Hi Mr-ENTJ, sorry for the long ask. This may seem like a very small issue, but I'm an INFP and I work in the service industry. My main problem is the entitlement in my workplace. I'm working for a corporate organization and, as corporate is, it's full of entitled, rich assholes to the people "below" them. There are policies in place to ensure efficiency and independence so that my clients don't do everything through me, but with my clients expecting anything and everything, I feel like it's my job to enforce the policies and educate them to become independent of having me do everything for them.

I've brought these problems to my supervisor and manager before, informing them that these policies are not respected, the inefficiencies in what the process should be, what clients are doing instead of going back to their actual resources, and suggestions/feedback/constructive criticisms to improve all of these things. My supervisor and manager are both ISFJs and they have worked in this department for over a decade, enough to say "it is what it is; this is what it means to be in service." My coworkers are not nearly as motivated to enforce the policies either because they see no change throughout all the years they've been here, or they don't care for this job enough.

I know that my job is service-oriented and there's something called going above and beyond, but I feel like there is nothing wrong with me educating my clients and i don't want to change what I feel is correct. I feel like another INFP on the team and I are the only ones who feels this passionately about these problems and want to improve it, but this burden is so tiresome and my team thinks it's annoying for me to police everything. I know that this job is no longer for me, and I'm working on finding something else, but until then, what else can I do?

I'm probably just looking for some validation and feedback on what I can do better, but am I wrong? Do I just need to let this go and let things be as they are? Am I just not doing enough? Am I not enforcing this properly?

Asked by Anonymous

You can have my validation that you’re not wrong, you’re probably right, but that still doesn’t fix any of the problems you’ve outlined. Culture change comes in one of two ways if leadership isn’t open to change:

  1. The ‘judger way’ (xxFJ + xxTJ): Become a leader yourself and cascade the change downward -> This requires an immense amount of time to stick around and climb the promotional ladder
  2. The 'perceiver way’ (xxFP + xxTP): Get enough influential people to agree with you and override leadership -> This requires an immense amount of effort and may get you fired

Both options require power. Without power, you’re stuck at the mercy of other people’s decisions inside and outside of work.

This conflict is also a key reason why many INFPs are miserable in corporate environments because they need to adhere to systems and processes other people in power make. Without any motivation to climb the ladder, become a person of power, and change the systems/processes themselves– INFPs get stuck as passengers in a car that someone else is driving. This is why you see a lot of INFPs opt for freelancing careers, academia, or completely opt out of work (stay-at-home parents) to maximize freedom.

Moving forward, you’re correct to find a company that’s a better culture fit. Until then, I wouldn’t waste another single brain cell stressing about things and people that refuse to change. Save your time, energy, and emotions for the next role so you can hit the ground running.

Related answers:

#mbti #myers briggs #infp #enfp #isfp #esfp #typology #mbtiq #career #careers #work #job #quitting
2 months ago / 22 notes
c

How do I become more assertive and how do I control myself and what kind of behaviors I should adopt so that people take me seriously? I’ve had colleagues and people that did not take me seriously because I joke and I have this carefree attitude which translates to me not caring about doing the job. And they feel as if I don’t matter because I give off vibes that I don’t matter and neither does my work. I am a jock, and a joke. So obviously there is something wrong with my way of being, and I’m not sure how to go about changing that. I made the example of work, but it happens all over, like people don’t take me into account. Thank you!

Asked by Anonymous

You need to build trust with the people in your life both inside of work and outside of work. You can achieve this by saying what you mean and meaning what you say:

  • “I’m going to do [A] by Friday at 5PM.” Then do it.
  • “I’ll send you [X,Y,Z] tonight.” Then send it.
  • “I’m going to pick you up at 8AM tomorrow morning.” Then show up.

Rinse, wash, repeat.

People whose words and actions don’t align are not respected in life because they aren’t reliable. Be reliable so that people will be interested in giving you more of their time, more of their energy, and more access to themselves because they know they’re building a friendship/work relationship on strong and stable foundations.

Additionally, learn to read the room. There are flaky people who don’t joke around and there are reliable people who joke around. You don’t need to bleach your personality of all humor to be taken seriously, but you do need to show thought and consideration to those around you. For example, don’t crack jokes when others are stressed, confused, and upset because that can be interpreted as disrespect. Get to know those around you (and let them get to know you in return), focus on solving problems, contribute value, build bridges, clear up confusion, and you’ll start to transform other people’s perception of you.

Give first the thought, consideration, and respect to other people that you want to receive for yourself.

#maturity #respect #trust #life #work #colleagues #career #careers #job #relationships #faq
2 months ago / 40 notes
c

which things you dislike the most about each mbti personality type? what are the things you think should be improved of their natural tendencies?

Asked by Anonymous

Related answers:

By perceiving function:

  • High Ne (ENFP, ENTP, INFP, INTP): Flaky and unreliable. Struggles with consistency, follow through, and discipline. Prone to being impractical and unrealistic. Quitters.
  • High Se (ESFP, ESTP, ISFP, ISTP): Short-sighted and superficial. Struggles with seeing the big picture and underlying connections. Prone to optimizing for short-term benefits over long-term gains. Reckless.
  • High Ni (INTJ, INFJ, ENTJ, ENFJ): Vague and unrealistic. Struggles with concrete details and constraints needed to make their ideas work. Prone to perfectionism and delusions of grandeur. Know-it-alls.
  • High Si (ISTJ, ISFJ, ESTJ, ESFJ): Concrete and rigid. Struggles with deviating from tried and true methods. Prone to dismissing novel ideas as unrealistic, annoying, and unwelcomed; risk averse to a fault. Killjoys.

By judging function:

  • High Fe (ESFJ, ENFJ, ISFJ, INFJ): Scripted and impersonal. Struggles with nuance, exceptions, and subjectivity to standard and expected behaviors (‘social norms’). Prone to passive aggression and messiah complexes. Pushovers.
  • High Fi (INFP, ISFP, ENFP, ESFP): Subjective and rigid. Struggles with compromise and perceiving everything systematic as an attack on individuality, freedom, and creativity. Prone to martyr complexes. Victims.
  • High Te (ESTJ, ENTJ, ISTJ, INTJ): Systematic and impersonal. Struggles with nuance, exceptions, subjectivity to standard thinking ('common sense’) and the unpredictable things that make humans– human. Prone to impatience. Bulldozers.
  • High Ti (INTP, ISTP, ENTP, ESTP): Nuanced and chaotic. Struggles with creating scalable, standardized, and automated systems that work for the majority of people. Prone to overcomplicating everything. Trolls.
#mbti #myers briggs #infp #intj #intp #infj #enfp #entj #entp #enfj #istj #isfj #estj #esfj #istp #isfp #estp #esfp #mbtiq #typology
2 months ago / 228 notes
c

Hi Mr. ENTJ, congrats on the new job offer. It's good to hear INTJ and Kobe & Co. are doing well, too.

I'm an ENTJ currently in my fourth year of my Computer Science PhD specializing in Machine Learning/Data Mining, and I know that you know how quickly this field moves. There's loads of advice about how "doctoral programs a marathon, not a sprint" and students need to pace themselves and have work-life balance in order to not burn out. Following these principles, I've made it this far unscathed (in terms of mental health deterioration) and managed to stay in my program.

With luck, an understanding advisor, and low amounts of admin work (emails, meetings-that-could-be-emails, etc.), and good self management, I have been able to work 40 hour workweeks for the most part and stay on track. That being said, I am currently in a period of time where I am increasing to 50 hour workweeks in order to meet a conference deadline at the end of June 2023 (time of writing is mid-late April 2023). As long as I show up to work every day and do my best, I expect this paper will be finished by the time my internship starts. This is fine by me; deadlines need to be met, and I want to continue with my current 5-year PhD trajectory (as opposed to taking longer).

Speaking candidly, I have ADHD and am also Autistic, and maintaining this 40hr/week is critical in preventing the "I wake up in the morning wondering if I've accomplished anything meaningful with my life" feeling that gets in the way of me doing very much at all with my day. I also notice that when I am in the *deep throes* of burnout, my ability to pull back and look at the bigger picture takes a nap and I make myopic, hasty decisions. It's a recipe for bad research.

I've relaxed my "good work-life balance" constraint to simply "do not enter the *deep throes* of burnout". My question is for what lies after this period of time: I will be entering a summer research internship. I am concerned I will not perform well at my internship and will not be able to study as hard for full time interviews as a result of my choices now. Any tips for optimizing this recovery time and post-burnout damage control? Is this an ill-posed question, and there is no way to have my cake and eat it too?

Thanks for your time and consideration, Mr. ENTJ.

Asked by Anonymous

You can have your cake and eat it too, you’ll just need to endure for the next few months.

Some thoughts on your situation in no particular order:

  • Get therapy and medication for the ADHD and autism if you haven’t already. Mental health issues should never be left untreated especially when you’re attempting ambitious and difficult goals. It would be like trying to win a race with a broken leg.
  • Set strict guardrails to get adequate sleep and nutrition. Don’t compromise on either of these two because it’ll severely impact performance. During the most intense periods of my life, meal planning worked really well so I could grab and go healthy meals without long prep time. Poor health choices lead to low energy, brain fog, and bad moods. Healthy food/snacks, hydration, vitamins, exercise (even a quick 15 minutes of cardio when my scheduled was packed) made me 10x more effective.
  • Reach out to the summer internship team and learn more about expectations so you can start planning ahead to manage your time and prepare to hit the ground running. Most summer internships aren’t time-consuming and energy draining to the point they’d grind you down to dust. This is because interns require a lot of time to onboard which cuts into the 3-month summer term and they have limited access to information, skills, and experience needed to do more complex work. I wouldn’t jump the gun and stress about underperforming without knowing the full scope of your role and responsibilities.
  • Ensure that you have at least one person from your summer internship who can speak highly of you. In the unlikely event you don’t perform well in your internship, you’ll still walk away with a solid professional reference to use for future full-time job offers. Pro tip: Companies won’t interview every single person at the internship even if you fuck up. As long as they can verify you worked there and you have at least 1 person (more is better) who can speak to your abilities, you’ll be fine.
  • Prioritize full-time job interviews > summer internships if the summer internship has a low chance of conversion to a full-time role. If the opposite is true, reverse that order. If you need to prioritize one of these two, prioritize the one that secures your desired outcome.
  • Focus on outcomes over input. Focus on the things you achieve, the milestones you reach, and the obstacles you overcome– not the amount of hours you put in. A few weeks ago I fixed a $5 million problem by clearing up a misunderstanding with a 90-minute conversation. This 90-minute conversation was way more impactful than the 40-50 hours of work I put in the previous week. There’s that John Wooden quote: “Don’t mistake activity for achievement.” Benchmark your progress towards achieving a ‘meaningful life’ with impact, not input.
#work #school #phd #academia #burnout #internship #internships #entj #faq
2 months ago / 14 notes
c

Do you have any tips on dating and finding a good partner that fits your personality, lifestyle, goals etc.? I am thinking about entering the dating pool but so far it has been very disappointing.. I do not know whether I expect too much from my "partner" because I expect a lot from myself as well. I have always been very serious (due to my upbringing), I studied full-time (graduated with honours/cum laude for my Bachelor's and Master's) while also working full-time. I am very active in the community, I read a lot, and I constantly try to grow/improve myself by following new courses, financially independent etc. The reason why I am saying this is to give you a glimpse into the person that I am.

I am 25 (almost 26) and I find it so difficult to find a man that is serious, hardworking, and mature. I prefer to be alone than to give my time to someone who (in my opinion) does not deserve it.


Do you have any tips on how to tackle this?

Asked by Anonymous

You can’t be disappointed at the dating pool if you haven’t even entered it. There’s no magic wand to dating: go to centers of excellence if you’re looking for excellent people (top academic institutions, top companies, etc.), socialize often to expand your network (many matches are made through shared acquaintances so more socialization means higher chances of chance encounters), and be open-minded because happiness comes in many unexpected forms.

I wrote something relevant here: “You may be envisioning in your mind some high-powered CEO type in a suit as ‘your type’ but that stable, established, and secure partner could also arrive in your life in the form of a quiet and dorky engineer who has his life together and loves his job, the dreamy artist who relentlessly pursues his passion, or a boisterous carpenter/mechanic who successfully runs his own business.”

I wouldn’t compromise on your ‘must-have’ qualities, but I’d definitely be open to how they present themselves in another human being.

If you’re a high-achiever, and it sounds like you are, then you’re probably not used to failure and you’re wary of it. You need to accept that dating is more like running science experiments than acing tests: there’s no amount of preparation to exactly get it right on the first try or the first few tries– there will likely be multiple attempts, multiple failures, and multiple iterations until you get it right. The sooner you start, the faster you’ll accumulate wisdom, narrow your preferences, understand your boundaries, and build your relationships.

I started dating at 15 and I wasn’t able to get it right until I was 31 years old. There was a lot of bullshit between then and now with selfish standoffs, stupid fights, and immature breakups. It helped me grow and better understand what I wanted in a partner so that when I finally got it right, I really got it right.

Check my #dating tag in case there’s something else relevant there for you.

#dating #relationships #relationship #love #partner #faq
2 months ago / 22 notes
c

i am an intj and 18, it's my second year in uni and my major is overall promising (engineering with focus on nano, 3d and powder technologies (not going in depth with this one)). after graduating i'll be able to work in various fields, from medicine to metallurgy. anyways, the problem is that the way most my subject are being taught is unbelievably boring (not good for my adhd) plus i missed out on some of them (high math and physics mostly) due to stress and overall depressed mood (war in my country + no friends + really tough family situation abuse etc). now, even though i missed out, i know that lots of people did the same and still graduated and now have high paying jobs, and therefore i can too, but i am really anxious about not understanding some of new material due to lacunas in my knowledge. i plan to catch up on some of it during summer but i am pretty sure that till june all my determination will evaporate, and i will continue resenting my choice of major (originally wanted to choose linguistics but didn't work out). another thing is that i don't want to be doing one thing my whole life, i want to be well versed in multiple unrelated fields (from writing and acting and art to history social studies linguistics and architecture). my question is, how to find that spark/motivation again? how to combine all the things i am interested in so i learn a bit of each and when should i do that, now or later in life? i suppose if i graduate and get a good job i can go back to learning again in free time. i also want to get out of this house as soon as possible, so i need to either really put efforts into successfully graduating or start looking for part time jobs to save up money (i doubt i will be able to do both at once). one idea i had for part time is to start an etsy shop as i have original ideas and means to execute them (but there is a risk of failing which i am perhaps more afraid of than i should be).

may you please give me an advice on my situation? sorry if this ask is too messy and thank you for reading it

Asked by Anonymous

For starters, I’d rethink your MBTI type. I’m confident you’re not an INTJ and I wouldn’t use any INTJ descriptions to guide your thought process. Based on your writing style, I’d look closer at descriptions of INTPs and INFPs.

Next, there’s a framework I use to break down problems and solve them. It can be applied to basically everything in life. For your situation, it looks something like this:

  • Step 1: Define. What are the goals you want to achieve? Do you want to move out? Do you want to graduate college? Do you want to study something that interests you? What are the end goals? What does your ideal life look like in a few years at the point where you can breathe easily?
  • Step 2: Prioritize. Of the goals you’ve defined, which are most important? Example: #1 priority is to graduate college, #2 priority is to be financially independent and move out, #3 is to study something that interests you.
  • Step 3: Plan. For priority #1, what are all the things you need to do to graduate college? Are there faster ways to graduate and get a great paying job? Do research on which classes to take, community college credits, etc. Attach timelines to them.
  • Step 4: Execute. Do it. Self-explanatory. What did you learn from carrying out your plan? What worked and didn’t work? Are there any new and exciting insights you know now that you didn’t know before?
  • Step 5: Measure. Are you happy? Did achieving your goals bring you the life you wanted? If not, go back to step 1 and restart the process. Iterate until you get it right.

Unless your family is rich, I’d argue that college isn’t for learning, college is a financial commitment in exchange for skills training, credential gathering, and network building to get a job with a positive return on investment (ROI). If you want to learn– go to a library. You can learn without college. Go on YouTube, go on Google, go on ChatGPT, etc. and learn for free.

Know your priorities and execute based on the most important ones.

#career #education #college #university #faq
2 months ago / 9 notes
c

Hi!! Did you unfollow some or a lot of people recently? We used to follow each other but no more :(((

Asked by Anonymous

Yes, some inactive blogs became spam or porn bots so I removed them. If I unfollowed you by accident, send me your username.

#faq #blog
2 months ago / 2 notes
c