Photo by Asela

In 1887, L. L. Zamenhof published the Unua Libro (First Book). It was the first book that described the language he invented, Lingvo Internacia (international language), which was later renamed as Esperanto (one who hopes).

He believed that much world conflict was caused by isolation and misunderstanding, so he designed a language that would be very easy for everyone to learn, no matter where they’re from. The idea is that Esperanto would serve as a universal second language. Everyone would learn the native language of their homeland, but they’d also learn the language that would let them communicate with anyone.

Esperanto has been described as a linguistic handshake. If I’m talking to someone from China, the only way we can communicate is if they’ve made an enormous effort to learn my language. Meanwhile, I’ve made absolutely no attempt to learn theirs. It’s completely one-sided.

What happens in a handshake? Both people extend their arms and meet halfway. And so it is with Esperanto, when two people from completely different cultures can meet on neutral ground.

Photo by ElektraCute

Obviously, it hasn’t exactly taken off like the metric system. The percentage of the world that speaks it is estimated to be 0.03%, and possibly far less. But it does work. There are actually some people who speak Esperanto as their native language, often because their parents don’t have any other language in common.

If Esperanto’s time hasn’t come yet, what other tool can we use to promote peace and understanding? How about the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator?

People often think of the MBTI as a career planning instrument, though I don’t think it’s helpful in that regard. To me, it’s always been a simple way of describing the essence of someone’s personality. If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then your 4 letters are worth a whole heck of a lot of words too. And what this comes down to is better understanding of ourselves and others.

I thought about this while watching an episode of The Office a couple days ago. Pam Beesly, an ISFP, went to put her food in the microwave, and found a disgusting mess. In perfect ISFP fashion, she printed the following note on yellow paper and taped it over the microwave:

TO WHOEVER MADE THE MICROWAVE MESS:

THE MICROWAVE IS A SHARED
KITCHEN APPLIANCE.

BY NOT CLEANING IT UP, YOU
ARE BASICALLY TELLING WHOEVER
FOLLOWS THAT THEIR TIME IS LESS
VALUABLE, AS THEY WILL HAVE TO SCRUB
OUT YOUR DISGUSTING SPLATTER.

SINCERELY,

DISAPPOINTED

Later, she comes back to the kitchen to see her coworkers’ reaction as they see the mess and the note. (Remember they don’t know who’s responsible for either.) This conversation ensued:

Andy (ESFP): That is just obnoxious.

Oscar (ISTJ): No kidding.

Pam (ISFP): Yeah…Wait, what, the mess, or the note?

Oscar (ISTJ): The note. So holier than thou.

Angela (ISTJ): Hmm. I liked it.

Pam (ISFP): Don’t you think the person who left the mess is the obnoxious one?

Andy (ESFP): No! The note is way more obnoxious than the mess.

Meredith (ISTP): “Sincerely, disappointed?” Get off your high horse, richie!

Pam (ISFP): Just because someone likes things clean doesn’t mean they’re rich.

Meredith (ISTP): Nah, they’re rich.

Lots of conflict here, because people aren’t thinking about where the other person is coming from. So they label someone as “holier than thou” instead of ISFP. (Or “bitch” instead of ENTJ, etc.)

One set of labels says “You’re different from me, so I’m going to disregard you or insult you.” The other says “You’re different from me, so I’m going to figure out why you are the way you are, and see how we can get along. And if we can’t get along, then at least we can respect our differences.”

That’s one of the great things about the MBTI – it helps us appreciate people who are very different from us. A few months ago, I got pulled over for “disregarding a stop sign.” The cop said I didn’t even remotely come to a complete stop, and he was almost laughing because he couldn’t believe what I did.

Here’s what the cop, an ISTJ, was probably thinking:

“Are you blind? Did you not see the stop sign? Did you not know what you were supposed to do? How could you fail at such a simple task? Didn’t you learn this the first week of driver’s ed?”

Here’s what I, an INTP, was thinking:

“There wasn’t another car in sight. It was pitch black, so I would’ve seen their headlights a mile away. The purpose of a stop sign is to manage traffic at an intersection. If there’s no traffic to speak of, why would I come to a complete stop, wasting gas and wearing down my brake pads, knowing in advance that I was just going to start back up immediately? I’m surprised I even took my foot off the gas.”

Not that this would get me out of a ticket, but at least the cop wouldn’t leave thinking that some people don’t know what a stop sign is. If he had read The Personality Puzzle, he could have said, “License, registration, and Myers-Briggs Type.” Upon hearing “INTP,” he could have said, “Well, sorry about the dumb rule, but technically I still have to give you a ticket. It’s my sworn duty. Now do you want to talk about The Matrix?”

Image from The Matrix Reloaded (2003)

It’s hard to believe we’ve already reached the 10th anniversary of The Matrix. It’s a good time to remember that reality isn’t nearly as objective, straightforward, and deterministic as it seems. Instead, it’s a bizarre combination of free will, destiny and randomness that I haven’t figured out yet.

The world is constantly evolving, and in order to move along its path, it needs all kinds of people. No one is better or worse than anyone else, because we all have our part to play. We can’t all be Neo, whose purpose was to end the war between the humans and the machines.

• Someone needs to be Morpheus, whose purpose was to free Neo from the Matrix.
• Someone needs to be Tank, whose purpose was to save Neo and Trinity from Cypher’s betrayal.
• Someone needs to be Thadeus, whose purpose was to warn everyone that the machines were amassing an army to attack Zion.
• Someone needs to be the Keymaker, whose purpose was to give Neo the key that would let him reach the Source.
• Someone needs to be Trinity, whose purpose was to give Neo a choice of not rebooting the Matrix and rebuilding Zion.

All of these people have a purpose, and if one fails, we all fail. So let’s support each other in doing what we’re each supposed to do, whatever that may be.

Now, to clear up a few misconceptions about personality:

1. There are no bad types.

This is a really hard thing for many people to accept, but all types are equal. Social conditioning may have convinced you that your personality is flawed, or that you should be more like this person or that person. That’s crazy. Your personality is just as it’s supposed to be. You don’t need to change anything.

Go ahead and acknowledge your weaknesses, address them if you want to, but don’t beat yourself up about them. Anything you’d like to change about yourself is the flip side of something you like about yourself. You can’t have one without the other.

Questions like “Why can’t I be more organized?” or “Why do I just blurt things out?” point to the inherent consequences of your type. Even if you could change your personality, you couldn’t drop the downside without sacrificing the upside. The yin must balance the yang.

2. Your type doesn’t limit you in any way.

A lot of people are afraid of labels, but labels are not bad unless you misuse them. Your type isn’t a box or a prison, but simply a description of your preferences. If you generally prefer chocolate over vanilla, you wouldn’t be offended if I said “You seem to prefer chocolate.” It doesn’t make sense to be offended by your own preferences.

That goes for personality too. Preferring one side of a spectrum doesn’t mean that you couldn’t, wouldn’t, shouldn’t ever go near the other. Identifying your preferences and learning about yourself does not restrict your options, it expands them.

3. Your type is what it is. It’s not what a test tells you.

“Do you know your type?”

“Yeah, I took one test that said I was an ISFJ, but another one said I was an ISFP.”

“OK, that’s what the tests said, but what’s your real type?”

“Well, the tests said…”

“Don’t tell me what the tests said. Tell me what you are. You know yourself pretty well, don’t you?”

“Well, I guess I’m not entirely sure what the letters mean.”

“Ah, then that’s what you should work on!”

If someone measures your height at 5’9″, and someone else measures it at 5’10″, does that mean your height is messed up, or inconsistent, or a huge mystery? No, it just means that at least one of the measurements was off. That happens, because some things are hard to measure. But the answer isn’t dependent on any one measurement.

It’s like fingernails on a blackboard to me when I see people making ridiculous claims about people’s types. Tony Montana, an ENTJ? Have you lost it? Darth Vader, an INFP? Are you mental?

Even better is when people make one unsupported wild guess after another. “Barack Obama? Maybe he’s an ENTP. Or maybe an ENFJ. Or how about INFP? Hey, what about INTJ?” Guys, these types aren’t remotely similar! Either learn more about what the letters mean or learn more about Obama, but stop shouting out random letters!

How would you determine a dog’s breed? You’d observe the dog, learn about the different breeds, and make an educated guess, right? You wouldn’t say “Maybe he’s a Chihuahua, or a Poodle, or a Great Dane, or a cat, or a pig, or a bird…”

It’s not always easy to figure out your own type, let alone someone else’s. For one thing, the words don’t mean what you’d think they mean. Like “extravert” doesn’t mean social, “judging” certainly doesn’t mean judgmental, and even “intuition” doesn’t mean intuition. I still can’t believe I once left an MBTI workshop thinking I was an ISTJ. Another thing is that you don’t act the same way all the time, and even if you did, your behavior isn’t a perfect reflection of your personality.

Despite the difficulties, it’s well worth your while to learn what makes people tick. And now you can order The Personality Puzzle at 20% off the regular price of $27 (you can verify the reduced price in your shopping cart). The price goes back up on Sunday at 11:59 PM EST.

Whether you take advantage of this offer or not, I hope that in 2009 you take big steps down your chosen path, and improve both your alignment with your true self and your connections with other people. That is my New Year’s wish for you, and for the world.

Photo by Flirty Kitty

I can tell you that vanilla is the best ice cream flavor in the world. I can tell you why it’s so much better than all the other flavors. I can tell you that it outsells chocolate 3 to 1.

But when all is said and done, none of that matters, because maybe you just like chocolate better. And that’s OK.

And maybe I like vanilla better, and that’s OK too.

Photo by Erik Charlton

Advice. We love to give it, we hate to receive it. I’m talking about everything from the very gentle “why don’t you try it this way” to the very blunt “you must die now.” It’s very easy to create unintended consequences with seemingly harmless advice, especially if you’ve been infected with the critic virus.

Differences of opinion

Once my boss said to me, “Nice tie. But it needs to hang a little lower.” I looked at my tie and thought it looked fine. Then I saw that his tie came down really low. I said, “Well, they say it’s supposed to just touch the top of your belt buckle, but I like it to go a little bit lower than that.” He said, “No, it’s supposed to completely cover your belt buckle. Look it up.” I said, “I did look it up. You look it up. Anyway, it’s a matter of opinion.” This eventually reached the “I know you are, but what am I” stage before it was broken up by a phone call.

At another job, my boss saw me in a tie and said, “Nice tie. But it’s coming down too low.” I just groaned and said “No, it’s not,” probably sounding more annoyed than the situation warranted, just because I wasn’t interested in going through that again. What was I supposed to say? “Thanks for the advice. My opinion of how to tie a tie has suddenly changed to match your opinion. I’ll continue tying it that way until the next person disagrees.” No, that would sound too sarcastic.

Dumb advice

Some advice is just plain wrong. Once I was at my juggling club, attempting a trick under a ceiling that was really too low for it. Someone said, “You’re throwing the balls way too fast.” I said, “I agree, but that’s because the ceiling’s too low.” He said, “Well, I’ve seen someone do that at the same height, but he did it much slower.”

At first I thought he was kidding, but no, he just didn’t have much of a grasp on the laws of physics. What was I supposed to say? “Brilliant advice! I’ll just work on changing the acceleration due to gravity. Dumbass!” No, that would be too mean.

Angry comments

I recently received this comment on my blog, in which I’ll *** out some of the words:

“You sick ******* liberal piece of ****. You’re a coward and a sick pathetic fool like all liberals. You spit on the graves of every dead victim of Terrorism and in the faces of every American soldier. You’re nothing but a parasite on society. I hope you get to watch your family members die in front of you in a terrorist attack.”

Gee, don’t hold back. Why don’t you tell me what you really think?

It’s still in my moderation queue, but I’m thinking “mark as spam and delete.” And the person who left it was anonymous of course, so I’m curious about his definition of “coward.” I’m also curious about the kind of person who leaves comments like this. I wonder if these people are 40 year old drug addicts living in their parents’ basement, or if they appear normal most of the time and only turn angry under the veil of anonymity.

But actually, this kind of criticism is the easiest to deal with. It’s clearly not based in reality (am I even a liberal?), nor do I feel the need to respond, so all I have to do is delete it. Problem solved.

“I’m just trying to help”

The toughest criticism to deal with is the kind that comes from people who are “just trying to help.” What is that supposed to mean, anyway? If you’re “just trying to help,” is that supposed to give you immunity? Having good intentions might get you off on manslaughter instead of murder, but wouldn’t it have been better not to kill anyone?

I don’t care if someone is “trying to help.” In fact, it makes it worse. Because instead of just ignoring criticism from someone who’s not trying to help, I have to think of a way to politely say, “Thanks for your advice, but I’m going to ignore it. I hope you’re not mad, but you’re wrong because…”

Come to think of it, needing to respond is the only reason I have a problem receiving criticism. If someone criticizes me on their blog, I can just read it and decide whether I want to respond. But if someone sends me an email or approaches me in person, and tells me what I’m doing wrong, I have to say something. But what? Here are some possibilities, though not necessarily in the exact wording you would use:

Option 1: “You’re right! I never thought about it that way, and now I totally agree.”

This is possible, but not that likely unless there’s a teacher-student relationship or something like that. If it’s advice from one peer to another, then to achieve this happy ending, the critic would have to not only know what they’re talking about, but also be on the same wavelength as the other person. There are lots of different wavelengths.

Option 2: “I understand that you have your opinion. But obviously I disagree, or I would have already been doing it that way. I disagree because…”

This settles the matter by explaining why you’re not going to listen to them, but it’s not what they want to hear. It’s likely to result in “Geez, I’m just trying to help.”

Option 3: “Thanks, I’ll think about it.”

There are some cases where you’ll eventually change your mind after you hear enough about it. I didn’t use Gmail right away, but someone told me about it a few times, and then one day when I needed to email myself a file too big for Yahoo to handle, I got a Gmail account. And there have been times when I was considering something, but just hadn’t been fully persuaded yet, so I was open to any input. Advice can potentially be very constructive when phrased as “Consider doing this…” instead of “You suck because…”

“I’ll think about it” actually seems like a very good response because it shows that you’re listening, but it doesn’t commit you to anything. On the other hand, is it OK to say you’ll think about it, if you know that you really won’t? If someone tells me “Your posts are too wordy, you should just list a few bullet points,” should I say “OK, I’ll think about it,” or should I explain why I’m not going to do it?

Tips for giving advice:

1. Remember that they didn’t ask for your advice. But if you really think you can help, approach with caution.

2. Give one piece of advice at a time. They don’t want a list of the top 10 reasons they suck.

3. Realize that your opinion is just your opinion. They might have a different one. So might billions of other people.

4. Don’t get mad if they don’t comply. Maybe they just have different tastes. Or maybe they’re just not there yet. Or maybe your sales pitch sucks.

Tips for receiving advice:

1. Comments from drunk morons…just ignore them.

2. If it’s helpful advice like “This link is broken” or “You have parsley stuck in your teeth,” say “Thanks!”

3. If the advice is potentially helpful but you’re not ready to jump on it yet, say “Thanks, I’ll think about it.”

4. If you disagree with the advice, or you’re sick of hearing it, or the person doesn’t know what they’re talking about…well, I don’t know. Your thoughts?

Photo by Leonid Mamchenkov

Recently I’ve read two blog posts that spawned major debates in the comments. In one of these posts, there were many people commenting on multiple sides of an issue, with lots of well-reasoned arguments as well as a lot of emotion. It was very entertaining to read. Perhaps it went a bit too far, but everyone seemed fine in the end.

But in the other one, things got completely out of hand. One person was extremely disrespectful of others and repeatedly went out of his way to be rude. Surprisingly, the blog owner seemed OK with it. I stepped in with a comment to try to calm things down, and the owner emailed me. It turns out that the rude commenter had ultimately been blacklisted. I guess the owner wasn’t as OK with it as I thought.

While the second case was obviously an example of what not to do, I think a little disagreement is a good thing. When I see environments where everyone is always agreeing about everything, it just seems a little fake to me. People are supposed to be different. If your opinion is different from someone else’s, that’s OK.

When it comes to this blog, I don’t want anyone to feel that they can’t disagree with me. It’s good to share different viewpoints, and sometimes we can all learn a lot from disagreement. Of course, I can’t say that I’ll agree with everything you say, but at least I’ll listen.

Then again, there’s a right way and a wrong way to disagree. Here are some tips for disagreeing on this blog or anywhere else.

1. Decide what you want to gain by arguing. If I see a blogger post something completely ignorant and irresponsible, sometimes I want to cause trouble. But in most cases I don’t. If your goal is just to politely offer a different point of view, keep this in mind as you write your comment, and don’t take it too far.

2. Be respectful of other people. If you come off as being a raving lunatic hell-bent on putting other people down, no good will come of it.

3. You don’t have to argue about everything you disagree with. It’s important to pick your battles, and every disagreement is a tiny battle. A little bit now and then is fine, but if you’re constantly nitpicking, people will quickly tire of you.

4. If possible, agree before you disagree. If you generally agree with what someone said and you just want to argue with one point, be sure to comment on what you liked first. It makes your criticism seem less harsh, and people will be more willing to try to see things your way.

5. Don’t think you have to finish every argument. Outside of a formal debate, there won’t necessarily be a winner of an argument. After you make your point, a lot of back and forth is probably not going to help. Say it, be heard, but don’t beat a dead horse.

You might not have noticed that the photo at the top is a photoshopped image of someone arguing with himself. I think this is an appropriate image because it shows that a disagreement doesn’t have to be “us” vs. “them.” We can all be on the same team, and just toss around different opinions because it keeps things interesting and helps expand our thoughts. If we can just argue in a respectful way, I’m sure we can agree to disagree.

This was an old draft post that had been sitting around since February. I’m posting it now because I’m about to write a post about constructive criticism, and I was reminded of this post.

By the way, those of you who read IttyBiz know that Naomi turned off comments not that long ago. She said her blog was meant to be a lecture, not a conversation, and that lame comments were impacting her writing, driving away nice people, and giving bad advice.

I think it’s perfectly fine to decide that your blog will not be a conversation, but that’s not the direction I’m taking with my blog. Feel free to converse!

I see some people out there saying that a certain blogger deleted their comment, and how dare they censor them, and why don’t they believe in the value of debate, and the First Amendment guarantees them the right to leave any comment they want (though it doesn’t), etc.

I’ve never written up a comment policy, but suffice it to say that I reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason. Yes, that’s censorship. Of course I’m going to censor some things. I don’t guarantee anyone the right to leave blog graffiti here.

Having said that, I’m not going to delete a comment simply because I disagree with it. Disagreement is fine. A comment would need to contain a rather large amount of rudeness and/or stupidity for me to delete it, and fortunately, I get very few of those.

Image from I Am Legend (2007)

I Am Legend is about a just-around-the-corner future where they find a cure for cancer by genetically re-engineering the measles virus. But the virus mutates into an airborne strain with catastrophic results.

90% of the world’s population is killed.

9% mutate into evil vampire zombies like the one above. They’re extremely hostile, have superhuman strength, and have a one-track mind focused on killing people. Fortunately, they can only come out at night because of their painful sensitivity to ultraviolet radiation.

(The pic comes from the alternate ending where they all decide to become friends. You can see the love in their eyes.)

1% are immune to the virus. This sounds good, until you consider that these people have to constantly defend themselves from hordes of evil vampire zombies.

That’s how it goes with critics too. I’m not talking about people who simply have different opinions, but people who tell you that you need to change. There seems to be some kind of airborne critic virus that affects people differently.

90% of your critics are dead to constructive criticism. They can only offer completely useless feedback like “you suck.”

9% of your critics are mutants who retain some of their humanity, but aren’t helpful. This can be because they have unreasonable demands, or they’re not seeing all sides of the situation, or maybe they simply have opinions that are perfectly valid, just being expressed in an overly confrontational way. Unfortunately, ultraviolet light does not deter them.

In Ode To My Hatemail, Naomi Dunford gives a long list of complaints she’s received about Online Business School. These complaints are not only really picky, but they contradict each other.

Some people complained that they hate audio, and want it all to be video. Others complained that they hate video, and want it all to be audio. And others complained that they hate PDFs, and wonder why she thinks people are deaf and need transcripts. This is the thanks she gets for making everything available in different formats to make everyone happy.

But 1% of your critics are the people you need to listen to. No one is perfect, and there are always things we can do better. When someone offers good constructive advice, we should listen. But how do you know who to listen to?

You might not, at first. It might take some time for the advice to sink in, or you might need to hear it from multiple people. But what you want to look for is people who know what they’re talking about, understand your situation, and want to help you.

But sometimes after fighting off so many of the bad critics, we fail to recognize the good ones. Robert Neville (Will Smith) survived by only going out in the daylight, covering his tracks with rubbing alcohol, rigging his property with UV spotlights and explosives, and sleeping in a bathtub with his assault rifle. Not much of a life. By the time he finally met another immune person, he had forgotten how to be human.

Don’t hide from your critics, just know who to pay attention to. Also be careful when you’re the critic.

In season 3 of the reality show Beauty and the Geek, Mario and his partner were sent home because of this question:

“What is the term that refers to your date duplicating your body language or adopting your speaking rhythm?”

Mario answered “mimicking,” but the official answer was “mirroring.” I’m not sure that Mario’s answer was technically wrong, but mimicking usually refers to imitation for the purpose of making fun of someone, while mirroring is imitation for the purpose of building rapport.

A good example of mirroring is shown in this scene from Hot Shots!, where Charlie Sheen on his motorcycle mirrors Valeria Golino on her horse (until he can’t keep up).

Mirroring can be done in many ways, because there are so many aspects to our behavior. You might see that someone is leaning against a wall, with their hands in their pockets, looking relaxed, speaking slowly and softly, and sometimes glancing at the floor. You can pick any of these behaviors to mirror.

To some extent, you naturally mirror people you like. If you think about it, you’ll probably see that you act slightly differently depending on who you’re talking to, because it just seems right to blend in a little. People also mirror because they look to others to determine acceptable behavior. Some people say the best way to silence a drunk is to speak softly, which encourages them to do the same.

People like being mirrored because they like people who are similar to them, even if they’re not aware of it. They might not realize that you’re mirroring them, but they’ll have a good feeling about you. You might even be able to pick up on their feelings by copying their movements. And keep an eye out for when someone is mirroring you, because it means they like you.

Obviously, you don’t want to overdo it. If you match someone’s movements perfectly, imitate their accent, and parrot back everything they say, they’ll think you’re making fun of them. Then they’ll ask “Why are you doing that?” and you’ll repeat “Why are you doing that?” They’ll say “Stop that!” so you’ll say “Stop that!” and they’ll think you’re in third grade.

Have you ever tried mirroring someone deliberately?

Four weeks ago, I started a wacky experiment of working against my personality type, deliberately acting out my non-preferences on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.

This involved acting as an ESFJ instead of my natural type of INTP, one letter at a time.

• extraversion instead of introversion
• sensing instead of intuition
• feeling instead of thinking
• judging instead of perceiving

I consider myself to have passed the trials, because I said I would judge myself by effort and not results. But it was very hard to make significant changes on any of the four dimensions. Even my least clear preference, perceiving, was hard to budge.

Michael J Pastor (no link because his blog is only open to invited readers) suggested that I was trying to do too much at once, and that just like with weights, you want to increase the stress gradually. This is absolutely true. If it was really my goal to change, I would have started by making a plan to slowly ease into each trial, instead of jumping in headfirst.

But my intention wasn’t to change, at least not permanently. The point was just to do it to see what it was like. I was curious how hard it would be (very), and whether I would want to continue doing anything differently after it was over (not really). It was entertaining to try it, but I’m happy to go back to normal.

I said in The Personality Puzzle that while we can upgrade our abilities, our preferences are pretty much fixed. And for that reason, I think it makes a lot more sense to go with what you are than trying to change things about yourself that you really don’t want to change. Not that we can’t get better at things with practice, but you’ll always be better at what you like to do. And since all types are equal, why change?

However, we’re all surrounded by people of different types, and I think it’s helpful to be able to understand where they’re coming from. Now whenever I meet a new person, I’ll know that we have something in common, because I tried on their personality for a while.

I’ve just finished week 4 of my Myers-Briggs trials. This week focused on judging.

I had mentioned before that I don’t have a strong preference for perceiving, so using some judging wasn’t too hard, and this was definitely the easiest of the four trials. However, it was still hard to deviate much from my natural preferences.

I tried to concentrate on the best aspects of judging: being organized and checking items off my todo list. Perceivers, particularly intuitive perceivers, tend to think up a lot of ideas that don’t get done. And I do suffer from out of control todo lists.

I have a day planner that I write some things down on, in case I get an idea when I’m not with my computer. But I mainly work from a todo list on my computer, which is 537 lines. That doesn’t mean 537 separate tasks, because some tasks have details that take more than one line, and I also have some blank lines between groups of tasks, but it’s still a lot. I have a separate todo list just for my blog, which is 1,098 lines. I also play with various todoodlists.

Anyway, with this many different tasks to choose from, it’s sometimes hard to just pick one thing and do it. This week I got into the habit of starting each day by working on a big project, and saving other stuff for later. I’m not really a morning person, so it’s not that I have more energy earlier in the day, but whatever I work on first will definitely get done.

I try to check email and read blogs later in the day, since that kind of stuff tends to expand to fill the time available. I also try to add items to the end of my todo lists rather than the beginning whenever possible. I have a hard time with that because I like to do stuff while it’s fresh in my mind, but there’s just not time to do everything.

I still find perceiving more fun because I’d rather be spontaneous than scheduled, but it’s hard to argue with the results you get from being organized.

I read Dave Navarro’s What’s Holding You Back? to get some productivity tips. I really liked it, and I’ll write a review soon. I’ll also write another post to recap this whole experiment.

In the fourth and final week of my Myers-Briggs trials, I’ll be focusing on judging.

Judging and perceiving are kind of hard to explain, and they can be looked at in a few different ways, but one way is that judgers are more like type A personalities, while perceivers are more like type B. The type A/B theory has been heavily criticized and is considered obsolete, but at least you have an idea of what I mean. As with all the other preferences, neither judging nor perceiving is better than the other. (The words unfortunately sound like judgmental and perceptive, but that’s not what they’re about.)

I expect this to be the easiest one because I’m a “split P.” I didn’t get numerical results when I took the MBTI, but they underlined my P to indicate a not-so-clear preference. I was also the only one in the P group at the workshop who insisted on using the right color M&Ms when making a blueprint of a house (like using brown for a table, instead of mixed random colors). Apparently, judgers always pay attention to M&M color, while perceivers usually don’t.

I also got a head start on this because I’ve been trying to make better use of my time in my mini-retirement. I find that even though I’m not working, I don’t have that much more free time. For one thing, I’m now getting 8 hours of sleep a night instead of 4.

So I’ve been trying to be more careful with managing my time instead of just doing whatever. I thought I had unsubscribed from a bunch of blogs, but I just checked and I’m still subscribed to 92, so I don’t know what happened. While reading blogs is fun, it’s easy to spend more time online than you’d like to.

I figure now is a great time for me to read Dave Navarro’s What’s Holding You Back? Beat The Seven Success Killers That Everyone Struggles With. I bought it in June but haven’t read it yet, which I think is pretty ironic considering the subject matter.

Productivity is not strictly a hallmark of judgers, and in fact someone with a sensing/perceiving combination is usually very action-oriented (though perhaps not that organized). But for me, an intuitive/perceiving thinker and daydreamer, I think paying attention to productivity is bound to make me use my judging side. At the very least, putting this ebook in my schedule is showing judging already.

Looking forward to a week of organization, structure, and responsibility. Go judgers!

I’ve just finished week 3 of my Myers-Briggs trials. This week focused on feeling.

I didn’t think this trial would be especially difficult, but it turned out to be the hardest one by far of the three I’ve done.

While I’m definitely a thinker overall, I answer some of the MBTI questions as a feeler would, so I didn’t think I was that one-sided. On the other hand, thinking is the dominant function of an INTP (also of an ISTP, ESTJ, and ENTJ), so maybe that’s why it was so hard to act differently.

I tried to practice empathy by looking at people and imagining how they felt. At one point I was even talking to some trees, saying that they probably don’t like having lights wrapped around them during the day when they’re not being used. I even apologized for not knowing their names and having to call each one of them “Mr. Tree.” This all felt a bit silly to me.

I had meant to re-read the oneness chapter from Personal Development for Smart People, but I didn’t get around to it. I had also meant to spend some time around art and focus on how it made me feel (a suggestion from RL David), but the art gallery near me must be under renovation or something, because there’s currently no art in it.

I guess it didn’t help that I’m working on a particular section of my next ebook that demands all the logic I can muster. However, I didn’t want to let this experiment be too disruptive, so I decided not to stop working on that.

I guess my main stumbling block is that I don’t have enough patience. I tried to slow down when reading feeling-oriented blog posts so I could absorb the feeling vibes, but I kept wanting to finish them quickly and move on to something else. I tried to listen to a feeling-oriented audio, but I kept having to switch over to Firefox and do something else because I couldn’t concentrate on the audio. I also got into an argument with someone because I wasn’t patient enough.

I think I might be able to work on this by practicing meditation. I’ve tried it a few times, and only once have I been able to make it through the full 20 minutes that I had planned. I keep thinking about things I have to do, and it becomes too hard to just sit there, so I sometimes can’t even make it 5 minutes before giving up. I figure that in addition to the usual benefits of meditation, I could also use it as a tool to measure my progress in developing enough patience to sit there for 20 minutes and feel instead of think.

Yet another week of realizing how attached I am to my personality. I think the worst must be over, but I’m looking forward to the end. That’s the good thing about your non-preferences: there are only four of them.