Are you a “scanner?” This term was coined by Barbara Sher, author of books like Wishcraft and Refuse to Choose!: Use All of Your Interests, Passions, and Hobbies to Create the Life and Career of Your Dreams (which is about scanners). Scanners are people who are generalists, have many interests and often have trouble sticking to one thing. They are often categorized as having ADD (whether or not they do is a topic of some debate in the scanner subculture, such that it is!).

Well I for one will confess to being a scanner. I think it’s partly symptomatic of the times we live in. The opposite tendency, to be very focused upon one specialty, is really characteristic of older paradigms, such as agricultural or industrial. The internet itself is almost a perfect example of how ADD/Scannerlike modern information culture is.

Of course, other people have picked up on this theme and used different jargon. Margaret Lobenstine wrote a book called, The Renaissance Soul: Life Design for People with Too Many Passions to Pick Just One I haven’t read that one yet, but like the title.

Still another look at this topic was created by Thom Hartmann, in Attention Deficit Disorder : A Different Perception. His premise is that people with ADD are “hunters” as opposed to farmers. I did read this book, and actually attended a talk given by Hartmann on this subject. It’s an interesting idea, especially if we look at in the context of changing cultural paradigms. Perhaps, in some ways, strange as it may seem, the post-industrial world will be more like the pre-agricultural (e.g. hunter-gatherer)?

There’s even a forum dedicated to scanners: