This Week's Rabbit Hole: The Multi-Passionate Advantage
When "Just Show Up" Meets "Never Stop Exploring"
Last week I attended a book launch for Make Sneaky Art with Nishant Jain, and something he said really resonated with me. He talked about realizing that if you want to do something for a living, you get there by showing up consistently and just doing the thing—even if you’re no good, even if you don’t feel ready.
It reminded me of Tina Fey’s famous advice: “Say yes. You’ll figure it out afterwards.”
So I started down the rabbit hole of this “just say yes” philosophy, and I stumbled into something much more intriguing. Most successful people follow a predictable pattern: say yes early to build skills, then say no more often to maintain focus. But there’s a whole category of wildly successful people who never stopped saying yes. And their approach to building careers is fascinatingly different.
The Never-Stop-Saying-Yes Pattern
Take Nishant’s journey: PhD in neuroscience → political cartoonist → stand-up comedian → novelist → urban sketching as stress relief → The Sneaky Artist. He didn’t just try many things—he was genuinely good at each one.
Or Tina Fey: her “say yes” advice comes directly from improv training at Second City, but look at her range: first female SNL head writer → Weekend Update anchor → 30 Rock creator and star → Mean Girls screenwriter → Broadway musical adapter → Golden Globes host → Netflix series creator. She’s simultaneously a writer, performer, producer, and business builder.
Then there’s Ryan Reynolds: actor → producer → marketing agency founder → telecom company owner → gin brand builder → soccer team owner → Formula 1 investor. He doesn’t just lend his name to these ventures—he becomes the creative heartbeat of each business.
Richard Branson represents the ultimate example: 400+ companies across airlines, space tourism, music, trains, mobile services, banking, health clubs, cruise lines, hotels... the list is endless.
The Multi-Passionate Mind
What strikes me about these people isn’t just their diversity of interests—it’s their ability to see connections between seemingly disparate fields and transfer insights from one arena to another.
Reynolds uses his entertainment industry storytelling skills to revolutionize how brands market themselves. Fey applies improv principles to business and life philosophy. Branson treats every industry entry as a creative challenge to disrupt “fat and complacent” dominant players.
They don’t just accumulate random experiences—they synthesize them. Each new venture builds on and strengthens the others, creating what you might call a “diversification advantage.”
The Cognitive Architecture Behind It
Here’s where the research gets really interesting. When I dug into what makes some people thrive as multi-passionate entrepreneurs, I found fascinating patterns in how certain minds work.
Some of the most successful multi-passionate entrepreneurs—including Richard Branson, Bill Gates, and the founders of IKEA, JetBlue, and Kinko’s—have been open about having ADHD. This isn’t coincidental. Research shows that adults with ADHD are 300% more likely to start their own business.
The traits often associated with ADHD—divergent thinking, pattern recognition, hyperfocus on interests, comfort with risk, and ability to make unexpected connections—are exactly the cognitive tools that fuel multi-passionate success.
But you don’t need an ADHD diagnosis to recognize these thinking patterns. The key insight is that some minds are simply wired for exploration, connection-making, and synthesis rather than narrow specialization.
The System Problem
Here’s the tragic part: our education and workplace systems are optimized for linear, sequential thinking. Schools reward sitting still and focusing on one thing at a time. Traditional career advice pushes specialization and “finding your niche.”
But innovation often comes from the intersections—from people who can see patterns across fields and apply insights from one domain to solve problems in another. The same mind that struggles with traditional structure might be exactly what’s needed to build something entirely new.
Many multi-passionate entrepreneurs don’t choose entrepreneurship—they escape into it. They leave environments where their curiosity was seen as distraction, their energy as hyperactivity, and their wide-ranging interests as lack of focus.
The Reframe That Changes Everything
What if we stopped seeing multi-passionate minds as “unfocused” and started seeing them as “cognitively diverse”? What if a person’s inability to pick a lane is seen as the superpower that it is - the ability to synthesize disparate concepts?
The most groundbreaking innovations often come from unexpected combinations. The iPhone merged a phone, music player, and computer. Airbnb combined hospitality with peer-to-peer sharing. Netflix fused entertainment with data science.
These breakthroughs require minds that can see across boundaries, not just within them.
What This Means for All of Us
You don’t need to be diagnosed with anything to benefit from this insight. If you’ve ever felt like you don’t fit the traditional mold—if you’re energized by variety, if you see connections others miss, if you get bored by routine—maybe the problem isn’t you.
Maybe your brain was never meant to sit quietly in someone else’s system. Maybe you’re here to build your own.
The next time someone tells you to “focus” or “pick one thing,” remember that some of the most successful people in the world became successful precisely because they refused to do either. Their secret wasn’t learning to say no—it was getting really good at saying yes in ways that built upon each other.
In a world that’s increasingly complex and interconnected, we might need more multi-passionate minds, not fewer.
Hi 👋 I’m Katie and I have A LOT of different interests. I also enjoy connecting the dots between seemingly disparate topics.
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