My Scanner Daybook (or how I’m emulating Da Vinci)

How much do you know about Leonardo Da Vinci? I admittedly don’t know that much about him – he painted Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, wrote in notebooks backward and upside down, and was a hilarious side character in Ever After – but I do know that he was a Scanner personality. I wrote about Scanners in this post, but something I didn’t mention in that post is the ultimate tool for a Scanner – the Scanner Daybook.

Barbara Sher’s Scanner Personality

I’ll refer you to the aforementioned post for an in-depth explanation of what a Scanner Personality it, but I’ll take you through the high-level details. Barbara Sher wrote a book called Refuse to Choose! detailing what a Scanner is and what they should do with their lives. A Scanner is someone who has many core interests – in the corporate world, they’re often referred to as a generalist (as opposed to the specialist, who has one interest). They (we?) can’t just pick one thing to focus on. In fact, choosing one feels stifling.

But having so many interests can be distracting. It’s difficult to choose a priority when everything is interesting, not to mention finishing anything! So in order to collect and expand on ideas, Barbara Sher suggests a tool: the scanner’s daybook.

The Scanner Daybook

A daybook is a notebook meant to give a Scanner space to expand on all the ideas and opportunities that pop into their heads. But it’s not just any notebook.

I, for example, have a daily notebook that started in college as my “book of lists”, and developed into a bullet journal over time. This notebook houses everything – to do lists, lists of books I’ve read, random scribbles to remember things later. If I feel like I need to write it down, it’ll likely go into this notebook.

My scanner’s daybook is different. Its purpose is more specific – it’s meant to house only my creative ideas. I’ve had iterations of this in the past (there’s a spiral notebook hiding in my bookshelf somewhere that has sketches of sewing project ideas from 2013…), but Sher’s instructions helped me hone the use of this notebook. It’s ONLY for my creative ideas. And its layout is conducive to adding layers of detail as you imagine it.

And as ideas gather in your daybook (I’ll talk a little about how to make that happen later), you’ll find that sometimes, just writing the idea out is enough to quell your enthusiasm for it. Writing about other ideas will spark continual inspiration, and those are the ideas to start working on.

Scanner Daybook Examples

I won’t belabor you with images of a bunch of other people’s daybooks (mostly because it’s hard to find images connected to real people and not just re-pinned beyond traceability), but here are a couple examples.

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I mentioned Da Vinci at the beginning of this for a reason. He is the ultimate daybook hipster – he was making daybooks waaayyyy before they were cool. And fun fact: the British Museum has digitized a couple hundred pages of his notebooks! Check them out here.

I was planning on showing somebody else’s because showing mine felt silly somehow. But I couldn’t find anybody else’s that I liked (but this guy did a completely-digital one, which I love). Anyway, I’m working on doing things even though I might look silly (more about that in this post), so here’s mine.

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Starting Your Own Scanner Daybook

When you’re shopping for your ~*perfect daybook*~, there are three key elements to keep in mind.

Big and Impressive

You know those notebooks you see in a stationary store that are big and impressive and you can’t help being intimidated to write in them? That’s perfect for a daybook. The idea is to symbolically honor the value of your ideas. After all, your ideas are a manifestation of your creativity, an expression of your innovative thinking, and absolutely worth taking seriously.

In addition, a big notebook will give you space to capture all the details of the ideas you have. Each idea will get its own two-page spread, and you want to ensure it’s large enough!

Paper you want to write on

The second element for an effective scanner’s daybook is for it to have the right paper. If you don’t have strong opinions on paper…I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t understand that. When you’re shopping for a daybook, try and go somewhere where you can touch the paper before you buy it. You don’t want it scratchy or too thin. Nothing that ink will bleed through!

Also, Sher recommends blank pages – no lines. I followed her advice with mine. While I agree that not having lines allows me to sketch and emphasize particular points easier than I would be able to with lines, I’m I might go with a dotted page (like with my bullet journals) next time.

Pens/Pencils you want to write with

Ok, so this isn’t technically the daybook itself, but it’s important to have satisfying pens. Remember, you’re going to be honoring your ideas, letting them live their full lives on these pages. So make sure you have the right writing instrument. One that matches your notebook, that balances perfectly in your hand, and creates the perfect, unskipping line.

How to Use Your Scanner Daybook

Now that you have all the tools necessary, here’s how you use the daybook.

1. Open to a full 2-page spread

2. Give your idea a title

3. GO.

Pour all your thoughts out on the page. Write prose, draw diagrams, tape in research you found on the internet, do math as to how much money this could make you, draw a map of international coverage, whatever comes to mind. If you come up with a new idea while you’re working on the first one, turn to a new 2-page spread, write the title and a couple quick notes so you don’t lose the idea, then return to your original idea.

4. Repeat.

Sher recommends repeating this process every day for at least 20 minutes for a week or so, just to build the habit. As I mentioned before, regularly recording your ideas will help with the indecision of being a scanner. Some ideas will fill about a quarter of a page and you’ll be out, while others will fill 2 or more pages in your daybook. And that’s when you know you have a winner.

I’ve only been using my scanner daybook for a couple months now, but I like having a central location to ramble about my creative ideas. The more I fill the notebook, the prouder I am of it. If you happen to start one, I would LOVE to chat about it and see what you come up with!