🗺 When "follow your passion!" leads to several different directions: the case of the multi-hyphenated.
Things to learn from those with multiple professions, the rising trend replacing 'side hustlers'.
While side hustlers are those with a main job + one or multiple projects on the side, a multi-hyphenate is someone who identifies themselves as multiple roles at once (e.g. writer-producer-director).
Though popularized by public figures, the multi-hyphenate trend has seeped its way into our daily life, where some of your connections on LinkedIn, or mutuals on Twitter, call themselves a one-fit-for-all expert.
How’d it get to this point?
By definition, a multi-hyphenate is a person, especially a celebrity, with several professions or skills. The term itself originated in the 1970s, and was first used in Hollywood to refer to celebrities and artists who fell outside the traditional notion of a “triple threat”: singing, dancing, and acting.
For celebrities, their accomplishments determined their hyphenated titles. This is normalized as in the creative industries, skills and experiences overlap a lot.
To those outside of creative industries, though, the notion of work has shifted from simply doing a job to building a career.
The hyphen has now become shorthand to conflate personal identity with professional capability.
This trend eliminated the need for any specificity at all, instead implying a complex creative identity based on a jack-of-all trades or “ace” ideal.
Moving away from specialization, and toward “chameleonization,” means leaving behind the ideology of industrialization.
Workers no longer engage in the division of labor to speed up production, but rather thrive on individual growth.
With the creation of social media, we are now seeing individual creators and online “influencers” as full-fledged producers.
Still a little puzzled as to what a multi-hyphenate is and why it’s important to know about it? Read the full think-piece breaking down its origins here.
I’m interested! What’s next?
Multi-hyphenates are mostly made up of freelancers who are looking to present themselves as ‘flexible’ and ‘employable’. But even when our jobs don’t fall into this category, the tips to maintaining a successful multi-hyphenate career are still applicable and helpful to improve our work:
Build on your skills. For the multis, completing work in different fields and for different clients is what keeps them afloat. For the rest of us, it’s still worth the time to learn about things we never expected to—like new software, writing skills or even styles of working, to keep up with work trends.
Pick and choose projects carefully. Though every offer will bring you opportunities to grow, allow yourself time to figure out which projects or team collaborations will not only serve you best, but will you serve best. Avoid the overwhelming feeling of being overworked.
Learn how to set boundaries. In the world of the multi-hyphenates, boundaries mean respecting yourself and charging clients correctly for your time and effort. This could translate to having clear boundaries at work, including knowing when and how to take breaks.
Know how to self-promote. A key and mandatory expertise to have when you’re looking to become a full-on multi-hyphenate, is to market yourself effectively. And even for the mono-career workers, having a ‘pitch that lands new clients’ more often than not would come pretty handy.
Learn more about the golden skills to have as a multi-hyphenate, including the strong communication strategies in the complete article here.
Embracing the mindset
As you learn and explore more about the multi-hyphenate method, Nicole Kyle, a storyteller-researcher-educator based in New York would love to remind you to keep these 4 main points in mind:
The personal branding box. Do not let having a particular ‘personal brand’ stop you from pursuing another passion, just because it might not ‘fit your image’.
Focus on the change you might bring. Accept that the more revolutionary work might be in teaching those who question you where the connections (between your professions) exist.
Reframe life and career from the linear basis. Think of it as concentric circles, or at least, a series of floating Venn diagrams. It will allow you to work on different projects and in different settings over your lifetime.
Exploring versus focusing. Hummingbird people move from flower-to-flower / passion-to-passion, whereas jackhammer people prefer to spend their life going deep into one passion area. Choose your own narrative.
Find further discussions on embracing the multi-hyphenate mindset on Nicole Kyle’s article here.
Looking for more concrete advice on what to do when you have multiple passions?
Join our free webinar “Mekari Talks: Deep Dive” where we’ll talk all about Career Planning and Self-Competency! You will get insights from 3 different POVs, as we welcome our speakers from Mekari, Bangkit Academy by Google, and Riliv.
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In the meantime, we’ll get back to writing another article for you to freshly read next Monday.
Cheers!