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Does this sound familiar? Does Elaine remind you of yourself? Do you also wonder why you're caught in this kind of dilemma? Are you unable to figure out what drives you and why you're so different from people who made their choices early and followed one path? Why can't you start working on your dreams--and stick to them?
How will you ever focus your curious mind on one path when you can't bear to turn your back on anything? What makes you tick? Believe it or not, there are very good answers to those questions. If, like so many Scanners I've met, you think the situation is hopeless, you're in for some nice surprises.
Here's the first and most important surprise: If Scanners didn't think they should limit themselves to one field, 90 percent of their problems would cease to exist! What is a Scanner? Scanners love to read and write, to fix and invent things, to design projects and businesses, to cook and sing, and to create the perfect dinner party. You'll notice I didn't use the word "or," because Scanners don't love to do one thing or the other; they love them all.
A Scanner might be fascinated with learning how to play bridge or bocce, but once she gets good at it, she might never play it again. It sounds wonderful, doesn't it? The problem is, Scanners are starving in the candy store. They believe they're allowed to pursue only one path. But they want them all. If they force themselves to make a choice, they are forever discontented. But usually Scanners don't choose anything at all. And they don't feel good about it.
As kids, most Scanners had been having a great time! At school no one objected to their many interests, because every hour of every student's school day is devoted to a different subject.
But at some point in high school or soon after, everyone was expected to make a choice, and that's when Scanners ran into trouble. While some people happily narrowed down to one subject, Scanners simply couldn't. The conventional wisdom was overwhelming and seemed indisputable: If you're a jack-of-all-trades, you'll always be a master of none.
You'll become a dilettante, a dabbler, a superficial person--and you'll never have a decent career. Suddenly, a Scanner who all through school might have been seen as an enthusiastic learner had now become a failure. But one thought wouldn't leave my mind: If the world had just continued to accept them as they were, Scanners wouldn't have had any problems. With the exception of learning project management techniques, the only thing Scanners needed was to reject conventional wisdom that said they were doing something wrong and claim their true identity.
Almost every case of low self-esteem, shame, frustration, feelings of inadequacy, indecisiveness, and inability to get into action simply disappeared the moment they understood that they were Scanners and stopped trying to be somebody else. It appears that Scanners are an unusual breed of human being. One reason they don't recognize themselves is that they don't often meet people like themselves. How do you know if you're a Scanner? Maybe it would be useful to first discuss who isn't one.
Who isn't a Scanner? Well, specialists aren't Scanners, obviously. If you're someone who is happy being completely absorbed by one field, I've labeled you a Diver. Some clear examples of Divers are professional musicians, scientists, mathematicians, professional chess players, athletes, business owners, and financiers. These people may "relax" with a hobby, but they're rarely passionate about anything but their field. In fact, Divers often wonder how people can be interested in anything but what they're interested in.
Sometimes they even make fun of themselves for it, like the racing bicyclist Tim Krabbe described in The Rider, who glances up from his gear to look at people walking and says, "Nonracers. The emptiness of those lives shocks me. They're always curious to know "what's out there" and love to poke their noses into just about anything.
A Diver rarely spends a moment wondering what he might be missing when he's totally absorbed in his field. On the other hand, 99 percent of Scanners spend a lot of time scanning the horizon, thinking about their next move. Many people look like Scanners, but aren't People who continually move from one idea to another often have very different reasons for doing so. Some are simply trying to make up their minds, and when they find the "right" choice, they can easily give up all the other ideas they considered.
Others move between ideas for reasons that surprised me when I first heard them.
Here are some examples. I spent years frustrating myself and everyone around me with my constant jumping from one thing to another. What I learned about myself eventually is that I knew deep down what I should be doing all along, but was simply too scared to commit myself to it. The constant stream of alternative ideas was simply an advanced avoidance technique. I think I've always avoided what I really want to do because I was afraid I'd be mediocre, or fail completely, so I'd keep changing my mind before I produced anything that could be judged.
Depressed people often make the mistake of believing they're Scanners. Depression can create a fractured consciousness that doesn't allow one to pay attention to anything for long, and some depressed people believe that the cause of their depression is their inability to find something they can care about intensely. But the reverse is usually true: They can't care about anything because they're depressed. One of the main symptoms of depression is the inability to feel desire.
A woman who had experience with depressed people told me: The types of attention span problems that have to do with depression are quite different than job-interest attention spans. When you get so you can't read a book and even newspaper articles are too complicated to remember from start to finish , you can't pay attention during a conversation, and you have no idea where your keys and wallet are when usually you know exactly where you put them, then you need to talk to somebody about therapy and medication, both of which work wonders.
And then we have ADD.
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Before knowing who they were, many Scanners assumed that their "problem" might be attention deficit disorder ADD , simply because everyone assumed that being interested in lots of things was a form of distraction. I've also met people with diagnosed ADD who appear to be Scanners but are not. Once you understand that a bona fide Scanner has no problem with the normal ability to focus as opposed to ADD-style hyper-focus , the confusion with ADD usually clears up.
I'm a Scanner and have been diagnosed with ADD. And I can tell you that nothing is clearer than the difference between feeling stuck because I'm having an ADD attack--that is, my mind is in a fog and I have trouble remembering what I'm doing--and being stuck for the typical Scanner reasons of being attracted to so many things that I can't figure out which project to reach for next. Of course, there are many people who are quite content in their fields and have a few normal interests in addition, such as a lawyer who enjoys cooking and travel, or an advertising art director who collects antiques.
But there's a noticeable difference between someone with a normal range of interests and a Scanner. Who is a Scanner? Intense curiosity about numerous unrelated subjects is one of the most basic characteristics of a Scanner. Scanners are endlessly inquisitive. In fact, Scanners often describe themselves as being hopelessly interested in everything although, as you'll find out, this isn't so. A Scanner doesn't want to specialize in any of the things she loves, because that means giving up all the rest. Some even think that being an expert would be limiting and boring.
Our society frowns on this apparent self-indulgence. Of course, it's not self-indulgence at all; it's the way Scanners are designed, and there's nothing they can or should do about it. A Scanner is curious because he is genetically programmed to explore everything that interests him.
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