Winston Churchill (1874–1965):

When given the choice, Renaissance Souls prefer to be governed by our own energy rather than by a schedule, calendar, or “to do” list. We may write down an activity in our planner, such as going to the library or doing research on Thursday morning. When Thursday comes, if we feel like doing research, we’ll be dynamite at it. But should we not feel

Her name? Maya Angelou! Here’s what she has to say, one swan to another: “I think we’ve done a real disservice to young people by telling them, ‘Oh you be careful. You’ll be a jack-of all-trades and a master of none.’ It’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. I think you can be a jack-of-all-trades and a mistress-of-all-trades. If you study it, and

Wherever they end up, Renaissance Souls usually find that they have to tackle three challenges in order to get where they want to be: focus, money, and time. The challenge of focus is to avoid being paralyzed by the seeming need to choose among many paths. The challenge of money is to link your passions to a source of income. And the challenge of t

Not everyone will understand your desire to move on to new challenges. You can always remind these people of Leonardo da Vinci. Nowadays, he’d probably be considered a failure because he left the The Last Supper unfinished, or because he was satisfied simply with having designed a helicopter instead of having his flying machine mocked up, market te

experiments? Fine, his wife might say. Why don’t you go to MIT and pursue a nice stable career in science?

proud. And yes, there was a brief period in the history of time—basically, the latter half of the twentieth century—when a person could be hired fresh out of school by a large corporation and steadily climb that corporation’s ladder to more and more money and perks, until he (and sometimes she) retired with a good pension and absolutely no financia

As soon as I took the Renaissance Soul quiz, I knew I was one. That made me happy the whole weekend. But when Monday morning rolled around and I was back at work, I went into a panic. How can I have any sort of economic security if I keep changing interests all the time? Deep down I think I really count on that regular paycheck, the promotions, and

you may have a long history of beating up on yourself when you dropped one passion for another. You may have fallen into the trap of thinking that your different choices must have been the wrong choices. This is usually far from the case. One of the best ways to dispel uncertainty is to clarify what you value.