Instead Of Worrying About The Future: Fill & Download for Free

My first advice is to read as much as you can on the eight cognitive functions. Absorb information, contrast them in your mind, and understand them as much more significant than TvF or JvP.In an interview, it can be helpful first to fit a person into what I call "type shells". These shells contain e/i and p/j, but nothing more - no functions yet, just baseline attitudes.So, part A: type shellsExxP types are some of my favourite, and often very easy to spot. They are people-attractors or people-offenders; they are risk-takers and spotlight-stealers, bigshots and big liars. They are loose, unconnected until they find something that will stick. They are very much Heroic Stars in their minds, if not also in real life. Either Ne or Se will be their dominant function, and it will be their driving force - see part B for questions here.ExxJ types are much more collected, overall, though ETJs are much more so than EFJs. Fe and Te are both incredibly driving functions, and by their teens they will learn to balance out that function (to soften it, really) with either Ne or Se. But EJ types will still be firm, and diplomatic if not also friendly.IxxP types are interesting, and I quite like us that way. In social situations especially, we can seem some odd mix of EP's openness and EJ's firmness. Ti or Fi being dominant functions leads to an internal process of immediately judging incoming information to sort it into a system to some degree. It's only our auxilary functions, Ne or Se, that force us into openness. And since those can be weak on their own, we support them with Ti/Fi thoughts are Fe/Te actions and ideals.IxxJ types are interesting for the same reasons as IP types, but IJs seem to be a lot more stable in their stacking. Usually, their dominant Ni or Si is able to directly colour the auxilary Te or Fe that is first reflected in social settings, so they don't have as much a need to pull from all their functions (though their tertiary functions shine more than anyone else's on average). They can still be hard to pin if you don't recognise their dominant function at first, especially with INJs; often, you should rely on their judging axis here before their perceiving one, which will fit in as you learn about them.Discovering Preferences: "What were you like as a child"If it's unclear after interacting with someone which shell they fit most, this question should help decipher some of their basic tropes, drives, or even functions.- EP types will probably talk of being extroverted and active, often also quite talkative. Their inner worlds would have been all processing, understanding their experiences- EJ types were also probably quite external, but with a more distinctly receded inner world. They probably tried to command great control or great friendship (or both).- IP types like to talk about parts of themselves that they find to be entertaining either because of the concordance or discordance between the fact and their current self. They bounced between introverted thought and dreaming and extroverted talking and orchestrating.- IJ types are the least likely to want to talk about themselves, right behind EJ types. What they do mention will either be a specific event (esp ISJs) or linked traits (esp INJs). They were introverted and often either held specific grounded focuses (esp ISJs) or were interestingly disconnected from the world (esp INJs).Part B: Finding FunctionsFe or Fi? (Or Te or Ti?) Usually, my opener question when typing people is "Say someone comes up to you, proclaiming something terrible has just happened. How do you react?"- People with high Fe tend to almost immediately start worrying about the hypothetical person, and though most will also want to know details of the event because of their Ti, they will want to help the person by making sure they (and any other people involved) are okay and stable. I've had a few FJ types also offer to take the person out for coffee or a snack so as to talk over the event with them.- People with high Fi are right above Ti in most awkward first response. They usually follow similar steps to Ti/Fe users, saying that they want to know what happened and then see what they could do to help, but if you push them to elaborate (What sort of event do you imagine? What information do you need to help them? How far would you go for this near stranger in making sure they're okay?) Fi users will taper off, holding only a moral value of the person's happiness, not an emotional one.- Both thinker types usually try to learn about the circumstances first, but only Te users will set up a system or plan to help the person. Usually direct and a fairly quick jump, Te plans solve the moral problem of a person in pain, but usually doesn't go out of its way to accommodate feelings, just to secure safety.- Ti users, though, will want to explore all of the details (usually I let them come up with their own scenario, since that can reveal other functions and priorities), and then talk about hypothetical situations, especially if Ne is present. They want to explore different conditions of their reaction, and are the most likely to internally weigh the worth of their contribution; if the effect on them is negligible, they're more likely to reach out and help this person.Discovering Preferences: "What were you like as a child"Fe v Ti v Te v Fi- Fe users will always incorporate people into their memories. Even TPs talk about interactions they had with people in their youth. (S)FJs especially will talk about instances with strangers or of managing interpersonal relations.- TPs talk with their Fe most. ETPs may talk more coldly about people or about how they've commanded and/or manipulated them to some degree, and ITPs may talk at the same level as some IFJs about social fear, but they also talk mostly about interaction with people in their memories.- No EFJ will talk about solving mental riddles in their room alone below the age of 12.- No IFJ will talk about exploring the world alone below the age of 12.- No ETP will talk about loving more than 2 people more than their idea for some twist in imagination or invention, especially below the age of 12.- No ITP will talk about ease in conversation, or much conversation not bent on developing their own curiosities and satisfying knowledge cravings below the age of 12.- TJs talk most about their own actions and about global circumstances in their life (for the latter, esp NTJs). They don't mention people as much unless the interaction holds a meaning or outlines a personality trait for themselves.- FPs talk about individual stories they find amusement in. Some may talk deeply of accomplishments and failures, and FPs comfortable with you will probably also talk about dreams, ideas, or fears as well.- No ETJ will talk about their deep cultural opinions or moral views they had before the age of 12.- No INTJ will talk about their favourite isolated memory unless it has meaning.- No ISTJ doesn't have a favourite isolated memory with no meaning.- No EFP won't talk about their greatest youthful prides from before the age of 12.- No IFP won't talk about cultural opinions or moral views they had and imposed on people before the age of 12.Se or Ne? It's best to ask this if you find that someone's introverted Judging function, either Fi or Ti, is higher in preference than their extroverted one (if you know they're either an EP or IP). That way, Se or Ne will be in their top two functions as well, and their answer will be even clearer. Tell them "Imagine yourself watching a sunset. Now, give me your inner monologue."- Se users, almost without fail, always talk about how they'd enjoy the colors, the wind, the feeling of the land around them, and any other number of sensory (sometimes even sensual or spiritual) details. They may be slightly more hesitant to answer at first, especially if their Se is lower than their Ni (NJ types).- Ne users often start with watching the colors, but two to three thoughts in, wander away from the direct question. (When I first asked my ENTP boyfriend, he ended up talking about types of bombs because the imaginary sun reminded him of explosions; and ESFJ friend of mine started asking hypothetical questions about whether or not she was with people, and then lamented some childhood memory about a vacation)Si or Ni? It's best to ask this to people whose extroverted Judging function, Te or Fe, is higher than their introverted one (as in EJ and IJ types) so that you know Si or Ni will be their stronger function as well. To isolate these, ask "What is your largest fear?"- Si users will respond slower than Ni users on average. Theirs may be linked more closely to their Judging function as well, with SFJ users overwhelmingly worrying about living up to the standards of people around them, and STJs worrying about living a future they will enjoy. Their fears are almost always completely pulled from an event in their past. If they give a firm answer, immediately ask "why". If a story proceeds, it's very likely an SJ, especially if the transition between the two is more bent on an Ne-driven trail of what-ifs than it is an Ni-shaped jump based on gained understanding.- Ni users likely worry a lot, just as IP types do. Ni users fixate on personal things, much like Si users, but are more likely to worry about hypotheticals than because of them. Ni users are stereotyped as having high anxiety levels in general, and often fixate the most on future results to their life or (esp in NFJs) the life of people they care about. They are more likely than SJs to have their fears be undertones instead of obsessions, and are much less likely to be scared about being scared than Si users, too.This is a massive outline of my typing process. It's incomplete by nature, since every person I type means that I'm pulling out all of the knowledge on functions and type distinctions that I have formed, observed, and read before in all of my studies. The questions won't do you as much good as actual understanding will, and someone's type doesn't do you as much good as understanding the person through it does.Don't just try to figure out their MBTI type. Use knowledge of it to discover how they as a person work, and how their personal configuration will impact your entity.

The longer you are in the game the easier it becomes to just blow it off. I grew up during the “sticks and stones” era, and heard the expression regularly at home when relating something that had happened at school. I was always the thin ‘smart’ kid, two years younger than any of my classmates and a perpetual ‘teachers pet’ though I never did anything to curry that designation. So, I got called lots of names and was taunted a lot, and back them almost all of the girls liked me a lot, which really didn’t help at all.During high school and my first few years of college, when I started working during summer vacations, I was on the road at 15 working at industrial jobs in NJ, ND, NC, LA, and CO, and was a fast study and an eager beaver and once again was called a ‘brown noser’ that had to be ‘blowin’ somebody’ when I was offered a foreman position at 18. You learn to just dismiss all that crap or cave-in and quit. I wasn’t a quitter.So by the time I hit 60 and was still in commercial construction, after many exciting and rewarding side trips, I found myself in downtown Atlanta on a condo project that was so tight there was no lay down space or room for equipment and we all had to park on the street where your truck would be broken into 10 minutes after you parked it. And I was lucky enough to get a brand new PM the company had just hired, one with a Masters degree in Construction Management. Yah fucking hoo! Anyway after battling this butthole for nine months he showed up on the job one afternoon and said he needed to talk with me. We went into the small Conex container that was my office. He shut the door, though it was sweltering, and began to unburden himself to me. He had had enough, couldn’t handle the world he had studied for, couldn’t handle people like me telling him to “go fuck himself and get off my job”, and get away with it Didn’t understand how the hierarchy in the industry worked, and why his position as a PM didn’t carry more weight. I just listened, wondering where all this was headed. Finally he said that he wanted to apologize to me for all the crap he had said about me since he first met me and how much he had learned working around me, and that he was quitting the company. As he was leaving he told me that I was the toughest skinned son of a bitch he had ever met and ever hoped to meet.I thanked him for the compliment and wished him luck, and went back to work. It does get a lot easier to ignore that garbage the older one becomes.

The biggest difference?Yikes.I saved this question to my “Answer Later” queue a week ago, and I’ve been mulling over the answer ever since…and I still not 100% sure what the biggest difference is between my wife and me. There’s a metric ton of differences between us, and, depending on the day, any one of them might technically qualify as “the biggest.”Here’s my best idea so far:She’s spontaneous, and I’m methodical.She does whatever she feels like doing, whenever she feels like doing it, while I plan everything out, rationally and analytically.Like a true Stoic, I practice self-denial—while my wife is all about instant gratification.Case in point:One of my wife’s coworkers—one she’s been training to replace, actually, when said coworker retires next spring—unexpectedly retired early, this month. So my wife’s training schedule has been…how shall I say this? Accelerated.In mid-November, my wife is scheduled to fly to New Jersey, on the company’s dime, for a week of training at the company’s national headquarters.New Jersey, as we all know, is just a hop, skip, and a jump from this place:New Yawk City.(Sorry, New York City.)Neither my wife nor I have ever been there. Both of us consider ourselves travelers, or wannabe travelers, and it’s only our perpetual state of debt-induced destitution which has kept us from traveling more often like the D.I.N.K.s (dual income, no kids) that we are.My wife has proposed that I accompany her to New Jersey.On the face of it, this is an ingenious plan. It would be a fun, romantic, memorable trip. And it wouldn’t be a serious disruption, either. I’m still unemployed and I haven’t started flight school yet because I’m waiting to be approved for several financial assistance programs so I can start treatment for Crohn’s disease. My wife’s week-long training seminar in NJ is the perfect excuse for the two of us to explore NYC—sample the restaurants and cocktail bars, go up to the top of the Empire State Building, stroll through Central Park, tour the Statue of Liberty, and see a show on Broadway (as my wife, a huge fan of musical theater, has always dreamed of doing).But I possess a highly analytical and rational personality. And I immediately spotted several glaring flaws in my wife’s plan:Neither of us has more than $500 in the bank, and we have four figures’ worth of credit card debt between us, and six figures’ worth of student debt. Taking a vacation to New York right now doesn’t seem like the most fiscally responsible idea. I’d have to stump up my own plane ticket, which would be a few hundred dollars; it’d be a few hundred dollars more for accommodations (my wife’s accommodations are getting comped, but mine wouldn’t be); hundreds of dollars for meals and tourist attractions and cab fare and/or rental cars; and I hear those Broadway shows are expensive as all hell. We could potentially emerge from this trip with another $1,000 in debt, at least.We’d have to hire a pet sitter for our two cats while we were gone, too. So that’s another few bucks right there.My Sallie Mae loan payments commence next month. I’ll need $150, and I’d hate to think that instead of saving that $150, I blew $150 and more on a frivolous trip to the Big Apple.I’m still suffering from the symptoms of a Crohn’s flare-up. If the symptoms should worsen while we’re on our trip—which seems likely, as my stomach doesn’t react too well to restaurant food when I travel—I’ll be stuck in the bathroom the entire time. In immense pain.When I brought these points up to my wife (just the money issues, not the stuff about Crohn’s), she got a bit testy, to say the least. This happens fairly often, I’m afraid. She’ll come up with a wonderful, spontaneous, romantic idea—a road trip to Mount Rushmore, a vacation to New York City, even a two-week junket to Peru—and I’ll shoot it down, because my rational mind and my conscience are both telling me it isn’t a logistically feasible or financially sound idea. My wife, in her turn, will get hurt and angry, because in her view, I’m being boring and unromantic and I don’t care about spending time with her or keeping the relationship fun and interesting. My wife doesn’t worry about money nearly as much as I do, and she thinks I worry too much about it, at the expense of fun, adventure, and romance. She says that right now—while I’m unemployed, and we don’t have kids—is the perfect time for this little vacation to New York.Is she wrong? Not necessarily. If I do wind up going to NYC with my wife, then I’m sure our week-long trip will become a very fond memory for both of us years down the line. I’ll probably look back and realize that I was worrying too much about money and other material concerns. One shouldn’t be so concerned with financial matters that one forgets to live a little.Am I wrong? Not necessarily. Deficit spending is never a smart idea. Who knows but that something disastrous might happen—a car accident, a severe illness, etc.—and we’ll need the money we so frivolously spent on a trip to New York. Even if nothing disastrous does happen in the near future, we should still technically be saving every penny we earn to pay down our debts and try to make some financial headway. It won’t be long before my student loan payments increase to $800 a month, and both my wife and I want to have children before we’re much older.But in the meantime, we’re at an ideological impasse. My wife thinks I’m a wet blanket. I think she’s a spendthrift. I’ve already apologized to her for worrying about money all the time, but I’m sticking to my guns. A trip to NYC just isn’t in the cards right now.So my wife is now sloping around our apartment, heaving heavy sighs and muttering about the romance and spontaneity that’s vanished from our relationship, and I’m sitting here feeling like a stick-in-the-mud—and resenting the fact that I’m being made to feel like a stick-in-the-mud just because we’re in pretty bad financial shape right now and I think we should save for a rainy day.