When You Like Everything: How to Choose a Career with Broad Interests
Having wide-ranging interests is not a flaw in your self-understanding — or a sign you haven't grown up enough to decide. In 1997, researchers Achter, Benbow and Lubinski tested the popular assumption that multi-interested people have no clear preferences. The data didn't support it. Here is what that changes.
"I like too many things" and "I don't know what I like" are different problems with different solutions. If your interests are many and all of them are genuine, the task is not to eliminate them. Find roles where 2 or 3 of your strongest areas work together — that is where unusual careers are built, ones that a specialist in a single field cannot replicate.
Say you're drawn to biology, history, and programming — and when someone asks what you want to do, you freeze. Adults often hear "can't decide." But that misreads the situation. One person can't decide because nothing has grabbed them yet. Another can't decide because too many things have, and any choice feels like a loss. These are different problems, and the standard advice — "pick one and go deep" — only helps the first.
The flat-profile myth
Career counseling long held that broadly-interested people have no clear preferences — everything appeals equally, and that's what blocks choice. In 1997, John Achter, Camilla Benbow and David Lubinski at Vanderbilt University tested this assumption using data from SMPY, one of the largest longitudinal studies of intellectually talented youth. In a sample of several hundred adolescents, a genuinely flat RIASEC profile — where no interest type stands out above the rest — turned out to be rare. Most people showed 2 to 3 distinct peaks; instruments normed on average populations simply weren't sensitive enough to catch the differentiation. The paper, published in Gifted Child Quarterly, was direct: the "they all like everything equally" myth is largely a measurement artifact, not a real personality trait.
The counterintuitive implication: someone who sincerely says "I like it all equally" most likely hasn't yet found a way to notice the differences in their own interests — or hasn't given any of them enough time to develop.
Wide interests are not a sign of indecision. They're a signal that the standard question "what do you want to be?" is too narrow for your profile.
The scanner type: not shallowness
In 2006, Barbara Sher introduced the term "scanner" in her book Refuse to Choose! — a person who moves between interests not out of shallowness but because of a different way of building knowledge: broadly rather than deeply. Sher described several subtypes. Sequential scanners go fully into one subject, then move on and don't return. Cyclical scanners rotate through several topics in turns. "Double agents" hold two strong directions in parallel. None of these is a failed specialist — it's a different mode of developing expertise.
Sher's key observation: scanners don't lose interest because they're bored. They move on because they've absorbed enough for their own purpose — understanding how something works. Deep specialization often feels like confinement rather than progress to them.
What a multipotentialite can do
In her 2015 TED talk "Why some of us don't have one true calling" — which had reached 8 million views by 2017 — and in the book How to Be Everything (HarperOne, 2017), Emilie Wapnick identified two concrete advantages of a wide interest profile. First: multipotentialites notice connections between unrelated disciplines that specialists in each field don't see on their own. Someone who understands both biology and design will approach a medical app interface differently than someone who knows only one of the two. Second: the habit of being a beginner in multiple areas makes learning faster. Anyone who has started from scratch several times is less afraid of that stage.
How to search when your interests are several
The practical approach is not to narrow your interests down to one, but to look for roles where 2 or 3 of them work together. This isn't a compromise or a "little of everything" setup: roles at the intersection of fields genuinely require that combination, and a single-discipline specialist can't substitute for it.
A few examples of how intersections work: interest in data and in communication leads to product analytics or science journalism; interest in technology and in people leads to UX research or developer relations; interest in biology and in business leads to medical product management or pharma consulting.
In the RIASEC model, this means looking for careers that match a pair of types, not just one peak. A review by Rysiew, Shore and Leeb in the Journal of Counseling & Development (1999) found that for people with high scores across multiple interest types, a two- or three-letter RIASEC code predicts career fit more accurately than searching for a single dominant type.
What to do
- Identify which case you're in: do you like nothing, or do you like too much? Different problems, different paths.
- Write down 5 to 7 areas that genuinely pull you in, and look for intersections: which careers require 2 or 3 of them at once?
- Take the career assessment — it builds your RIASEC profile and shows how your peaks combine. Look beyond the top result: check every career where your match is above average.
- Choose for one year, not forever. Deep engagement with one direction for a defined period gives far more data for your next move than endless weighing of options.
Frequently asked questions
Are there careers for people who like everything?
Yes — careers that sit at the intersection of fields: product management, science journalism, consulting, UX research, project work. What they share is that they require strong orientation in several areas at once. The RIASEC model helps match these roles to your specific combination of interests.
How do I tell broad interests from indecision?
Broad interest means you actually want to do something in several fields — read, try things, dig in. Indecision means you don't want to go beyond a surface acquaintance with any of them. If there are at least 2-3 topics you return to on your own, that is not indecision.
Do I still need to specialize at some point?
It depends on the role and the stage of your career. Many positions early on require at least one clear direction. But that does not mean discarding the rest — it means starting from one end and seeing how the others follow. Barbara Sher's Refuse to Choose! lays out several strategies for keeping multiple directions active at once.
Sources
- Achter, J. A., Benbow, C. P., & Lubinski, D. (1997). Rethinking Multipotentiality Among the Intellectually Gifted: A Critical Review and Recommendations. Gifted Child Quarterly, 41(1), 5–15.
- Rysiew, K. J., Shore, B. M., & Leeb, R. T. (1999). Multipotentiality, Giftedness, and Career Choice: A Review. Journal of Counseling & Development, 77(4), 423–430. doi.org/10.1002/j.1556-6676.1999.tb02469.x
- Sher, B. (2006). Refuse to Choose! Use All of Your Interests, Passions, and Hobbies to Create the Life and Career of Your Dreams. New York: Rodale.
- Wapnick, E. (2015). Why some of us don't have one true calling [TED Talk]. TEDxBend. ted.com
- Wapnick, E. (2017). How to Be Everything: A Guide for Those Who (Still) Don't Know What They Want to Be When They Grow Up. New York: HarperOne.
This article is for educational purposes and does not constitute professional advice. The test result is an assessment based on the RIASEC model, not a diagnosis.
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