Some people arrive at a block not because nothing interests them, but because too much does. A photographer who also writes, wants to learn ceramics and keeps a half-finished album on a hard drive. A designer with three side ideas and a fourth forming. From the outside it can look like abundance. From the inside it often feels like paralysis: every direction seems possible, so none of them gets the commitment that would make it real.
If you have ever typed “too many interests, can’t choose” into a search bar, you are in good company. This piece looks at why having many creative interests can feel like a block, what research on multipotentiality and choice says about it, and practical ways to move without giving any part of yourself up.
Is having too many interests a problem?
Career researchers have a name for one version of this: multipotentiality, the capacity to develop interests and abilities across several quite different fields. In their review of the literature, Kathleen Rysiew, Bruce Shore and Rebecca Leeb describe how people with this profile can struggle less from a lack of options than from the expectation that a single, early, permanent choice is the mature thing to do. The difficulty is real. But it is a difficulty with the decision structure, not evidence that something is wrong with the person.
Barbara Sher, a career counsellor who worked with many people in this position, made a similar point more bluntly in Refuse to Choose!: the misery usually does not come from having many interests. It comes from believing you are not allowed to have them.
The interests are rarely the block. The rule that you must pick one first often is.
Why more options can mean less movement
There is a well-known line of research on choice itself. In a classic set of studies, Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper found that people offered a smaller set of options were more likely to choose at all, and more satisfied afterwards, than people offered a large set. The result has been debated and does not hold in every context, but the general mechanism is familiar: when each option carries the cost of closing the others, choosing starts to feel like loss, and postponing feels safer.
For creative work, this shows up as a particular kind of stuckness. You research, collect references, sketch the first page of several things, and then stop, because going further with one would mean admitting the others are on hold. The energy goes into keeping every door open.
How to choose without giving everything else up
A gentler frame is to separate two decisions that usually get fused. One is what am I?—a question about identity that does not need a final answer. The other is what am I working on for the next few weeks?—a practical question that does. Treating the second as a temporary experiment, with a clear end date, lowers the cost of choosing. Nothing is being given up; it is being sequenced.
It can also help to look for the thread rather than the winner. When people list what draws them to each interest—not the medium, but the pull underneath it—common patterns often appear: a fascination with how people tell their stories, a love of making something with their hands, a need to organise chaos into form. That thread can become the direction, with different media serving it at different times.
Where many interests become a strength
Some of the most original work happens where fields meet. A writer who understands photography frames scenes differently; a designer who plays music thinks about rhythm on the page. The task is not to cut the interests down to one, but to stop treating them as competitors. A small, time-boxed commitment, a place to park the ideas that are waiting their turn, and a question that connects them can turn the same restlessness into a way of working.
If you recognise yourself here, it may be worth noticing whether the stuck feeling is really about the work, or about the pressure to decide what kind of creative you are supposed to be. Those need different kinds of support.
Three structures that work for people with many interests
People with wide interests rarely thrive on one rigid plan. These structures tend to fit better.
Seasons. Give one interest the main stage for a defined period—six weeks, a season, a single finished piece—while the others wait in a notebook. When the season ends, choose again. Nothing is lost; it is scheduled.
A main thread and a side room. One body of work gets most of your time, and one smaller practice stays alive alongside it for play and recovery. Many people find that the side room feeds the main thread more than they expected.
A project that holds several interests. Sometimes the answer is a piece of work big enough to need more than one skill: a zine that combines writing and photography, a performance that uses sound and objects, a website that becomes a body of work in itself.
When it is more than many interests
Constantly switching can also be a way of avoiding the uncomfortable middle of any one piece of work, where the excitement of the new idea has faded and the difficulty has arrived. If you notice that you change direction every time something gets hard, the pattern may be less about range and more about tolerating that middle stretch. That is worth exploring with kindness rather than judgement—it is one of the most common places creative work gets stuck.
Common questions
What is a multipotentialite?
It is an informal word for someone with strong interests and abilities in several different areas. Researchers use the related term multipotentiality. It is not a diagnosis, just a description of a common way of being creative.
Should I focus on one creative skill?
Not necessarily for life. Focusing on one thing for a defined period can help work get finished, while your other interests wait their turn. Many people do their most original work where several interests meet.
How do I pick between creative projects?
Choose for a season rather than forever, notice which project you keep returning to, and ask which one you could finish a small version of soon. The point is to reduce the cost of choosing, not to find the one right answer.
Having too many directions sits in Direction & Meaning on our map. Creative Identity is the work of narrowing it down without throwing the rest away.