If you have multiple interests, stop trying to pick one

Someone probably told you to pick a niche. Find your one thing. Stick to it. Build an identity around a single topic so people know what you are about. If you have multiple interests, they said, you are spreading yourself too thin. You need to focus harder.

But what if that advice is wrong?

I keep thinking about this a lot after reading a thread from Nyk, the co-founder and CEO of Builderz. Nyk has shipped 32 products across 15 countries, working on Solana infrastructure, AI agents, and trading systems. He does not fit neatly into one box. His message is simple: if you have multiple interests, stop trying to pick one.

The best builders I see today do not narrow down. They combine.

The industrial age myth of specialization

We have been trained to believe that specialization is the path to success. Go to school, pick a major, get a job in that field, become the expert. The logic seems sound. The more focused you are, the deeper your knowledge, the more valuable you become.

But this logic comes from the Industrial Age. Factories needed workers who could do one thing really well, over and over. The economy rewarded depth because the world was simpler. Problems were well-defined. Solutions could be standardized.

That world is gone.

Today, the most interesting problems sit where fields overlap. The best products come from people who understand both technology and psychology. The most impactful research happens when biologists work with computer scientists. The companies that win are often started by founders who can code, sell, and tell a story.

Specialization made sense when knowledge moved slowly and careers lasted decades. It makes less sense now. The half-life of a specific skill is shrinking. What you learn today might be obsolete in five years. If your entire identity is tied to one narrow domain, you are building on shaky ground.

Nyk puts it bluntly: “The more complex your model of reality, the more problems you can solve, opportunities you can see, and value you can create. Specialism completely halts this process, and your shiny object syndrome has been trying to tell you this whole time.”

That last part matters. Your tendency to jump between interests is not a bug. It is a signal that your brain is trying to build a more complete picture of how the world works.

How top builders actually work

Look at the people who are actually shipping meaningful things right now. Not the Instagram gurus telling you to niche down. The actual builders.

They are not specialists. They are curious generalists who go deep enough in multiple areas to be dangerous.

Nyk is a good example. He runs a company building Solana infrastructure. He also builds AI agents and trading systems. These are not adjacent skills. They require different mental models, different tools, different ways of thinking. But he does not see them as distractions from each other. He sees them as inputs that make him better at all of them.

This is not unique to him. The founders I respect most are all like this. They read widely. They pick up new tools. They let their interests collide. And out of those collisions come ideas that specialists never see.

The reason is simple. When you only know one field, you can only solve problems framed in that field’s language. When you know three or four fields, you can translate between them. You can take a concept from economics and apply it to software architecture. You can take a lesson from game design and use it in a trading algorithm. You can take a pattern from biology and see it in a social network.

Researchers call this “transfer learning.” It is a powerful cognitive tool for anyone willing to build breadth. If you understand how neuroplasticity keeps your brain flexible and capable of learning at any age, you realize there is no good reason to limit yourself to one domain.

Your multiple interests are not a bug

We need to talk about the guilt. If you are reading this and feeling defensive, it is probably because someone has made you feel bad for your scattered interests. A parent. A teacher. A mentor. The internet. They all say the same thing: pick a lane.

But here is the thing. Your multiple interests are not a character flaw. They are a feature of how your brain is wired.

People who have many interests are often called “multipotentialites” or “scanners” or “Renaissance souls.” The label does not matter. What matters is that this is a normal human variation, not a disorder. Some people are built to go deep on one thing. Others are built to go broad. Both are valuable.

The problem is our institutions are designed for the deep divers. Schools want you to pick a major. Companies want you to stay in your lane. The advice economy wants you to niche down so you can be marketed to more easily.

But the world does not need more narrow specialists. It needs more people who can connect dots across domains.

If you feel like you are failing because you cannot stick to one thing, stop. Your shiny object syndrome is not a flaw. It is your brain telling you that there is more to learn, more to connect, more to build. The question is not how to suppress that instinct, but how to channel it.

The vessel strategy

So how do you actually do this? How do you honor your multiple interests without becoming a professional dabbler?

I call it the vessel strategy. You do not pick one interest. You build a vessel that can hold all of them.

The vessel can be a business, a brand, a product, a newsletter, or a community. It is the container that gives your various interests a shared purpose.

Dan Koe talks about this idea. He says your interests are not distractions from your work. They are the raw material for it. The trick is to find a vessel that lets you bring all of them along.

For example, if you are interested in psychology, technology, and writing, you do not have to pick one. You can build a brand about where those three things overlap. You can write about how technology shapes human behavior. You can build products that apply psychological principles to software design. Your three interests become one coherent project.

This is different from trying to do three separate things at once. The vessel gives them a common direction. It turns your scattered energy into focused output.

The key insight is the vessel does not have to be narrow. In fact, it probably should not be. The most interesting vessels welcome multiple inputs. A brand that only talks about one narrow topic is easy to market but hard to sustain. A brand that weaves together several genuine interests is harder to categorize and more interesting to follow.

You are the customer avatar

A reframe changed how I think about this whole problem.

Most advice about building a business or a brand starts with creating a customer avatar. You are supposed to imagine a specific person, give them a name, a job, a set of problems, and then build everything for that person.

But there is another way. You do not create a customer avatar so that you can niche down. You turn yourself into the customer avatar.

This means you build something that you would want to use. You solve problems you actually have. You write about topics you genuinely care about. You create the product you wish existed.

When you do this, your multiple interests become a strength, not a weakness. Because you are the customer, you know what matters. You know which details to care about. You know when something is good enough and when it needs more work.

This is exactly what Nyk is doing. He builds products for people like him: builders with many interests who want tools that work across domains. He does not have to pretend to be someone he is not. He just builds what he needs, and other people like him show up.

The customer avatar strategy works if you are trying to appeal to a mass market. But if you are building something meaningful, the best avatar is the one looking back at you in the mirror.

Building your polymath portfolio

If you are convinced that your multiple interests are an asset, the next question is practical: how do you actually build a career or a project around them?

Here is what worked for me.

Give each interest a role. Do not treat your interests as equal. Pick one or two that will be the core of your work. Let the others be supporting players. For example, if writing is your core, let psychology and technology be the topics you write about. If coding is your core, let design and writing be the skills that help you ship and explain your work.

Look for the intersections. The magic happens where your interests overlap. Spend time thinking about how your love of music connects to your interest in data analysis. How your fascination with history informs your approach to product design. How your hobby of cooking teaches you something about project management. The intersections are where your unique perspective lives.

Build in public. The fastest way to turn your polymath tendencies into something valuable is to share the process. Write about what you are learning. Show your work. Let people see how you connect ideas across fields. The audience you attract will be other curious people who feel boxed in by traditional advice.

Accept that it will look messy. A polymath portfolio does not fit neatly on a resume. It does not have a single job title. It will confuse people who are used to specialists. That is okay. The people who matter will get it.

Keep a curiosity log. I keep a simple list of things I want to explore. When I read something interesting, I write it down. When I have a random thought about how two unrelated topics connect, I write it down. Over time, this log becomes a map of your unique mental landscape. It shows you what you actually care about, separate from what you think you should care about.

Conclusion

The “pick a niche” advice is not wrong for everyone. Some people genuinely thrive when they go deep on one thing. If that is you, keep doing what works.

But if you have ever felt like a failure for having too many interests, hear me out: you are not broken. The world does not need you to narrow down. It needs you to bring your full, curious, complicated self to the work.

Your multiple interests are not a bug. They are a more complex model of reality. In a world that keeps getting more complex, that is what we need.

Stop trying to pick one. Build the vessel that holds them all.