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What is a Scanner Personality Type?
Simply put, Scanner Personalities are people who either have so many interests they find it impossible to decide on just one career – so they don’t make any decision at all for fear of making the wrong choice, or they have lots of projects on the go but seldom finish any of them before they lose interest and move on to the next project.
Scanners are interested in multiple things, they love learning, their brains work very fast, and they are constantly scanning the horizon for new things.
Scanner Personality Traits (from Scanner Central)
- You have creative ideas all the time, whether it’s for a book, a TV show, an art project, a website, a business, starting a movement, creating a brand, or writing a bestseller
- You love to learn about new subjects and ideas and then quickly move on to something else
- You have loads of seemingly unrelated interests
- Trying to choose between all your ideas, interests and projects stresses you out
- The thought of concentrating on one job or business for the rest of your life horrifies you
- You start lots of projects but don’t always finish them before you get into something else
Common problems for Scanners are a reluctance to commit to just one thing for fear of making the wrong choice, and not finishing projects. An analogy I love is comparing Scanners to honey bees. Their purpose it to move from flower to flower getting pollen. They stay at each flower just long enough to get what they came for and nobody can tell them when they should be finished because only the bee knows when it is done.
Scanners are included in this website because I’m a Scanner myself and Scanners are very much suited to Freelance life and having Portfolio Careers – which I also have! Please use the Category drop down box on the right to read more about Scanners and Scanner types.
My family fell about laughing when they first heard this term, as it seemed to describe me so well! But I like to think of myself as a bit of a reformed scanner… is that possible?! (Read all about it here: http://bit.ly/M9oAt9)
I love your analogy about being a honey bee – picking knowledge and experience along the way! And hopefully a little bit sweet too ;)
I know, I was an undiagnosed scanner for years & just thought I was into lots of different things & didn’t finish things because I’d tried them and they weren’t for me. Turns out I’d got what I came for and it was ok to then move on!
I loved your post, looks like being a Virtual Assistant / freelancer is the ideal job for us 2 scanners!
Like Emily I identify with your “scanner” personality type. Variety is the spice of life as they say.
I only now discovered that I am a scanner. I have so many projects and interests going on that my wife always complain that I start a new project and then move on to the next one before finishing it!
It can be hard to finish anything if you’re a Scanner – sometimes you’ve gotten what you needed from the project though so you are actually ‘done’ even though it doesn’t look like it to other people! Barbara Sher’s book ‘Refuse to Choose’ is great as she shows you ways in which Scanners can do all the things they want to do. I highly recommend it.
[...] I have copied over a description that I feel fits my personality very well from CareerPioneers.com: [...]