One book that has had quite a big impact on my life is ‘What do I do when I want to do Everything’ by Barbara Sher.*

In the book she discusses the concept of ‘scanners’. A scanner is someone who thrives on having several projects on the go – or moves on from a project to a new one before other people think they should! They are the ones labeled as ‘never finishing anything’ or ‘restless’. Scanners keep scanning the horizon for the next thing!

A key point for me is that a scanner may finish with a project long before other people would consider the project finished.

Barbara Sher compares it to the idea of a bee flitting from flower to flower. We don’t say to the bee – “hey, you didn’t spend half as long on this flower as you did on that one”. We just accept that when the bee has got what it needs from a flower, it moves on. So it is for a scanner. If your child is half way through making something then leaves it unfinished – the chances are that he has got what was needed from the it – whatever it was that had piqued his interest has been satisfied. Trying to make him finish is like making him finish a meal when he is already full. Not very satisfying for anyone.

Once I ‘got’ this I realised I no longer had to be ashamed of the half finished projects that liter our homeschooling!

It isn’t that we just aren’t good at finishing a project – it is that we have GOT WHAT WE NEEDED from it.

And moving on allows us to get more of what we need from another project.

But shouldn’t I be teaching my children to finish things. Finishing is good right? Well, sometimes we do have to take things through to their conclusion. Finishing certain things brings a discipline that IS good. My point is, we don’t have to finish EVERYTHING. We can be choosy about which things that we really WANT to finish.

The recent world has expected people to be very ‘serial’ in their approach to things. You find something you want to do for your career – preferably while you are young – and then you do it. FULL STOP. The concept of ‘jack of all trades, master of none’. Yet in previous times people were prized for their ability to have a wide range of different interests and ideas. You don’t have to look further than Leonardo Da Vinci to see a brilliant man who got involved in all types of things. (And incidently, one who didn’t finish much!). Yet we still consider him brilliant.

I believe the age of the scanner is coming again. People are not so much expected to get ‘a job for life’ anymore. We are moving to a more flexible time of people understanding others having several careers (albeit one at a time!).  The time will come when scanners once again are given the freedom to flourish and develop their talents in many directions at once.

Allowing our children to move on to new things when they wish to do so is allowing them to develop their natural creativitiy and inquisitiveness.

*The book is still available at Amazon.co.uk but the nearest I could find on Amazon.com was Refuse to Choose!