See, the problem wasn't that I didn't have any interests -- it's that I had too many. In high school, I liked English and math and art and I built websites and I played guitar in a punk band called Frustrated Telephone Operator. Maybe you've heard of us.
01:07
(Laughter)
01:09
This continued after high school, and at a certain point, I began to notice this pattern in myself where I would become interested in an area and I would dive in, become all-consumed, and I'd get to be pretty good at whatever it was, and then I would hit this point where I'd start to get bored. And usually I would try and persist anyway, because I had already devoted so much time and energy and sometimes money into this field. But eventually this sense of boredom, this feeling of, like, yeah, I got this, this isn't challenging anymore -- it would get to be too much. And I would have to let it go.
01:50
But then I would become interested in something else, something totally unrelated, and I would dive into that, and become all-consumed, and I'd be like, "Yes! I found my thing," and then I would hit this point again where I'd start to get bored. And eventually, I would let it go. But then I would discover something new and totally different, and I would dive into that.
02:15
This pattern caused me a lot of anxiety, for two reasons. The first was that I wasn't sure how I was going to turn any of this into a career. I thought that I would eventually have to pick one thing, deny all of my other passions, and just resign myself to being bored. The other reason it caused me so much anxiety was a little bit more personal. I worried that there was something wrong with this, and something wrong with me for being unable to stick with anything. I worried that I was afraid of commitment, or that I was scattered, or that I was self-sabotaging, afraid of my own success.
02:57
If you can relate to my story and to these feelings, I'd like you to ask yourself a question that I wish I had asked myself back then. Ask yourself where you learned to assign the meaning of wrong or abnormal to doing many things. I'll tell you where you learned it: you learned it from the culture.
03:22
We are first asked the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" when we're about five years old. And the truth is that no one really cares what you say when you're that age.
03:31
(Laughter)
03:32
It's considered an innocuous question, posed to little kids to elicit cute replies, like, "I want to be an astronaut," or "I want to be a ballerina," or "I want to be a pirate." Insert Halloween costume here.
03:44
(Laughter)
03:46
But this question gets asked of us again and again as we get older in various forms -- for instance, high school students might get asked what major they're going to pick in college. And at some point, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" goes from being the cute exercise it once was to the thing that keeps us up at night. Why?
04:09
See, while this question inspires kids to dream about what they could be, it does not inspire them to dream about all that they could be. In fact, it does just the opposite, because when someone asks you what you want to be, you can't reply with 20 different things, though well-meaning adults will likely chuckle and be like, "Oh, how cute, but you can't be a violin maker and a psychologist. You have to choose."
04:36
This is Dr. Bob Childs --
04:37
(Laughter)
04:41
and he's a luthier and psychotherapist. And this is Amy Ng, a magazine editor turned illustrator, entrepreneur, teacher and creative director. But most kids don't hear about people like this. All they hear is that they're going to have to choose. But it's more than that. The notion of the narrowly focused life is highly romanticized in our culture. It's this idea of destiny or the one true calling, the idea that we each have one great thing we are meant to do during our time on this earth, and you need to figure out what that thing is and devote your life to it.
05:23
But what if you're someone who isn't wired this way? What if there are a lot of different subjects that you're curious about, and many different things you want to do? Well, there is no room for someone like you in this framework. And so you might feel alone. You might feel like you don't have a purpose. And you might feel like there's something wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with you. What you are is a multipotentialite.
05:52
(Laughter)
05:55
(Applause)
06:02
A multipotentialite is someone with many interests and creative pursuits. It's a mouthful to say. It might help if you break it up into three parts: multi, potential, and ite. You can also use one of the other terms that connote the same idea, such as polymath, the Renaissance person. Actually, during the Renaissance period, it was considered the ideal to be well-versed in multiple disciplines. Barbara Sher refers to us as "scanners." Use whichever term you like, or invent your own. I have to say I find it sort of fitting that as a community, we cannot agree on a single identity.
06:41
(Laughter)
06:45
It's easy to see your multipotentiality as a limitation or an affliction that you need to overcome. But what I've learned through speaking with people and writing about these ideas on my website, is that there are some tremendous strengths to being this way. Here are three multipotentialite super powers.
07:07
One: idea synthesis. That is, combining two or more fields and creating something new at the intersection. Sha Hwang and Rachel Binx drew from their shared interests in cartography, data visualization, travel, mathematics and design, when they founded Meshu. Meshu is a company that creates custom geographically-inspired jewelry. Sha and Rachel came up with this unique idea not despite, but because of their eclectic mix of skills and experiences. Innovation happens at the intersections. That's where the new ideas come from. And multipotentialites, with all of their backgrounds, are able to access a lot of these points of intersection.
08:00
The second multipotentialite superpower is rapid learning. When multipotentialites become interested in something, we go hard. We observe everything we can get our hands on. We're also used to being beginners, because we've been beginners so many times in the past, and this means that we're less afraid of trying new things and stepping out of our comfort zones. What's more, many skills are transferable across disciplines, and we bring everything we've learned to every new area we pursue, so we're rarely starting from scratch.
08:34
Nora Dunn is a full-time traveler and freelance writer. As a child concert pianist, she honed an incredible ability to develop muscle memory. Now, she's the fastest typist she knows.
08:47
(Laughter)
08:49
Before becoming a writer, Nora was a financial planner. She had to learn the finer mechanics of sales when she was starting her practice, and this skill now helps her write compelling pitches to editors. It is rarely a waste of time to pursue something you're drawn to, even if you end up quitting. You might apply that knowledge in a different field entirely, in a way that you couldn't have anticipated.
09:14
The third multipotentialite superpower is adaptability; that is, the ability to morph into whatever you need to be in a given situation. Abe Cajudo is sometimes a video director, sometimes a web designer, sometimes a Kickstarter consultant, sometimes a teacher, and sometimes, apparently, James Bond.
09:37
(Laughter)
09:39
He's valuable because he does good work. He's even more valuable because he can take on various roles, depending on his clients' needs. Fast Company magazine identified adaptability as the single most important skill to develop in order to thrive in the 21st century. The economic world is changing so quickly and unpredictably that it is the individuals and organizations that can pivot in order to meet the needs of the market that are really going to thrive.
10:09
Idea synthesis, rapid learning and adaptability: three skills that multipotentialites are very adept at, and three skills that they might lose if pressured to narrow their focus. As a society, we have a vested interest in encouraging multipotentialites to be themselves. We have a lot of complex, multidimensional problems in the world right now, and we need creative, out-of-the-box thinkers to tackle them.
10:41
Now, let's say that you are, in your heart, a specialist. You came out of the womb knowing you wanted to be a pediatric neurosurgeon. Don't worry -- there's nothing wrong with you, either.
10:54
(Laughter)
10:55
In fact, some of the best teams are comprised of a specialist and multipotentialite paired together. The specialist can dive in deep and implement ideas, while the multipotentialite brings a breadth of knowledge to the project. It's a beautiful partnership. But we should all be designing lives and careers that are aligned with how we're wired. And sadly, multipotentialites are largely being encouraged simply to be more like their specialist peers.
11:24
So with that said, if there is one thing you take away from this talk, I hope that it is this: embrace your inner wiring, whatever that may be. If you're a specialist at heart, then by all means, specialize. That is where you'll do your best work. But to the multipotentialites in the room, including those of you who may have just realized in the last 12 minutes that you are one --
11:52
(Laughter)
11:53
to you I say: embrace your many passions. Follow your curiosity down those rabbit holes. Explore your intersections. Embracing our inner wiring leads to a happier, more authentic life. And perhaps more importantly -- multipotentialites, the world needs us.
12:19
Thank you.
12:21
(Applause)
圖片來自André Terras Alexandre
編輯/排版Danny