Since the original Keirsey temperament sorter is no longer free, I’m always on the lookout for new online Jungian (Myers-Briggs) personality type classifiers.
Since the original Keirsey
temperament sorter is no longer free, I’m always on the lookout for new
online Jungian (Myers-Briggs) personality type classifiers. I’ve just found
one (don’t laugh;
it’s Bloginality,
the weblog-oriented personality test) that’s
super-straightforward: four questions, no nonsense. It is, of course,
easier to skew the results, but I appreciate not feeling like I’m having
my tea leaves read mysteriously by Professor Trelawney.
Despite its transparency, it seems to be effective, as I seem to match my
historic classification of INT[P/J] (the Architect or the Mastermind —
I’m pretty close on the perceiving/judging axis).
✱ ✱ ✱
Aside: You know, I took a weird
detour into ESTJ-land when I was consulting, right out of school. ESTJ is
“The Supervisor”, and that’s totally where I was going. Wearing
smart clothes to work, organizing others’ time, keeping projects on track,
thinking about stock options and making Senior Engineer in a year and a half.
The thing is, I don’t think my personality really changed at all — I
think it was just sort of trying on new clothes, a new way of approaching
life. And the dissonance, the underlying conflict between the E and the I,
took its toll.
I sort of stayed in that groove for another year or so after I started at Be. We had another huge project, with a big
client, and gosh, nobody around here knows how to stick to a schedule, and
go go go go! By this point it was 2001, and I had almost completely
removed artwork from my life (discounting any UI design I did at the office),
and I lost much of my ability to be patient with people and pets. Learning
how to make judgments about the world around me taught me how to be judgmental
of my friends and family; I made a habit of setting my jaw when things
did’t go my way. Oh, yeah, and I developed social anxiety
— again, tied to situations I didn’t have full control over.
A (sort-of) new job, and now, a change of venue, and I’m finally starting to
sort this all out. The Extrovert settles back into an Introvert; lazy
dependance on the Senses gives way to Intuition; summer turns
to high. I’m drawing more than I have in
years, and I’m learning to be kind again. It will take some time, but I
think the attitude
gauge is finally starting to level out. (I’m reminded of some excellent
advice I once received for fighting seasickness: “Don’t take your eyes off the
horizon.”)
✱ ✱ ✱
Boy, I wasn’t intending to write all that. It just came out. And all I
wanted to do was talk about a Myers-Briggs tool I found! (I really believe
that was my only intention in starting this entry, but you’re welcome to
perform your own armchair psychoanalysis if you like.)