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

[Simon Angel]

Update: After a lot of reading on cognitive functions and meme'ing around, ENTP 200%... just thought you'd like to know I think I'm on a great track with Fe but I still haven't really connected with the Si aspect of myself which explains a lot of things.

It's going to be a work in progress your whole life. Also, because of the 7th slot Fi you're probably going to continue questioning your type for a long time. Ironically this further cements the Ne + Ti.

You likely won't ever be as organized as a Dominant/Auxiliary Si type and thank god for that. Their desire for order, doing things "the way they should be done" and consumerist mindset borders insanity. But according to them we're the crazy weirdos.

You know what makes us less insane than them? We can actually see through their narrow-minded, lateral way of thinking and realize that in their reality they're 100% right. On the other hand though I've never seen an Si dom/aux truly understand we're wired differently. To them, there's only one way of doing things - "the right way" or "the way everyone does it". Philosophy is "a waste of time" and talking about the vastness of the Universe, its laws and metaphysics makes their brains fry like the ending scene in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

 

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[Remiremi]

Its not that I actually get sidetracked, I just start procrastinating and do nothing.

That's the same, you do nothing because the goal is too big to be reached with certainty. So you can't trick yourself into working. Indeed, why work hard and fail anyway.

Thus my answer

You will get sidetracked, or star procrastinating so...

STOP aiming to do it WITH HIGH PROBABILITY OF FAILURE in three months.

START aiming to do it WITH 100% PROBABILITY OF SUCCESS in eighteen months.

It's up to you.

You can decide to disregard my advice and try to do it in three months anyway.

But you will tart procrastinating and do nothing (your prediction)​

Then try again for the next three months...

But start procrastinating and do nothing.​

Then try again for the next three months...

But start procrastinating and do nothing.​

Then try again for the next three months...
Then try again for the next three months...
Then try again for the next three months...


OR.

You can decide you will do in eighteen months WITH 100% SUCCESS RATE, avoid burning yourself with a self imposed bullshit deadline and MAKE PROGRESS EVERYDAY.

I've been there. I tried to succeed in the next three months for three years.

What will you choose?

 

[ZackerySprague]

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

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

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

They decide to do something and they just do it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

First obstacle? Yourself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why does it matter?

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

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

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

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

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

The third day, you get sidetracked...

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well good news, you were half right.

You can do it...

...But not in three months.

Why?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your strength is the speed at which you can pivot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Examples:

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

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

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

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

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








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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you enchain yourself too much, you will burnout.

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

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

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

You must play to your strength and mitigate your weakness.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can use this basic template:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An example can be:

• Meditate 10 minutes.
• Walk the dog.
• Do the dishes.
• Quick workout at the gym.
• Write in my journal.

Sometimes you will meditate in the morning, sometimes before you go to bed, sometimes during the commute. Doesn't matter, you need the flexibility to do things when you are ready for those.

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

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

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

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

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

This thing is Anxiety.

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

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

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

Then, because you are so future and possibly oriented you need help to organize things that happened in your past.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PHONES ARE YOUR NATURAL ENEMY.

Possible solutions to mitigate the damage from your phone:
- Destroy it.
- Use apps blocker like STAY-FOCUSED (android)
- Use phone blocker like FOREST. (ps: it doubles as a Pomodoro app, and is gamified which makes you less likely to bypass it, you sly fox)
- Use a way to track and realize how much time you waste on your phone, like STAY-FOCUSED. (prepare to be shocked)
- Change the color of your phone in grey-scale or invert white/black, attention vampires use flashy colors to suck you in, you can fight that by getting rid of colors.
How to do it with iPhone here, and how to do it with Android here.
- Destroy it.
- Buy a NOKIA 3310, a hand-held GPS, a vintage MP3 player, a nice watch, and a paper agenda. If you think about it, everybody has a phone so you don't really need one, as you can just ask to borrow the functionality you lack.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THEY CROSS YOU, YOU CROSS THEM. PERIOD.

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

AFTER ALL, YOU DON'T LIKE CONFLICT.

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

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

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

This is not you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




....


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

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

ENTP?

Be Patient and Restless

⬪

You must be patient in the long term.

You will get where you want.

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

Because you will take so many detours.

So be patient.

⬪

You must be restless in the sort term.

Want to explore an option, fine, do it.

Go all the way.

Unleash your curiosity.

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

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

A simple recipe...

1/ Explore until bored.

2/ Quickly build something valuable for others.

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

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

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

Once your oath is taken, go.

Explore.

Follow your curiosity relentlessly.

Everyday.

You are free now.

⬪

​

BONUS:

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

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

It feels like an uphill battle.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


....


Hope it helps,

Rémi

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

I am actually glad, I have found this post.

To be quite honest. I took the Myers-briggs test and was classified as a ENTP-T.

Everything he said above actually fits. No matter how much I try to stick to a routine, it doesn't work. My curiosity runs out pretty fast.

I have sent tons of money on courses because of my curiosity, but yet fail to follow through the same.

I first started out with Amazon FBA back in 2018. Sounded like a pretty good business model, I had the cash to spend (on credit of course) but yet did not purchase any inventory because I did not have the confidence to do so.

I then found Shopify Dropshipping as an alternative model to Amazon FBA and to my surprise I had a break-through last year selling a skincare product using Facebook Ads. But did not have the cash flow to keep with up the advertising costs.

Then I studied Social Media Marketing or servicing others helping them with their Facebook Ads, however I get the feeling of Imposter Syndrome due to not spending a ton of money with running Facebook Ads. So thus, I don't reach out to any potential prospects that may or may not need help. In all honesty, your clients might be most of dropshippers with 30% profit margins.

Right now my current profession is Information Technology, but I have hit a bump in the road to where I am not learning any new skills for the past two years. It's a work at home job that pays well.

My current problem is that I am out of idea's to explore that interest me. Therefore I feel like I am in depression state if you will?

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.

 

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[DonnieBrasco]

Tested as ENTJ 8W7 through the years on various tests and i asked family members and my significant other to take the test on my behalf and they got the same result.

My best recommendation is, ignore your inner doubting voice, silence it and force yourself to just get the tasks done, the reward will follow within days/weeks/months/years but in the end it will be worth it, i think for non NT types its a bit of a masochistic approach but it worked tremendously well for my INFP girlfriend and she got into a positive feedback loop and now its fairly easy to her to emulate me.

One thing that helped her alot was to use my planning strategy, when i started to buy DIN A0 sheets and hang them up in our appartment she said it gave her great insights into how my brain works, i took this for granted and thought everyone plans like this but apparently its not.

It basically goes like a mindmap, you write down the 4-5 main tasks/things you need to get done, draw a circle around them and then surround them by the tasks that need to get done in order to archieve the main task (layer it from layer 1 to 4/5/6 according to difficulty, the easiest tasks go on the outest layer and then build up the mindmap based on difficulty of the task and start attacking the easiest tasks first in order to get into a positive feedback loop).

 

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[Oso]

I'm one of those "mythical INTJ people", and I can tell you it has been a struggle to get to the point I'm now at. I wish the stereotypical "oh, he's an INTJ with an idea, so give him a week and he'll change the world" mentality applied to me, but alas, it doesn't.

I had to force myself to care about it, every micro step of the way, in order to make any type of progress at all. But this also taught me how to properly value my time, and it forced me into being even more self-aware.

I've learned 99% of personality tests are bullshit, and 99% of what we say, think, do, and feel is controlled via our mental state(s).

Take care of yourself and yourself will take care of you.

 

[Beerbread]

Great write-up! I'm an ENTP and definitely needed this. I was already using tips #4, #5, and #6 since the outbreak. I'm a work in progress, but this couldn't have come at a better time! Thank you!

 

[GoodluckChuck]

Thanks for sharing, I am glad it helped you.
May I ask you feedback about why the style turned you off at first? Because I am trying to get better at writing engaging pieces and any pointer would help a lot!


Thanks for sharing your experience with how hiring as been beneficial for you. I will focus on growing a team sooner than later thanks to you!


Thanks for the encouragement! This is my credo from now on!



Hahaha you got me. I only apply the last polish if I am obligated to do so or if it would be very stupid not too. Everything I do, I try to oneshot it as much as possible!

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!

 

[Odysseus M Jones]

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!

 

[Remiremi]

Hey guys, this post inspired me to write a draft for a (hypothetical) productivity/organization/calendaring email newsletter. It's about a specific tactic I've had in mind that is very aligned with the advice in the OP. I figured since I just wrote it all out, I might as well share it here.

---

I have a tendency to get enamored with project ideas that may a bit too grand in scope... One of those ideas keeps recurring for me, and it's closely related to why I love using a calendar (for stuff I've DONE, not stuff I plan to do) for my personal productivity.

I keep thinking I should go through all of my various types of personal records: journals, email correspondence, private messages, forum posts, software commits, passport stamps, plane tickets, invoices, rental agreements, etc. and use everything I can find as source material for an ultimate DONE list.

Imagine a private web page with a timeline of your entire life (at least your adult life) — mapped out, browsable, searchable, annotated, hyperlinked, tagged... personal stats, life events, and most importantly progress on projects. If I want to see every time I worked on some particular programming topic, I can pull up all of the relevant entries in my timeline. If I want have a project that's been on the back burner for 7 years, and now I feel like working on it, I can pull up all of my previous progress, see what I did, see where I left off, and jump right back into it today.

I'm a guy with dozens of projects on the back burner over years and years. The good news is, I do make progress on, and even finish, a lot of these projects. The appeal of this ultimate-life-timeline-done-list-thing is that I can get on track with projects a lot faster, and when I'm struggling for motivation, I can just browse everything I've done in the past and see what I find interesting to work on today.

In some ways, this is just too big of an idea, I can see myself going down a rabbit hole building an ill-conceived system that is too meta to every really be useful. But if I apply some of my favorite productivity principles, this becomes a very reasonable project.

What we need to make this work: a real commitment to a minimum viable product (meaning get my ego out of the way and find a solution that starts producing results this afternoon), an aesthetic of simplicity, and Larry Wall's laziness as a virtue.

In other words, if I get my head out of the clouds and get real, I can start getting exactly what I'm looking for just by using my calendar. I'm already using my calendar as much as possible to track my fuzzy plans and what I actually did, including notes about progress on projects, links to the context/resources I need to pick projects back up, sometimes notes about where I went and who I saw, and of course hard deadlines like meetings that I've scheduled with clients. I am also starting each week by creating a calendar entry that contains a "menu" of things I've been interested in recently, which serves the same purpose as being able to browse through my past projects and pick out what I want to work on.

So if I really want to create this ultimate DONE list, I can start small, right now, by taking one source of data (e.g. one of the handwritten notebooks I've filled up with journal entries) and start adding historical information to my calendar. Then I can experiment with different ways of tagging, linking and otherwise organizing a small set of data... once I have a simple system for creating calendar entries that meets my needs (must keep it simple!) then the job of turning all of my unstructured source material into a structured data on my calendar just becomes one more project on the back burner that I can pick up and work on when it feels like the right thing to do!

Let me know if you think this is a dumb idea, good idea, or if you see ways that this idea could be a lot better.

Hey have you look into Notion : here at Notion – The all-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, wikis, and databases. it's a very powerful tool.


This person basically implemented a system that is similarly complex and flexible as what you are aspiring too.

View: https://youtu.be/4-TYSah25UM


He calls it a "life operating system", he actually uses it to organize the future but you can probably use it to organize your past and your achievements.

It's a very good idea! I have been logging my achievements for two years now because if I don't I just forget hiw awesome I am

P. S. : notion can do all the tagging, crossing and aggregating that you want, this means no need to develop an app on top of your system.

 

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[Simon Angel]

I'm unclear on this argument (maybe that's the openness and perceiving at work...).

I definitely do not believe it's easy (if possible) to just change personality types at will. That seems blatantly ignorant of the fact that we are all caught up in a process of cause and effect. At the same time, I suspect that personalities are not exactly hard-coded.

I'm attracted to the idea that I could at least passably pretend to be a different personality-type, but then there is my life experience that shows this has never really been true for me. Sure, I have self-control, I can control my behavior, but the compulsions in my gut don't seem to change.

I could convince myself that I'm going to become the kind of personality type that can set like a bodybuilding goal and create a plan, and execute it for 6 months. And for a week or two I can convince myself that I really am becoming that person, but really it's just not in me, after a few weeks I am completely bored of dumbass bodybuilding and my gut is telling me to do something different. If I really had an INTJ personality-type (or whatever type is good at robotic execution) then I wouldn't have the urge in my bones to resist the plan, I would just happily plod along executing the plan and reaching my goals.

I know that I have changed in major ways over time, but that probably has more to do with the maturation of my personality-type than an actual change in personality. If personality types are malleable, the change at least has to be part of a process or major shock - just deciding to change overnight is delusion and self-will temporarily trying to override reality.

You can't change, ever. Supposedly your functions can change due to extreme trauma, but I'm not sure how extreme that is considering what I've gone through. I'd assume brain injury.

By the way, ENTPs and INTJs are complimenting types and can really get eachother. They're also shadow types. Let me explain.

ENTP stack: Ne Ti Fe Si
INTJ stack: Ni Te Fi Se

Quick recap of Ne and Ni - Extroverted Intution (Ne) is the function that sees endless possibilities and often is unable to weigh them against eachother. Introverted intuition (Ni) is the one that sees "the one" best possibility.

Mirrored functions but same order. ENTPs are said to become literal INTJs during severe stress. But not usually in a healthy way. ENTPs in INTJ mode stop seeing all the various possibilities and become very narrow sighted and it often ends up being a mistake. INTJs in ENTP mode lost their ability to accurately judge the possibilities that lie before them and usually end up at a crossroads sitting ducks.

By the way, shadow functions are pretty advanced stuff and not everyone agrees on them. Most people settle on types under stress having their own function stack but inverted.

So an ENTP with Ne Ti Fe Si would become an ISFJ with Si Fe Ti Ne. I think this is the more plausible scenario so take everyrthing with an open mind and judge for yourself.

You definitely sound like an ENTP by the way. ADHD is something people with the Ne function suffer from and it's a shame kids and adults alike are being medicated for.. something totally natural.

We all bring our gifts to the world and when you put a Ne dominant/auxillary person (ENTP, ENFP, INTP, INFP) you're literally turning them into robots. I've talked with ENTPS on antidepressants, Aderall and SSRIs and they're like "It feels like being an INTJ or something, sharp, focused and can stick to a task all day long".

Another ENTP who got a lot of shit done in their life but didn't believe he used his potential to the full extent was Leonardo Da Vinci. He hated himself for his procrastination, yet his legacy remains.

And just for fun:

Fictional characters who are ENTP: Tony Stark, Tyrion Lannister, Jack Sparrow, Deadpool, The Joker (The Dark Knight trilogy and DC comics), Chandler Bing, Tyler Durden, Saul Goodman, Emmet "Doc" Brown, Bugs Bunny, Negan from The Walking Dead, Alex DeLarge from A Clockwork Orange, Pennywise from Stephen King's IT, Jerry Mouse from Tom & Jerry.

Real life people: Benjamin Franklin, Niccolo Machiavelli, Steve Wozniak, Mao Zedong, Jeremy Clarkson, Salma Hayek, Adam Savage, Hugh Grant,, Matthew Perry, Voltaire, Leonardo Da Vinci, Richard Feynman, Barrack Obama, Alexander The Great (tied between ESTP and ENTP) Nero, Caligula, Socrates, Fidel Castro.

Of course, all of the above real people and fictional characters come with a range of enneagram types. Your enneagram CAN change over time and it has a lot to do with how you behave and what you perceive yourself as, want from life.

Personally I've always been a 8w7 over the years. That would put me next to Tyler Durden, Socrates, Satan (yup, Satan is typed as an ENTP 8w7 by enthusiasts), Negan from The Walking Dead, Thomas Edison, Fidel Castro, Alex DeLarge, Mao Zedong, Caligula, Jeremy Clarkson.

 

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[Remiremi]

I am super intrigued. I've never heard of this. Ni Te Fi stuff.

Where did you learn about this part of it, and how did you get to the point where you can accurately predict someone's personality?

Any particular resources you'd recommend?

For a detailed account you can consult this resource :

The Principles of Cognitive Function Theory @mbti-notes

[click here for pure text without blog theme] . Guide Contents: I. What Is Type? - Cognition vs Behavior - Personality is Interactive - Personality is Not a “Box” ...

mbti-notes.tumblr.com

Its great as it's very thorough and also starts with an extensive disclaimer against common misconceptions.

 

[GoodluckChuck]

 

[Simon Angel]

View attachment 34510

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.

 

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[Tom H.]

@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!

 

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[Tom H.]

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

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

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

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

 

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[Simon Angel]

The first time I read this, I just skimmed through it and thought, 'what a load of crap.'

And then I reread it in detail.

I'm an INTP.

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

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

Knew you were an INTP since Day 1.

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

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

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

It's got to do with me being an Ne dominant (absorbing from the external, processing internally and making sense of my environment and ideas rationally with Ti) while he's the opposite, since the Dominant and Auxillary functions are swapped. Also, the Fe function in ENTP is a level above INTP's Fe (3rd and 4th function respectively) so we tend to be more charming, expressive and energetic (though ENTPs are considered ambiverts and few actually look 100% extroverted) while INTPs tend to be more mysterious, aloof and introspective.

 

[Andy Black]

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

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

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

They decide to do something and they just do it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

First obstacle? Yourself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why does it matter?

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

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

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

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

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

The third day, you get sidetracked...

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well good news, you were half right.

You can do it...

...But not in three months.

Why?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your strength is the speed at which you can pivot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Examples:

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

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

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

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

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








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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you enchain yourself too much, you will burnout.

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

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

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

You must play to your strength and mitigate your weakness.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can use this basic template:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An example can be:

• Meditate 10 minutes.
• Walk the dog.
• Do the dishes.
• Quick workout at the gym.
• Write in my journal.

Sometimes you will meditate in the morning, sometimes before you go to bed, sometimes during the commute. Doesn't matter, you need the flexibility to do things when you are ready for those.

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

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

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

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

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

This thing is Anxiety.

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

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

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

Then, because you are so future and possibly oriented you need help to organize things that happened in your past.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PHONES ARE YOUR NATURAL ENEMY.

Possible solutions to mitigate the damage from your phone:
- Destroy it.
- Use apps blocker like STAY-FOCUSED (android)
- Use phone blocker like FOREST. (ps: it doubles as a Pomodoro app, and is gamified which makes you less likely to bypass it, you sly fox)
- Use a way to track and realize how much time you waste on your phone, like STAY-FOCUSED. (prepare to be shocked)
- Change the color of your phone in grey-scale or invert white/black, attention vampires use flashy colors to suck you in, you can fight that by getting rid of colors.
How to do it with iPhone here, and how to do it with Android here.
- Destroy it.
- Buy a NOKIA 3310, a hand-held GPS, a vintage MP3 player, a nice watch, and a paper agenda. If you think about it, everybody has a phone so you don't really need one, as you can just ask to borrow the functionality you lack.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THEY CROSS YOU, YOU CROSS THEM. PERIOD.

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

AFTER ALL, YOU DON'T LIKE CONFLICT.

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

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

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

This is not you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




....


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

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

ENTP?

Be Patient and Restless

⬪

You must be patient in the long term.

You will get where you want.

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

Because you will take so many detours.

So be patient.

⬪

You must be restless in the sort term.

Want to explore an option, fine, do it.

Go all the way.

Unleash your curiosity.

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

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

A simple recipe...

1/ Explore until bored.

2/ Quickly build something valuable for others.

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

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

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

Once your oath is taken, go.

Explore.

Follow your curiosity relentlessly.

Everyday.

You are free now.

⬪

​

BONUS:

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

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

It feels like an uphill battle.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


....


Hope it helps,

Rémi

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

Love this. I did that test before but can’t remember what I came out as.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

[LightHouse]

@Remiremi

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

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

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

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

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

 

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[Simon Angel]

Definitely, I've always had that in mind. Especially because I'm very versatile, the questions are not always black and white. I'm not a black and white person myself, so it's always very difficult to answer them, or to try to remember a life-or-death decision to know what I TRULY use when pulling the trigger.

I can relate myself to every single description of INFP and INTP, and now I even got INFJ on the last one for the first time, and it was pretty "accurate". At the end of the day I took what really mattered which was the (accurate and relatable) description of my strengths and weaknesses to help me understand myself better. I don't really care what team I'm on.

Thanks for this post, you added the second piece about making something quick before it vanishes into the air and that actually clicked a lot. It's way more effective to just work with what you've got than trying to be someone you're not.

I can't be 100% sure since I do not know you at all, but judging from what you've said in this post and your writing style, I'd guess you're an INTP.

ENTP and INTP have the hardest time typing themselves, because we lack Fi (introverted feeling) and have Ti.

Basically we can rationalize everything and convince ourselves we're any of the 16 types due to Ti + Ne. Our lack of Fi makes it very difficult for us to know what is authentic and relevant to us. INFPs usually find it easy to type themselves because of their dominant Fi, and INFJs also have a fairly easy typing themselves because of the Ni (seeks the most plausible scenario).

While Ne dominants, especially in combination with Ti weigh many possible scenarios and have a hard time figuring which one is the most plausible.

 

[Simon Angel]

I can see that, omg! The whole INTP still rings true to my behaviors though, as in, your original post xD

Looks like a total lack of Fi and type-awareness, so we could probably remove all Fi types (INFP, ENFP ISFP, ESFP, ENTJ, INTJ, ISTJ, ESTJ).

Just like you I've also considered ENFJ, INFJ and INFP. Many times. But as far as stereotypes go:

• I'm considered a bit too bright to be an ENFJ and not as people focused. ENFJ's have weak Ti (Inferior, 4th slot), so an ENTP would always be more logical (Auxiliary, 2nd slot), rational and objective than an ENFJ who mostly seeks social harmony and unity in groups. They also love attention from every side.​
• INFJs are..something else. I've been deluded in the past that I am an INFJ, then I made 2 friends (and a girlfriend) that were definitely INFJ and to them I'm like some god in their eyes that they look up to and support unconditionally. Mostly because I've helped them with many things they lack experience in (women, working out, healthy eating and fighting depression). So I am unlikely to be an INFJ as I tend to provoke people a lot, often unbeknowst to me even.​
• INFP.. I went through high school thinking I was an INFP. But I was just a depressed ENTP. This got more obvious over time when my Ti and Fe developed. I became much more confrontative, witty, unapologetic due to Ti but Fe also lead to developing my social skills to turn my wittiness into charm for the ladies, to not be perceived as a nerd anymore. I'd like to say my Fe is really developed now, but I don't think the anime dude above would agree.​

I skimmed through a few pages of posts you've made just now. I defnitely see Ne and Ti. I believe you're an ENTP.

• Smart and witty? Check. (Ti)
• Brainstorms ideas on autopilot (Ne) and then replies to others saying "We don't need to brainstorm now guys!" even though you just did (lack of Fi)? Check.
• Gamer? Check. (Ne)
• Depressed, sexy nerd? Check. (Ne + Ti + Fe)
• Interested in Ancient Greece? Check. (Ne, a bit of Si)
• Argumentative, healthily skeptical? Check. (Ne + Ti)
• Hardcore memelord? Check. (Ne + Ti)
• Full of self-hatred and self-love at the same time? Check.
• Struggle with addiction? Check.
• Lost faith in humanity and even your family? (Ti) Check.
• Disgusted by narrow-minded people? Check. (Ne + Ti)
• Thinking of getting rid of social media for good because people are retarded? (and you should) Check. (Ti)
• Very proficient in English yet you are from South America? Check. (ENTPs are great at learning new things and that definitely includes foreign languages).
• Edits each and every post? Check.

I could add more but I think you get it by now. I took all of the above from your post history, and curiously it's exactly what I am like as well.

 

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[BellaPippin]

You're welcome, Bella. It's really hard to type yourself when you're an ENTP (a random dude in reddit who's also an ENTP managed to type me, I was stuck between INTJ and INFP) so I'm happy to help out.

Yup, it does make sense, and your whole rationalizing with an open mind approach (Ti + Ne) here in this reply has convinced me even more.

Update: After a lot of reading on cognitive functions and meme'ing around, ENTP 200%... just thought you'd like to know I think I'm on a great track with Fe but I still haven't really connected with the Si aspect of myself which explains a lot of things.

 

[Primeperiwinkle]

This thread reminds me of when my best friends started talking about enneagram two years ago and it took me 14 months of ignoring them before I finally tackled the stupid tests because, let’s face it, if all your friends are fascinated by something you have to be too or just live with never participating in the conversation. Then I found out that my type is the most suspicious and reluctant of all types to take the enneagram test and that made me laugh. So here’s my contribution. I test as a 6w7.

On MBTI I’m an ENTJ but being a girl who can easily and methodically point out the flaws of the humans around her has never gotten me very far so I taught myself how to reverse it and just encourage ppl to do the positive side or I try to keep my mouth shut. That’s hard. Lol.

It’s highly amusing to me when other ENTJ’s point out ppls problems though.. then when they receive respect for doing so I’m in awe cuz I really want to point out stuff a lot but I don’t cuz it’s mean. I’m currently working on a project so I can get paid to point out issues and boss ppl around to help them. That’s fun.

Looking at memes that validate my feelings make me feel better if I’m having a rough day. Also, the idiosyncrasies of any type make me giggle because we are all so strange! These chicks on YouTube use hyperbole and humor to explain the types and almost all their videos are amusing. I like this thread. Simon, your insight into this subject is impressive. I’m glad you’re on the forum.

For your viewing pleasure...

View: https://youtu.be/iL-FP4qS_lo

 

[AceVentures]

I'm an ENFP, and I've loved what you shared here with us.

Your lovely contributions on the topic have been diligently dissected, highlighted, and annotated in my notes for quick reference as my personal Modus Operandi.

Since fully embracing my strengths as an Extroverted Intuitive and leveraging the weakness mitigation tips you outline, my state of being has improved drastically. I can focus, I can engage, I can tune in and out of whatever I want, and I can let my imagination take me for a ride. I feel like a child again, and every day is a blast!

What you call Speed of Production test, I prefer to use the term Rate of Penetration (ROP) which I learned from Oil and Gas and I think is a hilarious term. I've scheduled an ROP check every 3rd day on my Google Calendar.

Every day, I go for a morning hike up the mountain and wander through the woods. This meditative practice is truly where my best ideas come, as I'm most in-tune with my intuitive. Since adopting ROP checks, I've starting Spiraling further into my ideas. Whereas in the past it would take me a long while before I circled back to the other interests of my curiosity, with the ROP checks I keep spiraling deeper within the latest interests I've had. On my morning walks, I can map out exactly what comes of the day, and why I'm so stoked for it all.

I can't thank you enough for piecing together this post - how you verbalize seemingly intimate and individual aspects of my personality with such clarity is beyond me. You see the patterns, and you lay them out in a manner it can be used.

Many thanks friend!

P.S. I've attached a couple of docs - these are my personal notes over the topic. Figured perhaps the mapping-out of these ideas can also be of use to someone else.

 

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[BellaPippin]

I revisit this thread every time someone bumps it, and it lightens my mood. It empowers me. It reminds me I'm not the mess I think I am.

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.

Last week I came back to a project that hadn't touched in a year, which in turn hadn't touched in another year or so. However each time I come back it takes more shape. I'm glad what I'm doing isn't a race to the market though, or I'd be lost.

I've added a 3rd post-it to my monitor:

 

[eliquid]

You might want to look into cognitive functions to have a better grasp of you being INTP or INTJ.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/73/42/d2/7342d226f93450489a3a3a3336e427e1.png

This test below is fairly good. Better to look at the functions stack rather than 16personalities test(which is based on big 5, not myers briggs).

Sakinorva Cognitive Functions Test (Grant/Brownsword)

A cognitive function test centered around the work of Harold Grant, Alan Brownsword, Myers & Jung, and the 16 personalities they describe, this personality test calculates a cognitive function type using two different algorithms and attempts to pin down your type.

sakinorva.net

Thanks, I took that and it came back INTP

The last letter ( P ) was really faint in the display. Oddly enough they had an explanation for this.

They said it might as well not even be there ( the P ) as it was unclear if I would be a P or a J. So that kinda confirms why I thought for years I was a J, but then would score P a lot in the INT

 

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[arkania_x]

Hey guys, this post inspired me to write a draft for a (hypothetical) productivity/organization/calendaring email newsletter. It's about a specific tactic I've had in mind that is very aligned with the advice in the OP. I figured since I just wrote it all out, I might as well share it here.

---

I have a tendency to get enamored with project ideas that may a bit too grand in scope... One of those ideas keeps recurring for me, and it's closely related to why I love using a calendar (for stuff I've DONE, not stuff I plan to do) for my personal productivity.

I keep thinking I should go through all of my various types of personal records: journals, email correspondence, private messages, forum posts, software commits, passport stamps, plane tickets, invoices, rental agreements, etc. and use everything I can find as source material for an ultimate DONE list.

Imagine a private web page with a timeline of your entire life (at least your adult life) — mapped out, browsable, searchable, annotated, hyperlinked, tagged... personal stats, life events, and most importantly progress on projects. If I want to see every time I worked on some particular programming topic, I can pull up all of the relevant entries in my timeline. If I want have a project that's been on the back burner for 7 years, and now I feel like working on it, I can pull up all of my previous progress, see what I did, see where I left off, and jump right back into it today.

I'm a guy with dozens of projects on the back burner over years and years. The good news is, I do make progress on, and even finish, a lot of these projects. The appeal of this ultimate-life-timeline-done-list-thing is that I can get on track with projects a lot faster, and when I'm struggling for motivation, I can just browse everything I've done in the past and see what I find interesting to work on today.

In some ways, this is just too big of an idea, I can see myself going down a rabbit hole building an ill-conceived system that is too meta to every really be useful. But if I apply some of my favorite productivity principles, this becomes a very reasonable project.

What we need to make this work: a real commitment to a minimum viable product (meaning get my ego out of the way and find a solution that starts producing results this afternoon), an aesthetic of simplicity, and Larry Wall's laziness as a virtue.

In other words, if I get my head out of the clouds and get real, I can start getting exactly what I'm looking for just by using my calendar. I'm already using my calendar as much as possible to track my fuzzy plans and what I actually did, including notes about progress on projects, links to the context/resources I need to pick projects back up, sometimes notes about where I went and who I saw, and of course hard deadlines like meetings that I've scheduled with clients. I am also starting each week by creating a calendar entry that contains a "menu" of things I've been interested in recently, which serves the same purpose as being able to browse through my past projects and pick out what I want to work on.

So if I really want to create this ultimate DONE list, I can start small, right now, by taking one source of data (e.g. one of the handwritten notebooks I've filled up with journal entries) and start adding historical information to my calendar. Then I can experiment with different ways of tagging, linking and otherwise organizing a small set of data... once I have a simple system for creating calendar entries that meets my needs (must keep it simple!) then the job of turning all of my unstructured source material into a structured data on my calendar just becomes one more project on the back burner that I can pick up and work on when it feels like the right thing to do!

Let me know if you think this is a dumb idea, good idea, or if you see ways that this idea could be a lot better.

Maybe you'd like Roam/Obsidian or Milanote.
Or even Left -> Left by Rek & Devine


And before I read further (it took me 5 hours to get to page 3, I couldn't be less focussed today):
Thank you so much @Remiremi
You described me perfectly. I did the test 4 or 5 times in the past 15 years or so, always ENTP. ADHD (not diagnosed) and already my mum told me, 20 years ago "You just don't do the stuff you find boring or see no sense in it (for you)".
Yep, exactly. But sometimes insights must mature, right? You didn't tell me anything new today, but today it finally .... seeded.
I wrote an introduction thread here some time ago and always wanted to come back but was ashamed everyone would tell me "wow, always hopping on and off" and "FOCUS!!111" and "bullshit you tell yourself to not getting started". So it took me months to come back again and I think, if I hadn't seen this thread here it would have taken me more weeks or months to write my next post.
Now I'm more confident to write my next post (and atm I'm also motivated so I have to use that I think), also thanks for that!
(And now I finally know, why I'll never make a bug-fix version for the video games I made....)

Embrace the curiosity!

E:

 

[Remiremi]

Great advice here. I have a plan to make $10,000 per month in the next 3 months but i am afraid I would get sidetracked.
How do you think i should stay focus on my goal.

You will get sidetracked.

STOP aiming to do it WITH HIGH PROBABILITY OF FAILURE in three months.

START aiming to do it WITH 100% PROBABILITY OF SUCCESS in eighteen months.

 

[Simon Angel]

How would you help someone caught between those two types determine which type they truly are?

Any questions to consider regarding your past or simply behavioral?

You already show higher Ti than Ne in your posts, so you're surely an INTP. It's not about behavior at all, it's more about how you process information and make decisions.

@DrScream If I were you and about to start coaching people on Jungian typology I'd really reconsider referencing C.S Joseph - the guy does not know his type and has apparently typed his baby as "INTJ". Coming from a person with a myriad of mental health issues, the guy is insane.

 

[HabitsCampaigner]

My current problem is that I am out of idea's to explore that interest me. There I feel like I am in depression state if you will?

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.

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 appreciate you sharing the depression, Zack. First step is self-compassion. Knowing you're not alone and setting the intention to be kind to yourself. I sometimes think I'm out of ideas but I know that can't be true. The real issue for me is, will this idea be worth the work.

And now the issue is clear: what will be the overarching idea that is a big need for many people, that I can tag my various ideas of curiosity too. I like Knicks suggestion very much: learn a skill. This reminds me of past successes where I was able to stick with learning programming over many years. I suppose my curiosity was successfully played with because each day would be a new page to program - a new function, a new way to connect with and use the database. It remained fun until I got to the challenge of Object Oriented Programming and hit a wall. Learning a skill over time is another great framework around which we can tag all our curiosities.

On routine, have you heard of "Priming" or the "Miracle Morning" (I think I also read about this in James Clear's book "Atomic Habits")... basic idea: do your routine first thing in the morning. Whatever is most important to you. I do meditation, visualization, affirmation, gratitude, prayer, reading, and exercise. Before my "will power" (aka ENxP curiosity energy) runs out.

We can kick a$$.

Let's do this!

 

[dgr]

Wow, I've just found your post @Remiremi and it's awesome.

I'm an INTP (5w4) and I can relate to it. Some things I knew and for others I had a grasp of them. But your post is amazingly clear and to the point.

I'll start applying more consistently those strategies (I've used some of them with some success, but didn't persist on them).

Thank you for sharing!

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.

In case you haven't found this yet, I strongly recommend this site for all INTPs:

| Personality Junkie

Our New INFJ Book! Beyond Rare: The INFJ's Guide to Cultivating Growth & Self-Awareness Learn more... Purchase Options▼ Add eBook to Cart ($6.99) Buy eBook…

personalityjunkie.com

His books were like an instruction manual of my mind.