notes app; the myers-briggs type indicator
on personalities and how they change (or not)
Guten tag!
Sav here.
On my mind recently, are the building blocks of personality.
And by that, I mean the highly popular and superstitiously accurate Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.
I’ve been a proud INFJ since day one and I continue to introduce myself as one, nodding happily at every headline, quote block and description on the 16personalities blurb for INFJs.
However, if I took the personality test now, the chance I fall into my self-proclaimed INFJ lineage is quite thin. That’s because a lot of my personality axes, with the exclusion of perhaps the last one, have come to sit much closer to the border.
Between Smol Sav and Today Sav, it looks a little something like this:
Introversion-Extroversion
While still overwhelmingly introverted, I’ve grown significantly more extroverted over these last few years.
This isn’t to say I’ve gotten more talkative and outgoing which is associated with but ISN'T what being extroverted means, but it I have found myself gaining energy and feeling more rejuvenated following social situations — something I’ve grown to crave after a day of eye-numbing, button-click, widget-interacting screen time.
I still despise the idea of a get-together. I still dread speaking on a podium. I still roll my eyes with annoyance at every moment, leading up to an encounter — but I almost always, without fail, walk away from an interaction feeling better about myself and the people around me.
Intuition-Sensing
Out of all the MBTI axes, I’ve always expected this to be the most potentially misdiagnosed.
Once upon a time, I associated myself with the Intuitive personality type, brimming with imagination, creativity and abstract ideas.
Perhaps that’s just me being aspirational. Perhaps it’s the rose-tinted lens falling off. But I no longer relate to that.
I’m much more aligned to the sensing type. Practical, detail-oriented, scientific.
The conceptual, philosophical questions I once loved to ponder now seem like inter-looping circles — and there’s nothing more I crave than concrete, compelling, concise ideas that open the grounds for fair, equitable, and easily-grasped debate.
Sensing has grow far more sensible to me.
Feeling-Thinking
Yet another line of thinking that has received a significant hit over the last few years.
I’m still certain that I’m on the feels-boat. I operate off empathy and compassion, making decisions via the heart before consulting the brain.
But again, perhaps it’s just the requirements of the world around me, but I’ve found myself needing to rely on the think-camp. Harshly logical. Unfailingly analytical. Everything must travel through a stop gate trues and falses, pros and cons, ones and zeroes before coming to a conclusion.
Everyone employs a mix of both emotion and logic into their decision-making. I think now though, I use my heart to decide whether something has value to me, and then my brain to actually solve problems. Between you and me, I think that’s a healthier, more sound mentality (though that could very much be the Thinker speaking).
Perceiving-Judging
Last man standing — Judging is decidedly my most resilient trait.
Structure and order is how things get down. Consistency and predictability is how we maintain confidence. I value, almost to a fault, an internal locus of control — the belief that ordinary humans like you and I can take the reins of our own destiny.
If you want me to do something, tell me and let me execute on it.
And if you give me the autonomy to make my own decisions, you can trust me to consult my Intuitive-Sensing and Feeling-Thinking self on the most preferred course of action.
And yes, I do get the cup when ordering gelato — let me enjoy my dessert in peace instead of worrying about everything melting down the cone.
I get it.
It’s pretty much pseudoscience. Undoubtedly heresy. Boxes for the sake of boxes.
But isn’t it kinda fun to find out where you lie?
16personalities confidently says that while your personality certainly moulds and shifts as you grow older and change environments, your Myers-Brigs is practically decided at birth/early childhood.
Something about that mentality screams “fixed mindset” to me, but I often wonder whether it really is the case.
Am I an INFJ, who due to the qualms of corporate and adulting life, has temporarily taken on more extroverted, sensing and thinking traits to better fend for his environment?
Or am I permanently transforming from an INFJ to say, an ISTJ, due to the environment I find myself in?
Or perhaps, dare I admit, I was never an INFJ to begin with? Was I just someone who enjoyed the moral superiority that came with having a personality type that is only seen in 2% of the male population, associating my identity with things like poetry, writing and community-building — all endeavours that current me struggles to hold onto?
On my saved list: