#Polymath #Scanner #RefuseToChoose
Hey there! 👋 Do you ever feel like you’re constantly torn between different interests and can’t seem to commit to just one career path? Maybe you don’t have to choose! 🤔 Here are some common thoughts that might resonate with you:
– “I won’t choose a career path because it might be the wrong one.”
– “I know I should focus on one thing, but which one?”
– “I keep changing my mind about what I want to do and end up doing nothing.”
– “I work at low-paying jobs because there’s nothing I’m willing to commit to.”
– “I’ll never be an expert in anything. I feel like I’m always in a survey class.”
If you relate to any of these, you might be a scanner or polymath. This term refers to someone who has many interests in various fields and struggles to choose one specific career path. 🌟
Discovering this about myself has been so liberating, and I wanted to share it with you all! Some solutions to consider:
– Embrace your diverse interests and see how they can be combined.
– Pursue a portfolio career where you can explore different passions simultaneously.
– Seek out opportunities that value generalist skills and knowledge.
Remember, you’re in great company! Think of legendary polymaths like Leonardo da Vinci and Benjamin Franklin. Embrace your uniqueness and explore the endless possibilities that come with being a scanner. 🚀 #EmbraceDiversity #FindYourPath
I’ve said this for a while now: the statement that at the age of 18, someone should intuitively know what they want to do for the rest of their life is nonsense. You lack real-world experience among enormous opportunities. That you should know what you want to do (that’s a problem in and of itself; what you WANT vs. what you COULD do) for the rest of your life with no experience is crazy to me.
For my part, I’d love to see the economic workforce made changes allowing for this understanding.
I agree that generalists are made to feel bad these days. I read “so good they can’t ignore you” by Cal Newport and he pretty much said that in order to find fulfillment, you need to become a specialist/master at something. The idea of a scanner is quite intriguing. Now I do think there’s any organization needs a mix of both! I just think that we shouldn’t necessarily celebrate the specialists at the expense of generalists. Another concept to consider is by Adam Grant. He suggests that you don’t need to be the best in the world at one particular skill. Instead, being in the top 25% in a few different skills can make you uniquely valuable because of the combination of those skills. This is the typical generalist (we’re excluding people who are just lazy and calling themselves one). Anyway, what you’ve shared is so fascinating I think i’m gna write a segment in it! If you happen to be a student of college grad, that’s who I write for and would love to have you – or maybe one day interview you and share your journey at GradSimple!
I don’t really think we need a label for people who like to jump between things… There are simply those that can and cannot commit (I do not mean for either to sound negative).
Yeah, this is something I realized for myself relatively recently. I was always afraid of picking one path and it end up being the wrong one, or feeling like I want to do other things too but having sunk so much time gaining the support I need for that one thing (such as college education) that it now means I effectively can’t do anything else. I realized that perhaps instead, even though it’s slower and more difficult overall, I can spread my efforts wider and build support for *all* my interests, even if I can’t do so quite as deeply as a result.