So, H IMed about a career/personality test she took. The first description of the type she pulled up (ISTJ) didn’t appeal to either of us, but then she found another description that was a fairly striking match. I have my doubts about the how grounded in reality these things are. But I took the test myself just to see where it would fall on the fortune cookie/hair-on-the-back-of-your-neck-standing-up scale of insight.
The test spit out ESTP “Promoter”: These are action-oriented people, often sophisticated, sometimes ruthless — our “James Bonds.” As mates, they are exciting and charming, but they have trouble with commitment. They make good promoters, entrepreneurs, and con artists. I noticed that in the reults I had a strong lean towards T (thinking vs. feeling) but middle of the road scores in the other three. I think all that shows is I overthink tests like this.
Reading the desciptions of the four factors, I conclude that I’m an ENTP: Extrovert Intuitive Thinking Perceiving. (My opposite, the one the Chinese restaurant placemat would tell me to avoid, would be Introverted, Sensory, Feeling, and Judging. Let us all note that at least H and I are both Thinking and forget about the previous sentence forever.)
So reading the decripstion for ENTP zooms me straight past funny-horoscope-coincidence-land to wiped-that-smirk-off-my-face-ville. There actually some useful things for me to remember when my worse nature gets the best of me. For the purpose of future (self) reference, I’m going to copy some choice bits below. Everything comes from these two sites [bold emphasis added by me]:
First, the ego stroking tidbits:
With Extraverted Intuition dominating their personality, the ENTP’s primary interest in life is understanding the world that they live in. They are constantly absorbing ideas and images about the situations they are presented in their lives. Using their intuition to process this information, they are usually extremely quick and accurate in their ability to size up a situation. With the exception of their ENFP cousin, the ENTP has a deeper understanding of their environment than any of the other types.
This ability to intuitively understand people and situations puts the ENTP at a distinct advantage in their lives. They generally understand things quickly and with great depth. Accordingly, they are quite flexible and adapt well to a wide range of tasks. They are good at most anything that interests them. As they grow and further develop their intuitive abilities and insights, they become very aware of possibilities, and this makes them quite resourceful when solving problems.
ENTPs are idea people. Their perceptive abilities cause them to see possibilities everywhere. They get excited and enthusiastic about their ideas, and are able to spread their enthusiasm to others.
ENTPs are fluent conversationalists, mentally quick, and enjoy verbal sparring with others. They love to debate issues
In general, ENTPs are upbeat visionaries. They highly value knowledge, and spend much of their lives seeking a higher understanding. They live in the world of possibilities, and become excited about concepts, challenges and difficulties. When presented with a problem, they’re good at improvising and quickly come up with a creative solution. Creative, clever, curious, and theoretical, ENTPs have a broad range of possibilities in their lives.
And now the cautionary bits:
ENTPs are less interested in developing plans of actions or making decisions than they are in generating possibilities and ideas. Following through on the implementation of an idea is usually a chore to the ENTP. For some ENTPs, this results in the habit of never finishing what they start. The ENTP who has not developed their Thinking process will have problems with jumping enthusiastically from idea to idea, without following through on their plans. The ENTP needs to take care to think through their ideas fully in order to take advantage of them.
The ENTP, who does not naturally consider the more personal or human element in decision making, should take care to notice the subjective, personal side of situations.
Under stress, the ENTP may lose their ability to generate possibilities, and become obsessed with minor details. These details may seem to be extremely important to the ENTP, but in reality are usually not important to the big picture.
Trusting in their ingenuity to get them out of trouble, they often neglect to prepare sufficiently for any given situation. This characteristic, combined with their tendency to underestimate the time needed to complete a project, may cause the ENTP to become over-extended, and to work frequently beyond expected time limits. Complicating this situation is their predisposition to experiment with new solutions. This makes them eager to move on to the next challenge when things get boring. ENTP’s become stressed when their improvisational abilities are ineffective and they will avoid circumstances where they might fail.
They need to escape situations that are associated with anxiety
And here’s another that made me grin:
Both at work and at home, ENTPs are very fond of “toys”–physical or intellectual, the more sophisticated the better. They tend to tire of these quickly, however, and move on to new ones.
You mean, everyone’s not like that? :)
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