Hi, I’m Katherine, and I have WAY too many hobbies. This is because I’m a scanner personality, so finding a focus is very difficult. My husband was chatting with my brother recently and was asked, “Have you ever been interested in welding?” When I jumped in to say that I was…neither of them were surprised. But having so many hobbies can be discouraging! Luckily, I’ve learned some strategies to help me prioritize and focus on my interests.
Why Focusing Can Be Discouraging
Have you ever had an afternoon where you had nothing scheduled? Free time, for an hour or three? And then you find yourself at the end of it, not starting anything because you couldn’t decide what to work on?
Or have you finally decided to work on a specific project, jumped right in, then struggled with feelings of guilt or unproductivity because you can’t get the other enticing projects off your mind?
Ah, the life of a scanner.
I’ve noticed a pattern in my thoughts. I have a lot of projects that I want to work on. So naturally, I pick one to work on first. But then I feel discouraged because I’m not making progress on any of my other projects. So then I divide up my time among three or five or seven projects, only to get discouraged because I’m not making noticeable progress on any of them…
Turns out, there are two components to focusing your time and effort: prioritization and the actual act of focusing. And you need to tackle both of them if you’re going to really focus as a scanner personality (or as a non-scanner, let’s be real).
Prioritizing Focus
This is my biggest stumbling block. Literally every project I can imagine seems important and exciting and I want to get started on it RIGHT NOW. But I know that that’s a great way to pressure myself into doing things, instead of enjoying them. So I’ve developed some tools to help me prioritize.
Life Mapping
The first step to take if you’re going to prioritize your projects is to convince yourself that focusing on fewer things isn’t going to ruin your life. I know that sounds dramatic, but my projects mean so much to my day-to-day happiness that the idea of restricting myself feels like dooming myself to a boring, one-note existence.
So. When I did this exercise, it gave me peace of mind that I can focus on 1-3 things now, and I’ll get to all the other fun ideas later. It’s an exercise from I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was, Barbara Sher’s book that coined the term “scanner personality”. I’m going to truncate it a bit, but I would highly recommend checking that book out and running through the full exercise.
Take a piece of paper, lay it in front of yourself long-ways. Make one narrow column on the left and the rest will be a wider column to the right. Number the left column by 5s, from 0-90. (So 0, 5, 10, 15, 20…).
Then, in the right column, schedule out all the big projects in your brain. Seriously, put them all in there. List several if you think you can work through more than one in a five-year period. Anything you can dream of, put them in.
It might seem impossible, but you’ll probably run out of ideas before you hit the 90 year mark. I ran out of ideas around 65! But then I let out a sigh of relief. My life is LONG. And as long as I’m working on the things that I think are important now, I’ll have time to work on whatever fun thing I come up with in 20 years.
Prioritization Tools
Ok, now you’ve convinced yourself that you don’t need to do everything RIGHT NOW. Now, how do you decide which of the most important things to do today? Honestly, there are a LOT of tools out there for prioritization. Dig into the google-sphere and try some systems out and see what works for you.
I use an importance/difficulty matrix to decide which projects to focus on. Then, I use my personal scrum system and personal project management to break tasks into manageable chunks and schedule them into my life.
But you don’t need to use those specific tools! The key steps to take are:
- Decide what you’re going to work on
- Decide when you’ll re-evaluate what you’re working on
Once you’ve finished step one, DO NOT REEVALUATE YOUR PRIORITIES UNTIL THE DATE YOU CHOSE. Spend that time working on the projects you love! Enjoy the freedom that your imagination has given you! Schedule more things later!
Distraction Management
But what about all the ideas that jump into your head as you work? They’re so exciting! And they tempt you to start working on them right now, so you don’t forget them or the enthusiasm for you! This is a unique battle for focus as a scanner personality
You need a system to manage that. It doesn’t need to be complicated – it could be as simple as a distraction notebook to scribble whatever tries to sidetrack you.
You could also start a scanner daybook, which gives you a place to capture those thoughts and really give them the space they deserve. Because even if you never work on an idea, it’s worth capturing and giving space in your life.
Building Focus
Once you figure out what to focus on, you might also struggle with how to focus on that thing. In his book Ultralearning, Scott H. Young makes the point that getting good at jumping into things where you left off and going directly to a deep focus is what will help you accomplish a lot of things in a short period of time. And I think that’s one of the most important skills a scanner can build for themselves.
You know how, at the gym, you start with small weights and slowly work your way up to bigger, more ambitious lifting? Young suggests doing the same thing with your focus. Practice by setting a time for five minutes and focusing on your target activity for that long. After that becomes simple, you can extend the time however works for you – 15-minute timers, pomodoro timers, etc. Eventually, you’ll be able to work up to focusing for hours at a time.
I’ve written about using timers for productivity before. My favorite set of timers is 3, 30-minute timers with 10-minute breaks in-between. I can schedule a 2-hour chunk into a day and know I will work solidly for 1.5 hours of it! I can get a lot done in an hour and a half.
Summary: Focus as a Scanner Personality
Ultimately, a huge chunk of figuring out how to focus as a scanner personality is figuring out what to work on – and what NOT to work on. After that, it’s just a physical exercise of directing your brain to jump into the thing you’ve decided on!
