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

Remiremi

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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.
 
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GoodluckChuck

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I started reading this and was immediately turned off by the obvious copywriting. A couple hours later I opened my phone and saw ENTP and wondered, "What am I again? Oh yeah, INTP." Though, I'm right in the middle of I and E.

I read another couple sentences and realized you were speaking the truth. This post describes me very well. Some of the words explained it better than I understood myself from experience. So, for that I thank you very much.

One thing that sticks out in particular is the part about hard deadlines. I've always worked so hard for others but had managed to wiggle out of every deadline I ever set for myself. The only way I found success in business is to hire employees and create hard deadlines that way. It works very well and now that I understand it more, I'll be able to take advantage of it more.

I noticed early in the entrepreneur journey that I had to act fast. If I had an idea, I needed to execute on it quickly and finish within a day or two or it was game over. I've made some amazing things happen in a day or two.... Other times, I spent a week pouring myself into something only to never look at it again.

I can tell you wrote this for yourself and I appreciate the many grammatical errors. No true ENTP is going to go back and edit this without a hard deadline or a serious inkling for proper Grammer and punctuation.

To all other NTPs out there, stay strong and cut yourself some slack. We aren't meant for the slow burn. We are meant to flame out and burn hot before changing focus and lighting something else on fire. Let it burn ad long as it wants to then follow where your crazy mind takes you next!
 

Bekit

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This is amazing.

I'd give you the maximum allowed rep+ for this post if there was still such a thing.

I read through this absolutely mesmerized.

I've never encountered another description that describes my daily experience with such pinpoint accuracy.

Bravo!

The idea of producing something quickly out of your deep dive of research is an excellent one. I have done that in a limited way, but I'll start to do it more systematically. Love it!

I agree with all your points except #9. More specifically, your response to #9. I agree that I do better in a supportive environment than in a pond of sharks. But my personal standard is to not take vengeance. That doesn't mean I have to roll over and take abuse. Other viable alternatives:
  • Leave. If it's a toxic environment, just cut ties.
  • Negotiate. Chris Voss's approach is fantastic.
  • Delegate the vengeance. If someone has done something illegal, then hand them over to the authorities. That's what the justice system is there for (although, admittedly, it's VERY imperfect and sometimes a joke). If they've hurt me personally, I also delegate the vengeance to God in obedience to the command, "Avenge not yourselves...for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord." [Source]
  • Research ahead of time. When you've been hurt once or twice, you quickly learn to do your due diligence before trusting someone else.
  • Hedge against damage. Put things in contracts. Get payment upfront. Take out insurance. Do what's needed in case other parties play dirty.

I have always been skeptical of the whole personality type thing. Like @Simon Angel, I can read through all the personality types and say to myself, "This one could just as easily apply to me as that one." People say all the time, "This described me exactly!" But I always thought, "Yeah, but if you had gotten a different result, you'd have thought it described you exactly, too."

But your post hit the bull's eye with me.

Your bonus section is 100% true, too.

(For what it's worth, I'm an INTP, but I vs. E is like 51-49 for me, so I'm a very close toss-up and sometimes get the ENTP result when I do the test.)

Some practical stuff that this TOTALLY unlocks for me:
  • A month or two ago, I started a new business. It fills a need. It's a valuable service. I created the website in two days and it's still online. I bought a book that would expand my knowledge in a way that would make my service more valuable. But then I got bored. I never pursued getting a client. But every so often, my interest and curiosity circles back around to this business. So now I'm thinking, when that interest pops back up, instead of forcing myself to "leave it, I've decided I'm not pursuing this," I figure I might as well work on advancing it as the mood strikes instead of just leaving it and forcing myself to focus on other things. Play the long game. Develop it gradually.
  • Right now, I'm pursuing another business idea. I've been toying with a prototype for the last 3 months. After lots of iterations, I now have a prototype that I like. I've validated that I can sell it to strangers. It fills a need that I hear people complaining about all the time. Today I contacted a manufacturer. But all last week, I delayed taking that step of contacting a manufacturer, because I kept asking myself, "Is this yet another thing that I'm going to get bored of?" Your post gave me the freedom to say to myself, "You know what? YES. I'm probably going to get bored of this. Just like everything else. But that doesn't mean that I can't keep chipping away on it. So I might as well go ahead and do it while the interest is high."
  • In the meantime, I have copywriting projects. This happens ALL THE TIME with my projects. "I can work on this project, but not that one. I don't really know why. But your post shows me that I'm not alone in this. If I try to work on Project 1, I'll spend 2 days forcing myself to do it, and I won't have anything to show for my time. But if I work on Project 2, I can blast it out in no time, and then I bet I'll be interested in Project 1 again." This is DREADFUL for keeping a good schedule and knowing how much space I have in my calendar. But it seems useless to fight it. You are SO RIGHT about soft deadlines. And you are 100% right about how AWFUL it is if you change every deadline into a HARD deadline. So I LOVE your advice to "Just understand that soft deadlines mean nothing to you and plan accordingly" and "Don't take on too many hard deadlines at the same time." Absolutely brilliant.
Thank you for this fantastic post.

I hope you can do something with this.

You could totally put together a coaching offer for people and make this the first part of your sales letter. (It's some seriously good copy.)

Side note:
To anyone reading this through the lens of copy, look at how many times the introductory portion of the copy uses the word "you." (Most copy makes the mistake of being "me-focused.") Look at how I described myself as "mesmerized" as I read through it. When you can accurately describe to someone their exact experience like this, they will instinctively believe that you can also offer them a solution. And they will pay for that solution.

I could see this being used as an offer for an ebook or course, where your copy starts with everything up until the sentence, "During my short time on earth as an entrepreneurial ENTP, I have summarized below everything I know about mitigating our innate weaknesses."

And then, instead of transitioning to actually sharing your 10 points, you invite them to get your ebook or course, where you share the 10 points plus the bonus.

You would amp up a ton of curiosity, and then when the person actually got the ebook, they'd find it super valuable, which would build trust for whatever upsell offer you might want to develop.

Just a thought.

Anyway, thanks again for sharing. It's spot on for me.
 

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Very relatable and well-written, ENTP here with a 8w7 enneagram.

I have a progress thread where you can witness the potential and the disappointment that is the ENTP with striking resemblance to what is depicted here.

My super interests from age 14 to 22:

1. League of Legends - started out ultra bad, became a Challenger player in a few years, quit about 5-6 times before I reached that goa. Procrastinated streaming for a long time and ended up quitting for the 10th time or so since I used to be #1 in the world with a champion in the game. This has been on and off since 2012 and I think I quit for good, though I often feel like competing again. I probably played a total of 3 years from 2012 to 2012, so I spent a longer time off the game than on it.

2. Ecommerce/Dropshipping - spent 6 months learning everything from scratch (googled how to get rich and landed on the forum) then set out and created my whole store (did not touch the design after, it was good) + set up payment methods in just one morning, launched a product by lunch and in the afternoon I already had sales and ended up earning $30K a month from that. Got ultra sick for years, almost died a few times and the store + my money evaporated (among other things).

3. Formula 1 - dream since I was a child was to become an F1 racer. Father laughed at the idea and said that's not possible since we're from Bulgaria and poor. Now I am even more invested in the sport, bought a sim racing wheel + games and have eSports level competitive lap times after half a year of on/off driving. If I have a son one day I'm going to help him achieve whatever the F*ck he wants, and if it's to become an F1 driver I'm going to take him karting and sponsor him until his talent is recognized and bigger names take over with me in the management role.

4. Web design / Digital marketing - Started out in May last year, did 2 sites for free. I completely forgot about it until I decided to go at it again after going in debt from my 5th dropshipping attempt THIS May. Ended up learning how to cold call, close meetings and sales and I'm not in debt anymore. I can't really scale this locally and I'm not entirely interested in the idea anyway, so I decided to start reaching out to US businesses with cold emails + video audits. My pronounciation improved a ton and I'm sending out e-mails but it's something like 10 video emails one day, 3 the next, 0 for a week and then 5, 10, 15 the next few days. Then another idea catches my interest or I start reminiscing about League of Legends/Formula 1 and my theoretical streaming/sim racing success.

I'm really guilty of letting my close ones pressure me into being more productive. I've always felt they just don't understand, but then again it's not a terrible idea to improve the dreaded Si function. I can still only make my bed in the morning for 3 consecutive days and that's the end of that.

Weed helps when I get overwhelmed (keeps my Crohn's disease in remission as well).

Thanks for making this thread again, lots of valuable info and a perfect example of "practice what you preach".


P.S The only way to be 99.9% sure you're an ENTP (get it) is if you "tried out" every one of the 16 personalities for size at one point. I've managed to convince myself I'm an ENTJ, INTJ, ISFP, INFP, ENFJ, ISTP, ISTJ and etc. But I always end up coming back to ENTP lol.

John's Personality Test - Accurate and quick cognitive functions test.
 
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Jon L

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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....
 

Remiremi

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For anyone reading this, scratching their head asking themselves: "Am I doomed, enslaved to my personality type?".

Even if the outline about how your mind works doesn't seem to change without a big trauma, nobody can know how your mind works, it will always be a mystery.

In a nutshell, you are not your cognitive functions (what MBTI ultimately attempts to determine are your cognitive functions, personality types are only a classification system) YOU ARE MORE THAN THAN THE SUM OF YOUR PARTS.

Your results from different tests may be different (because tests are far from perfect). A test doesn't determine shit about you.

A test only gives you insights about how your unique minds work. Those insights might be wrong or might be right. A test is not absolute. You are the ones who must determine for yourself, are those insights actionable or not.

A test doesn't determine your life.

Only you can determine it.


It's ultimately your choice.

Thinking, "if only I could change my personality type... " is a blatant excuse, and you might want to re-read Unscripted , especially:

  • Chapter 16 -- "Our Self-Imposed Prison: Beliefs, Biases, and Bullshit"
  • Chapter 19 -- "The Special Scam: "I 'm Not Good at That" "
  • Chapter 23 -- "The Luck Scam: You Don't Play, You Don't Win"
  • Chapter 26 -- "The Biases: Your Brain's Delusions"
  • Chapter 27 -- "Bullshit from Bullshitters: Crutches, Clichés, and Cults"
  • Chapter 38 -- "Executing Excellence: You Can't Predict the Unpredictable!"
 
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Remiremi

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@Remiremi I really respect that initial post. To get you to expand a bit more: how do you think about goal setting in the context of the advice you gave for ENTP personalities? How useful is it to set goals? Should ENTP personalities just multi-track lots of goals? Is it better to have a single clear over-arching goal (e.g. "I'm going to get rich, here is why, this is what it will look like") and then try to coordinate our many different endeavors towards that end?

Just interested in seeing you write more about this topic. Anything you can write about goal-setting as an ENTP will be useful for me. Thanks!

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
 

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Thanks for this thread! I would like to add some of my own insights as an INTP. Like you said, money is not really a motivating factor for us. Curiosity is what makes us work. Because of this relentless curiosity, we kind of are interested in everything. This can be a real problem if you try to focus on building a business.

So, what works wonderful for me right now is to pick a skill that's hard to master and let your curiosity flow in this direction. Be curious about what you can do with this skill and look how you become better and better day by day.

Such a skill would be programming or video editing, for example. The basics are easy to learn, but the POSSIBILITIES are endless, and this is what makes us going. We're curious what we can craft. I think being able to be endlessly creative plays a big role here.


To give a real world example on how this could work out, you could learn to film as well as video editing and start a YouTube Channel. This way, you would help others with your knowledge base (which is huge if you're an INTP, don't fall into imposter syndrome, please), learn a skill with practically never ending creative possibilities and build a business, with all the comforts of your home!
 

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I just read your Intro and you are only 26 and came to those conclusions? Bloody hell, I feel old. I have read a lot of non fiction books, psychology and what not, but nobody has ever laid it out in such simple terms that you can actually understand.
It is an amazing post, I am one of those ENTP's which has always had those issues. My wife hand my friends have always complained about me starting something new every other day, that I get these great ideas and they die out with the same speed they come to live.
When you reach 45 and read post like yours and realising that the author is half of your age, you fell really dumb. You feel that you were oblivious all those years.
Anyhow, great you are here and shared your thoughts.

Best wishes!
Pete
 

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Great article, it matches up a lot with my experience becoming more successful over time. I appreciate you clarifying a lot of success strategies that I've been trying to codify myself, I think it will be very helpful for me to remember the advice here, both stuff I've already experienced and also the advice I haven't thought about before.

Over the years I've definitely become more biased towards action... as much as I love navel-gazing, I am now definitely a person that gets things done. But just like you described, a can get a whole lot done for the next 3-4 days, maybe this whole week, but then I'm likely to drop that thing and be on to something else.

I do get more success out of focusing on deeper, more difficult challenges... an example from this past week: although I like the idea, I don't actually get very curious about how to make music with a DAW like Ableton, so last week I wrote a Python function to generate sine waves and write them to a WAV file, then I started building up a library for audio programming from there. Of course, this lead to me brushing up on my calculus skills so I could start learning about Fourier series. My wife was like, "you don't need to be spending your time learning to program whale sounds," but I told her it's all part of the package. Spending time pursuing projects like that feeds into everything else I do.

Several years ago I started telling people, "If you watch me over the period of a few weeks, it looks like I'm constantly spinning my wheels and going nowhere, but over the course of 5 years I've accomplished major life goals that other people can only dream about".

Sometimes I do try to get myself to execute at a faster pace on mid-term goals, but still no success in years and years of trying. It's just that reality changes. The 3-month plan I wrote down 2 weeks ago may be irrelevant today. So today I just try to do as much as I can, and year by year that work adds up. I have a lot of goals still ahead of me, but today I am 100% living the life that I was dreaming about 7-8 years ago, like every detail I imagined is a reality today.
 
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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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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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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.
 

GoodluckChuck

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Told ya.

For anyone that's confused, he's not 37% ENTP, 23% INTP, 14% INTJ and etc. He's 100% ENTP. All the test is saying his most likely type (37%) is ENTP due to his answers.

The INTJ and ENTJ that's popping up (happened me to as well) is because of his entrepreneural journey which has influenced the way he answered the questions.

This is why it's crucial to do this test by answering what you've always been like i.e not what you think the answer should be, but looking back at yourself when you were 10, 15, 20 years old and what you were like then in order to get your accurate type.

I would agree with that. I've changed a lot since I started my business. It took me 3 years to understand why certain parts were so hard while other parts were easy. Personality tests have been hugely valuable.
 

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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.
 

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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It's almost as if we are to create businesses that require our attention that impacts others that will stand against the test of time without us being present once our interest for that business expires.

I can't seem to think of anything at this present moment.

I also explain to my friends that routine is just not in our nature. It's very hard to commit to a scheduled routine or let a lone build up discipline based on an interest once it expires.

Hey I've come to a similar conclusion.

But to rectify just one bit, I believe your interest is sort-of cyclic, not ephemeral, one day shining bright to never be seen again.

You curiosity about a subject is like the seasons it will come again, not like a shooting star. You have to take that into account, creating way to easily get back on track when the season come again. By being overly pessimistic you fail to see lines of play, by thinking your interest has vanished for good, you might take actions that are akin to auto-sabottage while thinking your doing the right thing.

One time-period you care about A, the next one about B, the next one about C, the next one about A again...

So the idea is to build a system that will be able to go on during the time period you don't want to put maximal effort in it.

From the way I see it (and I'm pretty sure there's more perspectives than those, I just don't see those yet)

The system you build need to (1.) have a system of checkpoint, (2.) some inertia or resilience built into it.

To solve (1.) the question is:
What happen if you stop working on the business and, one day, decide to come back. Do you have to start it all from scratch? The answer must be "not really"
Why does it matter? The easiesr it is to build the system incrementally, the more likely you are to keep coming back to it and make progress here and then.

To solve (2.) the question is:
What happen if you suddenly stop working on the business despite being uber-motivated the day before? The answer must be along the line of "It keeps going".
Why does it matter? First, if it stops working if you don't work on it, you fill guilt and guilt will criple you. Second, you it means every time you come back to it, you can improve the system and it will work better and better as time passes.


Some generic idea:

In term of "passive" income,
Invest in Real Estate and find a way to rent it so you are cashflow positive (do the maths!) on the transaction.
Repeat, fine-tune.
Why it works: one piece at a time your building a portfolio that will keep growing.

In term of funnel acquisition,
- maybe focus more on building organic growth thanks to automated system (like SEO) that can keep pushing lead into the funnel while you sleep instead of focusing on stuff that requires micro-management (like FB ads or affilitation).
- just buy the lead to somebody who know how to do lead acquisition so that you can just wire a certain amount automatically every month and keep the leads coming.
- set up shop in a market place that will keep leads flowing in exchange of a comission etc...

In term of funnel sales,
- maybe focus more on setting up a simple automated sales funnels that you can optimize every now and then.

Also some line of work have checkpoints built-in the progression

For example, freelancing, at the beginning it's hard but the more you do it and learn about it the more you realize you will never "go-back". The mindset and set of skills you learn will keep you from that.

So maybe you can start freelancing on the side, learn the rope, learn new skills thanks to freelancing and the variety of situation it offers (in contrast with a job where it's same ol' same ol' everyday)

Still with freelancing, you can sell retainers to client, (which means recurring income with high return-on-time invested).

Parting thoughts
By no mean it's an exhaustiv list of the options you have, this is just a sample from my own limited understanding of the subject. I just hope to help you see a new perspective that you can explore on your own, so that you can find the answers that fit your game of life.

Hope it helps,

Rémi
 
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Simon Angel

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It’s definitely true it’s difficult for N types to talk to S types though. Has anyone figured that out?

It'll always be hard, but not because "N" types are geniuses and "S" types are retards (like people love to joke about.)

Simply put, S types are essentially destined to make the most of reality while N types are destined to venture out into the theoretical/abstract.

The former (S types) find philosophy, abstract concepts, and deep introspection to be boring/useless/intimidating but they also tend to become very in tune with their bodies and surroundings/develop a deep understanding of the "here and now" and the concrete.

Because they neglected the physical to focus on the abstract, the latter (N types) perceive them (the Sensing types) as unintelligent while also being envious of their advanced motor skills and ability to handle everyday things and real life in general.
 

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This is amazing.

I'd give you the maximum allowed rep+ for this post if there was still such a thing.

I read through this absolutely mesmerized.

I've never encountered another description that describes my daily experience with such pinpoint accuracy.

Bravo!

The idea of producing something quickly out of your deep dive of research is an excellent one. I have done that in a limited way, but I'll start to do it more systematically. Love it!

I agree with all your points except #9. More specifically, your response to #9. I agree that I do better in a supportive environment than in a pond of sharks. But my personal standard is to not take vengeance. That doesn't mean I have to roll over and take abuse. Other viable alternatives:
  • Leave. If it's a toxic environment, just cut ties.
  • Negotiate. Chris Voss's approach is fantastic.
  • Delegate the vengeance. If someone has done something illegal, then hand them over to the authorities. That's what the justice system is there for (although, admittedly, it's VERY imperfect and sometimes a joke). If they've hurt me personally, I also delegate the vengeance to God in obedience to the command, "Avenge not yourselves...for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord." [Source]
  • Research ahead of time. When you've been hurt once or twice, you quickly learn to do your due diligence before trusting someone else.
  • Hedge against damage. Put things in contracts. Get payment upfront. Take out insurance. Do what's needed in case other parties play dirty.

I have always been skeptical of the whole personality type thing. Like @Simon Angel, I can read through all the personality types and say to myself, "This one could just as easily apply to me as that one." People say all the time, "This described me exactly!" But I always thought, "Yeah, but if you had gotten a different result, you'd have thought it described you exactly, too."

But your post hit the bull's eye with me.

Your bonus section is 100% true, too.

(For what it's worth, I'm an INTP, but I vs. E is like 51-49 for me, so I'm a very close toss-up and sometimes get the ENTP result when I do the test.)

Some practical stuff that this TOTALLY unlocks for me:
  • A month or two ago, I started a new business. It fills a need. It's a valuable service. I created the website in two days and it's still online. I bought a book that would expand my knowledge in a way that would make my service more valuable. But then I got bored. I never pursued getting a client. But every so often, my interest and curiosity circles back around to this business. So now I'm thinking, when that interest pops back up, instead of forcing myself to "leave it, I've decided I'm not pursuing this," I figure I might as well work on advancing it as the mood strikes instead of just leaving it and forcing myself to focus on other things. Play the long game. Develop it gradually.
  • Right now, I'm pursuing another business idea. I've been toying with a prototype for the last 3 months. After lots of iterations, I now have a prototype that I like. I've validated that I can sell it to strangers. It fills a need that I hear people complaining about all the time. Today I contacted a manufacturer. But all last week, I delayed taking that step of contacting a manufacturer, because I kept asking myself, "Is this yet another thing that I'm going to get bored of?" Your post gave me the freedom to say to myself, "You know what? YES. I'm probably going to get bored of this. Just like everything else. But that doesn't mean that I can't keep chipping away on it. So I might as well go ahead and do it while the interest is high."
  • In the meantime, I have copywriting projects. This happens ALL THE TIME with my projects. "I can work on this project, but not that one. I don't really know why. But your post shows me that I'm not alone in this. If I try to work on Project 1, I'll spend 2 days forcing myself to do it, and I won't have anything to show for my time. But if I work on Project 2, I can blast it out in no time, and then I bet I'll be interested in Project 1 again." This is DREADFUL for keeping a good schedule and knowing how much space I have in my calendar. But it seems useless to fight it. You are SO RIGHT about soft deadlines. And you are 100% right about how AWFUL it is if you change every deadline into a HARD deadline. So I LOVE your advice to "Just understand that soft deadlines mean nothing to you and plan accordingly" and "Don't take on too many hard deadlines at the same time." Absolutely brilliant.
Thank you for this fantastic post.

I hope you can do something with this.

You could totally put together a coaching offer for people and make this the first part of your sales letter. (It's some seriously good copy.)

Side note:
To anyone reading this through the lens of copy, look at how many times the introductory portion of the copy uses the word "you." (Most copy makes the mistake of being "me-focused.") Look at how I described myself as "mesmerized" as I read through it. When you can accurately describe to someone their exact experience like this, they will instinctively believe that you can also offer them a solution. And they will pay for that solution.

I could see this being used as an offer for an ebook or course, where your copy starts with everything up until the sentence, "During my short time on earth as an entrepreneurial ENTP, I have summarized below everything I know about mitigating our innate weaknesses."

And then, instead of transitioning to actually sharing your 10 points, you invite them to get your ebook or course, where you share the 10 points plus the bonus.

You would amp up a ton of curiosity, and then when the person actually got the ebook, they'd find it super valuable, which would build trust for whatever upsell offer you might want to develop.

Just a thought.

Anyway, thanks again for sharing. It's spot on for me.

Thank you very much for taking the time to share with us your experience! It made me really happy to know it helped you :)

Your feedback on the copy side of the text is deeply appreciated too as I have only started copywriting recently. It gave me a boost in confidence about this pursuit which is very welcomed!

I really wanted this text out in the wild as I believe it may help one or two persons in the future, as it would have helped me to stumble upon it a couple of years ago, had I been able to google search it.

About the #9, you point out Chriss Voss and I checked it out, it looks very good. Thanks for the recommendation.

I have to acknowledge that I don't like the idea of vengeance either. I am a nice and trusting guy first and foremost, and I am always willing to forgive...

But the point is not vengeance, it's intimidation. It's about preserving your environment. There are moments in life where your environment is a healthy one you care about and you don't want to run away.

The problem is that self-centered behavior tends to replicate and it takes on bad apple to rot them all.

Acting well and not letting toxic behaviors slip by helps people willing to behave well to keep behaving well. It makes life harder for toxic elements and also helps undecisive people to choose the right side of the branch.

This is an idea I need to mature more, but you might be interested in chapter 2 of the book: 'Barking up the wrong tree' by Eric Barker, as he discusses the question "Do nice guys really finish last?". (discussion also available in podcast form here). The insights from that specific chapter were eye-opening for me and it may complete your arsenal nicely.
 

Simon Angel

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The initial turn off was less about your writing and more about my "I'm getting sold something" sensor. Often when I read text with tons of formatting (tiny text, bold, etc.) it means that someone is trying to influence me so my guard goes up and I start reading it in a different way. When I left and came back a few hours later, my guard was back down and I could read the post without a biased feeling.


On another note, ever since reading this, I've been listening to some Youtube videos about this personality type. As an INTP I tend to be restless until I understand something on a fundamental level. As it turns out, these personality theories go a lot deeper than I thought! I'm excited to learn more about the nuances of each type as it compares to others.

If you ever want to get on a call and chat about being one of these rare breeds, let me know!

Read up on the cognitive functions of each type, the 16 personalities test is absolute garbage. They're testing on an Introverted/Extroverted, Intuitive/Sensing and etc spectrum that's super innacurate. Because an INTP and an INTJ only have 1 letter different between types, but their functions are completely different.

For INTP that's (in order) Ti Ne Si Fe.

For INTJ - Ni Te Fi Se

For ENTP - Ne Ti Fe Si (same functions as INTP but different order). As you can see ENTP is like a mirror to the INTJ in terms of function order but the functions themselves are actually opposite.

Ti - Introverted Thinking (dominant function, comes naturally and efortlessly to the individual, possibly subconscious) - comes accross as finding your own truth in the world and situations, a thirst for knowledge and understanding of frameworks, theories. Most scientists, especially inventors were intuitives with the Ti in their function stack. Comes with a certain arrogance that you're smarter than everyone.

Ne - Extroverted Intuition (auxillary function, very well-developed but is consciously used) - ideas, speculation, improvisation. "What if?". Sees endless possibilities and options, reluctant to pick one, dislikes tying themselves to something (like a job), tends to get bored quickly and move on to other things.

Si - Introverted Sensing (tertiary function, develops better in mid 20s) - order, routine, tradition, "this is how things are", gender roles. Due to being lower down the stack, INTPS (and especially ENTPS< as it's even lower for them) question all of the above and do not tie themselves to any of it. People with this function highly developed are usually very detail-oriented and lacking an understanding of the big picture which ENTPS and INTPS excel at (thanks to the Ne function).

Fe - Extroverted Feeling - sociability, sympathy, care for others and putting others before yourself. People who have this high in their function stack are selfless and would probably sacrifice themselves for others or the greater good, but unhealthy individuals are actually pretty selfish. Example: Your girlfriend buys you a gift (she's an ESFJ/ENFJ so she has Fe as a dominant function) but you didn't get her one back or appreciated it as much as she expected, so now she feels like shit and blames you.

Thanks to a not-so-well developed Fe function in ENTPS and INTPS it usually manifests as them being pranksters, aloof and overall disagreeable assholes until their early 20s (potentially late 20s for INTPS). ENTPS in particular tend to be nasty until their late teens, when they discover that being charming and utilising their unique feel for socializing (thanks to Ne + Ti with a pinch of Fe) they can influence people and do better in life. In high school that manifests as an ENTP being a virgin smartass nerd who ends up transitioning into funny, likable and flirty.

Look up descriptions of these functions to figure out which one you are. I've been reading up on MBTI and cognitive functions for more than 2 years and I still don't have a 100% understanding of it all. But I am able to accurately type people in real life (without them doing the test) like 80% of the time.
 

eliquid

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This post is relevant to the in-depth guide I did over at:

^^ Which breaks down into finding out your MBTI and Ennagram and using that to propel yoruself forward ( among other things )

Thanks for the share.
 

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Do people that believe this also believe horoscopes?
Libra with Virgo ascendant Campaigner here.

Edit: I should add I took the test 3 times.
Totally lied, Campaigner.
Subjectivity truthful, Logician
Middle of the road truth, Adventurer

Confirms I'm a Libra.
Damn my Virgo ascendant!

I'm 99% sure astrology is the Forer effect and unlike MBTI you don't exactly have to take (in my case countless over the years) tests to determine your zodiac sign. On the other hand, differences between each of the types are huge and you become especially aware of that once you come to understand how cognitive functions work.

Like I said above, the 16 personalities test is garbage and strays from cognitive functions entirely. That's why you got 3 different results.

Once it really clicked for me, I tried guessing my closest friends and my girlfriend's types. And after I gave them a proper cogntiive functions test, it turns out I got them all right - an ENTJ (he first got INTJ but is in no way an introvert), an INTP, an ESFJ (had no doubts), an ENFP (no doubts again) and an ISTJ (again, extremely obvious).

3/3 of the types you got have the "Introverted Feeling / Fi" function as their feeling function, and usually these types aim to stand out and do their best to be unique.

I've also noticed Fi types hate personality types because "that's so limiting, you can't just label every human and put them in a box like that, we're all so unique and different.." while Ti types (Introverted Thinking) tend to love this and really aim to understand the theory.
 
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eliquid

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I also took the personality test 3 times and got 3 different results. I don't think the Myers Briggs personality test is accurate.

I did find immense value in your post though so thank you for that.

It's like anything else in life.

Nothing is 100% accurate about anything in life.

Many things will impact your results on something like a Myers Briggs:
  • Not understanding certain words or questions in the test
  • Not answering as your true self, but what society told you to be and how to act
  • Your mood for the day
  • Your mood for the week
  • Memory
  • Your interpetaion of what the questions are/mean
  • etc
But these above will impact you on ANY test you take in life, right?

I took the MBTI test over several years growing up. I would be 1 of 3 things each time. Talking about maybe 1 time a year growing up. On average though, it would come back as 1 type the majority of the time. The minority would be 1 of the other 2.

A few years ago, I decided to take it on purpose many times with a few days or weeks between tests.

Out of many many tries, I kept coming back to INTJ. There were a few times something else would pop up but it was very small %.

Based on that, I decided to do the same routine with Ennagram. Same type of results, majority was 1 type but I kept getting another a slim amount of times.

I then did a lot of research into INTJ and 5w4's online. Not taking the test anymore, but research into careers, weakness, strengths, etc. All of that research kinda confirmed both labels.

I then proceeded to take other tests like the Strength's Finder test and more. Many of them came back with data that reinforced the INTJ and 5W4 outcome.

Within the last year, I took an even more in-depth approach.

I'm leaning a lot on INTP now.

Very very very similar in many ways to INTJ. Still connects on 5w4 and the other tests I took.

I don't think you can ever be 100%, but knowing at least 90% can make a difference.

You probably need to take it a few times and really get down to answering these things honestly from yourself, your core.

It might take months to do that.
 

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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Simon Angel

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You seem like quite the INTP, @BellaPippin, going by the way you speak.




To me this is a misnomer that one's MBTI type must stay constant. I grew up ESTJ, became ENTJ by the end of college, then ENTP for a year, and am now typically ENTJ but have been moving towards ENFJ.

Most people also tend to go from being more extreme to being more balanced as their cognitive functions develop as they get older and older.

One can also change their MBTI type. It's like a habit really. You can make new ones, though it is quite difficult to break old habits.

Sure you can change your MBTI type, if you suffer a severe head injury and get amnesia.

Your dominant function first shows up around the age of 4, your auxiliary around 12, tertiary develops in late teens and inferior in your 20s. Stating that you switched 4 different types over the course of your lifetime is a rather silly and misinformed claim. I am going to assume you know nothing about cognitive functions and are going along with the 16 Personalities test, which I've already exposed many times in this thread as worthless in figuring out your actual type.

You didn't grow up ESTJ, you grew up Te dominant (just like ENTJ). You were never an ENTP, though you may have had entered a more introspective time or gone under severe stress and taken a glimpse of your shadow type, INTP. The ENFJ also shares Auxiliary Ni with the ENTJ, though there's no Te in ENFJ but a weak Ti, so a Te dominant becoming an Fe dominant is treading unmedicated schizophrenic territory.

However, ENTJ's Te can kind of look like Fe. Look at Tony Robbins. Except the warmth you get from Fe doms is nowhere to be found. Just a big, masculine smile and the guy still looks like a ticking time bomb that could tear you to shreds. ENFJ are anything but intimidating.

Mistyping with your shadow is common and normal since I had a hard time figuring out whether I was an ENTP or INTJ, my shadow type. But after looking at numerous INTJ interviews (Elon Musk among others) I noticed I am way more fluid and at ease socially while they are just unable to not look awkward most of the time. My energy is sporadic and in bursts, while they are able to maintain a balance. They usually have a very concrete idea, a vision of what and who they want to become and just stick to it. While I've had tens of interests, aspirations and etc. They work before they play, I play and then I work.

Also, we tend to seek what we do not have, I've noticed ENTJs admire ENTPs and vice versa. But the Te and Ti battle often disappoints both types as well.

You're free to create your own, modified MBTI theory if you wish but after more than 8 decades of research and anecdotes I'm going to stick to Jungian functions and my 3 years of experience with typing people quite accurately. And the conclusion I've reached, among many other MBTI enthusiasts is that you most definitely cannot change types.
 
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INTJ - This thread was a pretty good read.
However don't fall into the trap of associating Myers Briggs with your individuality.
You can do exactly what you make yourself do.
On in your case what inspires you to want something to happen.
I also envy the ENTP's knack for creativity, further expressing that ideology of perfection is imperfect.
 
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