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The career you have had The career you would prefer
The parts of your career you were sure about are the hardest to change. Where you weren't sure, look at the types that differ from yours on just that letter. Each one is a career very much like yours, different in one way, and could be a path worth exploring.
You were sure about every part of your career, so no type one letter away is an easy step from the career you have.
Similar roles, very different environments, towards mastery, several at once.
Focused instead of Varied The Pollinator stays in one kind of work and keeps building on it. Your roles so far have varied somewhat. Picking the kind of work you like best and staying with it is an option too.
Very different roles, similar environments, towards mastery in at least one, several at once.
Rooted instead of Widespread The Octopus stays in similar environments, where the people and the rules are familiar. Your environments so far have varied somewhat. Choosing one world and putting down roots there could suit you as well.
Very different roles, very different environments, competent, several at once.
Competence instead of Mastery The Mender gets competent at many things instead of expert at one. You mostly keep going towards expert. Letting one area rest at competent, and spending that time on something new, is another way to go.
Very different roles, very different environments, towards mastery in at least one, one at a time.
Serial instead of Parallel The Reinventor gives one commitment its full attention at a time. You mostly hold several commitments at once. Putting everything into one for a while might be worth trying.
Similar roles, very different environments, towards mastery, several at once.
Focused instead of Varied The Pollinator stays in one kind of work and keeps building on it. Your roles so far have varied somewhat. Picking the kind of work you like best and staying with it is an option too.
Very different roles, similar environments, towards mastery in at least one, several at once.
Rooted instead of Widespread The Octopus stays in similar environments, where the people and the rules are familiar. Your environments so far have varied somewhat. Choosing one world and putting down roots there could suit you as well.
Very different roles, very different environments, competent, several at once.
Competence instead of Mastery The Mender gets competent at many things instead of expert at one. You mostly keep going towards expert. Letting one area rest at competent, and spending that time on something new, is another way to go.
Very different roles, very different environments, towards mastery in at least one, one at a time.
Serial instead of Parallel The Reinventor gives one commitment its full attention at a time. You mostly hold several commitments at once. Putting everything into one for a while might be worth trying.
Very different roles, very different environments, towards mastery in at least one, several at once.
Self-Led instead of Guided A Self-Led Polymath's moves mostly start from their own search. Most of your moves came to you through offers. Going out and finding the next one yourself could take your career somewhere new.
Very different roles, very different environments, towards mastery in at least one, several at once.
Guided instead of Self-Led A Guided Polymath's moves mostly come from offers and assignments. Most of your moves started from your own search, but saying yes to an offer you didn't go looking for can open doors too.
Your result:
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Your type in full: The Polymath
One of the Generalists, the family of careers that take on very different work in very different environments
Very different roles, in very different worlds, held side by side, with a drive for mastery. (VWMP)
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In everyday English, a polymath is a person of wide learning who knows several fields in depth. The word is often saved for famous scholars and inventors, though plenty of working people fit the description, such as a nurse who is also a published composer. On this page the roles also run at the same time, each in a very different world.
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The PolymathThe scan shows the career you've had. The trait test, which I'm building now, shows which of the sixteen types fits who you are, and how far your career is from that type.
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A Polymath (VWMP) career holds very different roles at once, such as researcher, legislator and musician, in worlds as far apart as a laboratory, a parliament and a concert hall, and takes at least one of those roles deep, to a standard the Polymath keeps raising. Each of a Polymath’s worlds knows the Polymath by a different job title.
A Polymath’s week holds several worlds at once, several work environments with their own measures of good work, and a parliament judges its members by votes won, a measure no laboratory uses.
A soil scientist who leads a research group at a public research laboratory and sits in the national parliament as an elected member answers to a laboratory director and to the voters, works with two sets of colleagues and keeps two calendars, with research as the role taken deep. A Polymath career can also begin with a first job. A graduate chemist at a paint maker, who plays bass in a band and coaches a children’s athletics club as a volunteer, holds a Polymath career, with the bass as the role she takes deep.
Members of parliament who sit on the farming committee with the soil scientist get a colleague who reads every figure in a bill twice.
The deep role gives a Polymath’s week one line of work that grows year on year while the other roles come and go. However, every world in a Polymath career sets dates of its own, a parliament its sitting days and a laboratory its grant deadlines, and nobody outside the Polymath sets a date for the next level of the role taken deep. In a crowded month, the next level of the deep role is the work that most easily moves to the month after.
A Varied career takes on kinds of work that have little in common, such as engineering, managing people and setting strategy. Each role asks for different skills and a different way of approaching the work.
At the other end, a Focused career stays with one kind of work and takes it deeper.
A Widespread career moves between very different worlds, such as a ministry, a startup and a charity, or one country's working life and another's. Each new world brings its own people, rules and habits, learned afresh at every move.
At the other end, a Rooted career stays in one recognisable world.
A Mastery career keeps pushing past good enough, in at least one area and often in several, whether or not anyone asks for it.
At the other end, a Competence career gets good enough and spends its energy elsewhere.
A Parallel career holds several commitments at once, such as a job, a practice and a seat on a board. Each keeps running while the others do.
At the other end, a Serial career holds one commitment at a time.
The first two letters of a code shape a working life more than the other two. How varied the roles are and how different their environments decide what a career is like from one year to the next, so the sixteen career types are grouped by those two letters into four families.
The method behind the types. Every career type here comes from one typology, built on five aspects of a career, each running between two ends. A type is the end a career sits nearest on each.
One kind of work, in similar environments
Very different work, in similar environments
One kind of work, across very different environments
Very different work, across very different environments
Several commitments at once, with a push for mastery
An engineer designs the heat shields on a space agency’s satellites and leads the agency’s heat-shield testing. On Saturdays the engineer holds a paid post at the city’s art museum, guiding visitors through the modern galleries. The museum now runs the engineer’s own tour, on how painters have shown the night sky, every month, and the tour is booked weeks ahead.
A record producer owns a small recording studio, where he produces albums for bands from across the country. Three afternoons a week the producer also coaches the goalkeepers at a second-division football club, a paid post. An album from the studio was nominated for a national music prize, and a goalkeeper the producer trained from the youth team has joined a first-division club.
A technician at a national seed bank cleans, counts and dries the seeds that collectors send in, and trains each new member of the seed bank’s staff in drying. Two days a week the technician proofreads for a publishing house, specialising in the Latin names of plants. Each botany guide from the publishing house names the technician as its scientific editor.
Every career type suits some people more than others, and part of the reason lies in their traits. The test measures the traits behind each letter of the code, and these four draw people to a Polymath career.
They seek out experiences radically different from the ones they are used to.
They like introducing people who could benefit from knowing each other.
They would rather tackle a hard problem than an easy one.
They are comfortable when an interruption breaks their flow of work.
Every Polymath career sits somewhere between Self-Led and Guided, depending on where its roles came from. Most careers hold some of each, and the variant follows the moves that shaped the career most. Self-Led or Guided
VWMPO, O for owned
A soil scientist who stands for parliament to bring the laboratory’s evidence into farming law, and a satellite engineer who offers an art museum a tour of her own design, have each opened a new world on their own initiative, which is what makes a Polymath Self-Led.
Each world a Self-Led Polymath joins sets its own terms, and the Polymath agrees the hours, the pay and the duties with people who see only that one role. A football club hiring a part-time goalkeeping coach can wonder whether a record producer with albums to finish will be at every training session. A record producer can offer the club a contract paid per session coached, so the club pays for exactly the afternoons the producer spends at training.
Ela Bhatt, a Self-Led PolymathEla Bhatt trained in law and joined the legal department of the Textile Labour Association, a union in Ahmedabad. Bhatt then founded SEWA, the Self-Employed Women’s Association, for the street vendors, home-based workers and cart-pullers the established unions had no place for, and led SEWA as its general secretary for twenty-four years. SEWA also opened a bank where women could save and borrow small amounts. While still leading SEWA, Bhatt served on India’s Planning Commission. A Self-Led Polymath (VWMP-O).
VWMPG, G for guided
In a Guided Polymath career, people inside a new world ask the Polymath in, as when a publishing house asks a seed bank technician to edit its botany guides. A Guided Polymath can accept such an invitation and keep every role already held, as the technician keeps the post at the seed bank beside the editing. The editing reached the technician without an application or an interview.
An invited role also comes with the inviting world’s own term, such as a full parliament or a series of guides, and leaving before the term ends is noticed in that world.
Zilda Arns, a Guided PolymathZilda Arns qualified as a doctor at the Federal University of Paraná and worked as a paediatrician and in public health. The bishops’ conference of Brazil asked Arns to create the Pastoral da Criança, a church network of about two hundred and sixty thousand volunteers caring for young children’s health. Alongside the network, Arns sat on Brazil’s National Health Council for eighteen years, and the bishops later gave her a second mission, a pastoral for older people. A Guided Polymath (VWMP-G).
Joe Ireland drove fuel tankers for an oil company for thirty-six years. Ireland had played in Cumbria’s Dearham Band since the age of fifteen, and when the band’s conductor left in the nineteen-fifties, Ireland was asked to take over for a while and conducted the band for fifty years. In four years from the late nineteen-sixties, Ireland took the village band from the lowest section to the championship section, and conducted it in six national finals. A Guided Polymath (VWMP-G).
Ferdinand Verbiest, a Flemish Jesuit, reached Macao with his order’s China mission and was posted first to a provincial mission in Shaanxi. Summoned to the imperial court in Beijing, Verbiest won a public astronomy contest and was installed as Director of the Observatory. While directing the observatory, Verbiest published a map of the world, cast cannon for the imperial army and served as translator in the treaty talks between China and Russia. A Guided Polymath (VWMP-G).
Wangari Maathai earned her doctorate at the University of Nairobi and went on to chair the university’s department of veterinary anatomy. Beside the university post, Maathai chaired the National Council of Women of Kenya for much of the nineteen-eighties and started the Green Belt Movement to plant trees. Kenya’s voters later elected Maathai to parliament, and she received the Nobel Peace Prize, the first African woman to win it. A Self-Led Polymath (VWMP-O).
Marius Daniel Popescu studied forestry in Romania and moved to Lausanne without a word of French. Popescu cut wood, then applied to drive buses for the city’s public transport company, and has driven them for more than thirty years. Beside the driving, Popescu writes poems and novels and founded a literary journal, Le Persil. Popescu’s books have won the Rilke Prize, the Robert Walser Prize and a Swiss federal prize for literature. A Self-Led Polymath (VWMP-O).
Ela Bhatt trained in law and joined the legal department of the Textile Labour Association, a union in Ahmedabad. Bhatt then founded SEWA, the Self-Employed Women’s Association, for the street vendors, home-based workers and cart-pullers the established unions had no place for, and led SEWA as its general secretary for twenty-four years. SEWA also opened a bank where women could save and borrow small amounts. While still leading SEWA, Bhatt served on India’s Planning Commission. A Self-Led Polymath (VWMP-O).
Zilda Arns qualified as a doctor at the Federal University of Paraná and worked as a paediatrician and in public health. The bishops’ conference of Brazil asked Arns to create the Pastoral da Criança, a church network of about two hundred and sixty thousand volunteers caring for young children’s health. Alongside the network, Arns sat on Brazil’s National Health Council for eighteen years, and the bishops later gave her a second mission, a pastoral for older people. A Guided Polymath (VWMP-G).
At work, a Polymath is a colleague with a second job title in another world, which the team may first learn of from a newspaper or a concert poster.
Having worked on both sides, they can explain each to the other.
They carry methods that work in one world into another that has not seen them.
Something that works in one of their roles can be tried in another while they still hold both.
They can show the people they train what only long practice teaches.
A Polymath’s standing in the role taken deepest can lead people to expect the same depth in the Polymath’s other roles. A parliament’s clerks, for example, know the parliament’s procedure better than a soil scientist who is renowned in the laboratory.
The lines below set demanding work, such as a finance director’s or a patent attorney’s, beside roles that few colleagues in that work would expect.
The deep role in each line is usually one the Polymath sought out, and the other two roles are as often offered as sought.
Finance director, partner in the sailmaking business, conductor of the choir
Plasterer, boxing coach, mushroom expert who checks the finds members bring to the society
Tunnel engineer, set designer, trustee
Patent attorney, setter of the magazine’s crosswords, member of the disciplinary panel
Optometrist, rowing coach, board member
Fibre network planner, first cornet player, coordinator of the food bank
Bank supervisor, licensed bird ringer, festival programmer
Other words people use for this pattern, and how each fits a Polymath.
Everyday use gives the word to anyone deep in more than one field, including a Reinventor (VWMS), whose very different roles come one at a time. The Polymath type asks for depth in at least one role and for the roles to run at the same time. VWMSThe Reinventor
In everyday speech the word describes skills, and this site uses the word for careers that cross worlds as well, the Generalists (VW), the family a Polymath belongs to. VWThe Generalists
A single deep skill under a broad bar of other skills, as hiring managers draw it.
Hiring language for a person with two deep specialities, or several, standing on broad skills, such as a tax lawyer whose garden designs win medals at flower shows.
Said of a working life split between several jobs, posts or ventures at the same time. Most portfolios on this site belong to the Mender (VWCP), whose pieces are each done well, or to the Keystone (VRCP), whose pieces share one world. VWCPThe Mender
For a Polymath the border can run through the week, such as a laboratory post in a neighbouring country beside a seat on the home town’s council, and expat applies only while home itself is abroad.
A new role in a Polymath career grows for months, and through those months the deep role’s practice runs on whatever hours remain.
Bringing a colleague from one world to an event in another, such as a laboratory colleague to a parliamentary hearing, gives each world a witness who has seen the Polymath’s work somewhere else.
A Polymath can put both job titles, such as satellite engineer and museum guide, on one business card and in one email signature.
A new world tends to pay a newcomer a beginner’s rate, and a Polymath can point to the deep role’s record when the first contract in the new world is agreed.
Minutes for a club’s committee, the rota for a museum’s guides or a seat on a parliament’s library committee put a Polymath inside the new world’s own running, where the insiders spend their time.
A Polymath can tie the deep role’s next level to a date other people know, such as a concert, a journal’s deadline or an exhibition’s opening, so the deep work gets a deadline as firm as the dates the other worlds set.
| The skill |  Varied |  Widespread |  Mastery |  Parallel |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Building a mental library Keeping notes of the ideas met in each world under names that can be reused in the others, such as a parliament's sunset clause, kept for a laboratory's trial projects. VW | Serves Varied | Serves Widespread | ||
| Engineering luck Putting a stuck problem from one world before people in another, where an answer from outside the field is likelier to turn up. WP | Serves Widespread | Serves Parallel | ||
| Deliberate practice Recording the deep role's work, as a bass player records each rehearsal, and practising the passages that sound weakest on the recording. M | Serves Mastery | |||
| Seeing change coming Reading each world's agendas for the deep role's subject, as a parliament's committee list shows when farming soils come up for debate. WM | Serves Widespread | Serves Mastery | ||
| Making work visible One web page listing the papers, the bills and the albums together, kept current as each role adds work. P | Serves Parallel | |||
| Telling the career story Keeping a short account of each role ready, so whichever role a listener asks about can be told well. VP | Serves Varied | Serves Parallel |
The Pollinator, the Octopus, the Mender and the Reinventor can each grow into a Polymath career by widening or deepening one aspect. A Polymath career grows on inside its own shape, through a new role, a new world or a second role taken deep, because VWMP already holds the grown end of every aspect.
One deep craft carried into several very different worlds at once. A Pollinator career becomes a Polymath career once a second, very different kind of work is taken up beside the craft.
Very different roles held at once in one world, with at least one taken deep. An Octopus career becomes a Polymath career when its roles reach into very different worlds.
Very different roles in very different worlds, held at once, each done well. A Mender career becomes a Polymath career once the push for mastery starts.
Very different roles in very different worlds, with a push for mastery, one commitment at a time. A Reinventor career becomes a Polymath career once a second commitment is taken on beside the first, and both are kept.
VWMPA Polymath career can put a soil scientist’s best paper and a farming law the scientist helped pass into the same year.
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Coming soon
The PolymathThe scan shows the career you've had. The trait test, which I'm building now, shows which of the sixteen types fits who you are, and how far your career is from that type.
You are on the list as . Look in your inbox for the first email.
Our signup is not answering just now. This opens the newsletter's own signup page, with your address filled in.
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