Authors, Can "Refusing to Choose" Support Us in Crazy Times?
What we can learn from "scanners" for sustainable businesses we love
This article was first published on Medium, May 8, 2021. Please substitute pandemic and post-pandemic for whatever we’re living through now.
“After month upon month where so much was in flux but our day-to-day experience felt like a boring version of Groundhog Day…it feels simultaneously as though so much and absolutely nothing has happened. But in between the nothing and so much, and beyond the constant swelling of grief and anxiety, many people have found room to reassess their life and what they want to change.” — Sadhbh O’Sullivan, Refinery 29, April 26, 2021
O’Sullivan captures the states of disruption, re-evaluation, and weirdness so many of us have found ourselves in throughout the pandemic and especially now, with a supposed end in sight, ready to ramp back on to a normal we may be ambivalent about.
Journalists, strategists, researchers, and individuals — just about everyone has taken note that human beings, forced to hit pause for a good, long, too-long while, are considering en masse how they want to proceed. What they learned during lockdown that they want to hang on to (and what they don’t), and what they still don’t know about fitting their priorities into the coming future.
I read a lot during the past year, but one book captured my heart and delighted me as it gave me something I didn’t know I needed. It may not have been written for you, in particular, but it may be just what you need at this point in time: Barbara Sher’s Refuse to Choose! Use All of Your Interests, Passions, and Hobbies to Create the Life and Career of Your Dreams.
Refuse to Choose! is for a type of person Sher identifies as scanners, those who have an abundance of interests, and perhaps talents to match, and seem genetically wired to not stick with one thing or be able to pick one thing alone. This predilection can make scanners’ behaviors and choices unfamiliar and unsettling to the rest of the world, which often turns around and projects this unease onto them, making scanners feel wrong somehow for not going with everyone else’s flow.
On the surface, this book is a how-to manual, but it is so much more. It is a warm, funny, readable, wholistic, and humanistic treatise written by someone who knows and loves her subject inside and out and has spent years teasing out its nuances. It’s all the philosophy, psychology, commonsense, and coaching we scanners may need to build a solid foundation from which to proceed comfortably as ourselves.
And it may be for you at this point in time, because in a way we’re all scanners now: scanning our hearts, minds, and the environment for what’s next; how we fit new information about our priorities, desires, and preferred ways of living into the back-to-normal that’s slowly opening up for us.
Barbara Sher, a beautiful gift of a human being, died a year ago (5/10/2020) during the pandemic, age 85. I know what she would say to you: refuse to choose. Not only that, she provided a roadmap, rationale, and tools for you to do so.
Let me share some of Sher’s thinking with you, on the condition that you still read the book. This summary only dips into some of its brilliance and is no substitute! Yes, read it for the knowledge, but more so, read it for the magical experience of Sher’s personality alive on every page happily in service to you.
Some Wisdom Highlights
Replace the self-criticism that comes from absorbing the projections of those who don’t understand your wiring, with an appreciative interest in this aspect of yourself. There is power in knowing your identity. True, whether or not you’re a scanner.
Your ideas are valuable and interesting even if they don’t come to fruition or make you famous or rich. “Respect for ideas is the same as respect for the idea maker: you. (It will also help you respect the ideas of others and might make a huge difference in their lives, too.)” Respect the new ideas you may be having and where they might be leading you.
What is the very best thing about scanners? “Their curiosity and fascination for what is new, their willingness to explore unfamiliar worlds, their exceptional ability to learn new concepts, their enthusiasm for experience — in other words, their love of being fully alive.” Where is your curiosity and enthusiasm taking you? What makes you feel fully alive?
Give yourself permission to move ahead on all the things that matter to you. And, give yourself permission to stop when you get what you need from each experience. A goal is a guide not fixed in stone. A choice now isn’t a life sentence. You always have the option to make new choices from where you find yourself next. Honor and explore all the things that matter to you and how they might fit into your life — this is joy, not a mandate.
Ditch the perfectionism.
Get a taste of doing things you previously thought were “impossible.”
Fit it all in by keeping only what you love.
“Each time you judge yourself, you break your heart.”
It doesn’t matter where you begin.
Eliminate false ideas, such as: you must pick one and only thing; you can’t change your mind; your hobbies don’t count; your job has to be perfect; and passions have to be obsessions.
Absorb useful ideas, such as: you can choose many things; you can use a “good enough” job to support the life you want to live; you can invent your own career and lifestyle; you might have to stop being so busy to make room for all the things you want to choose.
Types of Scanners
Sher’s decades of work with scanners has allowed her to identify types of scanners, and she delves into the characteristics of each type in ways that help people recognize themselves and begin thinking about better ways for them to live. As you scan your post-pandemic horizon, you might find that one of these types offers you illumination and opportunities going forward.
Cyclical Scanners
Those with multiple interests they return to again and again.
Double Agents have two strong areas of interest.
Sybils have so many areas of interest they may be overwhelmed with how to manage them.
Plate Spinners have multiple areas of interest and keep them all going at once.
Sequential Scanners
Those whose multiple interests come one after another, they tend to move on to something new rather than returning to the same interests repeatedly.
Serial Specialists can go deep into one area for along period of time before moving on to something entirely different.
Serial Masters tend to learn an area until they master it and it’s no longer interesting before they move on to the next thing.
Jacks-of-All-Trades
What the jack-of-all-trades may be best at is living a damned good life.
Wanderers
Wanderers may not know what they want next. They appreciate and welcome random experience. As Tolkien reminds, “Not all those who wander are lost.”
Samplers
Samplers want to try everything and know a little a bit about everything.
High-Speed Indecisives
High-speed indecisives blow through ideas and experiences at a speed few can identify with.
Life Design Models, Career Fits, and Tools
Giving scanners the experience of recognizing themselves and their quirks in the sea of humanity is just Sher’s first gift to us. For each type above, she moves on to providing theoretical and practical tools that are validating, comforting, empowering — and likely, for many, life-changing. I found most to be both utterly useful and delightful at the same time. And I think anyone facing a re-evaluation of how they are organizing their priorities, schedules, wishes, and lives right now will also find inspiration and utility in many of these.
Again, I provide just a sampling, as an encouragement to read the whole book.
Life Design Models
These are conceptual models that can help you arrange your life in a way that better works for you. The names are evocative enough to give you some sense: The Schoolteacher Model, The Farmer Model, The Parallel Lives Model, The School Day Model, The Spy Model, The Random Acts of Passion Model, The Alternating Current Model, The Walter Mitty Model, The Repertoire Model, The Good Life Model, The Most Valuable Player Model, The Itinerant Preacher Model, The City Desk Reporter Model, and at least a dozen others.
Career Fits
Sher fleshes out career options and ways to conceive of work to refined degrees that may spark new possibilities. Again, the names are vivid enough to get your imagination going: Replaceable jobs, independent work, portable jobs, jobs with built-in travel, the good enough job, your own small business, multiple income streams, umbrella career, contract work, telecommuter, consultant, expertise for sale, itinerant troubleshooter, writer, researcher, public speaker, talent agent, life coach, teacher, and other terrific mash-ups.
Tools
Finally, the tools Sher has devised over the years to help scanners practically and heartily enjoy their natures and do all the things are treasures. Anyone newly refusing to choose and juggling all the things that matter to them is bound to benefit from such things as: the scanner daybook, a 2-year wall calendar, destination steamer trunks, scanner planner, avocation station, project boxes, three-ring binders, 15-month goal calendar, kitchen timer, portable idea deck, career tryout, life’s work bookshelf, the soiree, the private museum, and the everything-I-don’t-want list.
If you’re scanning options for your author business these days facing local and global uncertainties, you owe it to yourself to read this book and bask in the lifetime of love and quirky expertise Sher poured into this work. Here’s a quick summary in the meantime:
Refuse to choose! You can do all the things that interest you and that matter to you. There are ways to make room for everything.
Open your mind to what’s possible. Value the way you think and approach the world, respect your ideas, follow your curiosity and enthusiasm.
Support your efforts by ditching false assumptions and shoring up useful ones.
Find a scanner type or types you identify with or want to explore.
Employ life design models, career fits, and tools to create the life and career of your dreams.
Finally, according to Barbara Sher, it’s not just a privilege to live a life you love, “it’s an obligation.”
