Katy Ripp 00:00:00  You’re not going to find one passion so great that all others will disappear. Your genetic mandate is to make many commitments and enjoy each one to your full capacity. This literally changed my whole entire outlook on life. So what if instead we just decided that we are done fighting our nature and we worked with it? That’s what I’m hoping to help you with. Today we’re going to explore what helps a scanner thrive. Hey there fellow rebels, welcome to #ActuallyICan, the podcast where we say a hearty hell yes to designing life on our own terms. I’m Katy Ripp, a lifestyle coach, business mentor, and serial entrepreneur here to guide you through the wild ride, defying what society expects of us and embracing our authenticity. On this show, we dive deep into taboo topics like death, money, spirituality, entrepreneurship, unapologetic self-care, and personal development, all while swearing and laughing along the way. Expect down and dirty conversations, plenty of humor and a whole lot of exploration, leaving you feeling empowered to be your truest self.

Katy Ripp 00:01:08  Whether you’re craving a good laugh, seeking unconventional self-care tips, or simply looking for some camaraderie. You’ve come to the right place. We only get this one short life, so buckle up and let’s design yours on our own terms. Ready to dive in? Let’s go. Hey, everybody, welcome back to #ActuallyICan. The podcast where we embrace the bold and the unapologetic living and also rewrite our stories that have held us back most of our lives. So I’m your host, Katy Ripp. And we’re going to dive into something today that has really completely transformed how I look at myself, how I operate in the world, and I hope this will help some of you and how you see yourself too. and we are going to be talking about a scanner personality. If you’ve ever been called like all over the place or felt like people don’t understand your endless passions, this one is absolutely for you. I used to think I was totally, like, flighty and non-committal, sometimes lazy. I dive into a new hobby or idea or business as a matter of fact, only to feel guilty when something else caught my interest.

Katy Ripp 00:02:23  I could never finish a project. There were so many instances where I just didn’t feel right, and felt like the black sheep felt like I just couldn’t keep my focus on one thing. But then I discovered Barbara Shearer’s concept of the scanner personality, and it was like a total lightning bolt of validation. So I hope by the end of this episode you’ll feel seen and empowered. We’re going to break down what it means to be a scanner. Or sometimes it’s called multi passionate, which sounds like way cooler than scanner if you ask me. But the scanner is out there. We’re going to try and figure out how to thrive with this personality. And I’m going to share some of my favorite tools, like my trusty ten minute timer. If you’ve never seen me do that or heard about it, you’ve never really followed me because it’s basically how I run my life. So we’re going to celebrate that beautiful chaos that is a scanners mind. So buckle up. So how did I even discover the scanner personality? I had never even heard of this until 2020.

Katy Ripp 00:03:23  So if you’re listening to this right now, that was four years ago. I also sort of forgot that this was out here. So I was feeling really sort of flaky and up in the air recently, and I’ve been trying to get a whole bunch of projects done, of course, half done projects, one of them being my blog and I have, I don’t know, maybe 100 blog posts that are half written. And I decided and committed to going back and really looking and really diving deep into my SEO on my website. Right. Because that’s the right thing to do. And so I realized that I had all of these unfinished blog posts, and I love to write, but I would write about something, and this is a perfect example. I would write about something, and then I would turn my attention to something else, and then I kind of forget about it for a while, but I was actually feeling really, really curious and wanted to explore all of these other drafts that I had of blog posts, and I stumbled on this one.

Katy Ripp 00:04:24  So how I really discovered the personality type was actually, I started out with blogging in 2018. I was in a blogging Facebook group. Right, because scanners also love our communities. So it was linked up to the Elite Blog Academy that I had purchased a course on blogging, and at the time, I was really struggling to find like the perfect domain name and posting kind of about my struggles as a blogger. But here’s a snippet. I went into the Facebook community and I wrote this post. I have been sort of a stalker on here for a couple of years. I started and paused several ideas I thought I was through. Unit one of the course. But I keep going back to my domain name, avatar, blog name, etc. hopefully some of you that have made it big or are struggling with this two can help. Girl out. I’ve had many passions writing about personal struggles, entrepreneurship, yoga, goal setting, and even mental health solutions. But niching down seems impossible. A few comments trickled in, but the one response like stop me in my tracks.

Katy Ripp 00:05:29  Really? I had to reread it a couple of times and the comment was as a scanner personality niching down has been incredibly difficult for me too. I’m gonna let that sink in for a little bit. I looked at it and I was like, wait, what is a scanner? And she had recognized that I was probably a scanner too. So I was like, wait a minute, What is the scanner? So I went down a real rabbit hole on scanner personality. 2 or 3 hours of finding everything I could read about it, which actually is not a lot out there. Everything I could read about it, podcasts, everything. And I mean, for years, I just thought my scattered passions were like a complete weakness. But no way. Here I am, I’m a scanner. So understanding the scanner personality, what exactly is it? So the term actually comes from a book I read called Refuse to Choose by Barbara Scheer, us here. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it.

Katy Ripp 00:06:27  According to her, scanners are driven by curiosity and have an insatiable need to learn and explore. Sound like anybody out there? We definitely get excited by new projects and ideas, and often feel that one lifetime isn’t enough to experience everything we want to do. One of the quotes that hit me like a lightning bolt honestly, is this one. You’re not going to find one passion so great that all others will disappear. Your genetic mandate is to make many commitments and enjoy each one to your full capacity. This literally changed my whole entire outlook on life. I used to believe that I had to stick to one passion, and if I couldn’t, it meant that I lacked commitment, or that I was lazy or non-committal or a failure. Really? Why couldn’t I commit to just one thing? Why did I always get so bored as soon as things got good? That’s another trait. So here are a few key traits of a scanner. So we’re definitely curiosity driven, always chasing the thrill of something new. So kind of like that shiny object out there that sort of promises something new and something you can learn or something you discover.

Katy Ripp 00:07:38  But that focus might not last forever. And that’s totally okay. This is the other thing is like accepting that this is all okay, we’re going to get there, I promise. But just keep in mind that we’re going to get there. Here’s the thing being a scanner doesn’t mean that you lack discipline. It just means that our brains are wired to explore, to connect the dots across lots of different disciplines, and to innovate in ways that people with singular passions might not understand. So we’ll address the elephant in the room, right? Like the challenges. What are the challenges of a scanner? So raise your hand if you’ve ever been labeled as noncommittal or possibly unfocused. I’m raising my hand over here, I see you. Society loves to reward people who specialize in one thing, so think going deep rather than wide, which can make scanners feel less than. We also tend to get really overwhelmed because there’s so much we want to do, but limited time and energy for all of those things. So what if instead we just decided that we are done fighting our nature and we worked with it? That’s what I’m hoping to help you with today.

Katy Ripp 00:08:41  So we’re going to discover and explore because we all love exploring. We’re going to explore what helps a scanner thrive. Honestly, it really does start with a mindset shift. So first, let’s embrace our multifaceted nature. There’s no need to fit in a box that wasn’t made for us. We know now that being a scanner is actually a gift. Were the world’s natural innovators the ones who can find patterns and solutions and thinking outside the box that others might miss because we draw from a huge pool of experiences that either we’ve had, we’ve discovered, we’ve read about, we’ve listened to, we’ve learned along our experiences. We can pull from all of those experiences and really find those patterns and solutions. So structure. Now, I know this word might make some of you cringe. And I get it. Let me tell you that I totally get it. But I’m not talking about rigid schedules here. I’m talking about possibly like making a scanner planner, which we will talk about in a little bit, where a journal you can possibly keep track of all your passions, writing down your ideas or your half finished projects, your someday dreams.

Katy Ripp 00:09:56  This is going to give you permission to come back to them later. Totally guilt free and a big one here. Permission to pivot. Scanners thrive when we allow ourselves to explore a passion and then move on guilt free when the thrill fades. It’s not quitting, it’s just part of our process. And we have to really figure out how to embrace this. Okay, so here are a few more traits of the scanner. Personality. This is how barbers share. I think it is sheer. I think this is how she explains it. She describes scanners as curious and creative and also multi passionate who are never satisfied with just one path. So I think a lot of us as a, you know, midlife adults right now are thinking of ourselves as ADHD and that absolutely could be true, right? There are probably many, many of us that went undiagnosed, but you might actually just be multi passionate. So here are some of the signs that you might be a scanner. You crave variety and dive into new interests with passion and energy.

Katy Ripp 00:11:00  You’re equally fascinated by art, science, languages and new technology, which this is also one of those things that like, I love spreadsheets and numbers and really looking to see how things work and fit together. But I also am like a major visionary, right? Big picture person. Getting down into the details of stuff is really not my jam. You love starting projects and learning new things more so than finishing them. So I know lots of people that like love finishing projects like feel a real sense of accomplishment after they finish something. My accomplishment comes in starting them. As a society, we mostly value people that finish projects. You also have endless creative ideas, from books to businesses to TV shows and art projects and all the things. It’s one of the things that I really am good at in my coaching business, because I can think outside of the box, and if somebody comes to me with a problem, I can usually look for a different solution that’s not necessarily mainstream. So your brain might totally light up in nature or at rest, inspiring you with new ideas.

Katy Ripp 00:12:08  I think I’ve talked about this a couple of times, but when I walk or when I move is when I get all of my good ideas. So I kind of consider it my part time job to get out and actually move, because that’s where all of my great ideas come. And I usually just take my phone and I’ll dictate notes, or I’ll like write notes down in my phone while I’m walking. This creates a little bit of a problem when I’m in a yoga class, but I have absolutely done it. The thought of sticking to one career or passion forever terrifies you. I have to be really honest about this and I try not to get very I try not to get too aggressive about this, but for those of you that sit in cubicles and or sit in an office or punch a clock from 8 to 5 or whatever, like really, that’s your structure. That’s your routine. Some of you love it, some of you probably hate it, but it would make me like, want to scratch my eyes out.

Katy Ripp 00:13:03  I think sometimes I want to do that because it seems easier, but I would never make it. I would just never make it. I like my time. I like the freedom. I like new things happening every day. So you’re also great at making connections between seemingly unrelated ideas. And I talked a little bit about this before. Like I can collaborate with just about anybody on anything, and I can figure out how maybe a cookie decorator and a home organizer can get together and figure out how to collaborate and make a really cool like event or idea together. And those are two sort of unrelated Ideas, but I just have that sort of brain that could figure out a way to do that and make it really beneficial for both of them. So if you think to yourself, like connecting to people or connecting to items or connecting to experiences that don’t seem related, you probably are a scanner. And so let’s be honest here your house and your car may be messy. It’s just part of the scanner charm.

Katy Ripp 00:14:06  And if you’ve known me for a long time, you know that’s why I need a ten minute timer. So my ten minute timer has cleaned my house. I also have someone who does my laundry and cleans my house for me, so that’s the only reason I work. So I can have a clean house, but I just can’t do it myself. But also, I have to set a timer in my car for 30s and I don’t get out of my car for 30s and I take those 30s. And now I have started to clean up all of the things in my car before I get out, but I won’t let myself get out for 30s. I know it sounds weird and super immature, but it’s just the way I work. So if you’re nodding along to any of these and you don’t have to be all of them, you could have like little bits and pieces. You’re probably a scanner. You’re not lazy, you’re not non-committal or just wired to explore the world and its endless possibilities in a totally different way.

Katy Ripp 00:14:58  So here’s a little caveat to now that I’ve been sober for three years now, I can totally look back and see how these feelings of never fitting in this non-committal feeling, the kind of unexplained reason for me never finishing projects, society’s way of not really celebrating this kind of trait. Wanting people to, you know, dive deep on one thing rather than be fairly decent at a lot of things. I realize some of that probably made me feel so lost that I actually used alcohol to numb the pain and medicate. And once I figured this out and I started to really embrace it. It was much easier for me to walk away from that. So just a little caveat there. Okay, so maybe you’re thinking to yourself, like, how the fuck do I make this, like work for me instead of against me all the time? Here are some tools that I have used and I have figured out actually work for me. There are lots of tools out there, lots of, you know, digital downloads, printables, journals, all the things.

Katy Ripp 00:16:04  And I’m a sucker for any kind of paper. So journals have always been one of the things that I love to buy but never actually finish. This year, my friend Kenzie, who actually was on the podcast about homeschooling. So if you are interested in homeschooling at all. Also Kenzie and Erin in that episode were hilarious. So Kenzie actually bought me a journal last year a planner I’m a sucker for a planner, but I never really got past January. But this one I’m just about to get through the entire year, so it was called a commit 30. So it’s commit 30.com commit three 0.com. I am not an influencer or an affiliate partner of these guys, although I really wish I was because I could sell the shit out of these things. It is a fascinating tool. I love it so much. There’s stickers and there’s colors and there’s gold circles and places to do doodling, and it’s just it’s full of the stuff that I’ve always really kind of needed. There’s challenges every month that you can make up yourself, but they give you some ideas.

Katy Ripp 00:17:07  So if you are a planner junkie, head on over to commit 30 and just take a look at some of the pages. I really ended up enjoying this one, and it’s the first planner I think I’ve ever gotten through in my entire life. So that is one tool that if you are interested in that, hop on over there. My second tool would be the ten minute timer. So I know this sounds super elementary, really simple, but for me, somewhere along the way somebody said, try it for just ten minutes and see what happens. And I did it. So I have been obsessed with little egg timers. The first one I ever bought was at Anthropologie. The stupidest. I don’t know if it was $45. Like, who spends fucking $45 on a egg timer? But this girl does. It was the cutest little retro timer. I still have it, and I set that thing for ten minutes and do just about anything, so it helps me start a project without the overwhelm. One of the stories I love to tell my mother is an amazing cleaner.

Katy Ripp 00:18:10  She always has been. She used to vacuum our house from top to bottom every single day. Three floors, basement, main floor, upstairs every single day. All of it. Stairs. Everything top to bottom. Make all the beds. Do all the things. And I cannot like, keep a pair of shoes off our stairs. I we were just like, I don’t know if I was like Spawned from of super dirty person. But my mother, I mean, I’m sure she is just. She looks at my house sometimes and it’s like, oh, Katie, I can just hear her voice. Oh, Katie. But the other thing that she is extremely good at is just starting. I can stand in front of a closet for an hour. I mean, that is really no joke. I can stand and stare at a closet for an hour thinking about how I’m going to start this. If I start it, how am I going to finish it? I don’t want to, like, drag everything out of my shoe and coat closet, and then everything’s just laying there and I lose steam, so I just don’t do it.

Katy Ripp 00:19:13  I used to get really, really overwhelmed with that kind of stuff. So instead of failing altogether or not finishing a project, I just wouldn’t start. I wonder if that feels familiar to any of you, but somewhere along the way somebody said, just do it for ten minutes and see what happens. You can stop right after ten minutes. You don’t have to keep going, but if you feel like you can keep going, just keep going. And when the timer goes off, you’re not going to feel guilty. You’re not going to do anything. You’re just going to set the timer for ten minutes. You’re going to do what you can, and then you’re either going to stop or you’re going to go on or you’re going to give yourself a break. So I started it with my little Anthropologie really expensive timer. So here’s how it works. It’s not really rocket science. It’s simply setting a ten minute egg timer. Obviously, absolutely. Use your phone or you can use 100 different timers. It doesn’t really matter for me.

Katy Ripp 00:20:05  I like the tangible. I like to see it. I like to hear it. I like the little dinging at the end. Whatever you do, you. But the ten minutes gives you enough. Ten minutes isn’t that long. It really isn’t. But it gives you enough time to sort of get started. And if you’re trying to beat the clock like I do because I’m competitive. Also, if you’re trying to beat the clock, it’s amazing how much you can get done in ten minutes. That’s. But if you don’t go past the ten minute, like a lot of times I go past the ten minutes, it goes off and I’m in the middle of my closet. But now I’ve started. I forgot to tell you, like my mother can. I will stand in front of a closet for an hour. My mom will just start. She’s like, what the fuck are you standing here for? Just start. Keep going. Like, what are you doing? And I’m like, I am thinking she’s like, quit fucking thinking and start going so she can have like a toy closet cleaned out in the time that I would have just stood there and stared at it.

Katy Ripp 00:21:01  So I have used this to declutter my house. I’ve used it to start a writing project. I use it almost every Monday on my Money Mondays to go through and pay attention, and do all the deposits and all of the weekend transactions for all of our business and our personal finances. I have cleaned up our porch. We’ve cleaned our garage this way. A lot of the things that I do happen to be decluttering, like when my office is ridiculously messy. I take ten minutes. I clean it up before I start, before I even get coffee when I come in here. So the ten minute timer has really like ten minutes at a time. Totally saved my life. It just gets me started and that’s really all I need. Once I get started, I can keep going. It’s really just getting started. So maybe the ten minute timer will help you. Another little tool that I use sometimes is called mind mapping or using a mind map. This is a great tool for visually organizing your thoughts.

Katy Ripp 00:21:59  So of course we have thousands of thoughts a day while hundreds of thousands of thoughts a day scanners probably have millions. But basically, you would grab a big sheet of paper and start connecting your ideas. For example, if you’re working on like a creative project, you would map out all the related concepts, the potential collaborators you could be with, or steps you might want to take to get to the next step. It’s like creating kind of a snapshot of your brain’s brilliance. So for instance, like the middle circle might be, I’ll just use our ice cream shop as an example. The middle circle is ice cream shop, but then the branches off of that are going to have basically different revenue streams. So let’s say we do events. We also do birthday parties. We also do crazy shakes like we opened right after Covid. So we were going to do like birthday shakes in a jar and then sell those to people that could just come pick them up for birthday parties, so that kind of thing.

Katy Ripp 00:22:58  And then again, more branches off of those circles. So like for events, we’ve got live music, we’ve got last school party, we’ve got first day of school party, we’ve got Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, all the events that go on around a specific day or time where we can then branch out and like, what do we do on Mother’s Day? So we have, you know, buy one, get one scoop of ice cream. Plus we have Build your mom a picture frame project and that kind of thing. So you could obviously you could keep going and going and going and going, but it does help sort of map out an idea, and it flushes out some of the poor ideas that we have, which in my case are plenty. And so we can sort of cross out the things that don’t make sense and the things that do make sense. Another tool I use is theme days. So for instance, like Money Monday or Finance Friday or Wellness Wednesday, that kind of thing where you concentrate on one thing one day a week.

Katy Ripp 00:24:00  And so you always have theme days, and those are the things that you pay attention to on those particular days. Sometimes that lets us open up our mind and concentrate on one specific thing, rather than 450,000 things. So also I am going to put in the show notes a link to some of these tools. I have the ten minute timer. I have a list of things that you can declutter in ten minutes. But I also have a list of tasks that you can do in ten minutes. So if you are an entrepreneur or somebody that has control over a whole bunch of different things in your office professional life, those are tasks that you can get done every day. And I do have a blank PDF for mind maps, so it just gives you an idea of what that looks like, because it’s sort of hard to explain on here. I’ll leave that link in the show notes as well. So before we wrap up, I just I really want to leave you with this, like being a scanner and being a multi passionate is a gift.

Katy Ripp 00:24:57  It took me so long to figure this out, but it means that you get to live a rich and colorful life full of endless possibilities. So if you feel like you are a multi passionate or all of a sudden you identify as a scanner and not just crazy and flighty and all over the place all the time. Be gentle with yourself, give yourself some grace and celebrate your curiosity and your adaptability and flexibility and the unique way your mind works because it is different than most minds. So I definitely hope this episode resonated with you. I’d love to hear if anybody has any feedback about this, or if any or all of it resonated, or you’re listening to this and you’re like, hell no. I dive deep on one thing and I’m cool with that. Also cool if you find any of the scanner tools that I’m going to provide here beneficial to you, please let me know. I would also love to keep creating some of these tools, some things that work for me and keep going with those. 

Katy Ripp 00:26:01 So thank you so much for joining me today on #ActuallyICan until next time, please keep exploring and keep thriving. And remember, you can do it all. Just maybe not all at once. And that’s a wrap on today’s episode. I hope you enjoyed diving deep into the world of living authentically with me. Before you go, don’t forget to connect with me on Instagram. Shoot me a message at Katy Ripp. I’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s episode and connect with you further. And remember, if you want more details on today’s episode, or just want to explore more about designing your life unapologetically, head on over to my website at Katy Ripp dot com. There you’ll find all the juicy details and resources you need to keep the inspiration flowing. Lastly, if you’d like to join me on the show, whether it’s to tell about your experience of designing your own life, to share your expertise, or if you’d like to participate in lifestyle coaching live on air, don’t hesitate to reach out. Your story could inspire countless others on their own path to living authentically.

Katy Ripp 00:26:57  Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, keep living boldly designing your life. And remember #ActuallyICan.