A Writer’s Papyrus

The Myers-Briggs personality test classifies an individual according to four letters:

Extroverted or Introverted
Sensing or iNtuitive
Thinking or Feeling
Judging or Perceiving

Although you can take a free online test to determine the strength of your preferences, the difficulty lies in the fact that we tend to be a little subjective when answering questions.  We often answer questions based on what we would like to be rather than what we would normally do.  A more accurate test result can be achieved by being typed by an accredited Myers-Briggs typist, which normally costs about AUD$400 or so.

Lucky for me, my cousin’s accredited.

So what do the letters mean?

Are you an E or an I?  This simply refers to where you derive your energies from - externally or internally?  Extraverted people think out loud, they love crowds, they are the life of the party and they thrive in crowded environments.  Intraverted people think inside their heads.  They prefer talking one-on-one.  At a party, they normally stick to the people they know.  They need their own personal private time.

Are you an S or an N?  This refers to how you depict your environment.  To determine which you are, think of the last restaurant that you had dinner at and write down some words to describe it.  Sensing people use their five senses - they generally describe a restaurant according to what they notice with their five senses.  For instance, they might talk about the size of the room, the layout of the reception, the lights, and various other objects.  Intuitive people usually talk about the ambience of the restaurant. The words they use to describe the restaurant tend to be more abstract, like “cosy”, “warm”, “airy”.

Are you a T or an F?  This refers to how you think.  To determine which you are, imagine you are on the Titanic and you have been asked to allocate people to life boats.  Some people have to be left behind because there aren’t enough life boats.  How do you decide who stays and who goes?  Thinkers tend to be more logical and practical. They make decisions based on logic which can occasionally seem rather cold.  For instance, on the Titanic, they might decide that the elderly and infirmed should stay behind because they are old and sick.  Feelers, on the other hand, would have a tough time deciding who should stay and who should go because they usually want to save everyone.  By the time a feeler has decided who gets a lifeboat, the Titanic would have sunk.

Are you a J or a P?  Judging personalities need closure.  They like to structure their time and are generally quite orderly.  They usually make lists of things to do.  They dislike it when others are late.  Perceiving personalities don’t need closure.  They consider time to be flexible and often take an appointment time to be a suggestion of roughly when to meet rather than an agreed meeting time.

Now you know why you find some people insanely annoying.

The interesting point to note about the Myers-Briggs personality type is that it explains why arguments arise between individuals and why a person might enjoy one job and hate another.  For instance, it explains why I never enjoyed dentistry even though my personality type INFJ generally take on careers in health.  The F part of me enjoys helping people, but the N part of me dislikes the monotony of dentistry.  Had I been a sensing person, the S and F combined would have made dentistry the ideal profession for me.

Given enough examination, the Myers-Briggs personality typing can explain a lot about your preferences and decisions made in life.

Now that I know INFJs make good writers, perhaps I shouldn’t pack up my pen just yet…

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