The New Man Of Action | Personal development focused on taking action and unconventional thoughts on success. » Action

Calling it a day…

Tristan Rayner — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 08:29:40 +0000

Well, I’ve decided to wrap up my blog. Time to move on. My original site here was a kick in the pants for myself to take action: too many ideas, not enough actually done with them. I can’t say that now I follow through everything 100%, but I have a renewed sense of purpose which is less involved with personal development.

So, instead of forcing some content out to my dozen of readers rather than writing from the heart, it’s time to move on.

Where to? Well, who knows. But first I wanted to tip my hat to those who are involved in personal development who are really something else. There are many good contributors, but for mine these two made me sit up and say I can change and I can achieve. Leo Babatua at ZenHabits, and Jonathan Mead at Illuminated Mind. Thanks gents.

I thought a list of what has happened since starting this blog might also be pretty snazzy:

I have commenced and am now part way through an MBA that I was lucky enough to start due to a scholarship from Neville Sawyer. Neville’s kindness, foresight and determination to help young people is inspirational, and I am just one of many grateful recipients of Neville’s philanthropy.
Through starting this site, I have learnt the WordPress philosophy and open source environment… and because I can’t do anything unless it’s balls deep, I’ve learnt enough CSS and PHP (programming languages) to get me into trouble. I’ve also met some great people who are able to get me out of trouble in those situations when I’ve broken something (again).
It’d be a huge leap of faith to say the site or my actions changed anyone or anything much. I am proud of some things that have been born from either the site itself or the online blogging process itself. But hey let’s keep it on the downlow and just say the site has helped cured world hunger, world peace is close, and global warming is no longer a worry. Job done =)

Have fun world – I’m off to my next challenge!

Trust in your team: why, how and who?

Tristan Rayner — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 23:37:54 +0000

I had to do an essay on trust for Uni the other day. I wasn’t too interested. So much research says the same thing: Trust is good, develop trust within your team and you will be more successful, more productive, slimmer, richer, more likely to attract white doves, babies will stop crying when you smile at them, etc etc.

So I started poking around looking for something that was off the beaten track, left field of most of the fanatical trust findings. As it turns out, there’s some good stuff out there.

Claus Langfred in 2004 decided to take a counter-intuitive approach and investigate what happens when teams have too much trust ie. when trust exceeds trustworthiness. In looking at 71 teams, Langfred found that high levels of trust resulted in low levels of monitoring. As this autonomy increased, team members were more often than not satisfying self interest rather than bothering to contribute. A couple of studies by authors including McEvily et al (’03), Barney and Hansen (’94) and Szulanski (’04) demonstrate that trust in someone results in lower levels of vigilance and creates a bias where you give that person the benefit of the doubt. This reduces the chances of you thoroughly screening the info you receive. In turn, you become complacent, and the quality of information you or your team receive decreases. The best research usually turns out to stuff that seems so obvious once you hear it.

Social Engineers use these concepts regarding too much trust against us. One of the most famous of these engineers is Kevin Mitnick, who defined Social Engineering as the act of manipulating people to perform acts or disclose information that can rely on establishing trust between parties. Mitnick didn’t know how to hack a password or backdoor his way into a server – he just got info from people by gently teasing it out of them.

Say you have a long lost friend or relative ring up. They went to school with you or played on your team a couple of years ago. They’re best friends with your partner. They make sure to ask how your dog Fido or was it Patches is going. Suddenly there’s a quick build up of trust, and you’re more than happy to give that person the benefit of the doubt when they get your dogs name wrong. You smile to yourself and correct the person on the phone – your dog’s name is Lassie. Bingo! The Social Engineer hits the jackpot – a fair percentage of passwords are related to pet names, and there’s a good chance your password is lassie1, lassie1234, or has a last name, like LassieRayner.

So while there’s a dark side to trust, most balanced research seems to suggest that organisations find a balance between too much trust (or an overinvestment in trust) when groupthink takes over and not enough trust where no one wants to share anything and there’s a loss of information between parties as everyone holds their cards close to their body. This implies an optimum level of trust exists – but trust is a dynamic and changing variable with a very unclear boundary between not enough and too much. The answer? Add just a little distrust to the equation – don’t take everything from those you trust as the gospel, and if you’re in a team, at least do a little monitoring of them once in a while.

Hello to all - I’m a little sorry I don’t update this more but I’m stuck between apathy and a busy place. I’m off to Karratha, WA on an Elec Eng. job. As the Englishman I’m working with might say – It’s well far away!

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How to breakout of a grumpy mood

Tristan Rayner — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 06:26:54 +0000

Who loves a cactus?

Feeling grouchy. In a bad mood. In a funk. Cantankerous. It’s been me in the past few days. I cheered up eventually and started thinking about what happened the my usual cheery self.

We all have to deal with bad stuff. Bad news, difficult tasks with difficult people, and disappointments all add up. And sometimes we just plain wake up grumpy.

What’s the problem with us on these days? Who’s going to like us when we’re being a thorny bugger? Why do we just sometimes feel a bit like a prickly cactus?

We’re tired out. Being tired is a sure fire way to make you unhappy. There’s nothing like waking up feeling like you haven’t slept a wink and with a big day in front of you. Work on getting more sleep, and you’ll have a bit more pep! The ABC have some great sleep facts which should encourage you to have a snooze more often, including this little doozy: the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska, the Challenger space shuttle disaster and the Chernobyl nuclear accident have all been attributed to human errors in which sleep-deprivation played a role.

Unfinished business. Feel like you’ve got a lot on that you just must do otherwise your world will crumble down? Chances are slim. Remind yourself that you can’t do everything, things can be put off, and that when you die there will still be things left that you haven’t done. In the mean time, try living a little and doing stuff you want. A bit flippant perhaps – but why do we convince ourselves that everything must be just so without concentrating on what really matters?

You forget the real world and expect life to be fair. We make mistakes, we feel sorry for ourselves; we wallow. The funny thing is that the moment you realise that life isn’t fair and and that things don’t always work out the way they should, you stop feeling resentful and start smiling. Bring it on.

Lower Stress: Instead of forcing yourself to bathe in a hot bath of stress, which is bad for just about everything, lower your tolerance to it. Avoid it, delegate it, try to stop getting into those situations. If that’s not possible, for example because your job that you love is stressful, work on releasing stress – and not by throwing stuff out the window! Some people are into yoga and meditation. Others just like to go and have a laugh with mates at the end of a week. Don’t just sit there Improve your stress-coping skills and you won’t wake up like a bear with a headache.

Choose Your Battles: Arguing with everyone is sure to make you more grumpy, not less. Sometimes you need to stick it to someone when they are giving it to you themselves. But sometimes we are just disagreeable and want to aggravate everyone. Choose your battles wisely, you’ll be far more effective in winning those that are truly important.

GTG: How to get things going – get a partner!

Tristan Rayner — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 08:08:03 +0000

Partnerships and teamwork can lead to success. Flikr: ThinkPanama.com

Just recently I’ve realised that I really flourish in a team environment. I don’t mind doing things by myself, but when engaged in a team or working with someone I find it really works to boost motivation and desire to knock over goals and milestones.

In addition, fnding a partner for something you’d like to do is one of the best ways to get things going. I’ll call this GTG, similar to the well-known GTD (Get Things Done).

Getting things going is a big part of the difficulty that we have when trying to do something new.

Be it a new project, a new business, a new blog, or a personal goal like trying to get fit – it’s tough to start when we’re unsure of what might happen. It’s not easy to keep going when you’re not really getting the results you hoped for initially, especially if you’re out of pocket on the way.

One solution is to do things with a partner or a team. A great example is having a jogging partner, someone who relies on you and someone you equally rely on to go jogging on weekends. It’s a lot easier to face the pavement when you’ve got someone to go with, or when you know if you don’t go you’re letting someone down.

So why do we try to go things alone when we really need help?

I think it’s a combination of:

Greed: We want it all to ourselves;
Lack of trust: Chances are you’ve been let down previously. It’s not easy to trust someone if you’ve been burnt;
Pride: It’s a real ego booster to do something all by yourself.

Any one of those alone is a pretty powerful reason for wanting to do things by yourself. But more often than not, these are the reasons we will fail. Factor in touch of stubbornness and denial and there’s a recipe for a project without hope.

Teaming Up

I’ve always found that when I start something new, I can get a lot done while I’m really excited and ambitiously planning world domination. But often that drive can be misplaced or scattered because I’m not concentrating on the part that’s most important – I’m busy trying to set up the structure required rather than working on the deliverable.

When I’m doing something with someone else, it’s a lot easier to spend that energy doing the most important bits where you can make an impact – not just running around like a kid in a candy store trying everything at once without making headway.

Use your expertise on your parts, let your partner use their expertise on the other aspects which you aren’t so sure about. Great partnerships have partners and teams with different skill sets, but there’s advantages in having both people in a partnership or a few people in a team with a similar expertise so that together you can create something really impressive.

What’s even more important is that a partner or a team can really help move beyond the first downswing. You can’t have overnight success – and in fact it’s probable that you won’t have much luck early on. This relative lack of success isn’t easy to persist against. A fair percentage of us give up when we realise it’s not as successful and not nearly as fun as we first thought. We know we need to put in a consistent effort but suddenly it gets hard.

A partner helps us push through for so many reasons:

Competitiveness: A desire to challenge each other to produce your best whilst being joined forces against the competition you face together.

Friendship: Nothing like being able to go out for a beer together – that’s when the best ideas happen, right?

Commitment: A joint effort can be more effective when you’re able to share ups and downs and motivate each other to keep going.

Perspective: Sometimes you need a different point of view. Maybe you need a woman to join you if you plan to include ladies in your target segment. Perhaps a young person can give you some insights into areas you hadn’t thought of. Use it to your advantage.

I expect to be just the first of a number of GTG posts – helping you get things going! When I was talking about this topic with a friend of mine, he jokingly suggested that this site would have been better as thenewmenofaction.com. In a way he’s right*, it’s far more interesting sharing stories rather than just listening to me all the time. Let me know through a comment or an email if you’d like to share anything.

*He’s wrong because he should’ve said thenewpeopleofaction.com =]

Homer Simpson – The True Man Of Action

Tristan Rayner — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 08:47:37 +0000

Homer Simpson

Is there anyone else quite like Homer Simpson?

An hilariously overweight buffoon you might say – but have a look at the real Homer.

If you want to lead an interesting and challenging life you don’t have to look any further for inspiration.

I’m not talking about the Homer who is obsessed with making the perfect butt grove in his couch.

I’m talking about the slightly deranged yet heroic Homer Simpson who will try anything – he’ll take action with no fear about the consequences that lie ahead.

We could all learn a little from Homer. Forget the boorish lazy behaviour he so effortlessly characterises and look at his excitement and will to try something different. He has tried 188 jobs in the first 400 episodes – some of the all time classics include going to space as a NASA astronaut, taking up studies at clown college to be like Krusty the Clown and becoming Sanitation Commissioner.

Homer acts before thinking, gives it his all, and quite often suffers the consequences.

Our relationship with Homer

The really interesting thing about Homer is that as a blue-collar ‘everyman’, we can all identify with him to some level – or we know someone like it. That makes it easy for us each to take our own insights from Homer and his adventures. The statire is particularly cutting with Homer.

We can all appreciate that Homer suffers from a severe lack of planning. He doesn’t really think about the danger of impulsive behaviour. But he rarely backs away from a challenge, and endears himself by being the lovable dope that has done it all. He certainly has no malice, the problem with him is usually his lack of foresight.

The most obvious message we take from Homer is to do a little planning before committing.

There’s a hidden message embedded here too

Homer is truly a man of action. He is willing to take action without fear or worry getting in his way. Homer doesn’t let anything like that creep into his mind.

Where would we be without people taking risks like Homer who becomes a minor-league baseball mascot, monorail conductor, astronaut – or grease salesman?

Well, we might all be like Marge Simpson (or worse, Maud Flanders. When asked what sort of ‘nonfat ice milk’ she wanted, requested: “Unflavoured for me!”).

Marge Simpson

Talented, hardworking housewife. Flirts briefly with a life outside of TV mom but inevitably falls back in line.

Let’s get one thing straight – Marge is a great home maker, and always puts her family before herself. But she rarely steps outside her comfort zone to take a risk doing something she loves. She has on occasion let her blue hair down to follow her dreams – for example when she joins the police force, or runs her own pretzel wagon, but she disapproves and worries. This isn’t a bashing of Marge. It’s not easy for the mother of a family quite like the Simpsons – but she epitomises those of us who doubt ourselves and don’t give ourselves enough backing to take action.

Let Homer be your guide to taking action – and plan just a little more when you do it!

To buy or to build your success?

Tristan Rayner — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 06:08:09 +0000

Can a system of fostering development and a team culture beat buying talent and bringing in expertise? Img: Dakinho.

What’s the best way to create success?

I’ve been wondering this week about whether or not it’s better to build a culture and a system, or to establish yourself with the best and brightest brought in as hitmen to create value.

We’re spoilt, because this is about to play out in front of our eyes in the football world.

Even if you’re not a fan of soccer, you would’ve probably heard about this week’s latest developments: Real Madrid have bought three of the best players in the world, Kaka and Cristiano Ronaldo and David Villa for a money is no object fortune of around US$300m.

That’s big bikkies. Ridiculous sums of money. That much would just about be enough to buy all the players from the other teams and tell them not to show up when Madrid is playing their team!

So what gives? The spending spree is a clear signal that Madrid intend to take back the mantle of the best football team in the world from their local rivals in the Spanish La Liga, FC Barcelona (I’ll relegate Manchester United here after they were torn apart by Barca in the Champions League final).

Real Madrid have focused on buying the biggest and the best. The club is more than football – it is an entertainment brand. And it sells well. David Beckham’s arrival in 2003 led to a 137% increase in shirt sales, and similar returns can be expected. It seems that talent management will be all that is required to guide Real to further wins.

This current action is in retaliation to Barcelona’s recent triumphs including winning La Liga with a thrashing of Real Madrid 6-2, and becoming Champions of Europe.

Barcelona’s recent success has come from 7 of their 11 starting players being prodigies of their youth academy – including Lionel Messi. From as young as 12, future stars are taught ‘Total Football’. “Receive, pass, offer, receive, pass, offer,” is how Andres Iniesta tells of his youth academy education. The manager is a former Barca midfielder and one-time ballboy, again a homegrown talent. Barca have established themselves under their motto: ‘More Than A Club‘ and with success born from within. The culture and system established by Barca is envied by all football clubs.

Who will prevail?

Will it be a return to the days of the Los Galacticos when a rampaging Madrid, bulging at the seams with superstars including Beckham and Zinedine Zidane, rocketed to immediate success with multiple trophies? Or will the quick success wither and indeed implode similar to the post-galácticos period where Real failed to win any trophy for three seasons following their 2003 league title? In that same period, Barcelona won the 2006 Champions League and successive La Liga titles.

With underdog status going firmly to Barcelona, the new Spanish season will be fascinating to watch both for football, and for those of us who are curious to see if culture, philosophy and homegrown talent can beat the purchased superstars.

What no one will tell you: Create an imaginary friend for success

Tristan Rayner — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 11:46:09 +0000

Image source: Karloswayne

So, you might have heard that children having imaginary friends isn’t a bad thing.

In fact, kids with mysterious companious had far better communications skills at a young age.

Plus, the results of having an imaginary friend were long lasting: university students who recalled having an imaginary companion in childhood were more creative, more achievement oriented, and more emotionally responsive than students who didn’t have one.

The reason for this? When you have an imaginary friend, you have to invent both sides of the conversation. To communicate, you have to understand what a person wants to know and you need to know how to tell them. Acting out both is tricky – and it turns out, it’s good practice for the real thing.

Unseen playmates are teaching kids the art of communication.

So what does it all mean?

I really like this idea when applied to us: adults. Busy and clever thinkers. No time for imaginary friends.

Well, hang on. I think you need to find your own imaginary friend and start talking to him or her again (or it again, in the case of one little tacker who had an imaginary potato called ‘Bun’).

Why?

It puts the shoe on the other foot. You can start to understand things from another perspective. Hear what your ideas sound like from you to someone else. Imagine what sort of responses you might get to your story. Think about how people want their information and how to deliver that to them.

Take action after you’ve bounced some ideas around off your imaginary friend who can see things under a different angle; under a different light. It might help you almost see things again for the first time and give you inspiration outside your normal bounds.

How To Stop Making Excuses And Start Taking Action

Tristan Rayner — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 11:06:31 +0000

Never Give Up - What's Your Excuse? Source: JRFeP (Flikr)

How often do you make an excuse, rather than taking action?

I’m hoping you might see this as a little wake up call.

I think you can do it. You can push past the comfort zone and find your power within.

Are you settling for something that’s less than you really want just because you’re making excuses? You can achieve. You can get fit, eat better, start a business, take action. Start living.

Have you caught yourself saying these before?

“I’m too busy”

“I can’t”

When excuses become a way to justify your lack of action, you’ve really stopped seeing the big picture and don’t have your priorities in place. No matter how hard, what do you need to do that’s really worth doing? What are you neglecting even though it matters the most?

I’m going to present some methods to help you stop making excuses. There’s two main reasons: how you convince yourself not to do something; and a lack of organisation & priorities that stumps progress.

How to stop making excuses: Take a look at yourself

1. Have Confidence: Fight your fear

Be confident. Don’t doubt what you can do. Remember the old chestnut that even if you do fail, at least you will have learned a helluva lot more than if you had done nothing. It’s easy to sabotage your ideas because you have a fear of failing. When given a choice between a risk and sure thing, the sure thing will often win out. Smile brightly at the opportunity you are creating for yourself and embrace what might happen by having a go.

This isn’t easy. I daily toss up thoughts and ideas and shoot them down because I’m not sure if I’ll be able to make them happen. When I realise I’m doing this I usually go and have a chat with a few close friends who I’m comfortable bouncing ideas off and listen to them. Sometimes an outside opinion is needed to help you get some perspective.

2. Stop waiting: Why not now?

Timing is rarely important. Don’t deny any possibility of success by waiting. Avoid thinking that you’ll start going to the gym next week, next month, in the new year, or starting the project once you have a bigger desk, a laptop, a bigger screen. As my friend Mark Foo said to me – he couldn’t just wait until English, his second language, was masterful before starting his site. He had to get going to start fulfilling his dreams.

3. Be Honest: What do you really want?

If you are serious about starting your own business, eating better, or getting fit, there’s physically not much to stop you. However, your excuses for not doing what you want could actually be hiding the real reason for why you don’t do it. Work it out.

A big one for me is that I like doing things with other people – especially physical activity. If you find that you don’t think you can do it by yourself, see if you can find a mentor, a friend, or a gym partner to help out. Find someone or a group who can hold you accountable when you feel like slacking, and possibly punish you. I play soccer (poorly!) for my local club here in Newcastle, Australia. Knowing that if I don’t turn up to training I’m letting everyone in the team down – and risking starting on the bench – can be a big motivator for when I feel lazy.

How to stop making excuses: Organise and prioritise

It’s your choice. Take back your time

Do you find you don’t have time to work on what you love doing? Well, hang on just a tick. You have the choice of how you spend your time. Therefore when you say “I don’t have time” you’re actually saying: “That’s not my priority”. It’s time to organise yourself.

Everyone wants you, especially if you’re talented. It can be difficult to squeeze things into a busy schedule. Consider making a new relationship with your time by sorting out your priorities and what really matters to you. It’s hard to make an excuse when you have defined your number one priority as being getting fit.

That said – you might not be spending as much time with your friends and family. I’ll remind you of a Mr Montgomery Burns quote for you to weigh up when considering your priorities;

Mr. Burns: I’ll keep it short and sweet — Family. Religion. Friendship. These are the three demons you must slay if you wish to succeed in business.

You need to take action to fulfil your goals and dreams. I don’t think there’s any other way.

Need any more inspiration? There’s no excuse to not watch this amazing video.

Matt Scott:

Time to start saying: I can, I will.

Timeless Business Fundamentals Applied To You. Personally.

Tristan Rayner — Sun, 31 May 2009 22:23:05 +0000

Be Ambitious (Cedrics_Pics)

Great organisations are based on timeless fundamentals that have enabled them to survive and thrive. Big business are experts in self-improvement and development.

So why are we so often lost on a personal level?

We crave new methods for founding ideas, stimulating growth, and assisting personal development without knowledge of the core features that distinguish success.

An idea: Why don’t we apply what great companies use for ourselves?

Jim Collins and Jerry Poras spent six-years evaluating exceptional companies (such as 3M & Disney) to unearth the core reasons as to why they are exceptional and published Good to Great and Built to Lastwith the findings.

A number of the underlying guiding concepts explored by Collins and Poras can be applied to our own personal growth and development with potentially amazing results

Four of the timeless fundamentals of great companies:

Big Hairy Audacious Goals:

BHAGs stimulate progress. A BHAG is a form of vision that is set to act as a clear catalyst. A BHAG is usually a broad and inspiring dream, with a finish line that you can aim up at and be truly inspired by.

Some examples of organisational BHAGs:

Google: Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Nokia: Connecting 5 billion people by 2015.

Amazon: Every book, ever printed, in any language, all available in less than 60 seconds.

I smile when I read these BHAGs. They motivate, excite, and build momentum.

Your own personal BHAG should intersect your passions, and give you a best-in-the-world attitude. It’s not just another long term goal. It needs be huge. It has to be hairy-scary and dashing. Too important to be impulsive. More like a Mt. Everest. Publishing a book is fairly hairy – but a bit more audacious would be to become the leading expert in your passionate interest.

A great example: Will Smith and his wife Jada Pinkett want to be the greatest philanthropist’s America has ever seen. It’ll be tough with Bill and Melinda Gates clear challengers, but what an aim.

Experimentation:

Try a lot of things and keep what works. Experimenting stimulates progress. Try stuff out, give things a go. Learning things outside your area of expertise but that you have an interested in can come in handy in all sorts of ways. Read my post on why lighting lots of fires or committing action to a few interesting projects can open up new and unexpected paths.

It’s widely known that Google allows workers 20% of their time to work on things they’re really passionate about. All sorts of ventures have been born from this time allowance (check out the Labs for more). Change is not just embraced, but demanded.

Good enough never is:

Relentless self-improvement stimulates progress. There’s nothing wrong with having shortcomings (I’ve got plenty..!), but you have to do the best you can. If you’re not working on improving from your last experience, you’re spinning your wheels on the ground.

Don’t be seduced by ‘good enough’. Good enough doesn’t stand out. It’s tough to be perfect, but you can be heroic rather than just ok. Dare to be different. Be remarkable and outstanding. Be a Purple Cow.

Develop a core ideaology and align your values to it:

Visionary companies are guided by a core ideology, core values and a sense of purpose beyond just making money. On a personal level, developing your own core ideaology gives a strong sense of identity and helps align your values. Consider your own most important values and write them down. Construct your own ideaology or manifesto based on those values and your passions. Make it something to be pursued zealously, just like 3M’s dedication to innovation, and use it as a guiding force for generations.

An emphasis on ethical standards is a common theme for great companies: staff are inspired by the ideals and give more; the companies reap payoffs in the long term from grateful recipients of their honourable reputations. Look beyond – ‘get lots of customers at big profit margins’ and think about your values and humanity. Your ideaology will serve to guide you.

I’d love to hear your thoughts – have you got a big old shaggy BHAG you’d like to share or feel inspired enough to start applying these core distinguishing methods of improvement?

Unconventional action: Don’t just have one goal – light lots of fires

Tristan Rayner — Tue, 26 May 2009 11:43:16 +0000

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.