This is your chance to reflect on what you will take away from the very brief Chapter 13: About Sequential Scanners and to learn from or contribute to other book club members’ take-aways. You can also pose questions here about the chapter or what you are discovering about yourself.
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Okay. On to Chapter Fourteen next. Use the Next link (up above the title) to continue on to Exercise 1: Try the Serial Specialist Tools after you are done adding your comments.
I’m finding I have persistent hobbies with a sensational Reward.
My sequential pursuits seem to have a different Reward when there’s no one else to do it. The interest dies when the problem’s addressed or someone else appears.
I learned that I’m pretty sure I’m not a serial scanner. However, I also learned four things that made a lot of sense to me. 1. Boredom is kryptonite to a scanner. 2. Scanners are energised by learning. 3. Scanners love to learn more than they love to know. 4. Scanners are motivated by enjoyment, not ambition. Yes, yes, yes and yes! I’d also add that this is a deep, fulfilling sense of enjoyment – not just a frivolous sense of being entertained.
Thank you for calling those out Christine. I’ll copy them in my Daybook.
Your point about a deep, fulfilling sense of enjoyment reminds me of a different one: my son gets this look when his younger sister is “teaching” him something he knows. So much joy. Nodding his head, anxiously waiting for her next instruction, knowing where she’s going. The first time was a dance choreography. I can’t remember the other, but it was recent and I recall noticing the same pure-joy expression.
I think of myself has having ambition: ambition for enjoyment!
Perhaps my son was loving to know more than loving to learn.
I enjoy knowing when I get to explain it to someone else (and usually actually learn it in the process).
I’m not familiar with this boredom of which you speak. Too much to do! Especially relax.
“Scanners just want to have fun”
Yes indeed! Great observations about your son too – thanks for sharing them. I also agree – relaxing is serious business and there’s nothing boring about it. I suppose the boredom that Barbara was talking about in the book was the boredom of having to do something we hate, or doing something on repeat.
Having said that, one of my favourite jobs ever was my first job, where I was stacking shelves in a supermarket. It always baffled me why I loved that job so much. Years later, I heard someone talking on a radio documentary about repetitive work and how imaginative people actually love it, as it allows their mind to wander off wherever it will while they’re doing it.
I don’t do any sort of craft, but I wonder if people who love to knit or sew also have the same experience? Do any other scanners out there love to do repetitive tasks for the same reason?
I’m going to try to combine your thoughts: turning a boring task into repetitive work with room for wander