Name: Refuse to Choose!
ISBN: 9781594866265

Refuse to Choose!

Lifestyle coach Sher discusses the "Scanner"--Someone who frequently has a multiplicity of interests, but finds it hard to create a successful life, because their passions and abilities are taking them in so many different directions. Sher identifies seven types of Scanners--ranging from the Serial Specialist (someone who learns all about one subject, only to get bored and need to move on to the next) to Sybil (a person with so many areas of interest, she can't finish a thing). Sher counsels Scanners that theirs is a unique ability, not a liability, and contends that Scanners must do everything they love, not zero in on one pursuit at the expense of all others. She offers techniques to free people from "goal paralysis," and shows how people can stop thinking of themselves as dabblers or dilettantes and find innovative ways to live lives of variety, challenge and joy.--From publisher description.

What Hacker News says

malexpleMay 2026

I'm a Java developer with 15 years of experience. I had a pattern I couldn't explain:

First company — 5 years. Second (new stack) — 3 years. Every job after — 1–1.5 years, then burnout.

I spent years blaming external things. Bad management. Wrong team. Boring stack. But it was always me.

Last year I got a Perplexity subscription. In four months I wrote scripts to simplify my daily workflow, built small tools, tried to write my own OS in Zig, and much more. By the end I had 40+ projects — small and large.

I asked myself: what is wrong with me?

I found Barbara Sher's book "Refuse to Choose." Read it in two days. First time in 15 years I saw myself described — not as a collection of flaws, but as a specific type with a specific architecture.

I tried to build a test so that other people could also assess themselves and understand who they are.

I combined Sher's Scanner/Diver concept with Lencioni's 6 Working Geniuses — Sher explains your trajectory, Lencioni explains your working engine.

229 people completed it so far. A few things I noticed: - Most scanners don't recognize themselves until their mid-30s - Age at self-recognition strongly correlates with burnout frequency before that point - The rarest type: the Wanderer Scanner

Works in English, Russian, and Chinese. No registration, completely free. Scoring is algorithmic — your answers produce a score profile, and the result description is generated from that profile. Each combination gives a different output.

https://malexple-scanner-profile.hf.space

Curious: how old were you when you first recognized yourself as a multipotentialite?

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elcapitanApr 2026

This. For those more into reading instead of straight to therapy, Barbara Sher's "Refuse to Choose!" book about living with a multitude of interests can be a good starting point.

Also, making (or maybe tuning) a chess engine to teaching sounds like an interesting challenge, actually.

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k310Feb 2026

Well, that's about one career too late. (mine)

I scratched and clawed my way through. It sure was interesting and varied.

I took heart from a book "Refuse to Choose" by Barbara Sher (2006). Not sure if it's dated by now, but it might encourage generalists who are "serial masters", that is, who master one thing after another; in my case to succeed in various different jobs with a common foundation of computer skills, scripting, *nix and electronics (all self-taught).

I played out that old maxim: A physics degree qualifies you well for every job but physics.

But look at what scripting did for me. I don't recall writing any low level code after learning assembler and C. That layer had sedimented for me while others were still hard at it writing large, complex programs. I just needed to solve a wide variety of problems very quickly,(laundry list withheld) My tools were perl (new at the time), tcl, even hypercard, which let me build interactive apps for non-computer-geek managers rapidly and with nice graphics (XCMDS to the rescue).

So, is this just moving solutions a layer above the previous? How often does this happen?

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codazodaDec 2024

If this resonates, checkout the book Refuse to Choose by the late Barbara Sher.

https://a.co/d/emco5Yk

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codazodaJul 2024

Consider the book Refuse to Choose by the late Barbara Sher. This book helped me fill notebooks where before I would start a notebook and throw it aside after a handful of pages.

https://amzn.to/3RSCGov

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k310Mar 2024

First, decide whether you want to specialize, or to be more of a generalist.

Read "Refuse to Choose" by Barbara Sher.

I am/was a generalist, bouncing from one field of interest to another, so it was electronics, optics, systems, admin and IT, even part of a sales team. Not for everyone. This is called "serial master" in the book.

There are methodologies to help decide. Here is a classical one:

https://careerservices.fas.harvard.edu/blog/2022/08/28/your-...

But there's no methodology for knowing what field is going to be hot or (importantly) dead in a few years. Things change rapidly. This affects specialists more than generalists.

Depending on how focused your interests are, that focus can propel you through tough spells. I learned Unix systems and utilities when not so many did, and that made me really productive. And over time, opened more doors. Others scoffed but I felt the power, and liked it.

A business/management career will take a lot more leadership skills on top of the math and computing basics.

So will techies as they move "up" the ladder. Understanding some psychology, and especially, persuasion will increase effectiveness over efficiency, so to speak.

Good luck.

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