Sarah Tucker on the Benefits of Polymathy

The writer and biographer of Edward de Bono explains why you don’t need to have just the one career

The Path is a Lie, and That’s Excellent News

When you’re nearing the end of university overdraft maxed, degree halfway legible, still unsure how to properly cook rice  someone inevitably asks The Question:

“So, what are you going to do with your life?”

The implication? That you’re supposed to know. Worse, that there’s one perfect, gleaming answer. That out there, somewhere, is your One True Career, the path you were meant to walk, possibly while wearing beige chinos and answering emails about deliverables.

Let’s be blunt, the path is a myth. There is no path. At best, it’s a cobbled back alley full of detours, strange signage, and the occasional urban fox. At worst, it’s a conveyor belt to burnout, boredom, and having opinions about coffee machines.

But here’s the real plot twist the fact nobody’s told you because it messes with the brochure:

You don’t have to choose one thing. You don’t have to do it forever. And you’re not broken because you haven’t figured it out.

I’m Sarah Tucker. I was a banker. Then I became a yoga teacher. Then a novelist. Then a travel journalist. Then a radio presenter. Then I wrote the biography of Edward de Bono, the man who literally invented lateral thinking. I am, according to most HR departments, an absolute nightmare.

But let me tell you something with authority and zero apology, life gets vastly more interesting when you stop trying to be one thing and start building sideways.

Burn the Map, Here’s the Web

We’re conditioned to think of careers as ladders climb rung by rung, shake hands, get promoted, die slightly inside. But what if it’s not a ladder? What if it’s a web?

That’s the idea behind polymathy, the concept of pursuing multiple interests deeply and letting them feed each other. It’s not scatterbrained. It’s strategic. And it’s increasingly how the world works, even if LinkedIn still prefers a tidy CV.

A polymath is someone who doesn’t just know a bit of everything they synthesise across disciplines. They’re the ones who read an article about bird migration and end up designing an app that improves traffic systems. Or study philosophy and become better marketers. Or quit law to become chefs, only to return as food policy advisers.

It’s not confusion. It’s cross-pollination.

Portfolio Careers, Also Known As “Having a Life”

Then there’s the portfolio career, which sounds like something your uncle in private equity would fake-smile about but is actually the backbone of a lateral life.

Imagine your career not as one long job title that gets gradually sadder, but as a set of overlapping projects, gigs, roles, and fascinations that evolve over time. It’s working in UX while running a podcast. Consulting by day, writing noir fiction by night. Designing a fintech start-up while teaching Pilates in the park.

You don’t have to put “multi-hyphenate” in your Instagram bio. You just have to stop pretending there’s only one acceptable shape for a “real job”.

But Isn’t That… Flaky?

No. It’s the opposite of flaky. It’s adaptive. Flaky is staying in a job you hate because you can’t imagine anything else. Lateral thinking is noticing the cracks in the wall and realising you might enjoy knocking the whole thing down.

Some of the most interesting people alive never picked one lane. Maya Angelou, poet, journalist, calypso dancer, Hollywood director, civil rights activist. Hedy Lamarr, actress and co-inventor of Wi-Fi. Steve Jobs said a single calligraphy class shaped Apple. Elon Musk… well, he’s a cautionary tale, but you get the point.

Lateral living isn’t lack of focus. It’s layered intelligence. It’s competence with range. And in a world that no longer rewards staying in your lane, that range is power.

The Myth of the One Career

Here’s what nobody tells you about career advice, it’s mostly retrospective fiction. People stitch a narrative together after the fact to make it sound intentional. Nobody includes the existential dread, the unpaid internships, the months spent making spreadsheets about spreadsheets.

Your first job will likely be a placeholder. That’s fine. Your degree might never come up again, except in pub quizzes. Also, fine. The idea that your life has to make sense now is ludicrous, and possibly a conspiracy by people who peaked in Year Eleven.

The careers of the future, the ones that don’t exist yet, will be shaped by people who didn’t specialise too early, who kept playing with ideas, mixing skills, and asking strange questions. Who saw not just the career ladder, but the scaffolding around it, and redesigned the whole thing.

But What Do You Do with All This?

Start with what’s in front of you.

Write down not just what you’re “good at”, but what you do compulsively even when nobody’s asking. The niche YouTube rabbit holes. The odd obsessions. The moments when you disappear into a task and time loses all meaning.

Next, look sideways. Where do your skills and interests intersect? Are you an English student with a gift for data? A software developer who plays jazz piano? A politics undergraduate who sketches cartoons in the margins?

Those aren’t quirks. They’re raw materials. Combine them, and suddenly you’re doing work nobody else is equipped to do because only you have that combination.

Structure Without Shackles

Now, before you dash off and start six side hustles and a non-profit, a word of caution. The dark side of polymathy is what psychologists have called “Leonardo Syndrome”, the tendency to start everything and finish nothing, like a creative goldfish on espresso.

The trick is structure. Systems. Deep work. Not everything has to be monetised, but some of it needs follow-through. Use tools old-school calendars or AI if it helps  to build containers for your chaos.

And don’t worry if it doesn’t look tidy. Tidiness is for IKEA. You’re building something better.

What They Don’t Teach at Career Fairs

Polymaths, the ones with portfolio careers and lateral minds, tend to do better in times of crisis. They adapt faster. They innovate more. They don’t crumble when one job disappears or one industry shifts, because they’re not defined by that job or that industry.

Also, they’re more interesting at dinner parties.

A study by Dr Robert Root-Bernstein found that Nobel Prize winners were disproportionately likely to paint, dance, act, or write poetry. Not because it made them smarter, but because it made them more flexible. Creativity isn’t a hobby; it’s a survival trait.

Final Thought, The Loft

At some point, you’ll be older. Maybe even thirty. And you’ll go metaphorically, or literally, into your attic. Not for Christmas decorations, but to take stock of your life so far.

And the question you’ll ask yourself won’t be, “Did I follow the path?” It’ll be, What did I build?

Did you accumulate titles, or stories?

A career, or a body of work?

A CV, or a life?

Be the person who went wide, deep, and strange. Who took the job and left it. Who made sense of the mess and occasionally turned it into something brilliant. Who didn’t just climb, but rewired the staircase, painted it red, and installed a trapdoor.

Lateral living isn’t the backup plan. It’s the plan that lets you change the game.

Now go do something gloriously unfocused.

Sarah Tucker is a novelist, journalist, broadcaster, yoga teacher, travel writer, lecturer, and biographer of Edward de Bono. She’s available for existential career counselling, assuming there’s tea.