Take ten minutes to picture yourself living either of the Life Design Models for Plate Spinners. Each of them is described somewhere in the chapter. What would be great about it? What would it be missing for you?

• The Alternating Current Model
• The Learn, Try, Teach, Leave (LTTL) Model

If you are a Plate Spinner, you might want to do this for both of them.

Now do the same, for ten minutes, with one of the careers for Plate Spinners:

• Nonprofit Incubator
• Itinerant Troubleshooter

If you are an unsatisfied Plate Spinner, create a Backward Planning Flowchart for moving toward one of these careers.

Write in your Daybook how each of these felt and what great ideas came up while you were daydreaming about them. In a new comment on this page, tell us which ones you tried on and what you discovered about them and about yourself. After you share your experience, read the rest of the comments and reply to a few. Who are the Plate Spinners in this group?

Please be sure to subscribe to future comments on this exercise or to check back here on Wednesday evening or Thursday morning for new ones.

Use the Next link (up above the title) to continue on to What I Learned from Chapter 12 after you are done adding your comments.

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Read the chapter, then turn to the last page for the Scanner Tool Kit items that best help Plate Spinners. Try at least one of the tools, two if this chapter describes you.

Here are the Scanner Tools recommended for Plate Spinners:

• Tool 1: Your Scanner Daybook on page 140
• Tool 2: Your Portable Idea Deck on page 69
• Tool 3: 20 or 30 Three-Ring Binders on page 157

Tell us which tool(s) you chose and give us a review. If you found one helpful, you might also want to give it a page of its own in your Daybook. After you share your experience, read the rest of the comments and reply to a few.

Please be sure to subscribe to future comments on this exercise or to check back here on Wednesday evening or Thursday morning for new ones.

Use the Next link (up above the title) to continue on to Exercise 3: Picture a Plate Spinner Life Design and Career after you are done adding your comments.

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Pull out your Scanner Daybook and a pen and see if you can find 10 or 15 uninterrupted minutes. I’d like you to try this fantasy for yourself:

Imagine you’re on a tiny desert isle alone, with nothing to do. A ship will be by in 2 or 3 days and you have enough to eat until then, but there’s no one to talk to, nothing to work with, just a couple of days to pass while you look out to sea.

At first your mind might be empty, but give it a little time and when something comes to mind, pick up your pen and start writing.

What happened? Did you get bored or find your thinking slip into a different mode?

Try this for 10 or 15 uninterrupted minutes. Write down whatever thoughts come into your mind while you fantasize that there is nothing you can or must do for the next 2 or 3 days.

If you find yourself happily coming up with ideas for projects until you come crashing down to earth with the thought that you don’t have the time or resources to proceed with them when you get off the island, you might want to give the Alternating Current Life Design Model—alternating solving the problems in front of you with time for generating and fleshing out ideas—a try. If you find your thoughts leaning toward recalling song lyrics or choreography steps or practicing a foreign language or planning how to greet the folks who are coming to rescue you, then this one’s probably not a good fit.

So tell us what you thought about and how it felt. After you share your experience, read the rest of the comments and reply to a few.

Please be sure to subscribe to future comments on this exercise or to check back here on Wednesday evening or Thursday morning for new ones.

Use the Next link (up above the title) to continue on to Exercise 2: Try the Plate Spinner Tools after you are done adding your comments.

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