Flikr: _val_

Do you find it difficult to commit to one project at a time?  Or find that your interest in things peaks fast and falls away just as quick?

You’ll be really into playing guitar in one week, but you also want to read the latest blog post about (bad) money advice, and watch a few TED talks.  Or you’ll look up at night, see the stars, and remember that you’ve always wanted to know what all the constellations are called.

Committing all your action to one project and seeing it through is a special gift. I’ve never really been able to understand how just doing one project or trying to achieve one aim or goal really works.  There’s are so many interesting things out there.

The world is an amazing place.   As William Cowper remarked – “Variety is the spice of life”.

Understand Yourself

A short journey of self discovery or inward looking is often required when you find you can’t do what others can.

Once upon a StumbleUpon I discovered the thoughts of Barbara Sher. Ms Sher likes to talk about ‘deep divers’ and ’scanners’.

In short:

Deep divers are specialists who are happy being completely absorbed in a topic.  Deep divers do PhDs & become experts.  Anyone you know who’s been doing the same job for the last 20+ years is an example.  Specialists tend to be well paid, but are they happy?

Scanners want to taste everything, learn as much as they can.  Intense curiosity.  Interested in everything.  Can’t seem to settle on anything in particular. Da Vinci is an example of a brilliantly successful scanner.

It’s an interesting way to look at people and their behaviour.  For me, it becomes a revelation – I am a scanner, and it’s good.  One thing to remember though, as a scanner, I can get in trouble spreading myself too thinly across too many projects.  But there’s a thirst to learn and grow and push limits.

Now where?

The concepts of working on more than one passion and being a scanner can be rather nicely bought together with a story from Bill Buxton’s new book Sketching User Experience:

A ceramics professor comes in on the first day of class and divides the students into two sections. He tells one half of the class that their final grade will be based exclusively on the volume of their production; the more they make, the better their grade. The professor tells the other half of the class that they will be graded more traditionally, based solely on the quality of their best piece.

At the end of the semester, the professor discovered that the students who were focused on making as many pots as possible also ended up creating the best pots, much better than the pots made by the students who spent all semester trying to create that one perfect pot.

Therein lies a recipe for creating success.  Don’t devote yourself to making a pot.  Devote yourself to making pots, and learn from each mistake.

Do more, create more, experiment. Light lots of fires. Fan the ones you like most.  See what catches.  Don’t hose down your own ideas.  Don’t try to create the one project of perfection.   The more you try, the more you can introduce an element of unpredictability that might take off.

It’s humorously counter-intuitive: reduce your risk by starting lots of fires and seeing which one(s) take.

Ignore conventional advice about taking on one project.  Throw yourself at your biggest interests. Create options for yourself.

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