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Are you an ENTP and wonder why you can't get things done when working for yourself?

Tom H.

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Bit of a slowlane question! but I'm curious, what jobs are recommended for an ENTP? This could also help be an indicator for businesses that are good for ENTPs too.

I've worked happily as a programmer and as a writer. The key thing for me is autonomy and creative freedom. Programming and writing can both be soul-crushing when I have stupid requirements and not enough freedom, but when I have jobs where I am trusted to think for myself and I'm doing good work, it's very rewarding.

These are both generally solo pursuits (although a lot of my time programming does include talking through design decisions, etc. with co-workers and stakeholders), but that doesn't seem to matter as far as beign "extroverted". I do gain energy when I'm working with others or showing off my work, but I also enjoy being left alone to focus.

I don't know if that helps. Maybe it points out that what matters is not the job, but the qualities of your role. Another example, I was a machinist for 4 years in my early-20s. I really enjoyed parts of the job where I was given a blueprint and left alone with a block of metal to figure it out. I did not enjoy when someone else had already done the tool-making, setup, CNC programming and I was just there to push a button and take measurements.
 
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Tom H.

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Hey of course, let me answer this in a rush and then feel free to ask more questions if you need clarification.

# 1 / Decide what the end-game looks like.

TLDR: Decide what you want to have accomplish in twenty-five years.

I believe an overarching goal is a way to go but it has to be very detailed. Just one sentence is not gonna cut it.

Details, lot of details. Also, use your deducting power to understand what your goal prerequisites are.

What I mean by that.

Want to be rich? Ok, how rich?

Why do you want to have that amount?

Why can't you be satisfied with less?

What does it mean if you have that much money?

Do you want to get rich in a specific way? By writing Sci-Fi books? By making the world a better place?

What attributes (skills, strategic position, special knowledge) do you need to have to be able to realize that?

What will you do once you are rich? What do you want to do for the rest of your life?

What do you want to be written on your grave?

Imagine you're in the future, old, you smile, you are going to die tomorrow, yet you are happy, why?

You don't have to create that vision in a day, but you can start thinking about it now. (WRITE IT DOWN, OFTEN).

Then ask yourself what it would mean to realize that vision. If you can find one way to do it, it means there's more way to do it.

If there's a Will, there's 1 Way.

If there's 1 Way, then there are 999 other Ways.

Figure out, different ways to reach your goal. What do they have in common? Is there one that excites you more than the other.

Example:

I want to be rich... Why? Because I don't want to be poor? Why? Because I want to be free and go on adventures. What kind of adventures? Creating businesses, helping people, doing science stuff... I want to have time to study and make progress in the field I want without caring about money! Ok, how much do I want to be able to have that life style? I want to have 10k$ net a month to spare on life, fun and pursuits. Why 10k, because Food X, travel X blabla... (write your santa claus list then do your maths). Ok let's find five different ways to reach that goal!... (One can be, as suggested in Unscripted , 5 millions dollars invested at 5%). Ok what does each one have in common? Ok so I need skill X, skill Y skill Z. Is there one that I prefer? Oh I like that one. Do you see yourself trying at this for the next ten years? Yes sounds good to me. Ok.. Now...

# 2 / Find the One Thing that is instrumental to reach your goal and that you can do EVERY-DAY (even on holiday or hangover)

Okay listen, this is probably the most powerful piece of advice I can give you.

It's actually so important that I think it will be better and faster if I share it in a video.

Let's do this.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crOV0a_vZwE

Thanks for the great video! For anyone that didn't watch it, a few of the highlights:

- Use a vision of life 25 years in the future as a way of nailing down what is really important to you, what success really looks like, and what prices you are willing to pay. Getting clear on everything implied by your 25 year vision helps you see what shorter-term strategies and actions are in alignment with your vision and likely to succeed, and what you're doing that is out of alignment and ultimately unsustainable for you.

- Build your strategies around things that also move you closer to your vision.

- The 25 year vision uncovers real motivation, for those of us who aren't motivated simply by "getting rich"

- Set a daily goal that is so small you can't miss, this daily goal can change every few months, as long as you're working consistently on something that will produce results in alignment with your overall vision.

- Don't be greedy with your goals. Don't set goals that ask for too much and then end up failing, adding up to zero. Instead, small goals met every day add up to big successes.

There is more detail in the video, I enjoyed watching it.

---

I did some writing this morning about goal setting, and I looked back at many pages I wrote a little over a year ago in my journal on the topic.

Along the same lines as starting with a vision like @Remiremi described, one of the major things for me in goal setting is alignment. I've seen that I need to be absolutely certain that the goals I choose are what I really want, and then I need to be able to argue in favor of them to myself, calibrated to whatever emotional state I'm in or however much energy I have. Simply convincing myself in a moment of enthusiasm that a goal is a great idea is not good enough, the goal needs to resonate with me at the core or I will not do it over the long-term.

In other words, it's more about discovering goals than it is about setting goals. And then I need to thoroughly articulate the idea both logically and emotionally.

I can see this in the goals that I have accomplished. And this is why something similar to the pattern of effort in the original post has worked for me: I always come back to those goals that I can really feel in my bones.

The reason I asked for more ideas about goal setting is because I don't think it's a good idea for me to just depend on eventually getting the things that I really want, because without going through the process of setting goals I might just wander aimlessly and accomlish nothing. Also, as my goals get bigger, I feel like I need to continue improving my ability to execute.

Now I have a comfortable income, a little bit of passive income, starting a family with my wife (having this baby was a major goal occupied our lives for the past year, and to a large extent the past 5 years), I have an ideal living situation on the beach in a beautiful country, emotional and spiritual well-being, and so on. So now I want to really get rich. Even though it's something I really do want, everything else in my life is comfortable enough that I don't expect I will just meander my way into more money, I think it has to be intentional.

---

The thing this thread about the ENTP personality-type got me thinking about is how often I get distracted by "play".

I work very much like Remi described. In my journal from a year ago I described how I cycle between expansion and contraction modes, kind of similar to Remi's explore and exploit (explore and exploit is better and closer to how I've operated the past year). The problem is that I benefit from a lot of exploration that doesn't really advance the goal of getting money.

I do have a curiosity "problem", but more then that I have an ego problem. I do a lot of things that look like work, and would be work if I had a different goal, but for me they are just play. Computer science and math is a big distraction. So is chess. These distractions do lead to opportunities and are part of my relaxation and mental health, but I would beneit from treating them like play, not like work. I think they are work because I get confused about what I'm working at, I start to think of myself as a mathmatician or an artist. That's my ego over-inflating my self-image... until I get rich, I am only an amateur at those things. I am a professional computer programmer, but learning more about programming at this point is also confusion caused by my ego. That is, if my goal is to get money. If my goal is to be an even better programmer, fine, but then I wouldn't be on this forum.

It's hard to say to myself that time spent getting better at programming is not serious work, it's play.

I intend to continue working in a curiosity-following way like Remi described, but to be a lot more real with myself about whether I'm turning that flight of curiosity into a cash-producing asset or if I'm "investing in myself" in a pursuit that doesn't belong in work hours. My desire to be cool, intersting, entertained, respected, cultured, challenged, etc. is holding me back from getting money.

One area where I do have good experience with this is in meditation. I actually have some accomplishments in meditation. The technique I follow is very goal-based, and there is no way to hit those goals if I indulge in mind-wandering. The only way forward in meditation is renunciation of everything but the goal.

It's time to get over myself and apply the same renunciation in my life as a householder. Renounce everything but the goal.

---

tldr;

- Goals must be 100% what I really want, not something I try to convince myself I want

- Don't confuse hobbies for work.

- Grow the balls to let go of everything but the goal.

I think there's a lot more about goals, but that's what I wanted to think through right now. I think there's a lot of benefit in hearing other people share their perspective on goals the way that Remi did.
 

Remiremi

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My desire to be cool, intersting, entertained, respected, cultured, challenged, etc. is holding me back from getting money.

Hey, I am glad you enjoyed the video.

I wanted to quickly share something with you, so here I am.


About your desired to be cool, interesting, entertained, respected, cultured, challenged, is there a way you can fuse indulging in what you love with creating a helpful business so that you can do the things you love and create a business at the same time? (yes it might not be the most optimal business, but who cares as long as it makes you happy?) You are basically looking for a business model that unites your passion and market-wants under the same flag.


For anyone wondering, roughly, which part needs to be included in a business model:
- A way to create value for a group of people.
- A way to reach people in this group.
- A way to close a deal with the people you reached.



Then when you find a viable business model, ask yourself — and research — "Is it the road I want to take, and am I willing —, and will be happy and grateful — to stay on this road for the next ten years of my life?" (because it's likely to take a long time, so better be sure, you won't throw the towel in three years)


example:
I like to learn complex topics in AI, but I don't want to work a job, and freelancing on difficult AI topics is incredibly stressful. (, and freelancing in easy AI topics gets boring pretty fast) and I have always wanted to be an entrepreneur on top of doing science.
So I asked, how can I indulge my love of learning hard things (for the sake of learning) and still derive value to share with others?
Then I asked, how can I monetize it so that I don't live the cursed-artist-lifestyle?
I derived several business models that looked kinda viable. Like, specializing in a certain area of the field and continue freelancing. Create a think tank. Teach people basic and advanced topics etc...
I decided teaching would actually be a great fit for me as I loved it.
So then I asked; "What does it mean to create an online course business about technical topics? What does the day to day look like? What problems will I have to solve? Is there other people telling about what their lives look like?"...
I gathered intel and concluded it's a life I was willing to live and daily problems I was willing to recurrently solve.
(I also connected it with my 25 years ahead vision)
Et voilà, been working on that for the last year, and never have been happier and driven in my life.



There's many ways to go about it, certain avenues are more crowded than others, and sometimes figuring out the road ahead is not trivial.

But in the end, everything is "Figure-out-able"
(thanks Google)


P.S.: Even if "Follow your passion" is often bad advice.

Keep in mind that there are people able to create businesses based on teaching Orchid-care or Drone Flying. (keyword able)

If you are interested in something, there are other people like you. You can serve those people in a profitable way, you just don't know how yet.
 
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Nick T

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Hello friends, are you an ENTP? Are you struggling with finishing things? Are you wondering why you can't seem to follow the monk-like discipline you crave so much?

This post is for you. (ps: This post may also apply to INTP, INFP, and ENFP, but it's not guaranteed. It has been primarily written for my fellow ENTP in mind.)

If you are a bit like me, and you probably are, you admire people of the ENTJ or INTJ types. The Elon Musks, the smart lads with the incredible power of execution.

They decide to do something and they just do it.

And you want that power, you want to be awesome at execution...

You have so many ideas (that you believe are amazing and revolutionary) if you concretize those ideas you will be on top of the world, don't you?

But when you start to work on them on your own, as a side-project or a business, your work ethic is gone, nowhere to be seen.

That's weird because you have an incredible work ethic everywhere else, be it at your job or in a team. You are always craving to learn more and become better. You always produce top-grade stuff and you are relentless. You are proud of this. And people agree with that statement.

You then, think you can make it out on your own, as skillful as you are, it would be a shame not to try.

But when you take the leap, you come to quickly realize, it's gonna be hard than expected.

First obstacle? Yourself.

You just can't seem to do what you know needs to be done.

You face a procrastination level more intense than anything you've never met in your life. Except maybe for that time you wanted to confess your love to your crush as a teenager.

You need to understand you are not a cold-blooded strategist that will follow a plan to completion.

You must understand this: You are an explorer! You go where your interest leads you. And when you are motivated by a will to explore your curiosity, YOU ARE UNSTOPPABLE.

The other side of the coin says, when you are disinterested in the tasks at hand, you feel bored as hell and will probably find a way to escape from doing the tasks at hand.

Your driving force is not the perspective of making shit loads of cash, neither it is the perspective of freedom, and sorry to break it to you, your driving force is not your desire to change the world for the better.

Your driving force is your curiosity. This is your motor.

With curiosity, you are a tsunami. Nothing will get in the way of the answer you seek.

Without curiosity, you are very good at finding excuses to not do what bores you out.

Why does it matter?

It matters because you will probably do the following mistake...

You will decide on a goal and following contemporary advice decide to make it S.M.A.R.T. Which basically means realistic with an arbitrary deadline.

Your strategizing mind will help you devise a sound plan of action, and your knack for creativity help you discerned a way you can even kill two birds with one stone.

You talk about it with whoever might be willing to listen and you feel on top of the world.

The first day? You are killing it. The second day? You are killing it.

The third day, you get sidetracked...

One month later? You haven't even achieved 10% of what you set out to do.

You were supposed to be able to do it in three months by focusing intensely.

Now, this seem very compromised. You feel miserable and guilty. You wonder if you are any good at anything.

This scenario keeps happening again, again, and again... Until you give up or you stumble upon the truth.

Let's give a closer look at your primary hypothesis.

So you were thinking you can do it in just three months by focusing intensely?

Well good news, you were half right.

You can do it...

...But not in three months.

Why?

Because even though you can focus intensely consistently on the subject you are curious about.

You can't stay curious about the same subject consistently.

So your curiosity will lead you to places you can't predict.

You just know one thing for sure, if you were interested in something one day, you will be interested in that thing again. You just can't predict when.

You will actually bring that project to completion effortlessly, but not in the shortest time possible.

Instead of the three months, you estimated, it will likely be six to nine months.

And that's ok, because that won't be the only thing you have done in those six to nine months.

You have an unprecedented capacity for multithreading, you just can't allocate all your threads to one project. It must be different projects. This is how you are.

If you are curious about something, you will want to drop the ball on your current project to satisfy your curiosity. And you must do it.

But every time you follow your curiosity you must find a way to get away with more than just knowledge.

Unused knowledge is ephemeral, vanishing as swiftly as it was acquired.

You must build something from the fruit of your recently acquired knowledge that will stand the test of time and bring you a small but lasting advantage.

It doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be there.

THE KEY THING TO TAKE AWAY FROM THIS: You must shift from a consumer to a producer.

You must start producing stuff. Start businesses, start a blog, do everything you want, but DO. (keyword do, not just read about/learn about etc....)

It's normal for you to getting informed about something you are interested in, but you need to act on it. You must build something out of it. You must share it with the world.

You must create things and release them in the world. I REPEAT. You must create things and release them in the word.

You don't have to follow a great mastermind plan, you don't have to follow a routine or fixed planning. You don't have to torture yourself to heck out every last bit of productivity there's inside you.

You just need to listen to yourself and follow your curiosity. And to do it everyday.

Your strength is the speed at which you can pivot.

You can change your mind and start working on something different than what you were doing, at full speed, and immediately.

You can survey a complicated question an bring back multiple possible answers at the speed of light.

You are impulsive and adaptable. You can do anything you want because you will always find a way... As long as you are interested.

This surges of productivity come at a cost. Your interest in a particular thing has a very short shelf-life.
One to two days top. Sometimes it's less than a couple of hours.

If you don't catch the wave of curiosity, it's gone, and sometimes it's gone for several weeks or months.

So expecting yourself to work on the same project, without interruptions every day for three months in a row? ... You are being oblivious to your own nature, my friend.

You probably know that by now, the biggest predictor of entrepreneurial success is consistency.

Then how can you expect success if you can't stay on track and schedule for more than two weeks?

You need to build a different kind of consistency than a rigid routine and prison-like tight schedules.

You need to play on your strength: Explore and Exploit ASAP.

Don't explore something without bringing back a treasure from your adventure.


Examples:

  • You were curious about nutrition and muscle-growth gym regimen? You binge-learned every possible way to do it (instead of doing your job lol). You just acquired way too much knowledge to expect yourself to remember it a week from now. So applying it consistently? Out of your league.
    The solution? Swiftly assemble a training and nutrition guide based on what you just explored, package it in a nice PDF, and then share it with the world. You can decide to monetize it or just to share it for free on a forum, it doesn't matter. It will help some people, and that's good for your karma. Second benefit, the day you will want to actually go to the gym, you can just follow your own guideline. Two birds, one stone.
  • You are learning Python and discover the weird world of Decorators and Closures. This stuff is basically out of your league and at your level you will probably never use it. But you can't shake off the feeling. You start binging and learning mystical stuff. Before you go back to the real world to what will actually move you forward in the grand scheme of things, put on together in one shot a blog post that you will publish on Medium behind the paywall. Boom! Three birds, one stone: Personal Branding & Portfolio : check; a very slim source of additional passive income: check; a quick way to retrieve your long-lost knowledge about closures when you finally need it, three years from now: check.
  • Well you see the idea, indulge your instinct and before the honeymoon ends, build something that will last. In this way, you will shift from an inconsistent being to a prolific and polymath builder. You will shift from consumer to producer.







So by now, if you are an ENTP, you are probably envisioning what I am talking about.

I want to add a couple of other points... Playing on your strength also means you need to mitigate your weakness.

Your strength and weaknesses are two faces of the same coin. You can't get one without the other.

During my short time on earth as an entrepreneurial ENTP, I have summarized below everything I know about mitigating our innate weaknesses.









Weakness mitigation tips #1: You can only respect HARD DEADLINES.

There's two kind of deadlines: HARD deadlines and SOFT deadlines.

HARD deadlines are deadlines you must respect. When you are under hard deadlines, you work like crazy to respect them. Those are often imposed by a promise or the external environment. Hard Deadlines are why you have so much work ethic when you work for somebody else.

SOFT deadlines are deadlines you don't have obligation to respect. Basically they are deadlines you can bullshit yourselves out of easily. Often those are arbitrary and self-imposed, for example, SMART Goals. Soft deadlines are why you have so few work ethic when you work for yourself.

The litmus test is simple, "Can I find a way to not respect that deadline?".
If you start generating a thousand ideas about how to do so, then it's a soft deadline and this deadline means nothing to you and will bring you nothing. (except guilt)


So you being too clever may start to think? "Oh, gotcha I just need to change every deadline into a HARD deadline".

NO! Don't do this. The only way to do this is to take risks and to put yourself at a disadvantage. You are basically gambling on yourself just to create the pressure necessary to do the work. This is a horrible way to live your life.

(ex of this destructive behavior: Damaging relationships just to be sure you will do something. Wasting all your money to let the pressure of feeding your family let you work like crazy, etc...)

As an ENTP what you crave is freedom, this way of proceeding (a.k.a. burn your bridges) is the polar opposite of freedom. It will make you feel miserable and burn you out, also it sucks because you are destructing what you build to build more. This is terrible. Don't do it.

Just understand that soft deadlines mean nothing to you and plan accordingly.

Don't gamble on a deadline you can bullshit yourself out of.

Soft deadlines are a distraction to you, those are noise. SMART goals stuff like that, forget those, they don't work with you.

But also, don't take on too many hard deadlines at the same time.

Those hard deadlines are like prison chains to you. And what you crave is freedom.

If you enchain yourself too much, you will burnout.


This leave the question. How an ENTP can get stuff done?

Weakness Mitigation tip #2: Boredom is like a steel wall to you. You can't get through it and have to wait for the door of curiosity to open.

So what should I do? The ENTP equivalent of taking massive actions.

You must play to your strength and mitigate your weakness.

Follow your curiosity and build something from your exploration. Build it quickly, in a couple of hours or max. You must build it before your curiosity wither.

Understand that boredom is your limit. You can only go through boredom excruciatingly. This is your hard deadline for every project, you must finish the milestone before boredom takes you and your curiosity wants to go somewhere else.

A quick note about perfection?
What you build must never be perfect. Perfection is your enemy, it makes you anxious and buries you in analysis paralysis. (= you don't do shit and feel shitty about it)

What should I do when I am bored with a project and want to do something else?

You must stop and do something else. You will get back to the project eventually if you were interested once, you will be interested twice.

Weakness Mitigation tip #3: Don't make plans more detailed than a rough outline.

A detailed and carefully crafted plan is wasted on you... You will never follow it through.

Don't spend time creating detailed stratagems to get to your goals. THIS IS A WASTE OF TIME, DO SOMETHING ELSE INSTEAD.

You are tactical and agile. The time horizon you can plan on is limited to a couple of hours. It's very short.

For the long term, you can guess how things are gonna roughly. Your intuition power is often on point.

It's even more powerful when you feed your intuition with data. How do you get your data?

Every time you want to plan your future, turn to your past instead and log what you have been doing in the last few days.

You want to empirically determine your speed of production. Take the time to keep track of what you did during the day.

You can use this basic template:

Questions to gather data about your explorations:
1. What have I been interested in the last few day?
2. How did I go about exploring that interests?
3. What did I get out of it?
4. How long did it took?
5. What have I build-out of what I discovered? How have I used it?
6. How long did it took?
7. Is there thing I can do better next time? Things I need to avoid next time?


Answer those questions every two to three days. (Optimally, every time you finish a cycle of Exploration / Exploitation)

Store those answers in a way you can easily access those later. (Don't just write on a spare napkin and throw it away).

Weakness Mitigation tip # 4: Don't try to follow a perfect routine.

In the same way, hard deadlines are a chain to you, trying to respect arbitrary daily planning will lower your available energy for the day.

Instead, have a shortlist of 5 mandatory items you must do during the day and that you can do quickly.

If you can't cross every item of that list in less than 100 minutes, the list is too long.

An example can be:
  • Meditate 10 minutes.
  • Walk the dog.
  • Do the dishes.
  • Quick workout at the gym.
  • Write in my journal.
Sometimes you will meditate in the morning, sometimes before you go to bed, sometimes during the commute. Doesn't matter, you need the flexibility to do things when you are ready for those.

What matters is that you crossed every item of the list, not when you crossed those.

The rest of the day, follow your curiosity relentlessly and get something out of it.

Weakness Mitigation tip #5: Keep your Anxiety in check... It keeps your from entering a Flow state.

First of all, You must strive to get into Flow. Getting into flow every day is your bread and butter as an ENTP.

Though there's one thing that can keep you from entering a Flow state even if you are well rested, in good health, and will push you to immediate-rewards behavior.(ex:... alcohol, infinite scrolling, eating way too much sugar, gambling, buying spree, opening 200+ tabs on your web browser about a shitty subject you don't even care about)

This thing is Anxiety.

You must learn to effectively manage your anxiety level. Because when highly stressed and without a hard deadline, you are basically dysfunctional and will get nothing done.
(Please remember that high-stress level and hard pressure to get things done is a miserable way to live your life. It's okay once in a while but don't abuse it.)

So do things that help you rest and recover. Make a conscious effort to recover and balance your innate restlessness.
Examples:
- Sport you genuinely enjoy
- Meditation
- Light encounter with your social circle
- Playing games
- Read books unrelated to your goals. (fiction, or history)
- Get a massage.
- Dance, Concert, Restaurant
- Journaling, gratitudes etc...

Weakness Mitigation tip #6: Inject a bit of order in your life.

Then, because you are so future and possibly oriented you need help to organize things that happened in your past.
  • Some of us are a mess when it comes to meetings and time constraints or remembering special events like birthdays. Get a calendar, note everything inside, check it often.
  • Your life memory is foggy at best and can't remember specifics even if you try hard, it often means you are totally wrong about your achievements and efforts (often wrongly believe you never did anything right) ⇒ Spend time every day to journal about your life, log your decisions and log your achievements. Include specifics like mood, time spent on task etc... When in doubt about what you have been doing, you can read those logs to help you access data you would have forget otherwise.
  • Revisiting your life is very difficult for you as you get immediately distracted. If you believe you have a trauma from your childhood (and most people have) Consider going to a psychologist who will guide you through the fumes of your past.
  • You want a boost of productivity and increase your odds of success in the short term. Get an accountability coach that will help you add some order in your life. (Getting a coach is one of the ways to help you achieve soft deadlines you would not be able to honor otherwise), it also helps you clarify and be more surgical about your focus.
  • You forget the things your family / entourage needs you to do (do the laundry, send wishes for birthday etc...)

Weakness Mitigation tip #7: Become more aware of your mind, thoughts and body.

You must strive to be aware of your mental state, to identify when you start to get bored and must finish asap or to identify when you are curious about something.

The best way to do so is to practice mindfulness meditation (yes seriously) and to do sports that demand to be aware of the mind-body connection.

This will help you be more tuned toward your sensations and thoughts. Which is key to live a more fluid and free life.

Weakness Mitigation tip #8: GET RID OF YOUR PHONE / SOCIAL MEDIA
Phones are engineered to suck your attention away from whatever your doing. Your attention is a raw resource they monetize.

As an ENTP you are curious and novelty-seeker, and you are very competent at indulging your curiosity for hours on end.


Attention vampires have access to brilliant minds that they pay a lot to spend their day engineering way to suck your attention for the sake of ad profits.


Against a phone, you are at the bottom of the food chain.

PHONES ARE YOUR NATURAL ENEMY.

Possible solutions to mitigate the damage from your phone:
- Destroy it.
- Use apps blocker like
STAY-FOCUSED (android)
- Use phone blocker like FOREST.
(ps: it doubles as a Pomodoro app, and is gamified which makes you less likely to bypass it, you sly fox)
- Use a way to track and realize how much time you waste on your phone, like STAY-FOCUSED. (prepare to be shocked)
- Change the color of your phone in grey-scale or invert white/black, attention vampires use flashy colors to suck you in, you can fight that by getting rid of colors.
How to do it with iPhone here, and how to do it with Android here.
- Destroy it.

- Buy a NOKIA 3310, a hand-held GPS, a vintage MP3 player, a nice watch, and a paper agenda. If you think about it, everybody has a phone so you don't really need one, as you can just ask to borrow the functionality you lack.

I repeat. GET RID OF YOUR PHONE. Thank me later.

Weakness Mitigation tip #9: You don't do well in a pond of sharks, you need a supportive and encouraging environment.


You are trusting and willing to see the best face of everyone you meet. You want to collaborate and share your knowledge.

You are good in a team and with people, especially when you can assume everybody is on the same side.

You want to trust people, and you usually demonstrate trust first. Keep doing that, it's one of your competitive edges.

But a word of caution, trusting people first doesn't mean people should be safe double-crossing you.

Of course, some foe will want to abuse your willingness to help.

If somebody abuses your trusting identity YOU MUST RETALIATE. I am serious.

You will know when somebody abuses your kindness. Your Machiavellian side will know immediately. DON'T MAKE EXCUSES FOR THE VILLAINS.

THEY CROSS YOU, YOU CROSS THEM. PERIOD.

ONCE YOU HAVE DEMONSTRATED YOU CAN BITE AS WELL AS YOU CAN SMILE
and both sides are bleeding, YOU CAN THEN SHOW FORGIVENESS.

AFTER ALL, YOU DON'T LIKE CONFLICT.


This assumes that you are evolving in an environment where people willing to screw you are an anomaly, and most people are on your side.

If you realize that people wanting to screw you over are the norm, then you are in a pond of shark AND YOU MUST RUNAWAY ASAP.

Let the evil political game and the House of Cards vibe for the people who thrive in those corrosive environments.

This is not you.

You will thrive more in a group that is trusting and encouraging, united in a common cause.

The fact that you have a developed Machiavellian mind doesn't mean you must use it at 100%.

If people around you are mean, calculating, or vain. Leave, without looking back.

Weakness Mitigation tip #10: Don't bet on speed. Build an advantage for the long game instead.

Because, when you start out as an ENTP, you will never be the first to arrive somewhere...
(When you will become an experienced ENTP, this will change, as your tactical velocity will be unheard of, but when you start, well... You are not the fastest.)
... You must not pick your battles based on rewards correlated with a short time to arrival... (Example, you are starting out with dropshipping, you see everybody is going for fidget spinners. Don't go for it, you will arrive after the battle.)
... Instead, You must pick your battle based on long term compounded rewards. (Example, learning skills that are difficult and valuable to master. Code, Copywriting, Writing, Consulting.)

Then once you start to have an edge that is difficult to replicate...(Example; you are a blockchain enthusiast, but you probably know things more in-depth than most of the other blockchain enthusiasts.)
... Pick a battle that will complement it and that triggers your curiosity (Example, starting a blog about blockchain + learning how to do first-class SEO).

Even though everybody was faster than you in the short run... (Example, your accountability partner Tom became a millionaire just in two years, and you were still in your parent basement)
... On the long run, you will establish a valuable strategic advantage that is hard for anybody else to replicate. (Example: Five years later, your Blockchain blog is ranked first on google and is monetized with ads, You keep getting people asking you to interview you and you started a consulting business about blockchain. You never made that much money in your life and you now have a strong network. You basically do what you want, when you want, with who you want, from anywhere you want.).




....


Alright I am getting bored, just one last thing before we go...

TLDR: implement the code written below in your daily life. It will do the trick, I know you will figure out the specifics on your own.


ENTP?

Be Patient and Restless




You must be patient in the long term.

You will get where you want.

But you won't get there in the shortest amount of time possible.

Because you will take so many detours.

So be patient.




You must be restless in the sort term.

Want to explore an option, fine, do it.

Go all the way.

Unleash your curiosity.

... But you must make a pact with yourself.

Every time you unleash your curiosity, you must build a memento and share it with the world.

A simple recipe...


1/ Explore until bored.

2/ Quickly build something valuable for others.

3/ Share it to the people who most need it.


You are an explorer and every time you go on an adventure, you bring back wonderful treasures, undiscovered before.

Promise yourself you won't keep those treasures to yourself and will share those with the world.

Once your oath is taken, go.

Explore.

Follow your curiosity relentlessly.

Everyday.

You are free now.




BONUS:

What does it look like when you are not playing to your strength and mitigating your weakness?:


You are doing something, let's call it interest A. You begin to be interested in interest B.
You decide to keep doing interest A.
You slowly get bored and pick up your phone.
Five hours later, you haven't finished working on interest A.
You feel guilty and have trouble falling asleep this evening.
You wake up, lethargic, it takes you four hours before finally getting to work on interest A.
It's excruciatingly boring but you manage to finish it. You begin to be interested in interest C.
You repress it and start working on interest B.
And so on and so on....

It feels like an uphill battle.

Also, it's depressing because you know your current velocity of execution is nowhere near your actual potential...


What does it look like when you play to your strength and mitigate your weaknesses?

You are doing something, let's call it interest A. You begin to be interested in interest B.

You switch your focus on interest B.
Five hours later you know everything you could know about interest B. You are still hungry for more.
You decide to produce something about your discovery.
(for the sake of example and to give you an idea of what it could be, let's say it's an article you will put on medium behind the paywall and you include a bait to your newsletter.)
Three hours later you are done with the building phase, you share it with the world and go to bed.
You feel good and sleep well.
You wake up, early in the morning, your interest for interest A is back and you feel the urge to do something about it.
You jump out of bed and start working asap, forgetting breakfast. By noon you are done with interest A.
You begin to be interested in interest C. You start working immediately on interest C.
And so on and so on.

You are prolific and restless. Your cumulative speed of production is unheard of. You are proud of you.

Could you have been done with interest A sooner if you had double down on it? No. You can't get away with boredom. This is your limit.

This is why you need to be patient. You are like a wind vane, you keep turning. So you will get there. You just won't get there by the shortest path.

This is why you need to be restless. Because you have to take the detour and answer the calling of your curiosity, you have to move as fast as possible, or you will never finish anything.



....


Hope it helps,

Rémi

P.S.: Btw, from my slim understanding of typology, this can maybe apply also to INFP, ENFP, and INTP.

Great post! I couldn't agree more. It took me a while to figure some of this stuff out, and your knowledge/clarity/input are great additions.

I always point people to the Meyers Briggs test and Peter Drucker's "Managing Oneself"...

I appreciate you taking the time to write this and adding your mitigation strategies...

Valuable post for us ENTPs navigating through our journey of trying to execute! Hopefully other ENTPs can really grasp what you are saying and take action on it rather than it being hind sight

I completely locked myself up for the last 4 years... Like completely... Being 100% voluntarily celibate etc, had to live in the back of a warehouse for a bit, and created reasons that would force me into a "J" type execution.

The quote I have been using is to push is "People Don't Change Until The Pain Of Staying The Same Greater Than The Pain Of Change", and "Most People Give Up Right Before They Succeed" etc... it's been painful this way for sure...

However, I wasn't really sure how else to get myself to "do" what it took...(Hints why I appreciate the mitigation strategies) It did help me with my investing partners by gaining trust through commitment over time. It also kept costs low and allowed us to bootstrap.
 
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Nahmed8

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Hello friends, are you an ENTP? Are you struggling with finishing things? Are you wondering why you can't seem to follow the monk-like discipline you crave so much?

This post is for you. (ps: This post may also apply to INTP, INFP, and ENFP, but it's not guaranteed. It has been primarily written for my fellow ENTP in mind.)

If you are a bit like me, and you probably are, you admire people of the ENTJ or INTJ types. The Elon Musks, the smart lads with the incredible power of execution.

They decide to do something and they just do it.

And you want that power, you want to be awesome at execution...

You have so many ideas (that you believe are amazing and revolutionary) if you concretize those ideas you will be on top of the world, don't you?

But when you start to work on them on your own, as a side-project or a business, your work ethic is gone, nowhere to be seen.

That's weird because you have an incredible work ethic everywhere else, be it at your job or in a team. You are always craving to learn more and become better. You always produce top-grade stuff and you are relentless. You are proud of this. And people agree with that statement.

You then, think you can make it out on your own, as skillful as you are, it would be a shame not to try.

But when you take the leap, you come to quickly realize, it's gonna be hard than expected.

First obstacle? Yourself.

You just can't seem to do what you know needs to be done.

You face a procrastination level more intense than anything you've never met in your life. Except maybe for that time you wanted to confess your love to your crush as a teenager.

You need to understand you are not a cold-blooded strategist that will follow a plan to completion.

You must understand this: You are an explorer! You go where your interest leads you. And when you are motivated by a will to explore your curiosity, YOU ARE UNSTOPPABLE.

The other side of the coin says, when you are disinterested in the tasks at hand, you feel bored as hell and will probably find a way to escape from doing the tasks at hand.

Your driving force is not the perspective of making shit loads of cash, neither it is the perspective of freedom, and sorry to break it to you, your driving force is not your desire to change the world for the better.

Your driving force is your curiosity. This is your motor.

With curiosity, you are a tsunami. Nothing will get in the way of the answer you seek.

Without curiosity, you are very good at finding excuses to not do what bores you out.

Why does it matter?

It matters because you will probably do the following mistake...

You will decide on a goal and following contemporary advice decide to make it S.M.A.R.T. Which basically means realistic with an arbitrary deadline.

Your strategizing mind will help you devise a sound plan of action, and your knack for creativity help you discerned a way you can even kill two birds with one stone.

You talk about it with whoever might be willing to listen and you feel on top of the world.

The first day? You are killing it. The second day? You are killing it.

The third day, you get sidetracked...

One month later? You haven't even achieved 10% of what you set out to do.

You were supposed to be able to do it in three months by focusing intensely.

Now, this seem very compromised. You feel miserable and guilty. You wonder if you are any good at anything.

This scenario keeps happening again, again, and again... Until you give up or you stumble upon the truth.

Let's give a closer look at your primary hypothesis.

So you were thinking you can do it in just three months by focusing intensely?

Well good news, you were half right.

You can do it...

...But not in three months.

Why?

Because even though you can focus intensely consistently on the subject you are curious about.

You can't stay curious about the same subject consistently.

So your curiosity will lead you to places you can't predict.

You just know one thing for sure, if you were interested in something one day, you will be interested in that thing again. You just can't predict when.

You will actually bring that project to completion effortlessly, but not in the shortest time possible.

Instead of the three months, you estimated, it will likely be six to nine months.

And that's ok, because that won't be the only thing you have done in those six to nine months.

You have an unprecedented capacity for multithreading, you just can't allocate all your threads to one project. It must be different projects. This is how you are.

If you are curious about something, you will want to drop the ball on your current project to satisfy your curiosity. And you must do it.

But every time you follow your curiosity you must find a way to get away with more than just knowledge.

Unused knowledge is ephemeral, vanishing as swiftly as it was acquired.

You must build something from the fruit of your recently acquired knowledge that will stand the test of time and bring you a small but lasting advantage.

It doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be there.

THE KEY THING TO TAKE AWAY FROM THIS: You must shift from a consumer to a producer.

You must start producing stuff. Start businesses, start a blog, do everything you want, but DO. (keyword do, not just read about/learn about etc....)

It's normal for you to getting informed about something you are interested in, but you need to act on it. You must build something out of it. You must share it with the world.

You must create things and release them in the world. I REPEAT. You must create things and release them in the word.

You don't have to follow a great mastermind plan, you don't have to follow a routine or fixed planning. You don't have to torture yourself to heck out every last bit of productivity there's inside you.

You just need to listen to yourself and follow your curiosity. And to do it everyday.

Your strength is the speed at which you can pivot.

You can change your mind and start working on something different than what you were doing, at full speed, and immediately.

You can survey a complicated question an bring back multiple possible answers at the speed of light.

You are impulsive and adaptable. You can do anything you want because you will always find a way... As long as you are interested.

This surges of productivity come at a cost. Your interest in a particular thing has a very short shelf-life.
One to two days top. Sometimes it's less than a couple of hours.

If you don't catch the wave of curiosity, it's gone, and sometimes it's gone for several weeks or months.

So expecting yourself to work on the same project, without interruptions every day for three months in a row? ... You are being oblivious to your own nature, my friend.

You probably know that by now, the biggest predictor of entrepreneurial success is consistency.

Then how can you expect success if you can't stay on track and schedule for more than two weeks?

You need to build a different kind of consistency than a rigid routine and prison-like tight schedules.

You need to play on your strength: Explore and Exploit ASAP.

Don't explore something without bringing back a treasure from your adventure.


Examples:

  • You were curious about nutrition and muscle-growth gym regimen? You binge-learned every possible way to do it (instead of doing your job lol). You just acquired way too much knowledge to expect yourself to remember it a week from now. So applying it consistently? Out of your league.
    The solution? Swiftly assemble a training and nutrition guide based on what you just explored, package it in a nice PDF, and then share it with the world. You can decide to monetize it or just to share it for free on a forum, it doesn't matter. It will help some people, and that's good for your karma. Second benefit, the day you will want to actually go to the gym, you can just follow your own guideline. Two birds, one stone.
  • You are learning Python and discover the weird world of Decorators and Closures. This stuff is basically out of your league and at your level you will probably never use it. But you can't shake off the feeling. You start binging and learning mystical stuff. Before you go back to the real world to what will actually move you forward in the grand scheme of things, put on together in one shot a blog post that you will publish on Medium behind the paywall. Boom! Three birds, one stone: Personal Branding & Portfolio : check; a very slim source of additional passive income: check; a quick way to retrieve your long-lost knowledge about closures when you finally need it, three years from now: check.
  • Well you see the idea, indulge your instinct and before the honeymoon ends, build something that will last. In this way, you will shift from an inconsistent being to a prolific and polymath builder. You will shift from consumer to producer.







So by now, if you are an ENTP, you are probably envisioning what I am talking about.

I want to add a couple of other points... Playing on your strength also means you need to mitigate your weakness.

Your strength and weaknesses are two faces of the same coin. You can't get one without the other.

During my short time on earth as an entrepreneurial ENTP, I have summarized below everything I know about mitigating our innate weaknesses.









Weakness mitigation tips #1: You can only respect HARD DEADLINES.

There's two kind of deadlines: HARD deadlines and SOFT deadlines.

HARD deadlines are deadlines you must respect. When you are under hard deadlines, you work like crazy to respect them. Those are often imposed by a promise or the external environment. Hard Deadlines are why you have so much work ethic when you work for somebody else.

SOFT deadlines are deadlines you don't have obligation to respect. Basically they are deadlines you can bullshit yourselves out of easily. Often those are arbitrary and self-imposed, for example, SMART Goals. Soft deadlines are why you have so few work ethic when you work for yourself.

The litmus test is simple, "Can I find a way to not respect that deadline?".
If you start generating a thousand ideas about how to do so, then it's a soft deadline and this deadline means nothing to you and will bring you nothing. (except guilt)


So you being too clever may start to think? "Oh, gotcha I just need to change every deadline into a HARD deadline".

NO! Don't do this. The only way to do this is to take risks and to put yourself at a disadvantage. You are basically gambling on yourself just to create the pressure necessary to do the work. This is a horrible way to live your life.

(ex of this destructive behavior: Damaging relationships just to be sure you will do something. Wasting all your money to let the pressure of feeding your family let you work like crazy, etc...)

As an ENTP what you crave is freedom, this way of proceeding (a.k.a. burn your bridges) is the polar opposite of freedom. It will make you feel miserable and burn you out, also it sucks because you are destructing what you build to build more. This is terrible. Don't do it.

Just understand that soft deadlines mean nothing to you and plan accordingly.

Don't gamble on a deadline you can bullshit yourself out of.

Soft deadlines are a distraction to you, those are noise. SMART goals stuff like that, forget those, they don't work with you.

But also, don't take on too many hard deadlines at the same time.

Those hard deadlines are like prison chains to you. And what you crave is freedom.

If you enchain yourself too much, you will burnout.


This leave the question. How an ENTP can get stuff done?

Weakness Mitigation tip #2: Boredom is like a steel wall to you. You can't get through it and have to wait for the door of curiosity to open.

So what should I do? The ENTP equivalent of taking massive actions.

You must play to your strength and mitigate your weakness.

Follow your curiosity and build something from your exploration. Build it quickly, in a couple of hours or max. You must build it before your curiosity wither.

Understand that boredom is your limit. You can only go through boredom excruciatingly. This is your hard deadline for every project, you must finish the milestone before boredom takes you and your curiosity wants to go somewhere else.

A quick note about perfection?
What you build must never be perfect. Perfection is your enemy, it makes you anxious and buries you in analysis paralysis. (= you don't do shit and feel shitty about it)

What should I do when I am bored with a project and want to do something else?

You must stop and do something else. You will get back to the project eventually if you were interested once, you will be interested twice.

Weakness Mitigation tip #3: Don't make plans more detailed than a rough outline.

A detailed and carefully crafted plan is wasted on you... You will never follow it through.

Don't spend time creating detailed stratagems to get to your goals. THIS IS A WASTE OF TIME, DO SOMETHING ELSE INSTEAD.

You are tactical and agile. The time horizon you can plan on is limited to a couple of hours. It's very short.

For the long term, you can guess how things are gonna roughly. Your intuition power is often on point.

It's even more powerful when you feed your intuition with data. How do you get your data?

Every time you want to plan your future, turn to your past instead and log what you have been doing in the last few days.

You want to empirically determine your speed of production. Take the time to keep track of what you did during the day.

You can use this basic template:

Questions to gather data about your explorations:
1. What have I been interested in the last few day?
2. How did I go about exploring that interests?
3. What did I get out of it?
4. How long did it took?
5. What have I build-out of what I discovered? How have I used it?
6. How long did it took?
7. Is there thing I can do better next time? Things I need to avoid next time?


Answer those questions every two to three days. (Optimally, every time you finish a cycle of Exploration / Exploitation)

Store those answers in a way you can easily access those later. (Don't just write on a spare napkin and throw it away).

Weakness Mitigation tip # 4: Don't try to follow a perfect routine.

In the same way, hard deadlines are a chain to you, trying to respect arbitrary daily planning will lower your available energy for the day.

Instead, have a shortlist of 5 mandatory items you must do during the day and that you can do quickly.

If you can't cross every item of that list in less than 100 minutes, the list is too long.

An example can be:
  • Meditate 10 minutes.
  • Walk the dog.
  • Do the dishes.
  • Quick workout at the gym.
  • Write in my journal.
Sometimes you will meditate in the morning, sometimes before you go to bed, sometimes during the commute. Doesn't matter, you need the flexibility to do things when you are ready for those.

What matters is that you crossed every item of the list, not when you crossed those.

The rest of the day, follow your curiosity relentlessly and get something out of it.

Weakness Mitigation tip #5: Keep your Anxiety in check... It keeps your from entering a Flow state.

First of all, You must strive to get into Flow. Getting into flow every day is your bread and butter as an ENTP.

Though there's one thing that can keep you from entering a Flow state even if you are well rested, in good health, and will push you to immediate-rewards behavior.(ex:... alcohol, infinite scrolling, eating way too much sugar, gambling, buying spree, opening 200+ tabs on your web browser about a shitty subject you don't even care about)

This thing is Anxiety.

You must learn to effectively manage your anxiety level. Because when highly stressed and without a hard deadline, you are basically dysfunctional and will get nothing done.
(Please remember that high-stress level and hard pressure to get things done is a miserable way to live your life. It's okay once in a while but don't abuse it.)

So do things that help you rest and recover. Make a conscious effort to recover and balance your innate restlessness.
Examples:
- Sport you genuinely enjoy
- Meditation
- Light encounter with your social circle
- Playing games
- Read books unrelated to your goals. (fiction, or history)
- Get a massage.
- Dance, Concert, Restaurant
- Journaling, gratitudes etc...

Weakness Mitigation tip #6: Inject a bit of order in your life.

Then, because you are so future and possibly oriented you need help to organize things that happened in your past.
  • Some of us are a mess when it comes to meetings and time constraints or remembering special events like birthdays. Get a calendar, note everything inside, check it often.
  • Your life memory is foggy at best and can't remember specifics even if you try hard, it often means you are totally wrong about your achievements and efforts (often wrongly believe you never did anything right) ⇒ Spend time every day to journal about your life, log your decisions and log your achievements. Include specifics like mood, time spent on task etc... When in doubt about what you have been doing, you can read those logs to help you access data you would have forget otherwise.
  • Revisiting your life is very difficult for you as you get immediately distracted. If you believe you have a trauma from your childhood (and most people have) Consider going to a psychologist who will guide you through the fumes of your past.
  • You want a boost of productivity and increase your odds of success in the short term. Get an accountability coach that will help you add some order in your life. (Getting a coach is one of the ways to help you achieve soft deadlines you would not be able to honor otherwise), it also helps you clarify and be more surgical about your focus.
  • You forget the things your family / entourage needs you to do (do the laundry, send wishes for birthday etc...)

Weakness Mitigation tip #7: Become more aware of your mind, thoughts and body.

You must strive to be aware of your mental state, to identify when you start to get bored and must finish asap or to identify when you are curious about something.

The best way to do so is to practice mindfulness meditation (yes seriously) and to do sports that demand to be aware of the mind-body connection.

This will help you be more tuned toward your sensations and thoughts. Which is key to live a more fluid and free life.

Weakness Mitigation tip #8: GET RID OF YOUR PHONE / SOCIAL MEDIA
Phones are engineered to suck your attention away from whatever your doing. Your attention is a raw resource they monetize.

As an ENTP you are curious and novelty-seeker, and you are very competent at indulging your curiosity for hours on end.


Attention vampires have access to brilliant minds that they pay a lot to spend their day engineering way to suck your attention for the sake of ad profits.


Against a phone, you are at the bottom of the food chain.

PHONES ARE YOUR NATURAL ENEMY.

Possible solutions to mitigate the damage from your phone:
- Destroy it.
- Use apps blocker like
STAY-FOCUSED (android)
- Use phone blocker like FOREST.
(ps: it doubles as a Pomodoro app, and is gamified which makes you less likely to bypass it, you sly fox)
- Use a way to track and realize how much time you waste on your phone, like STAY-FOCUSED. (prepare to be shocked)
- Change the color of your phone in grey-scale or invert white/black, attention vampires use flashy colors to suck you in, you can fight that by getting rid of colors.
How to do it with iPhone here, and how to do it with Android here.
- Destroy it.

- Buy a NOKIA 3310, a hand-held GPS, a vintage MP3 player, a nice watch, and a paper agenda. If you think about it, everybody has a phone so you don't really need one, as you can just ask to borrow the functionality you lack.

I repeat. GET RID OF YOUR PHONE. Thank me later.

Weakness Mitigation tip #9: You don't do well in a pond of sharks, you need a supportive and encouraging environment.


You are trusting and willing to see the best face of everyone you meet. You want to collaborate and share your knowledge.

You are good in a team and with people, especially when you can assume everybody is on the same side.

You want to trust people, and you usually demonstrate trust first. Keep doing that, it's one of your competitive edges.

But a word of caution, trusting people first doesn't mean people should be safe double-crossing you.

Of course, some foe will want to abuse your willingness to help.

If somebody abuses your trusting identity YOU MUST RETALIATE. I am serious.

You will know when somebody abuses your kindness. Your Machiavellian side will know immediately. DON'T MAKE EXCUSES FOR THE VILLAINS.

THEY CROSS YOU, YOU CROSS THEM. PERIOD.

ONCE YOU HAVE DEMONSTRATED YOU CAN BITE AS WELL AS YOU CAN SMILE
and both sides are bleeding, YOU CAN THEN SHOW FORGIVENESS.

AFTER ALL, YOU DON'T LIKE CONFLICT.


This assumes that you are evolving in an environment where people willing to screw you are an anomaly, and most people are on your side.

If you realize that people wanting to screw you over are the norm, then you are in a pond of shark AND YOU MUST RUNAWAY ASAP.

Let the evil political game and the House of Cards vibe for the people who thrive in those corrosive environments.

This is not you.

You will thrive more in a group that is trusting and encouraging, united in a common cause.

The fact that you have a developed Machiavellian mind doesn't mean you must use it at 100%.

If people around you are mean, calculating, or vain. Leave, without looking back.

Weakness Mitigation tip #10: Don't bet on speed. Build an advantage for the long game instead.

Because, when you start out as an ENTP, you will never be the first to arrive somewhere...
(When you will become an experienced ENTP, this will change, as your tactical velocity will be unheard of, but when you start, well... You are not the fastest.)
... You must not pick your battles based on rewards correlated with a short time to arrival... (Example, you are starting out with dropshipping, you see everybody is going for fidget spinners. Don't go for it, you will arrive after the battle.)
... Instead, You must pick your battle based on long term compounded rewards. (Example, learning skills that are difficult and valuable to master. Code, Copywriting, Writing, Consulting.)

Then once you start to have an edge that is difficult to replicate...(Example; you are a blockchain enthusiast, but you probably know things more in-depth than most of the other blockchain enthusiasts.)
... Pick a battle that will complement it and that triggers your curiosity (Example, starting a blog about blockchain + learning how to do first-class SEO).

Even though everybody was faster than you in the short run... (Example, your accountability partner Tom became a millionaire just in two years, and you were still in your parent basement)
... On the long run, you will establish a valuable strategic advantage that is hard for anybody else to replicate. (Example: Five years later, your Blockchain blog is ranked first on google and is monetized with ads, You keep getting people asking you to interview you and you started a consulting business about blockchain. You never made that much money in your life and you now have a strong network. You basically do what you want, when you want, with who you want, from anywhere you want.).




....


Alright I am getting bored, just one last thing before we go...

TLDR: implement the code written below in your daily life. It will do the trick, I know you will figure out the specifics on your own.


ENTP?

Be Patient and Restless




You must be patient in the long term.

You will get where you want.

But you won't get there in the shortest amount of time possible.

Because you will take so many detours.

So be patient.




You must be restless in the sort term.

Want to explore an option, fine, do it.

Go all the way.

Unleash your curiosity.

... But you must make a pact with yourself.

Every time you unleash your curiosity, you must build a memento and share it with the world.

A simple recipe...


1/ Explore until bored.

2/ Quickly build something valuable for others.

3/ Share it to the people who most need it.


You are an explorer and every time you go on an adventure, you bring back wonderful treasures, undiscovered before.

Promise yourself you won't keep those treasures to yourself and will share those with the world.

Once your oath is taken, go.

Explore.

Follow your curiosity relentlessly.

Everyday.

You are free now.




BONUS:

What does it look like when you are not playing to your strength and mitigating your weakness?:


You are doing something, let's call it interest A. You begin to be interested in interest B.
You decide to keep doing interest A.
You slowly get bored and pick up your phone.
Five hours later, you haven't finished working on interest A.
You feel guilty and have trouble falling asleep this evening.
You wake up, lethargic, it takes you four hours before finally getting to work on interest A.
It's excruciatingly boring but you manage to finish it. You begin to be interested in interest C.
You repress it and start working on interest B.
And so on and so on....

It feels like an uphill battle.

Also, it's depressing because you know your current velocity of execution is nowhere near your actual potential...


What does it look like when you play to your strength and mitigate your weaknesses?

You are doing something, let's call it interest A. You begin to be interested in interest B.

You switch your focus on interest B.
Five hours later you know everything you could know about interest B. You are still hungry for more.
You decide to produce something about your discovery.
(for the sake of example and to give you an idea of what it could be, let's say it's an article you will put on medium behind the paywall and you include a bait to your newsletter.)
Three hours later you are done with the building phase, you share it with the world and go to bed.
You feel good and sleep well.
You wake up, early in the morning, your interest for interest A is back and you feel the urge to do something about it.
You jump out of bed and start working asap, forgetting breakfast. By noon you are done with interest A.
You begin to be interested in interest C. You start working immediately on interest C.
And so on and so on.

You are prolific and restless. Your cumulative speed of production is unheard of. You are proud of you.

Could you have been done with interest A sooner if you had double down on it? No. You can't get away with boredom. This is your limit.

This is why you need to be patient. You are like a wind vane, you keep turning. So you will get there. You just won't get there by the shortest path.

This is why you need to be restless. Because you have to take the detour and answer the calling of your curiosity, you have to move as fast as possible, or you will never finish anything.



....


Hope it helps,

Rémi

P.S.: Btw, from my slim understanding of typology, this can maybe apply also to INFP, ENFP, and INTP.
I think you just summarised me as a person, thank you for writing this amazing post. You have opened my eyes to my biggest weakness of not being able to stay consistent on one project.

Thanks, Naeem
 

BellaPippin

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Jokes on you all, I'm an INFP and I already figured it all out, in my daydreams, while I eat tiramisu cake. HAHAHAHA. I win.

giphy.gif



Also relevant and funny, don't binge too much
 
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The first time I read this, I just skimmed through it and thought, 'what a load of crap.'

And then I reread it in detail.

I'm an INTP.

Holy crap. You've described me, exactly. And not in some voodoo-magic 'this could apply to everyone' kind of way, but you've described what numerous people have said about me since kindergarten. "When he's interested in something, he's voracious. But when he's not, he couldn't care less."

Now, to apply what I read and not just move on to the next interesting thing....

Knew you were an INTP since Day 1.

Neo from the Matrix is an INTP. INTPs like INTPs (and sometimes ENTPs).

From time to time I wonder if I'm also an INTP, but then I remember I'm a depressed nerd and certified lunatic who's good with women.

My INTP friend is just a nerd and certified lunatic. Girls still like him but he really can't be arsed to get into a relationship as he can barely deal with himself. I also go between low/high energy constantly and my face is very expressive while he's always low energy and not as expressive.

It's got to do with me being an Ne dominant (absorbing from the external, processing internally and making sense of my environment and ideas rationally with Ti) while he's the opposite, since the Dominant and Auxillary functions are swapped. Also, the Fe function in ENTP is a level above INTP's Fe (3rd and 4th function respectively) so we tend to be more charming, expressive and energetic (though ENTPs are considered ambiverts and few actually look 100% extroverted) while INTPs tend to be more mysterious, aloof and introspective.
 
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Hello friends, are you an ENTP? Are you struggling with finishing things? Are you wondering why you can't seem to follow the monk-like discipline you crave so much?

This post is for you. (ps: This post may also apply to INTP, INFP, and ENFP, but it's not guaranteed. It has been primarily written for my fellow ENTP in mind.)

If you are a bit like me, and you probably are, you admire people of the ENTJ or INTJ types. The Elon Musks, the smart lads with the incredible power of execution.

They decide to do something and they just do it.

And you want that power, you want to be awesome at execution...

You have so many ideas (that you believe are amazing and revolutionary) if you concretize those ideas you will be on top of the world, don't you?

But when you start to work on them on your own, as a side-project or a business, your work ethic is gone, nowhere to be seen.

That's weird because you have an incredible work ethic everywhere else, be it at your job or in a team. You are always craving to learn more and become better. You always produce top-grade stuff and you are relentless. You are proud of this. And people agree with that statement.

You then, think you can make it out on your own, as skillful as you are, it would be a shame not to try.

But when you take the leap, you come to quickly realize, it's gonna be hard than expected.

First obstacle? Yourself.

You just can't seem to do what you know needs to be done.

You face a procrastination level more intense than anything you've never met in your life. Except maybe for that time you wanted to confess your love to your crush as a teenager.

You need to understand you are not a cold-blooded strategist that will follow a plan to completion.

You must understand this: You are an explorer! You go where your interest leads you. And when you are motivated by a will to explore your curiosity, YOU ARE UNSTOPPABLE.

The other side of the coin says, when you are disinterested in the tasks at hand, you feel bored as hell and will probably find a way to escape from doing the tasks at hand.

Your driving force is not the perspective of making shit loads of cash, neither it is the perspective of freedom, and sorry to break it to you, your driving force is not your desire to change the world for the better.

Your driving force is your curiosity. This is your motor.

With curiosity, you are a tsunami. Nothing will get in the way of the answer you seek.

Without curiosity, you are very good at finding excuses to not do what bores you out.

Why does it matter?

It matters because you will probably do the following mistake...

You will decide on a goal and following contemporary advice decide to make it S.M.A.R.T. Which basically means realistic with an arbitrary deadline.

Your strategizing mind will help you devise a sound plan of action, and your knack for creativity help you discerned a way you can even kill two birds with one stone.

You talk about it with whoever might be willing to listen and you feel on top of the world.

The first day? You are killing it. The second day? You are killing it.

The third day, you get sidetracked...

One month later? You haven't even achieved 10% of what you set out to do.

You were supposed to be able to do it in three months by focusing intensely.

Now, this seem very compromised. You feel miserable and guilty. You wonder if you are any good at anything.

This scenario keeps happening again, again, and again... Until you give up or you stumble upon the truth.

Let's give a closer look at your primary hypothesis.

So you were thinking you can do it in just three months by focusing intensely?

Well good news, you were half right.

You can do it...

...But not in three months.

Why?

Because even though you can focus intensely consistently on the subject you are curious about.

You can't stay curious about the same subject consistently.

So your curiosity will lead you to places you can't predict.

You just know one thing for sure, if you were interested in something one day, you will be interested in that thing again. You just can't predict when.

You will actually bring that project to completion effortlessly, but not in the shortest time possible.

Instead of the three months, you estimated, it will likely be six to nine months.

And that's ok, because that won't be the only thing you have done in those six to nine months.

You have an unprecedented capacity for multithreading, you just can't allocate all your threads to one project. It must be different projects. This is how you are.

If you are curious about something, you will want to drop the ball on your current project to satisfy your curiosity. And you must do it.

But every time you follow your curiosity you must find a way to get away with more than just knowledge.

Unused knowledge is ephemeral, vanishing as swiftly as it was acquired.

You must build something from the fruit of your recently acquired knowledge that will stand the test of time and bring you a small but lasting advantage.

It doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be there.

THE KEY THING TO TAKE AWAY FROM THIS: You must shift from a consumer to a producer.

You must start producing stuff. Start businesses, start a blog, do everything you want, but DO. (keyword do, not just read about/learn about etc....)

It's normal for you to getting informed about something you are interested in, but you need to act on it. You must build something out of it. You must share it with the world.

You must create things and release them in the world. I REPEAT. You must create things and release them in the word.

You don't have to follow a great mastermind plan, you don't have to follow a routine or fixed planning. You don't have to torture yourself to heck out every last bit of productivity there's inside you.

You just need to listen to yourself and follow your curiosity. And to do it everyday.

Your strength is the speed at which you can pivot.

You can change your mind and start working on something different than what you were doing, at full speed, and immediately.

You can survey a complicated question an bring back multiple possible answers at the speed of light.

You are impulsive and adaptable. You can do anything you want because you will always find a way... As long as you are interested.

This surges of productivity come at a cost. Your interest in a particular thing has a very short shelf-life.
One to two days top. Sometimes it's less than a couple of hours.

If you don't catch the wave of curiosity, it's gone, and sometimes it's gone for several weeks or months.

So expecting yourself to work on the same project, without interruptions every day for three months in a row? ... You are being oblivious to your own nature, my friend.

You probably know that by now, the biggest predictor of entrepreneurial success is consistency.

Then how can you expect success if you can't stay on track and schedule for more than two weeks?

You need to build a different kind of consistency than a rigid routine and prison-like tight schedules.

You need to play on your strength: Explore and Exploit ASAP.

Don't explore something without bringing back a treasure from your adventure.


Examples:

  • You were curious about nutrition and muscle-growth gym regimen? You binge-learned every possible way to do it (instead of doing your job lol). You just acquired way too much knowledge to expect yourself to remember it a week from now. So applying it consistently? Out of your league.
    The solution? Swiftly assemble a training and nutrition guide based on what you just explored, package it in a nice PDF, and then share it with the world. You can decide to monetize it or just to share it for free on a forum, it doesn't matter. It will help some people, and that's good for your karma. Second benefit, the day you will want to actually go to the gym, you can just follow your own guideline. Two birds, one stone.
  • You are learning Python and discover the weird world of Decorators and Closures. This stuff is basically out of your league and at your level you will probably never use it. But you can't shake off the feeling. You start binging and learning mystical stuff. Before you go back to the real world to what will actually move you forward in the grand scheme of things, put on together in one shot a blog post that you will publish on Medium behind the paywall. Boom! Three birds, one stone: Personal Branding & Portfolio : check; a very slim source of additional passive income: check; a quick way to retrieve your long-lost knowledge about closures when you finally need it, three years from now: check.
  • Well you see the idea, indulge your instinct and before the honeymoon ends, build something that will last. In this way, you will shift from an inconsistent being to a prolific and polymath builder. You will shift from consumer to producer.







So by now, if you are an ENTP, you are probably envisioning what I am talking about.

I want to add a couple of other points... Playing on your strength also means you need to mitigate your weakness.

Your strength and weaknesses are two faces of the same coin. You can't get one without the other.

During my short time on earth as an entrepreneurial ENTP, I have summarized below everything I know about mitigating our innate weaknesses.









Weakness mitigation tips #1: You can only respect HARD DEADLINES.

There's two kind of deadlines: HARD deadlines and SOFT deadlines.

HARD deadlines are deadlines you must respect. When you are under hard deadlines, you work like crazy to respect them. Those are often imposed by a promise or the external environment. Hard Deadlines are why you have so much work ethic when you work for somebody else.

SOFT deadlines are deadlines you don't have obligation to respect. Basically they are deadlines you can bullshit yourselves out of easily. Often those are arbitrary and self-imposed, for example, SMART Goals. Soft deadlines are why you have so few work ethic when you work for yourself.

The litmus test is simple, "Can I find a way to not respect that deadline?".
If you start generating a thousand ideas about how to do so, then it's a soft deadline and this deadline means nothing to you and will bring you nothing. (except guilt)


So you being too clever may start to think? "Oh, gotcha I just need to change every deadline into a HARD deadline".

NO! Don't do this. The only way to do this is to take risks and to put yourself at a disadvantage. You are basically gambling on yourself just to create the pressure necessary to do the work. This is a horrible way to live your life.

(ex of this destructive behavior: Damaging relationships just to be sure you will do something. Wasting all your money to let the pressure of feeding your family let you work like crazy, etc...)

As an ENTP what you crave is freedom, this way of proceeding (a.k.a. burn your bridges) is the polar opposite of freedom. It will make you feel miserable and burn you out, also it sucks because you are destructing what you build to build more. This is terrible. Don't do it.

Just understand that soft deadlines mean nothing to you and plan accordingly.

Don't gamble on a deadline you can bullshit yourself out of.

Soft deadlines are a distraction to you, those are noise. SMART goals stuff like that, forget those, they don't work with you.

But also, don't take on too many hard deadlines at the same time.

Those hard deadlines are like prison chains to you. And what you crave is freedom.

If you enchain yourself too much, you will burnout.


This leave the question. How an ENTP can get stuff done?

Weakness Mitigation tip #2: Boredom is like a steel wall to you. You can't get through it and have to wait for the door of curiosity to open.

So what should I do? The ENTP equivalent of taking massive actions.

You must play to your strength and mitigate your weakness.

Follow your curiosity and build something from your exploration. Build it quickly, in a couple of hours or max. You must build it before your curiosity wither.

Understand that boredom is your limit. You can only go through boredom excruciatingly. This is your hard deadline for every project, you must finish the milestone before boredom takes you and your curiosity wants to go somewhere else.

A quick note about perfection?
What you build must never be perfect. Perfection is your enemy, it makes you anxious and buries you in analysis paralysis. (= you don't do shit and feel shitty about it)

What should I do when I am bored with a project and want to do something else?

You must stop and do something else. You will get back to the project eventually if you were interested once, you will be interested twice.

Weakness Mitigation tip #3: Don't make plans more detailed than a rough outline.

A detailed and carefully crafted plan is wasted on you... You will never follow it through.

Don't spend time creating detailed stratagems to get to your goals. THIS IS A WASTE OF TIME, DO SOMETHING ELSE INSTEAD.

You are tactical and agile. The time horizon you can plan on is limited to a couple of hours. It's very short.

For the long term, you can guess how things are gonna roughly. Your intuition power is often on point.

It's even more powerful when you feed your intuition with data. How do you get your data?

Every time you want to plan your future, turn to your past instead and log what you have been doing in the last few days.

You want to empirically determine your speed of production. Take the time to keep track of what you did during the day.

You can use this basic template:

Questions to gather data about your explorations:
1. What have I been interested in the last few day?
2. How did I go about exploring that interests?
3. What did I get out of it?
4. How long did it took?
5. What have I build-out of what I discovered? How have I used it?
6. How long did it took?
7. Is there thing I can do better next time? Things I need to avoid next time?


Answer those questions every two to three days. (Optimally, every time you finish a cycle of Exploration / Exploitation)

Store those answers in a way you can easily access those later. (Don't just write on a spare napkin and throw it away).

Weakness Mitigation tip # 4: Don't try to follow a perfect routine.

In the same way, hard deadlines are a chain to you, trying to respect arbitrary daily planning will lower your available energy for the day.

Instead, have a shortlist of 5 mandatory items you must do during the day and that you can do quickly.

If you can't cross every item of that list in less than 100 minutes, the list is too long.

An example can be:
  • Meditate 10 minutes.
  • Walk the dog.
  • Do the dishes.
  • Quick workout at the gym.
  • Write in my journal.
Sometimes you will meditate in the morning, sometimes before you go to bed, sometimes during the commute. Doesn't matter, you need the flexibility to do things when you are ready for those.

What matters is that you crossed every item of the list, not when you crossed those.

The rest of the day, follow your curiosity relentlessly and get something out of it.

Weakness Mitigation tip #5: Keep your Anxiety in check... It keeps your from entering a Flow state.

First of all, You must strive to get into Flow. Getting into flow every day is your bread and butter as an ENTP.

Though there's one thing that can keep you from entering a Flow state even if you are well rested, in good health, and will push you to immediate-rewards behavior.(ex:... alcohol, infinite scrolling, eating way too much sugar, gambling, buying spree, opening 200+ tabs on your web browser about a shitty subject you don't even care about)

This thing is Anxiety.

You must learn to effectively manage your anxiety level. Because when highly stressed and without a hard deadline, you are basically dysfunctional and will get nothing done.
(Please remember that high-stress level and hard pressure to get things done is a miserable way to live your life. It's okay once in a while but don't abuse it.)

So do things that help you rest and recover. Make a conscious effort to recover and balance your innate restlessness.
Examples:
- Sport you genuinely enjoy
- Meditation
- Light encounter with your social circle
- Playing games
- Read books unrelated to your goals. (fiction, or history)
- Get a massage.
- Dance, Concert, Restaurant
- Journaling, gratitudes etc...

Weakness Mitigation tip #6: Inject a bit of order in your life.

Then, because you are so future and possibly oriented you need help to organize things that happened in your past.
  • Some of us are a mess when it comes to meetings and time constraints or remembering special events like birthdays. Get a calendar, note everything inside, check it often.
  • Your life memory is foggy at best and can't remember specifics even if you try hard, it often means you are totally wrong about your achievements and efforts (often wrongly believe you never did anything right) ⇒ Spend time every day to journal about your life, log your decisions and log your achievements. Include specifics like mood, time spent on task etc... When in doubt about what you have been doing, you can read those logs to help you access data you would have forget otherwise.
  • Revisiting your life is very difficult for you as you get immediately distracted. If you believe you have a trauma from your childhood (and most people have) Consider going to a psychologist who will guide you through the fumes of your past.
  • You want a boost of productivity and increase your odds of success in the short term. Get an accountability coach that will help you add some order in your life. (Getting a coach is one of the ways to help you achieve soft deadlines you would not be able to honor otherwise), it also helps you clarify and be more surgical about your focus.
  • You forget the things your family / entourage needs you to do (do the laundry, send wishes for birthday etc...)

Weakness Mitigation tip #7: Become more aware of your mind, thoughts and body.

You must strive to be aware of your mental state, to identify when you start to get bored and must finish asap or to identify when you are curious about something.

The best way to do so is to practice mindfulness meditation (yes seriously) and to do sports that demand to be aware of the mind-body connection.

This will help you be more tuned toward your sensations and thoughts. Which is key to live a more fluid and free life.

Weakness Mitigation tip #8: GET RID OF YOUR PHONE / SOCIAL MEDIA
Phones are engineered to suck your attention away from whatever your doing. Your attention is a raw resource they monetize.

As an ENTP you are curious and novelty-seeker, and you are very competent at indulging your curiosity for hours on end.


Attention vampires have access to brilliant minds that they pay a lot to spend their day engineering way to suck your attention for the sake of ad profits.


Against a phone, you are at the bottom of the food chain.

PHONES ARE YOUR NATURAL ENEMY.

Possible solutions to mitigate the damage from your phone:
- Destroy it.
- Use apps blocker like
STAY-FOCUSED (android)
- Use phone blocker like FOREST.
(ps: it doubles as a Pomodoro app, and is gamified which makes you less likely to bypass it, you sly fox)
- Use a way to track and realize how much time you waste on your phone, like STAY-FOCUSED. (prepare to be shocked)
- Change the color of your phone in grey-scale or invert white/black, attention vampires use flashy colors to suck you in, you can fight that by getting rid of colors.
How to do it with iPhone here, and how to do it with Android here.
- Destroy it.

- Buy a NOKIA 3310, a hand-held GPS, a vintage MP3 player, a nice watch, and a paper agenda. If you think about it, everybody has a phone so you don't really need one, as you can just ask to borrow the functionality you lack.

I repeat. GET RID OF YOUR PHONE. Thank me later.

Weakness Mitigation tip #9: You don't do well in a pond of sharks, you need a supportive and encouraging environment.


You are trusting and willing to see the best face of everyone you meet. You want to collaborate and share your knowledge.

You are good in a team and with people, especially when you can assume everybody is on the same side.

You want to trust people, and you usually demonstrate trust first. Keep doing that, it's one of your competitive edges.

But a word of caution, trusting people first doesn't mean people should be safe double-crossing you.

Of course, some foe will want to abuse your willingness to help.

If somebody abuses your trusting identity YOU MUST RETALIATE. I am serious.

You will know when somebody abuses your kindness. Your Machiavellian side will know immediately. DON'T MAKE EXCUSES FOR THE VILLAINS.

THEY CROSS YOU, YOU CROSS THEM. PERIOD.

ONCE YOU HAVE DEMONSTRATED YOU CAN BITE AS WELL AS YOU CAN SMILE
and both sides are bleeding, YOU CAN THEN SHOW FORGIVENESS.

AFTER ALL, YOU DON'T LIKE CONFLICT.


This assumes that you are evolving in an environment where people willing to screw you are an anomaly, and most people are on your side.

If you realize that people wanting to screw you over are the norm, then you are in a pond of shark AND YOU MUST RUNAWAY ASAP.

Let the evil political game and the House of Cards vibe for the people who thrive in those corrosive environments.

This is not you.

You will thrive more in a group that is trusting and encouraging, united in a common cause.

The fact that you have a developed Machiavellian mind doesn't mean you must use it at 100%.

If people around you are mean, calculating, or vain. Leave, without looking back.

Weakness Mitigation tip #10: Don't bet on speed. Build an advantage for the long game instead.

Because, when you start out as an ENTP, you will never be the first to arrive somewhere...
(When you will become an experienced ENTP, this will change, as your tactical velocity will be unheard of, but when you start, well... You are not the fastest.)
... You must not pick your battles based on rewards correlated with a short time to arrival... (Example, you are starting out with dropshipping, you see everybody is going for fidget spinners. Don't go for it, you will arrive after the battle.)
... Instead, You must pick your battle based on long term compounded rewards. (Example, learning skills that are difficult and valuable to master. Code, Copywriting, Writing, Consulting.)

Then once you start to have an edge that is difficult to replicate...(Example; you are a blockchain enthusiast, but you probably know things more in-depth than most of the other blockchain enthusiasts.)
... Pick a battle that will complement it and that triggers your curiosity (Example, starting a blog about blockchain + learning how to do first-class SEO).

Even though everybody was faster than you in the short run... (Example, your accountability partner Tom became a millionaire just in two years, and you were still in your parent basement)
... On the long run, you will establish a valuable strategic advantage that is hard for anybody else to replicate. (Example: Five years later, your Blockchain blog is ranked first on google and is monetized with ads, You keep getting people asking you to interview you and you started a consulting business about blockchain. You never made that much money in your life and you now have a strong network. You basically do what you want, when you want, with who you want, from anywhere you want.).




....


Alright I am getting bored, just one last thing before we go...

TLDR: implement the code written below in your daily life. It will do the trick, I know you will figure out the specifics on your own.


ENTP?

Be Patient and Restless




You must be patient in the long term.

You will get where you want.

But you won't get there in the shortest amount of time possible.

Because you will take so many detours.

So be patient.




You must be restless in the sort term.

Want to explore an option, fine, do it.

Go all the way.

Unleash your curiosity.

... But you must make a pact with yourself.

Every time you unleash your curiosity, you must build a memento and share it with the world.

A simple recipe...


1/ Explore until bored.

2/ Quickly build something valuable for others.

3/ Share it to the people who most need it.


You are an explorer and every time you go on an adventure, you bring back wonderful treasures, undiscovered before.

Promise yourself you won't keep those treasures to yourself and will share those with the world.

Once your oath is taken, go.

Explore.

Follow your curiosity relentlessly.

Everyday.

You are free now.




BONUS:

What does it look like when you are not playing to your strength and mitigating your weakness?:


You are doing something, let's call it interest A. You begin to be interested in interest B.
You decide to keep doing interest A.
You slowly get bored and pick up your phone.
Five hours later, you haven't finished working on interest A.
You feel guilty and have trouble falling asleep this evening.
You wake up, lethargic, it takes you four hours before finally getting to work on interest A.
It's excruciatingly boring but you manage to finish it. You begin to be interested in interest C.
You repress it and start working on interest B.
And so on and so on....

It feels like an uphill battle.

Also, it's depressing because you know your current velocity of execution is nowhere near your actual potential...


What does it look like when you play to your strength and mitigate your weaknesses?

You are doing something, let's call it interest A. You begin to be interested in interest B.

You switch your focus on interest B.
Five hours later you know everything you could know about interest B. You are still hungry for more.
You decide to produce something about your discovery.
(for the sake of example and to give you an idea of what it could be, let's say it's an article you will put on medium behind the paywall and you include a bait to your newsletter.)
Three hours later you are done with the building phase, you share it with the world and go to bed.
You feel good and sleep well.
You wake up, early in the morning, your interest for interest A is back and you feel the urge to do something about it.
You jump out of bed and start working asap, forgetting breakfast. By noon you are done with interest A.
You begin to be interested in interest C. You start working immediately on interest C.
And so on and so on.

You are prolific and restless. Your cumulative speed of production is unheard of. You are proud of you.

Could you have been done with interest A sooner if you had double down on it? No. You can't get away with boredom. This is your limit.

This is why you need to be patient. You are like a wind vane, you keep turning. So you will get there. You just won't get there by the shortest path.

This is why you need to be restless. Because you have to take the detour and answer the calling of your curiosity, you have to move as fast as possible, or you will never finish anything.



....


Hope it helps,

Rémi

P.S.: Btw, from my slim understanding of typology, this can maybe apply also to INFP, ENFP, and INTP.
Love this. I did that test before but can’t remember what I came out as.

No matter. I recently chattered with @Lex DeVille about how I immerse myself and deep-dive into something for a week max, and then I come up for air and do the same for another interest.

The trick is that I have a type of hard deadline of trying to implement something by the end of the week when I know I’ll want (or need) to turn my attention to something else.

I lean into my natural tendencies and have a handful of interests that I round-robin between, and that all pull in the same direction. (For instance mine are: creating videos for courses, creating videos for YouTube, growing an email list via YouTube Ads or Google Ads, running client campaigns, and talking to people about all of the above.)

Something else I try to do is finish the week so that a new plate is spinning. When I come back in a few weeks time to look at that project I want to see data for the few weeks it ran on autopilot. E.g. I might want to setup a Google Ads campaign and landing page to build an email list and I want to come back to it a week later to see how it’s done.

I also document as I go along, almost as a note for my future self to come back to, and to help my past self in the future (people following in my footsteps).

It’s super important to understand how you work and to lean into it.

Paging @eliquid because I know this is right up his street.

EDIT: Skimmed some more of the thread and spotted @eliquid in it already, which figures.
 
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LifeTransformer

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I checked back to 2015 - should be a millionaire by now :p - and my first reply to a personality test said INTP.

After doing the test again recently, still INTP.

This thread is absolute gold! I = Introvert right? E = Extrovert? So it most definitely applies to INTP in my opinion. I can can go ENTP under the right circumstances too :)

Anyway, what I wanted to say is; I think this thread might have finally unlocked a missing piece of "the puzzle" I've read so many things, got so many ideas, etc. But execution was and is always terrible. I now think it is because of my personality type, and this thread made so much damn sense to me!

Hopefully this really is that missing link, and if it is I owe you one massive beverage of your choice!
 
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People who are ENTP/INTP ( I am INTP) are highly associated with Attention Deficit Disorder.

I think it’s something like 70 ish %.
The reason I can’t get things done is because my brain regularly requires Dopamine hits and when it doesn’t receive said hits, it distracts to alternative methods or ways of finding it.

There is waaaaaaay more science behind this answer , so much so, it overwhelms me to even think about remembering the technical terms.

So, in my views , I believe the answer is the difference of an area of the brain that leads to Said behaviours.
 

lofi

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People who are ENTP/INTP ( I am INTP) are highly associated with Attention Deficit Disorder.

I think it’s something like 70 ish %.
The reason I can’t get things done is because my brain regularly requires Dopamine hits and when it doesn’t receive said hits, it distracts to alternative methods or ways of finding it.

There is waaaaaaay more science behind this answer , so much so, it overwhelms me to even think about remembering the technical terms.

So, in my views , I believe the answer is the difference of an area of the brain that leads to Said behaviours.
This makes a lot of sense, I'm INTP and struggled with focusing my whole life. Literally causes physical pain doing tasks I find boring, but if I'm interested the hours fly away. I find it easier to do tedious or boring tasks if I'm also doing something else simultaneously that releases dopamine l like listening to music or eating ice cream.

After rereading this thread all I can say is wow. This hits so deep and is putting what I've been experiencing my whole life into words. Everything from the crazy work ethic when you have hard deadlines to the software site blockers rings true. So glad to know there are other people going through this.

I'm great at devouring knowledge and become obsessed about topics for a couple weeks and then completely put it away. Getting into the producing mindset i think is difficult but essential. How have you guys made this a consistent habit rather than a one off thing.
 

Jemmalee

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This makes a lot of sense, I'm INTP and struggled with focusing my whole life. Literally causes physical pain doing tasks I find boring, but if I'm interested the hours fly away. I find it easier to do tedious or boring tasks if I'm also doing something else simultaneously that releases dopamine l like listening to music or eating ice cream.

After rereading this thread all I can say is wow. This hits so deep and is putting what I've been experiencing my whole life into words. Everything from the crazy work ethic when you have hard deadlines to the software site blockers rings true. So glad to know there are other people going through this.

I'm great at devouring knowledge and become obsessed about topics for a couple weeks and then completely put it away. Getting into the producing mindset i think is difficult but essential. How have you guys made this a consistent habit rather than a one off thing.

The moment I discovered my ADHD was like immense. I suddenly had the ability to understand my whole life in one minute.

I deem myself a lucky one.

I didn’t go on a ‘cure me’ medication journey, suckered to the system.

It just made me get a frickin grip on life.

I started exercise, eating well, meditatIon, digging deep into the meaning of life.

I noted all my flaws and wore them proudly (interrupting people, messy, nosy, creative as hell, )

“””I'm great at devouring knowledge and become obsessed about topics for a couple weeks and then completely put it away.””””

This my friend is Hyper Focus.
our gift to world. Head to google.

See this discovery in a POSITIVE light, PLEASE! Don’t fall into the trap.

Youll soon start to see.... everyone else are the crazy ones
 
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This is really cool. I did the test and came out to be an ENFP-T but this explains so much more than I could have imagined. I have actually started businesses and stopped working on them because of boredom. I learned from that and started two successful businesses but explicitly hired day-to-day staff to remove myself from the equation. It has been a TON better as I get to use my time the way I want to but now I am stressed because I have no bright ideas at the moment and it drives me nuts.

I really thought that I had some form of concentration problem. Your words ring true. But yeah, overall very interesting to know about oneself and use it to our advantage. It's tough though because I feel like I want to be able to just do mindless work for hours on end but I just get bored easily after a certain period.
 

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Thank you for this post. I really needed it right now.
In the last months I really saw it as a liability instead of an asset. But when I reflect now, I just noticed how fast and good work I did, when I was really interested and hyperfocused.

But I was just wondering how to mix the best of "both worlds". What I mean is, how to keep projects on track while I am not really interested in them. One solution might be to hire people. The only problem I see is that I might not be interested in managing them all the time..

What do you think about hiring people to fix your weaknesses?
Any experiences in managing people as a ENTP (or something like that)?

Thank you!
 

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So after my post above, I decided to look deeper into what my results might mean, and I also read @eliquid's excellent thread too.

I picked up the book "INTP" which I think was mentioned either here or that thread. and have been giving it a thorough look.

But, I got to a point where something doesn't quite seem right. It said about INTPs loving order? I'm chaotic, and if INTP is indeed Einstein's type, he used to say something almost the complete opposite of Marie Kondo; “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” and seemed quite chaotic himself from what I can gather...

Maybe that's where the extra letter at the end of the 16 personalities differentiates?

It said about INTPs "eating to eat, not for the joy of eating" or something along them lines, wheras I am definitely not in that camp, I'm quite a foodie lol

I know these tests are not going to be 100% accurate, but something about that makes me question the typing, I have checked multiple times, I only switch between ENTP/INTP

Just wondering if anybody has any further insight who's deeper down the rabbit hole than myself?
 
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So after my post above, I decided to look deeper into what my results might mean, and I also read @eliquid's excellent thread too.

I picked up the book "INTP" which I think was mentioned either here or that thread. and have been giving it a thorough look.

But, I got to a point where something doesn't quite seem right. It said about INTPs loving order? I'm chaotic, and if INTP is indeed Einstein's type, he used to say something almost the complete opposite of Marie Kondo; “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” and seemed quite chaotic himself from what I can gather...

Maybe that's where the extra letter at the end of the 16 personalities differentiates?

It said about INTPs "eating to eat, not for the joy of eating" or something along them lines, wheras I am definitely not in that camp, I'm quite a foodie lol

I know these tests are not going to be 100% accurate, but something about that makes me question the typing, I have checked multiple times, I only switch between ENTP/INTP

Just wondering if anybody has any further insight who's deeper down the rabbit hole than myself?
I'm INTP too - checked it twice 10 years apart. I'm terribly messy at home or in my car yet when I do a job for someone else I'm very tidy - go figure!
 

Simon Angel

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You are confused because you're doing the garbage 16 Personalities test, which is basically a rebranded Big Five Look up cognitive functions for your true type.

So after my post above, I decided to look deeper into what my results might mean, and I also read @eliquid's excellent thread too.

I picked up the book "INTP" which I think was mentioned either here or that thread. and have been giving it a thorough look.

But, I got to a point where something doesn't quite seem right. It said about INTPs loving order? I'm chaotic, and if INTP is indeed Einstein's type, he used to say something almost the complete opposite of Marie Kondo; “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” and seemed quite chaotic himself from what I can gather...

Maybe that's where the extra letter at the end of the 16 personalities differentiates?

It said about INTPs "eating to eat, not for the joy of eating" or something along them lines, wheras I am definitely not in that camp, I'm quite a foodie lol

I know these tests are not going to be 100% accurate, but something about that makes me question the typing, I have checked multiple times, I only switch between ENTP/INTP

Just wondering if anybody has any further insight who's deeper down the rabbit hole than myself?

Whatever book you're reading that describes INTPs as liking order you can throw in the trash. Things INTPs do not like: Authority, order, routine, people who can't think out of the box, washing their teeth on a regular basis.

From your writing style I'm pretty sure you're an ENTP.
 
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Einfamilienhaus

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The most important question is: Why this thread is not even marked as Notable?
 

LifeTransformer

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You are confused because you're doing the garbage 16 Personalities test, which is basically a rebranded Big Five Look up cognitive functions for your true type.



Whatever book you're reading that describes INTPs as liking order you can throw in the trash. Things INTPs do not like: Authority, order, routine, people who can't think out of the box, washing their teeth on a regular basis.

From your writing style I'm pretty sure you're an ENTP.

Thanks very much for your reply Simon, will definitely look into the cognitive functions more.

If my true type was ENTP that wouldn't surprise me. I think that other test you posted (I think it was you at least) pegged me as 70% ENTP.
 

Simon Angel

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Thanks very much for your reply Simon, will definitely look into the cognitive functions more.

If my true type was ENTP that wouldn't surprise me. I think that other test you posted (I think it was you at least) pegged me as 70% ENTP.

Then you're definitely an ENTP. ENTPs are probably the only true "ambiverts" out of all 16 personalities because of the Ne + Ti cognitive functions synergy. The only thing that does make us seem extraverted compared to INTPs is the third function in our stack, Fe, which is more developed than in the INTPs.

ENTP:

Ne - Extraverted Intuition.

Gathers information and comes up with a shit ton of ideas all day, every day. If brainstorming, wittiness and "what if?" had a name, that would Ne (Extraverted iNtuition). "Dude, imagine if.. and... and.. and.. etc". Funnily enough, everyone seems to activate their Ne more when they're high (every type has every cognitive function but with a different strength and preference). Focuses on what could be possible, rather than what is.

Ti - Introverted Thinking.

Processes all equally genius and retarded ideas that Ne comes up with and slaps it in the face or gives the green light as needed. Every great mathematician, physicist, chemist and etc likely had/has Ti way up in their stack.

Fe - Extraverted Feeling.

Smiling, knowing when you're pissing people off (and Ti often decides to ignore it), sympathy, holding your fart in when you're around friends because you wouldn't want to embarass yourself in front of others or have them smell what you ate for lunch.

Si - Introverted Sensing.

Forgot to eat? Bladder about to burst because you were so engaged in a task you didn't even notice how much you need to pee? Didn't make your bed? Leaving the dishes to wash for "later"? Play first work later? Give 0 shits about tradition, rules, maybe even your own birthday? Running late often and forgetting important responsibilities? You have what is called "Inferior Si". The bane of the ENTP.
 
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LifeTransformer

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Then you're definitely an ENTP. ENTPs are probably the only true "ambiverts" out of all 16 personalities because of the Ne + Ti cognitive functions synergy. The only thing that does make us seem extraverted compared to INTPs is the third function in our stack, Fe, which is more developed than in the INTPs.

ENTP:

Ne - Extraverted Intuition.

Gathers information and comes up with a shit ton of ideas all day, every day. If brainstorming, wittiness and "what if?" had a name, that would Ne (Extraverted iNtuition). "Dude, imagine if.. and... and.. and.. etc". Funnily enough, everyone seems to activate their Ne more when they're high (every type has every cognitive function but with a different strength and preference). Focuses on what could be possible, rather than what is.

Ti - Introverted Thinking.

Processes all equally genius and retarded ideas that Ne comes up with and slaps it in the face or gives the green light as needed. Every great mathematician, physicist, chemist and etc likely had/has Ti way up in their stack.

Fe - Extraverted Feeling.

Smiling, knowing when you're pissing people off (and Ti often decides to ignore it), sympathy, holding your fart in when you're around friends because you wouldn't want to embarass yourself in front of others or have them smell what you ate for lunch.

Si - Introverted Sensing.

Forgot to eat? Bladder about to burst because you were so engaged in a task you didn't even notice how much you need to pee? Didn't make your bed? Leaving the dishes to wash for "later"? Play first work later? Give 0 shits about tradition, rules, maybe even your own birthday? Running late often and forgetting important responsibilities? You have what is called "Inferior Si". The bane of the ENTP.

This is eye opening! Describes me perfectly. Except for the farting part, I might do that around certain people just for a laugh

I've attached a screenie of that bit that didn't sit well with me from the INTP book.

I like variety everywhere, only eating simple foods and sometimes forgetting to eat isn't me at all. So that kinda sent off an alarm bell to me ‍♂️

I would skip lunch if I was immersed in something though that's for sure, or eat while working. I don't do breakfast
 

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LifeTransformer

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People who are ENTP/INTP ( I am INTP) are highly associated with Attention Deficit Disorder.

I think it’s something like 70 ish %.
The reason I can’t get things done is because my brain regularly requires Dopamine hits and when it doesn’t receive said hits, it distracts to alternative methods or ways of finding it.

There is waaaaaaay more science behind this answer , so much so, it overwhelms me to even think about remembering the technical terms.

So, in my views , I believe the answer is the difference of an area of the brain that leads to Said behaviours.


This is actually a very important component to making this information useful.

Across the spectrum of similar tendencies of ENTP, they are all similar and adding in the attention issue compound things.

Primarily because that personality trait derived dopamine from problem solving. This is why they tend to work on something for a short time span and then it fades, because the easy hits of dopamine become more scarce, thus your brain starts to send you in directions to find novelty and ultimately get the dopamine in ways that expend the least amount of energy.

AKA, I started a new project on something I am really behind, and 3 months in when i start having to repeat the process to make money, it becomes repetitive and devoid of novelty. So then I start looking around and find some new engaging business idea that my brain tells me i could probably see results faster so i start focusing on that.

The thing is, you ARE in control of your brain via your mind and you are also in full control of your emotions via your mind (both conscious and subconscious. When you harness that powerful belief and learn to utilize it effectively and condition it over time, you start to work through a lot of these "issues" to get into a more repeatable FLOW state more often.
 

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@Remiremi

Remi, This is an excellent thread. I love your new copy skills.

It looks like you have taken a deep dive on some pretty important stuff and it's really well received.

One of the things I would add, is a bit contrary to one of your main points about indulging unfocused activity. While this can certainly solve the dopamine problem, over time it has diminishing results if you give yourself no self control over it. As we know though, reigning in that control takes consistent daily effort and conditioning to overcome over time.

So It can be a good idea to do from time to time, but by not allowing yourself 0 limits to it and setting reasonable expectations on when and how long it is necessary.

This is a great discussion BTW, one of the more engaging threads I have seen in a long time!
 
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Simon Angel

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34% INFP
26% INFJ
11% INTP
9% INTJ
6% ISFP

Fascinating...

You're all over the place. INFP has absolutely nothing to do with INFJ, nor does INTP with INTJ. Usually this is because people prefer to do these tests with what they think is the right answer or the way that they think they should be, yet who they actually are and their decision making is quite different.

We all aspire to better ourselves and are often fully aware of our flaws, but when taking these tests one must answer with a "What have I always been like?" mentality. How would your mother, girlfriend or best friend answer these questions? Looking back at your 20 year old self, would younger you have answered differently?

It does seem like you're an introvert though, so that leaves you with 4 possible dominant functions:

Fi - Introverted Feeling
Ni - Introverted Intuition
Ti - Introverted Thinking
Si - Introverted Sensing

Read up on each one to find out what your dominant function is, then it becomes pretty easy. It's safe to say you have low Si considering the answers you got are INFP (Fi dom), INFJ (Ni dom), INTP (Ti dom), INTJ (Ni dom again), ISFP (Fi dom again). Your likeliest dominant function according to your results (I suggest you take the test again and try to be really honest with yourself) is Introverted Feeling (Fi).

A couple quick questions:

Do you usually make your bed in the morning most days or do you tend to leave it as it were after getting up?

What's you reasoning for almost always/never making your bed?

What would your friends describe you as?

What does success look like to you? Imagine you've already made it. You have excess amounts of money and free time. What do you see yourself doing then?
 

Simon Angel

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I've been a fan of all forms of typology for many years now. While I have scored as an ENTP after several MBTI tests, I personally prerer the enneagram (I'm a 7) for any instropection, peace of mind and for leisurely reading. That being said I do strongly agree with how I behave based on the ENTP summary, I just see myself as a 7 more than anything else.

As for your post, I was initially going to skim through it as it's very long (lack of attention spans heavily found amongst ENTP), but realized you made some interesting points and gave it the whole read.

Thank you for typing this out as it's not something I have ever really come across, at least not in the way you presented it. I have been in a heavily extended period of being stagnant, lackadaisical, and distracted.

Taking hours to do something simple, laying in bed for 5 hours before I can even fall asleep, waking up dejected and unable to get out or bed even if I'm technically awake. This has led me to pondering the past few weeks how to best live with the organized chaos I seem to naturally prefer but you have laid out a great blueprint.

Thanks again.

It's not like MBTI and the enneagram are opposites, they go hand in hand.

An ENTP with enneagram 7 is the most common ENTP out there.

Fun fact: While MBTI (Jung) is all about your personality type and cognitive functions, which remain the same your whole life, the enneagram is mostly about your behaviour, attitude and mentality, which of course can and will change over time.
 

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