Multipassionate or Just Avoiding Your Most Important Work?

Don't let your shiny objects become the regret that haunts you.

Image by author, created with AI.

Let’s play a game.

It’s called: Will this haunt you in the afterlife?

Say you’ve got a passion project that keeps you up at night. Like, I dunno, a sure-to-be cathartic novel based on that time you moved cross-country to pursue a silver-tongued, psychopathic flat earther. If you died today and your afterlife intake interview asked about regrets, the unfinished novel would top the list.

So what, dear reader, are you actually spending your one precious life doing?

Doomscrolling? Designing a spectacularly gorgeous website devoted to mocktails? Building courses, booking consulting gigs, ghostwriting, Taskrabbiting—basically doing everything BUT the thing you’d regret not finishing if a piano fell on your head tomorrow? All while telling yourself, “Relaaaax. This is what multipassionates do. We chase shiny objects. It’s part of our charm.”

Just me?

Look, I’m THE crusader for multipotentialism. I love us. Crossing paths with a fellow shiny object lover is like finding an honest, gainfully employed, mentally stable date on Tinder.

I love us because multipassionates are enthusiasts of everything. We’re connoisseurs of wonder, collectors of delight. A new curiosity? That’s a delicious rabbit hole begging to be explored. If we seem excited, it’s because the Muse just handed us a brilliant book idea that’s already writing itself in our heads.

But that same enthusiasm—our secret sauce—can turn into a sneaky form of avoidance. A way to rationalize throwing ourselves into something new, while never seeing anything old through to completion.¹ While I encourage grace when assessing your life’s work—because fuck hustle culture and the fallacy of measuring ourselves with a specialist’s yardstick—there comes a point when avoiding your most meaningful projects, and instead filling your days with low-stakes wins, becomes a question of self-trust. Of whether, when it’s go time, you can count on yourself to show up for what matters.

This isn’t a lecture about discipline. Nor is it a hypocritical call after decades of support for the squirrel-brained among us to just pick something.

It’s about clarity.

You can’t do everything, and despite the resistance you might be feeling right now, you don’t actually want to. Infinite choice is the enemy of meaning. The act of choosing a thing at the cost of many others is what makes it sacred.

So let’s explore whether you’re really into #AllTheThings or whether your desire to start making felted snails might just be a way to avoid doing the scary work of your truest calling.

Clarity Begins with Self-knowledge

As the Cheshire Cat told Alice:

“If you don’t know where you’re going, it doesn’t much matter which way you go.”

As multipotentialites, we’re self-aware about what excites us. But most humans are disconnected from their deeper values and desires, and we’re no exception. In one 2020 study, participants struggled to define what “values” even meant.

This is a problem because when it comes to shiny objects, you can’t prioritize what matters most if you don’t actually know what matters.

You don’t need to meditate in a cave to gain this self-knowledge, either. Personality tests like Myers-Briggs, Enneagram, Human Design or The 4 Tendencies can help you name what energizes you, how you make decisions and where you do your best work.²

But the real clarity comes from noticing how you actually move through the world. What lights you up? What drains you? When do you feel most yourself? Write it out, speak it into your voice notes, but whatever you do, ensure you conjure a blueprint into existence so you finally have a target to shoot for.

I use seasonal reflections to keep a finger on the pulse of my inner landscape. Every few months—at a minimum once a year—before setting the next year’s goals, I’ll ask myself:

“Do I still value what I did a year ago? A decade ago?”

In my 20s, I wanted the intoxicating chaos of passion, the kind that left me breathless and buzzing. In my 40s, I still crave adventure—but it needs to come with sweatpants and an early bedtime. My priorities have shifted.

Yours undoubtedly have, too.

Define the Dream

Happiness—and by extension, meaning—comes from aligning your current reality with your desired reality. The question is, what does that desired reality look like? We might have the pervasive sense that our current reality feels like discontent, without being able to describe what it is that we actually want instead.

If this is a struggle for you, try asking yourself:

“What do I long for?”

Do you long for the freedom to travel? To where in particular?

Do you want control of your time? To be able to take naps in the middle of the afternoon?

Do you crave creative autonomy? To make weird, wonderful things without having to justify their practicality?

If you identify as multipassionate, I’d bet good money that you’ll delight in the illuminating nerdiness of grabbing a notebook and describing your perfect day, your ideal relationships, what wealth means to you and the work/rest rhythm you want your life to take on.

Pretend you’ve got your own personal genie and bottomless wishes and write until you can’t think of a single additional thing to add. Don’t worry about what’s realistic. Shoot for the moon.

Then, after a walk and a snack, come back to your brain dump and really consider whether you actually want every single item on your list—or if you just think you should.

A lot of what we chase is somebody else’s idea of success.

Do you really want a million dollars, or do you just want a sense of security?

Do you actually need to be “Stephen King famous” to feel as if you’ve had a satisfying and meaningful writing career?

Do you really need a world-changing legacy, or do you just want to crawl into bed proud every night?

When you can name what you long for, the noise quiets. You stop trying to do everything because you finally understand what you’re doing it for. You’ll be able to look at a miles-long To Do list and understand what needs doing now and what can be put off until later.

Once you’ve got this in the bag, you’re equipped to know exactly what to do with the next shiny object that crosses your path.

Streamline New Ideas

You’re never going to stop ideating. Rabbit holes feel like home, after all. And I would never advocate for you to stop being curious. I’m just suggesting you stop letting curiosity run your calendar.

That’s why I created a simple process—part gut-check, part permission slip—to help you decide which ideas deserve your focus now and which ones can chill in the Someday folder.

When a new idea hits, ask yourself:

1. Does this align with my core values?

2. Does this move me closer to my desired reality?

3. Does this fit my current season of energy and capacity?

4. Would I regret not doing it if a piano fell on my head tomorrow?

If you answer yes to most of these, it’s a keeper. If not, tuck it lovingly into your Someday folder, where you don’t have to worry about it getting lost. That frees up mental bandwidth to spend on your most important work.

Cognitive science shows that humans can hold only 4 to 7 items in working memory at once. That includes tasks, open loops and creative projects. Beyond that, our brains short-circuit.

In the interest of giving ourselves grace, let’s set a limit of 4 projects. If you run a household, work full-time or are training for a triathlon, each counts as a project.

How many open slots do you have for passion projects, then? If you’re lucky enough to have three, you might break them down like this:

• One long-term soul project

• One medium-term creative outlet

• One short-term curiosity

Everything else goes on the list for reassessment at a later date.

This keeps your ideas alive but your nervous system calm. It allows you to create a schedule that’s humane but still gets you across the finish line. It lets you feel the satisfaction of showing your creation to the world and saying, “I made this.”

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Once you know yourself deeply, the next step is designing a life that fits your actual shape. Not some Insta-worthy idealized version, but the wonderfully chaotic, hyper-curious YOU. It’s not a call to kill your shiny darlings; it’s an invitation to discover which one deserves your full-hearted devotion right now.

Give that project the sacred middle of your life—your best hours and your deepest focus. Then, let your other fascinations have the leftovers: a weekend, a stolen lunch hour, an unexpected brainstorming session in the doctor’s office waiting room.

Forget balance. Go for proportion. Let your Soul Project get the lion’s share of your attention, and divide the rest however feels good—just make sure the work that matters most doesn’t get your energetic crumbs.

It takes guts to admit that some of the projects we throw ourselves into are actually just sparkly detours keeping us from the work that really scares us. It may feel like a betrayal of your multipassions, but it’s not. When you learn to recognize the glittering allure of productive avoidance, you’ll finally have a compass leading you straight to what matters most.

💡💡💡 Paid subscribers, grab my Validate New Ideas Worksheet, your comprehensive litmus test for sorting brilliant ideas from beautiful distractions.

Your Turn

Before you go, tell me: What’s the project you simply must finish (or hell, even start)? The one that actually matters. The one you’d regret leaving undone.

Let’s hold each other accountable to dying without regrets, ‘kay?

If this all feels easier said than done…

If you’ve got twenty ideas vying for attention and can’t tell which one is your “must-finish-before-I-die” thing—that’s exactly what we figure out together during a Claritea Consult.

It’s a cozy, clarity-filled chat over bevvies where we sort the shiny objects from the soul work, so you walk away knowing exactly what deserves your focus now (and what can wait—without guilt).

Because when you finally know yourself, and the work that’s meant for you, everything else starts to fall into place.

👉 Book your Claritea Consult here.

Paid subscribers get $85 off their first consult.

1. I’ve talked a lot about finishing for people like us. I deeply believe some things aren’t meant to be finished. But that can’t apply to everything if you want to: survive in a capitalist society / develop self-trust / hold something you’ve made in your hands / leave evidence you were here on this planet.

2. I wrote an entire post about my favorite personality tests if you’re feeling a rabbit hole of navel-gazing in your future.