This is your chance to reflect on what you will take away from Chapter 1: All about 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.
Here, to remind you, are the exercises we completed in Chapter 1: All about Scanners.
- Create Your Scanner Daybook
- Your Living Quarters Map
Please subscribe to future comments on this page or check back here on Wednesday evening or Thursday morning for new ones. Make sure your fellow Book Club members know they are no longer isolated and are now part of a large, international group of Scanners.
That’s it for this week! Watch for your weekly email on Thursday or just log in again then. If you’re not getting the weekly announcements and you would like to add them, please send an email to me at webmaster@barbarasclub.com. I can also help with comment subscriptions if you need it. Until next week!
Wow Art! Love this so much and that you can speak to the difference doing the exercises can make…very powerful! Thank you so much for sharing.
I read Refuse to Choose several years ago, but didn’t do any of the exercises. I can already tell that joining this group and doing the exercises is going to be liberating and impactful. I found the Living Quarters Map exercise incredibly valuable. If I had any doubts as to whether I’m a scanner, they disappeared after beginning that exercise (I’m still working on it. I’ve only covered the basement floor of my home and know that working my way up the floors and into my garage workshop will take up many pages.) My inner voice dialogue while doing this exercise is full of comments like, “Oh, yeah! I forgot about that one. How exciting! Maybe I’ll pull that out and work on it this weekend!
Wow Art! Love this so much and that you can speak to the difference doing the exercises can make…very powerful! Thank you so much for sharing.
Sorry Art….this is a duplicate comment 🙂 I didn’t think it loaded so I typed it again above, lol.
Great chapter! Made me feel ‘at peace’ with that inherent sense of being different to others. Where i’ve wanted to do things differently/against the norm, historically – and especially as a child – i’d kinda felt a bit awkward and like i am causing trouble or being difficult; or got a sense that others saw me that way (hence why i guess i became adept at shapeshifting to conform or fit in with situations and those around me). Now i actually see it as being a trailblazer and I am embracing that and proud of it; of all the varied things i have done and where it has led me. I am also thankful that my parents (mostly) supported me to do so even if they didnt understand or necessarily agree with my choices.
I smiled as i was reminded that i left school at 16 to go to college and study a vocational course with interesting real life subjects rather than academic topics. The school didnt seem to know what to do at the time. Like why would I (and how dare i) turn down the opportunity to stay on? It was like i has snubbed them so they lost all interest in me. Makes me realise that society still has a way to go to accept people doing things differently. Since leaving school i have done loads more learning/education in night classes and hobbies and currently working full time and doing an apprecticeship! Always learning 🙂
Hi Janet! Thank you for sharing I remember the school not knowing what to do with me either, lol, and not always in a good way! 🙂
I have spent much of my life beating myself up because I could not choose “one thing” to devote my life to. When I was in my early 40s, I took a series of aptitude tests to see if they would provide me with a path towards my “calling.” Out of 15 tested aptitudes, 12 of them were “off the charts” — typically people end up with three to five aptitudes that are high. So the aptitude testing did not point me in a direction, but I did feel somewhat vindicated that I was not “crazy” for being unable to settle on one thing. I find that I delve deeply into something but once I reach a certain level of mastery, I may get bored with it. I’ve found a few things that I cannot “master” and these sustain my interest. I am an autistic person with ADHD, and these factors drive my “in depth” interests as well as my “many” interests. I am happiest when learning about something that has limitless depth, like creative pursuits and some intellectual ones. I am hoping that this course will further help me accept my multi-interest, multi-faceted self!
Hi Abby! Your experience (and so many others shared here) of feeling something is wrong with them for not choosing one thing is why I love Barbara’s work so much!
Interesting observation while reading the pages this week: I got a little “in my feels” about the ADD section. When I was younger my mother would never let a doctor put me on meds, because it’s not that I was ADHD, I was just a little boy and had spastic energy. You still can’t make sit still and do something for hours at a time. But when Barb was discussing school, it made sense to me. I hated college my first time around, not because it was difficult but because I couldn’t decide either! I wanted to play music, learn English, be a teacher. then I was on academic probation and dropped out. Then I went back and studied liberal arts, but I never cared about grades. Then in 2009 I went back again, and studied history, geography, etc. But I’ve always been a voracious reader. To this day, I still don’t think I have ADHD (although my mind is always racing), I’ve been what I call an engineer-brain – I love making lists and spreadsheeting things to death, but FINISHING was another thing. Now I don’t have to beat myself up about never finishing 90% of the things I put into journals, lists, and spreadsheets.
I’m reminded of a great line from ‘The Mentalist’ – “Being understood is an underrated pleasure.” I’ve never really worried about being understood, but I’ve always felt MISunderstood if that makes sense. I’m grateful for this process.
Wow J, very profound and I was thinking that even if we are not worried about being understood, in my opinion/experience it sure takes a lot of effort to constantly be misunderstood. 🙂
Ha! Found the thread! Ignore the one I wrote on the welcome page, and I’m actually replying on a COMPUTER instead of my PHONE so hopefully typos will be reduced.
I went through my notebook bin (I have an office supply habit) and decided upon a large blank sketchbook that was gifted to me over 24 years ago. I’m a fan of visual journals (Gwen Diehn’s The Decorated Page – LOVE that book). Thus, have started pasting in photos, labels, and making sketches.
I’m playing catch-up – labeling the upper left pages with ideas dormant and in storage, then returning to elaborate (often returning on multiple days to add notes, images, and more pages for new ideas, etc.) I think I’ll dedicate a few pages on projects that might combine several interests (e.g. native plant landscaping, fairy house design, pollinator identification, illustration and zine-making could all be combined … make a trail of fairy houses through my native gardens and illustrate what pollinators might appear… make it a “treasure” hunt for pollinators and put the map in a zine with illustrations….). You get the idea… VERY energized and happy when I’m working in the Daybook… BUT I do have that worry in the background – and still the guilt -of doing things partway or not at all….
Still need to start on the map of my home and the various projects it holds…
Hi Monica! So happy you found the page, and no worries about posting on the welcome page 🙂 For me the computer is so much easier and I rarely have the patience to use my phone…fat fingers! lol
Like Zibby, I was happy to learn that being a scanner was not seen as abnormal and was even admirable in the past. It was also good to learn where our current mentality has come from, i.e. that you must be a specialist in something. I have an arts degree (perhaps called liberal arts in the US?) with a history major and I’m so tired of hearing that people with arts degrees are unemployable or are condemned to low-paying jobs. This is not true at all. Despite my utter frustration at not managing to do the things I love outside of work, in terms of the job I do for money (otherwise known as a ‘career’), I’ve managed to use the skills learned in my degree to find interesting and well-paid work and I use these skills every day of my working life. One of my colleagues also has a history major and is very good at his job because of it (neither of us are history teachers, by the way – we both work in policy). It’s so annoying!!
I used to have a doctor who was a physician in general medicine, which meant that she specialised in general practice (a specialist MD). I remember having a conversation with her about it once and she was very unhappy about the fact that her speciality was dying out, as young doctors looking to specialise all went for specific specialties. She told me that the ‘specialty’ of a specialist MD is to be very good at diagnosing disease, especially when a patient has unusual symptoms. She herself was known for being one of those doctors that will get to the bottom of a problem when others can’t. I really like the idea of having a specialty in being a generalist. Maybe this doctor was a scanner? Maybe scanners are specialist generalists, in essence?
General Specialist is an interesting concept.
I’m thinking about the tension between generalists not being wanted, but sometimes needed. Perhaps that’s a filter of overwhelming possibilities (I’m a big fan of filters). Don’t shape-shift; stay available for when a generalist is wanted.
I like the idea of being a “specialist-generalist”, Christine. As Barabara pointed out, love of learning is a key characteristic of scanners. This characteristic led to me “dabbling” in all sorts of things while I stayed in academia (Some might have said I was “stuck” there, but I loved it!) Like you, I have a career. However, the connection between what I learned in school (in programs I finished and those I didn’t) and what I do for my salary would be hard to discern at first glance. I’m an eclectic mix of political science (Sino-Soviet relations), Asian studies, religious studies, English literature, and linguistics, but have been a corporate trainer and organizational development consultant for years.
Hi Art, that’s a fascinating combination of areas of study! I can see how you might possibly be filtering the skills learnt through your academic studies into your career. I imagine that skills in language, communication, textual analysis, systems (learnt by studying international relations) etc would absolutely feed into your work as a trainer and organisational development consultant.
I was very lucky to have been recommended a book not long after graduation called What Color is my Parachute, by Richard Bolles. Similarly to Barbara, his whole aim in life was to help people find careers they really loved, not careers that were fashionable or lucrative. I recommend it to anyone who is lost in their career path. He had a great way of helping people break down all of the their learning and life experiences into basic transferable skills, then getting them to pick the skills they loved the most and then pick fields they loved and putting it all together. Sadly, he has also passed away. While he was brilliant, he never touched on the concept of a ‘scanner’ or similar, although once I’ve finished this course, I’ll go back and read his book and see if there’s anything there, just presented in a different way.
Maybe it’s a bit crazy, but I’m still wondering whether I’m really a scanner. The main reason I’m confused is that I really love to dive deeply into a subject and my main frustration is that I don’t have the time to do so. However, there are many subjects that I wish I could study in depth. I feel like I need to be living ten different lives at ones. Maybe that’s the clue…?!
I also question if I am even a scanner or just a diver who needs help making time for my interests. I have read the book before and got a lot out of it for that.
I connected with the “serial master” scanner sub-type described later in the book as I am driven by wanting to achieve expertise in a subject. I think if you want to master more than one subject that counts as a scanner. And it does feel like multiple lifetimes are needed for me as well.
I like that a scanner is seen as someone who has a love of learning and trying new things that spark an interest for them. I love that Babara reminds us that it was once seen as someone who was a renaissance person. But that modern society has become fixated on experts in their chosen field.
‘Definition of the Renaissance peron, the notion that humans should embrace all knowledge and develop themselves as fully as possible.’
I’m someone who likes to learn something new, get proficient at it and then move onto the next. I guess I’m like a polymath without the true intelligence to back it up. It is nice to know that there is a place for scanners in society just as there is a place for true experts. To know that Refuse to Choose was written to hold our hand whilst we learn to thrive is exciting.
Hi Zibby! I totally agree that Refuse to Choose is “exciting” and when I have the pleasure of reading all of these posts, it makes me so happy that Barbara left such a powerful legacy!
Interesting that Barbara made clear who is a scanner and who not. The book is some years old and Over the time now I think there’s one aspect more who is not a scanner. I hear quite often that people say they are a scanner. When I asked them how they realized that they tell me that they have so many tasks to do and so many responsibilities in thier job, as mother, and so on. They are not talking about dreams, ideas and possibilities. They are just overwhelmed by their everyday life and distracted by the algorithms of social media, YouTube and so on. For me it’s a different to be overwhelmed by too many things to do or overwhelmed by the next “idea storm”.
What do you think?
Hi Sabine!
I think what matters is really what is true for us. We have to deal with and show up for the ways we get overwhelmed and what is animated in our lives. People have a lot of different ideas (based on their own experiences, values, gifts, perspectives) about being a Scanner and their own definition of that. Barbara’s definition is clear to me and is probably much more in line with your example versus the person who is distracted by social media 🙂 You bring up an interesting topic though, and it made me wonder what Scanners will look like a hundred years from now and how will mainstream culture view their gifts:-)
I found the section about who are not scanners to be interesting because it included depression, ADD, and ADHD as not scanners. I will have to finish the book now because there are different kinds of scanners. I feel fine about being one. I wonder if people feel sad,depressed or discouraged because they don’t know anyone else like them as a scanner? Because I am not good at freehand art, I did have difficulty with the living quarters part, but I did the scanner daybook. I wonder what parts of scanning might be genetic? My mom was “messy but happy” and I think that was a good thing. I enjoy reading people’s responses here.
Hi, I also found it interesting to read who are not scanners.
And I also not sure how I will do with the living quarters part. We will see.
I love the ‘messy but happy’ description of your mum. It’s lovely!
I also wondered on the genetic aspect Karen and whether – and how much bearing that might have on my own experiences.