From the Universal Self Instructor, 1883. In the past you were encouraged to pursue many interests.

I was going to write a post about how your dreams can change but then I discovered something that made me realise that this might not be true for everyone. Some of us are wired to pursue a variety of interests, as opposed to those who focus on one or two things throughout their lives. Neither of these ways of thinking is wrong, just different.

I have been talking about having many interests on this blog for a while, but I did not realize this was a sign of people with a particular type of brain. I only recently found out that I am a Scanner thanks to another blogger, Yarn and Pencil, who included a reblog on her site, which describes Scanners, the name given by Barbara Sher in her book Refuse To Choose (2007), for those who have many interests. Sher points out how the ideal of the Renaissance thinker has been superseded by the modern obsession with specialization in a single field where diversification is discouraged. It was a relief to know that to have multi-interests and the desire to try new activities is a specific type of mindset and not the result of being flighty or indecisive.

Not this kind of Scanner

It also does not mean that you lack determination. I have always finished what I started, even when taking some time off to do something else and have tried to gain skills and knowledge, even when I decided I didn’t want to make a particular activity my life’s work. That is why I chose to work in an artistic area because it allows you to use a lot of the knowledge gained over the years.

On John Williams website I read that as a Scanner you need to concentrate on one idea and develop this in order to make a living and be successful. But this does not mean that you should give everything else up or stop from being curious about the world. I wish I had known about it years ago. It would have stopped a lot of agonizing. I think that it must be hereditary because both my grandfathers and father had many interests. So does Ellie. It seems to have hit our side of the family more than any other branch.

It explains why time management and goal setting are more difficult for some of us. Our brains are constantly jumping from one interest to the next. So if you are a Scanner you must also be a juggler. This is the hard part and I know this from bitter experience and many extensions of course projects at University. If you have a looming deadline it is not the time to suddenly go off and pursue something else. With many interests it is still possible to concentrate on one thing at a time when necessary and avoid distractions, especially the Internet. Just because there is a smorgasbord of information available 24 hours a day does not mean you should look at it all the time. Get the thing that is most pressing out of the way no matter what and then you can move onto something else. It’s a case of keeping all your balls in the air in a balanced way so that one does not cause everything else to crash to the ground.

Sometimes it’s difficult to see the end of a project so it’s left uncompleted. This type of problem affected the most famous Scanner of them all, Leonardo da Vinci. I don’t think he ever considered the Mona Lisa finished. In fact a lot of his work is unfinished but this did not make him less of an artist, anatomist, engineer, designer etc. I have some unfinished canvases in the studio that have been sitting around for a while. They are not part of any specific project so I did not need to finish them in a hurry. I will get back to them eventually, but it goes to show that without some type of pressure it is easy to let creative endeavors slide. 

That is why some of us find it difficult to write long essays or works of fiction because the end seems a long way off and there’s plenty of opportunity to get sidetracked. Short stories and poems suit me better. At the moment I have been writing songs again after a bit of a break. This type of writing satisfies both my musical side and love of words and is short enough for me to write quickly. I return to work on a song if it is not quite right after letting it sit for a while. It is actually good to be able to move between activities, as you can come back and see things from a fresh perspective. 

While you can have many diverting interests it is probably unrealistic to think that you will be good at everything and it’s best work on your strengths. Although I like learning about at a lot of different things, I do try to develop my artistic and musical talents more than anything else. My interests in nature, mythology and folklore, other cultures, history, movies, fiction etc. help to stimulate the imagination and provide inspiration.

These are mainly my own thoughts on dealing with multiple interests. We are all different and one person’s experience will never be the same as another’s. If you want to pursue several dreams, it is not impossible. Just believe you can and do the work, no matter how long it takes.

Kat

Here’s ELO with a great song Hold on Tight (To Your Dream) and a very weird video.