INTJ

You Are an Introverted Intuitive

Wanted: An imaginative, inspired, tenacious, creative, driven, inwardlooking person. OK if stubborn, unrealistic in evaluating obstacles to achievement of personal goals, and easily bored by routine work.

That job must be for you, or for another introverted intuitive!

You are a self-confident and individualistic thinker. You draw your view of the way things are from within, from your "inner eye" to reality: your intuition.

More than any other type, you live in a world of pure ideas, a sea of concepts and associations so unique to your mind that no one else may share your vision. And that's all right with you. You do not need permission or understanding from the world in order to believe in your own intuition.

Some of history's greatest inventors and researchers have shared your kind of calm trust in their own ideas—and so have some of the world's most outrageous crackpots!

Perhaps that strong, and sometimes stubborn, sense of independence is built into the early childhood experience of those with your personality. Consider the numbers alone. When you were growing up, three-fourths of the children were extraverts, and you were in the minority. For every four kids, only one's perception was based on intuitive, rather than sensing, information. In fact, the best guess today is that only one percent of the population shares your particular personality.

Without getting into the chicken-egg question of whether your early personality built your childhood experiences or vice-versa, it's easy to see that introverted intuitives learn very young in life that they are different.

Many people with personalities like your own tell heart-breaking stories of rejection, of isolation—both enforced and self-selected—and of missing some of the shared experiences of others in their neighborhood or school.

So if you're a bit of a loner, stubbornly introspective, and a bit oblivious to the criticism or rejection of others, understand that as an adaptive response to having such a unique personality. You know that being different doesn't imply that you're inferior.

Clearly, there can be problems associated with this kind of individualism if you follow that logic through to the extreme conclusion that it's the rest of the world that's defective.

You focus on the possible, develop plans to bring your ideas into practice, and turn all of your energy toward achieving your goal, regardless of any obstacles which may get in your way. In fact, you ignore the obstacles.

Perhaps it's because the world "out there" is not where your best reality lies, but—for whatever reason—you tend not to evaluate opposition realistically. You really do believe of yourself and your abilities: "The difficult I do immediately; the impossible takes a little longer." When evidence begins accumulating that there may be something wrong with your idea, or when it is essential to revise your notions or take a different approach to solving your problems, you may just filter out the unwanted information. Critics? You can't hear them, or you discredit them for lacking your sense of vision. (What do they know, anyway?)

The challenge, of course, lies in maintaining your drive and commitment to your goals at the same time you exercise your little-used ability of sensing: using your five senses to tell you what is going on in the hard-facts world of the here and now. Your perceptive abilities, too, need some help: opening you up to the opinions and advice of others. You need to expend some energy developing a sense of reality. Your judging ability, too, must be nurtured in order to analyze your work with some objectivity, see problems before they arise, and decide what to do in case of difficulties.

Because it is your judging side which forms the basis of your "outer" personality, you must give it a chance to function socially, since even the best ideas are rarely implemented unless they are promoted, explained, sold to the world. Learning interpersonal skills may be unpleasant for a loner like yourself, but it's a necessary undertaking if you are to make your mark and realize your visions.

Your Auxiliary Process

As an introvert, your strongest process—intuition—rules your inner world of thoughts and ideas. Your less preferred process of thinking is left to guide your judgment and to "run the store"—deal with the outer world of people and things.

The combination of intuition and thinking forms the very cornerstone of your intellectual, creative personality: the ANALYST temperament!

In love with learning, fascinated by the very concept of intelligence, all intuitive-thinking types share an inner drive toward performance and a highly self-critical nature which continually strives for self-improvement.

Whether or not your judging nature inclines you toward trying to control others' behavior, you certainly set high standards for yourself. You're continually reciting a mental list of things you ought to learn, accomplish, master. You view your life as a sack that you should always be filling with new skills and activities.

Ironically, that achieving attitude may often leave you feeling that you're on the brink of personal failure. Since thinking intuitives tend to measure their own value by a yardstick of accomplishment—and since there's always more to know, more to do—you folks often feel twinges of inadequacy. You set your standards impossibly high and program yourself for failure. When you compare the wealth of your accomplishment with others', still you don't give yourself a break. Sure, you know a lot. Sure, you excel at a broad assortment of skills. Just because the rest of the world can't keep up with you doesn't mean that you're OK, it just means that others are less OK. In fact, you don't really expect too much of other people.

In many ways, you don't expect the majority of the world to understand you, and you don't go out of your way to be understandable. Scratch a thinking intuitive and you'll find more than a bit of arrogance just beneath the veneer.

Of all the basic personality types, yours is the most doggedly individualistic. Whatever field of work you choose, you're almost certain to approach it as an inventor, innovator, organizer and reviser.

Your intuition provides the ideas, your thinking offers a logical basis for implementing them, and your judgment fuels the drive to get the job done. Because the intuitive part of you gets so quickly "burned out," once all the problems have been solved, you're happiest in a job that lets you roam from one project to the next, turning your particular combination of intuition, thinking and judging to the next invention or reorganization.

The extent to which introverted intuitives succeed in life often is related to how well they develop their social skills. For those, like yourself, whose outer personalities are ruled by judgment guided by logic, there are obstacles to overcome, but with insight, acceptance of yourself, and a program of personal development, you can have the world eating out of your hand.

First of all, you are a natural critic. Now and then, you may use your logic as a club over the heads of those closest to you—not as an unkindness, but simply because that's the way you are. You certainly don't demand any more of others than you do of yourself.

The dilemma of interpersonal relationships for introverted intuitives who are also thinkers is their apparent lack of feelings, their tendency to devalue the needs of others for sentiment, appreciation, support and sympathy.

To some extent, it's easy to understand how you might behave as you do. As a loner, you have learned to do without these little emotional luxuries, and it may be hard for you to imagine how important they are to others. In their personal relationships, -NTJs often have a tendency to be lavish with complaints, criticisms, and suggestions for their mates, companions and friends. They tend to be stingy with the emotional goodies others may crave. Then, finally, they often get rankled when that behavior pattern provokes arguments. Why? Because introverted intuitives simply expect order and harmony, especially in their homes!

You may wish to spend some time examining this cycle, if you recognize just a bit of yourself in this description.

Some simple exercises can make you more effective in your personal dealings. Remember to compliment as much as you criticize. You can be far more effective in shaping others' behavior to what you want by pointing out how much you enjoy or admire a quality in others, or how much you appreciate it in them. Then your friend or partner has the opportunity to change to please you, rather than to stop displeasing you.

Try to recognize that the personal attack may not be the most socially effective response in your personal arsenal. When you must express disagreement, be on the lookout for your tendency to fall into angry exaggeration to achieve emphasis. It really doesn't work to your benefit.

In conversation, acknowledge the areas of agreement before you jump on the points where you disagree. Congratulate, appreciate, chat, touch and smile more, and you'll smooth out the road for selling the world on those ideas your active imagination spins out.

The intuitive-thinker's apparent deficiency of feeling is magnified in the introvert who is outwardly judging, and that's you, so you may wish to invest some time and energy into examining this part of your personality.

Sadly, some introverts have a hard time with the interpersonal domain—just as some extraverts have a hard time ever developing a sense of inner reflection. The difference is that an extravert with poorly developed introversion is hard to spot. An introvert with poorly developed social skills may have to struggle to deal with society. It is unfortunately true that many great introverted intuitives failed to have an impact in their field of work simply because they never concocted an effective social mask to wear for the "outside world."

Perhaps it's appropriate to point out here that your type does have feelings and you do relate to people. But as an introvert, you probably tend to invest time, energy, and affection in only a few people, measuring friendships by depth and longevity, rather than by breadth or number.

As an introvert, you naturally value inner processes over external signs. As a friend, you need little overt reciprocation of your feelings and little active contact in order to perpetuate a relationship. When a friend really needs you, you'll be there: this year, next year, ten years from now. That's the way friendship operates among introverts.

You tend to form a kind of quiet, intense, devoted friendship which awes your extraverted friends. They can't understand it. Frankly, you do not understand an extravert's concept of friendship, either. To you, their affiliations seem shallow, fleeting, and devoid of long-term personal commitment.

When it comes to friendship and love, it's apparent that introverts and extraverts speak different languages using common terms.

It may seem unfair, but it is true that this is an extravert's world. The introvert is expected to adapt, but the extravert must learn the patience to understand.

Many people who share your intuitive and thinking approach to life have a hard time really relaxing. For one thing, work is your life, and your life is work. Whether you're working at the job that pays your bills or working at learning some new avocational activity, you tend to work a lot.

In fact, you may realize that you even work at play. You may relate to recreation most comfortably as exercise (It's good for you, you know!) or as time reserved to perfect one or another athletic skill.

Learning to relax and do nothing might be good for you. Have you ever considered taking a quick course in self-hypnosis or learning yoga: setting aside some time every day to really unwind?

The Introverted Intuitive in the World of Work

Your introverted nature needs peace in order to work most comfortably. Whatever the job, you spend a lot of time thinking before acting, and you're in your element when you find work which gives you plenty of time for contemplation.

You don't mind working long hours on a project without a break, and you take pride and interest in your job, especially if you are kept in touch with the ideas behind your assignments.

You prefer a quiet working environment, and you enjoy working alone. If the telephone never rings, and no one ever intrudes or interrupts your train of thought, all the better.

From time to time, you may find that you regard other people as a necessary evil of most work situations.

When someone rouses you from deep thought or from some creative process that has your total attention, you may find it almost painful to snap back to reality. At such times, you may find that your verbal fluency suffers, and names and faces may not connect in your memory for the moment.

More so than your extraverted co-workers, you pay attention to details and you are conservative in drawing conclusions from your work. Those who make flourishing statements make you anxious, especially if they're referring to your accomplishments.

Intuitive workers, such as yourself, are in their glory when the work is challenging and novel. When you're inspired, you fire up your furnaces and work with a level of energy and exuberance that staggers the imagination of your sensory-type co-workers. A new task at hand? A new technique or skill to master? No problem for you. You will find the time to tackle the most difficult problem and unravel the most complicated situation.

Then things settle down. You stifle a yawn, while your frazzled co-workers sigh with relief. While you yearn for the next crisis, they make no effort to disguise their earnest hope that routine (blessed routine) is reestablished as soon as possible.

Then, one morning, sure as death, you wake up, staring blankly at the ceiling, and you know you've been stricken, once again, by the insidious dark side of the intuitive enthusiasm: boredom.

You try to fight it, and you deny it to your friends and enemies alike, but the fact is: you know you don't want to go to work. Your energy's gone, your spirit's flat, and, once again, you realize you've fallen into one of your slack periods.

If your judging tendency is well developed, it may arm you with enough discipline, organization and drive to temper those periods of intuitive exhaustion. Your introversion, too, may tend to level out the peaks and valleys of the intuitive energy. Even so, you may recognize that intuitive ups and downs may disrupt your life from time to time.

If you recognize this as a phenomenon which has occurred in your life now and then, just understand it as the natural flip-side of that intuitive energy, drive and creative problem-solving ability you love.

Accepting the "darker side" of a personality trait, understanding it, learning to take responsibility for your behavior, and learning to laugh at yourself can pay off with high dividends. Only then can you develop the personal power to control your maladaptive traits.

You'll find that your thinking-judgment may be called on to pull you out of your intuitive downswings with a bit more style, grace, and professionalism.

And even if you have to accept your personality as one which will always run hot and cold, you can set up a lifestyle for yourself which supports your own temperament.

You can target yourself professionally toward a career which is both creative and short-project-oriented, and you can aim for a field populated by other intuitives: people who'll understand your personality because they share it. You can bear in mind that you may need supportive co-workers who attend to details and facts and figures. If and when you find that job, or that employer, or those co-workers, you'll be valued for the glittering bundle of intuition you provide as a spark to the humdrum of everyday work life.

In a work field or an organization dominated by sensing types—especially the conservative sensing-judging personalities—those with your traits often are regarded as creative renegades intent on reckless revisionism. You may be eyed with suspicion and distrust.

Don't let that judgment get you down. You know, just because you're enlightened enough to appreciate both the "bright" and "dark" sides of your personality, that doesn't necessarily mean that the rest of the world will share your open acceptance. There will be times when you will have to face rejection, even open hostility, in order to remain your own best friend.

Your judging tendency will have a major impact on your behavior in the work place. As we already pointed out, this part of your personality may be used to temper some of the instability that plagues some intuitive workers now and then.

You also need to be aware that your judging side can act to set up psychological blinders, and that they can function both to your advantage and disadvantage.

On the one hand, you are good at filtering out extraneous information, so that you can focus on the critical issues to formulate plans, settle conflicts and wrap up deals with a minimum of delay.

On the other hand, you may restrict the flow of information too closely to what you consider to be "the essentials," and, by so doing, commit yourself too early to a solution. Worse yet, your tendency to be satisfied with yourself once you have decided on any course of action may make it impossible for you to recognize at an early stage when a mistake in judgment has occurred.

It's not unusual for judging people to find it difficult to interfere with their own plans: to shift gears, to interrupt one project for a more urgent one which emerges. From time to time, this tendency may rear its head, as you fail to notice new things that need to be done, after you've already set your sights on some other objective.

You're a thinker, and when you walk into the work place, everyone around you hears a computer switch on. When it comes to matters you assign to your thinking side, you probably tend to be unemotional: both unaware of and uninterested in people's feelings. It's certainly not that you intend to be unkind, but—where work is concerned—you tend to make decisions on an impersonal, logical basis.

Depending on the strength of your thinking tendency, you may inadvertently hurt people's feelings in your working environment.

You can reprimand people when necessary. You can even fire them, when you feel the situation really demands it. To be sure: that can be a valuable asset: the ability to do what needs to be done, free from self-recrimination and guilt.

You probably know that such impersonality crushes more feeling-type people, but you also recognize that separating your personal views from your work personality is an important ability to keep if you're to succeed in any number of highly competitive work fields.

As a person who values logic over sentiment, you probably don't demand personal treatment yourself; you simply ask to be treated fairly.

What's more, you understand that there may be adverse reactions to your impersonal stance, and you take some consolation from the fact that you are more capable than others of getting along without harmony.

But if you're a person whose head always rules the heart, you may wish to spend some time examining this part of your personality. If you suspect that most of your associates candidly consider you to be hard-hearted and insensitive; and if you find believable sympathy only among other "thinker-type" workers, you may wish to invest some time and energy in considering alternative points of view.

Remember, there are no "rights" and "wrongs", "weaks" or "strongs" when it comes to personality. There are only differences. You may find added in-sight and sensitivity an asset, both in the practical and personal sense, when it comes to your co-workers.******* How about some practical career guidance for your personality?

Whether or not the work you choose is science, your mode of thought will be basically scientific in any profession. You are driven to understand, predict, and explain reality, and you may slip into a favorite habit for those with your personality: living in a world of ideas, trying to figure out what everything means, and thereby missing out on a lot of direct experience in life.

You may live in the future more than you live in the present. That may be a work asset in many creative fields, but a liability in terms of designing a balanced, satisfying life—a tendency you'll want to watch for your future happiness.

Your personality is well-suited to a number of technical professions, including research science, medicine, law, academic research and teaching, architecture, creative computer fields, and design engineering.

Mathematics, too, is a field compatible with your personality type, particularly if you choose something other than pure mathematical theory. That thinking side of you that rules your outer personality would be happier seeing your work in an applied setting.

Yours is a personality type which typifies the upper echelons of leadership in high-tech business organizations, and it is not unusual for -NTJ characteristics to form the core of corporate culture.