From career counseling, advanced schooling, cheesy online tests, and plain ol' curiosity, all the interesting details of my personality, values, management style (if any), and other ways of pigeonholing someone.
Popular scheme based on Carl Jung's work on personality types. Two, maybe three times, it took the MB, the full-blown professional version, and found myself to be INTP or INFP.
I=Introvert - one time i measured near the middle, but every time definitely leaning toward Introvert. I like to think before deciding. Prefer to work on projects by myself in a quiet place without much interruption. A few interruptions are nice, but if i'm really on a roll, with any interruption i could "lose the bubble" ((link to excellent page - where did that page go?)). Richard Feynman described his mental "house of cards" in his autobiography.
Though Enough "E" to shmooze at an art show reception or social events, but i get worn out quick at parties and you wouldn't want to hire me as TV game show host.
Note that the terms Introvert and Extrovert are used in a somewhat different, though not unrelated, sense than in everyday lay usage.
N=iNtuitive Very strongly so - possibilities and relationships fill my mind while established facts and hard reality go out the other ear. Definitely good for science esp. the more theoretical areas, art, creative writing. I prefer creating fine art over working on commercial art projects.
T=Thinking and F=Feeling - the most recent MB results had me in the middle of the scale, just a teeny bit toward Thinking. I am strong in both. Right-brained spatial impressions, consideration of my personal values interest me as much as objective logic. I'll come up with a brilliant idea then encode it as software and write a nice stodgy dry engineering report on it.
P=Perceiving - this is the one i consistently score highest on. I'll strongly tend to do things my own way, outside standard procedures. I get along great in R&D departments, with manufacturing engineers, because they want problems solved and phenomena investigated. Depending on the organization of course, but usually, that's what i like to do.
OTOH, i would be a bad choice hire as an accountant. Beside utter incompetence in that field, there are lots of little rules and big laws that people get thrown in jail for screwing up. Hey, may some jail company could payola me to find a job as an accountant... keep their business growing...hmm...
I usually putter around, creaking along until i get a burst of enthusiasm when i work like a madman on a project, getting a lot done fast, then it winds down and i go back to hanging around, hiking and websurfing until the next burst. I'm great at envisioning excellent solutions to problems and starting something, but then finishing it over time becomes like pulling teeth.
In terms of Thom Hartmann's hunter/farmer categorization, i'm definitely a hunter. I prefer Wilson Harrell's more exciting term "buccaneer".
career advice - i'll stick to writing, fine art, researching, inventing, photography/film/video/music creating, and never ever become a cop, school principal, dental hygenist or priest.
The other axes weren't as informative. I have moderate drive, not all low-key, but not a hard-pushing high drive person. If something needs to get done, i can stick to the work, and get much done, but i also sure like to sit back after i'm done and enjoy life and the fruits of my labor. There are many fantastic things i gotta do, so i may make myself more of a hard-driving person than i really am.
Described well in the famous book What Color is your Parachute, this six-way system identifies people's basic orientations as one of Realist, Conventional, Investigative, Enterprising, Social or Artists. If you were at a party a hexagonal room, a group of one type in each corner, which one are you likely to join?
Investigative describes most of my actual jobs in the past, and Artist with a bit of Enterprising almost all of my volunteer/nonwork activities. Often my drive to enjoy is greater than my drive to investigate.
My Holland Code is either IAS, AIS, maybe AIR or IAR. Something like that. Just "AI" or "IA" and ignore the 3rd letter. Does this tell me or you anything new? Not really.
So, as with most watered-down pop psychology tests, i wonder if it's meaningful. I agree with its conclusion - but isn't this true of everyone? The same kinds of tests appear under other domain names.
The report tells me: "your need for creative and optional thinking doesn't have to be tied together with logic and factual data" Yeah, pesky facts. Many people care about facts and reality, not possibilities. I work on paintings titled "Five-Legged Cats" and "Floating Skyscrapers". I make a sucky scientist or engineer. Yet, strangely, most of my best-paying work has been in engineering, where i inhabit the overlap area between electronics hardware and low-level data processing software. Very left-brained stuff, but guided by visions of possibilities. Unsatisfied often, though, because only a tiny fraction of possibilities can be examined, and the drudgery of C++ coding wears me out over time.
This test gives me insight to the core reason for my procrastination and putting off of exciting projects, even ones i am thrilled and passionate about: "you procrastinate until the last moment to finish a paper, an assignment or a project. If you do the work early, at the time it's due, you'll have to go back and change it completely because you see it in a different contextual whole. So, why redo it?" So many times, i have to put something aside, e.g for my 9-5 M-F job, and when i have a chance to get back to work on it, i don't have the momentum. I always restart from scratch, a clean slate.
Track and Field analogy: Imagine running energetically toward a barrier which you intend to jump. When you get close, only ten feet away, something comes up - the phone rings, it's time for class, someone calls a meeting - so you stop and deal with it. Several hours later, the interruption is done. Now you can resume your jump. You go back right to where you left off, 10 feet short of the hurdle, start running and realize you're not going to make it over. Working on my pet art and software projects is like that. I really need many large blocks of time, several days each, to make an realistic progress. The Rat-Race full-time job lifestyle keeps nulling out whatever momentum i can build.
I seriously need a different kind of lifestyle, but not sure what exactly.
Around 1994 or 1995 i found an interesting book - Career Anchors, Edgar H. Schein. The idea is when choosing among careers, know your key career-related values. Security, Pure Challenge, etc. You may be talented at, say, bassoon playing, but if you value solid income and climbing the corporate ladder to upper management, joining a rock band might not be for you, and not just because rock bands normally don't use double reed instruments.
What my anchors are, among the eight identified from studies:
The anchors least important to me are Pure Challenge, and Stability. The desire to learn new languages, master circuit design, etc. might appear as a need to take on pure challenges, but this isn't so. Stability seems like a kind of death. General Management isn't a great delight to me either. If i ever become a manager, it'll be to take the extra money and run. I would not fit in at all. But then, i haven't actually tried management.
See my Music Personality quiz results on my Ways I Like To Waste Time page. Really profound.
The same site, , offers a "big five" test. my results
last updated 2007-Feb-17