Scanner Personality
I’m a scanner personality and I just noticed it as a friend pointed this out to me while we were visiting the new coworking space in town.
Of course I needed to lookup the definition, come to a few sites describing it. For example this one in English. I’ll quote from the site:
You have creative ideas all the time, whether it’s for a book, a TV show, an art project, a website, a business, starting a movement, creating a brand, or writing a bestseller
Yes! In fact I need to stop myself often from being too creative so I don’t have another project I cannot afford or never be able to finish.
You love to learn about new subjects and ideas and then quickly move on to something else
Yes! A German source also lists learning autodidactic, which is one of my natural talents.
You have loads of seemingly unrelated interests
Yes!
Trying to choose between all your ideas, interests and projects stresses you out
Yes! This is especially a problem if I cannot afford to continue working on interest/projects because I don’t have the money. This has been a source of depression for me in the past.
The thought of concentrating on one single topic for the rest of your life horrifies you
Yes! Actually this is a huge problem for me at the moment. How can I find a job that is interesting and versatile enough to not bore me? More on that later.
You start lots of projects but don’t always finish them before you get into something else
[Oh yes…]
The German version lists a lot more points which most of them I too respond with: yes.
Why did my company fail?
So I had a tech company starting the first Reprap related shop in Germany. I quickly learned how to engineer things, made my own models, etc. But I never succeeded in actually making a significant amount of money.
I noticed a theme going on in all these years: Lack of resources and fear of lack of resources:
- Lack of money to continue development (and therefore focusing on other things)
- Lack of human resources (lack of money, lack of nearby places to find creative people)
- Lack of time (running out of money in development and having to put things into production to sell something for profit)
Also, I cannot neglect that my depression and anxiety issues that had to do with me being trans and being unhappy with my life back then did cause damage to the company. Especially the anxiety:
- I didn’t feel comforable being in public back then
- The fear of neglect or failure did not make me want to search for investors
There’s one more thing:
You start lots of projects but don’t always finish them before you get into something else
Actually, looking at my previous paid side-jobs, I’m very well able to finish the projects, as long as I am happy working with them. How to make me unhappy? As simple as that! Break a promise. Don’t pay me. Ask for unpaid extra work. Stop communicating with me.
Lessons learned
- Next time I start a tech company, I’ll look for a co-founder that complements my skills
- Next time I try to have a stable money situation for double the planned development time
- Next time I’ll look into ways to get money to start with to build a working team before going into production.
What kind of job is right for me now?
Honestly, I don’t know. What can I do? Everything!* (*that does not require me to do the same thing over and over and over again).
I’m currently trying to get a few programming jobs that might keep me busy for a while and re-stock my financial supplies. After all, software development has the upside of not costing money to prototype, apart from my living cost).
My voluntary work at foodsharing does make me use a broad spectrum of non-technical skills. Recruiting new people, making sure they’re reliable, keeping informations flowing, organizing people, organizing meetups, searching for new cooperations.
Having to use a mix of skills a lot makes me very happy.