ISTP

You Are an Introverted Thinker

In the inner realm of thoughts and ideas, you use your rational ability to observe and analyze coolly, objectively, impersonally—usually toward the end of figuring out the way life works. Rarely do you ever turn your thinking process to the task of controlling any part of the world "out there:" neither situations nor people. That's just not your style!

You use your thinking process in a very concrete way: to help you do things, either work or play. It's unlikely that you see yourself as someone who enjoys abstract theory or intuitive speculations about the universe.

Yours is a very utilitarian approach to knowledge. You ask "What does it do?" "How does it do it?" and "Can I use it?"

When you're absorbed in your brand of intellectual exploration, figuring out how to do something or making something work, you are the picture of the single-minded person, avoiding distractions and side-stepping obstacles.

Patience and perseverance come naturally to you. You tend to lose yourself happily in thought while you're in the midst of figuring things out, and you'd just as soon puzzle things through on your own.

You are an independent thinker, a world unto yourself. You can do without encouragement or support from others to continue your work—so long as it's work you choose, something you really want to do. It is not essential that others even understand or appreciate what you do in order for you to function.

If your introversion is extreme, your rugged individualism may sometimes take the form of regarding others as a nuisance—an unwelcome intrusion into the sanctity of your thoughts. Add to this factor your thinking nature, and the relatively little importance you may place on feeling, and you'll understand why coping with other people is sometimes a struggle for many people with your personality constellation.

Introverts who are thinkers often have a difficult time expressing feelings, or (maybe more importantly) remembering that sentiment motivates so much of other people's behavior.

In the extreme case, it may be difficult for the casual observer to believe that introverted thinkers have feelings at all! If you fall into this category, chances are good that you've been badgered and lectured about this "shortcoming" your whole life.

Since your judging side is introverted, it's not likely that you're prone to attacking and criticizing others overtly. Usually introverted thinkers show a deficit in feeling by small "sins of omission." You may forget the value of a compliment, an apology, a smile, a pat on the back, a thank you.

You may appear to be critical just because you don't make a point of being appreciative when it's due. You may fall into the habit of saying nothing when everything's all right and pointing out problems as they arise. That can be hard on more feeling types, who take your silence (which you regard as approval) as rejection and are destroyed by your occasional critical comments!

Since you don't expect much emotional attention yourself, it may be doubly hard for you to recognize others' needs. But if you turn your acute powers of observation toward noticing the social signals people send, and if you remind yourself to become a bit more responsive, you can improve your personal effectiveness, both at home and at work.

Make yourself a checklist, if you like. It may seem to be a mechanical exercise, but you'll be astonished to see the results of assertive appreciation in your life.

1. Notice things that people are doing right before you point out their mistakes.
2. Comment on success more often than you remark on failure.
3. Learn to be a bit more personal with people. Use the direct address now and then. "How are you, Henry?" sounds friendlier than "How are you?"

alone.

1. Use non-verbal signals in conversations (body posture, smiles, headnodding) to communicate that you are listening, that you approve of the speaker.
2. Say "Thank you," even when you're just accepting work that's just part of someone's job. If you've already put some effort into developing your extraverted side: the personality you show to the world, you may not need these recommendations at all. You may practice these little exercises almost reflexively in your social life.

Sadly, some introverts have a harder 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 thinkers 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 introverted thinkers do have feelings and they do relate to people. But the introvert invests 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.

Your Auxiliary Process

You're a very interesting and complex person. Someone reading the previous section describing the inner you might see you as a very staid character, indeed. Emphasizing just your introverted thinker traits makes you sound almost stolid.

But that's only half the picture! Looking at your personality from another perspective—toward your auxiliary function of sensing guiding your extraverted perception—the picture is quite different, making you a very "this worldly" person.

The temperament of the sensing-perceptive individual is the cornerstone of a basically optimistic, here and now individual. That's why the sensingperceptive temperament is called the REALIST.

On the serious side, your friends are likely to describe you as somewhat shy, persevering, practical, factual, and solidly grounded in the here-and-now. Your skills of observation and analysis may be evident to anyone who knows you really well. Because you are not outwardly a judging person, people probably respond to you as curious, interested, and adaptable. The combination of sensing and perception creates a sampler of life, a sensation seeker: one who must be free to experiment, experience life directly. You are happiest when you can live life today, do things as the impulse arises, rather than out of commitment, obligation or duty.

Activity makes the sensing-perceptive person happy. When you're at the peak of your productivity, totally absorbed by some project, an innocent observer might use words like goal-directed to describe your behavior.

Chances are, those words just wouldn't fit your real motivation. Sure, you may look goal-directed; you may look like you're practicing some skill in order to perfect it; you may look disciplined. Actually, most of the time you just do things. That's the secret to understanding why the sensing-perceptive combination makes great athletes, great artists, great craftsmen, great musicians.

When other personalities set out to learn how to do something complex, they have to think about distant goals: how good they'll be someday if they continue practicing, working.

Intuitive types may tend to justify what they're doing at the present by some future expectation. Judging types tend to do a lot of things in their daily life because they should do them.

But people like you just do what needs to be done, moment by moment. The end and the means are inseparable. The sensing-perceptive person plays at work, derives pleasure from the perfection of the movement, the perfection of the act, while it's still going on!

If you're like most people with your particular combination of personality traits, you can work long hours on a task. You can be tenacious and patient and persevering—that is, when you feel like doing what you're doing. But look out when the "want to do it" wanes. Then you may have a rough time finishing things.

That doesn't mean you can't stick to a task, or can't improve that ability, but that it's particularly difficult for you. That doesn't mean you don't set goals and commit yourself to long-term projects which can't be carried off "just for the fun of it."But, it does mean that you can develop an almost over-powering urge to move on when life starts pressing in on you with too many commitments, too many obligations, too long a list of things to accomplish that aren't fun to do. People with your personality often have to struggle with the ties that bind.

You thrive on action, and you're good in a crisis. You enjoy dealing, moment by moment, with unknown situations— where the outcome is determined by your ability to apply your well-practiced skills to solve problems.

The sensing-perceptive person with thinking directs attention toward things more than toward people, and many folks with your personality hold a lifelong fascination for machines, adult toys, instruments, gadgets, gizmos, devices, tools and other things you can work with your hands.

As an introvert, your relationship with the world of things mechanical may express itself only in thinking about gadgetry, engineering, designing or planning how instruments and implements can be used, but you may also enjoy actively doing things!

Many people with your personality type choose jobs involving driving, flying, operating complex equipment, and building: in short, the macho professions! Historically, your type has been least frustrated in our society as a male animal. But now that many "males-only" active jobs in the world of machines are opening up to women, all that may change.

It will be fascinating to watch what the ready availability of computers and other electronic wonders will do for future generations of sensing-perceptive types.

If your hands-on spirit doesn't show up in the way you choose to work, maybe you recognize it in the way you like to play! When it comes to recreation, your friends may regard you as an active person, someone who enjoys being out of doors, someone who enjoys sports—either as a participant or an observer. And, of course, that makes sense within the framework of the rest of your personality. Who can deny the fact that admiring the functioning of a good machine translates into a real appreciation for the performance of a well trained body—whether yours or someone else's? Whether you're an athlete or not, the sensing-perceptive carries that mechanically inclined, physically involved, activity-for-its-own-sake characteristic into even the watching of sports. Wanting to know how things work means understanding new sports, new games, new skills.

Being a data-loving sensing person may mean that you know a lot of the statistical and anecdotal trivia of the sports you choose to follow, the games you like to play.

In interpersonal situations, your combination of personality features creates some paradoxical behavioral characteristics. First of all, as a sensingperceptive type, you're a good friend, loyal, fraternal, and generous with your group. Esprit de corps is the hallmark of your temperament.

But, as a thinker, feelings just aren't your forte. You may seem to go through life almost unconsciously at times, particularly when you're in the middle of one of your favorite all-consuming activities. Especially at those times when every neuron in your nervous system is preoccupied with what you're doing (and doing, and doing!), it's not likely that your mate would call you a romantic.

You are more comfortable giving things as tokens of affection than remembering the everyday small gestures of love: the apology, the frivolous card, the phone call, the thank you, the passionate compliment.

You may wish to examine what your "living in the moment" tendency does to your friendships. Chances are good that you're good at drawing people to you. People probably find your free, jovial spirit to be attractive.

Then your attention shifts, and you're gone. People who deal with you on a daily basis have to get used to your "now you see him, now you don't" way of conducting your relationships.

You're a great observer, but you may not use that natural skill consistently in your daily life, especially in the interpersonal domain. You don't know—or pay attention to— what matters emotionally to other people.

As a sensing-type person, you are capable of making great strides in finetuning your emotional relationships, by remembering to utilize your great skill as an observer to stop, look, and listen to the signals from those closest to you.

Introspection is not your long suit, generally speaking. You don't tend to ponder what may lie behind someone else's behavior—or your own, for that matter. You tend to be the ultimate empiricist, dealing with other people as they appear to be and never asking why. Complexities of motivation and feeling just don't strike you as very sensible questions in your world of the immediate.

The combination of sensing and perception creates a person who needs to be free, demands to be free to respond to the moment, the whim, the impulse. You don't like to feel that your life has been programmed, planned, and scheduled— especially if the planning has been done by someone else!

Those with your personality structure like to go off and do things, get away, run off, fly. When you're feeling the call of the road, it's hard to hold you back. Add that inclination to your other interpersonal traits, and you'll see why folks like you are a bit of a puzzle and a pain at times to those who count on your reliability.

The military often holds a particular fascination for your personality. Take a measure each of adventurer, crisis-lover, sensation seeker, game player, gadget admirer (translated to weaponry), observer, rational thinker, and comrade, and you can put together a pretty good military leader. The best military strategists have always been concrete thinkers whose plans either fit reality or inevitably lead to catastrophe. There is a very practical art to tactics, and that suits your type of temperament.

When it comes to communication, the combination of thinking and sensing can create difficulties. The data-person in you comes out, and you may find that you attempt to cover every last detail in the effort to be precise and to be understood perfectly.

Actually, that microscopically detailed way you choose to describe things is a reflection of what you like to hear when someone is explaining something to you! When you're interested in a topic, you want to have every single fact explained, and you're dissatisfied with anything less than an exhaustive presentation. You will have a scored a major insight into your own personality when you come to understand that few people share your need or affection for the microscopic analysis of every issue. Take two lessons from this: most people you speak with will appreciate it if you'll learn to be succinct, providing more detailed explanations and information only when asked. Ask for feedback and then use it.

And, second, when someone is explaining something to you, don't discredit them for omitting what you consider to be crucial details. Again, feedback is the clue. Ask for clarification and be patient.

The Introverted Thinker 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—despite your generally fraternal nature—you do enjoy working alone. When you're at the peak of your concentration, you're happiest if the telephone never rings and no one ever intrudes or interrupts your train of thought.

If your introversion is extreme, you may tend to regard other people as a necessary evil of most work situations.

As a sensing-perceptive (REALIST) type you have a characteristic attitude about how communication should be: clear, understandable, direct, precise. But as an introvert you may find it easier to express yourself in writing than in person. If your introversion is extreme, you probably prefer to let others handle your face-to-face communication whenever practical. Your introversion combines effectively with your sensing characteristic to ensure your attention to detail and your conservatism in drawing conclusions from your work. Those who make flourishing statements make you anxious, especially if they're referring to your accomplishments.

You trust your senses. You're rooted in the real world, not fantasy, and—in the world of work—that translates to an amazing ability to remember data and details. You show patience with familiar tasks, familiar skills, familiar routine.

While others may thrive on novelty, you are frankly uneasy with new problems until you settle on a sure way to solve them. You may lose some of your usual patience if work becomes too detailed and complicated. Change which you see as unnecessary not only makes you uneasy, but sometimes disagreeable, as well. You have to admit that you sometimes drag your feet when someone turns the tables on you (new task, new technique, new schedule, new rules) after you were comfortably targeted on your original goal!

You work steadily toward your goal, and—with much greater accuracy than the intuitive sorts—you have a good idea of how long it will take to reach the conclusion of the task at hand.

You are good at precise work, and you seldom make errors of fact. Those who pay less attention to doing the job right strike you as unreliable: not the kind of people you like to see working beside you on any assignment.

When you have to deal with intuitive sorts, you may find it difficult to trust their inspirations and adopt them as a basis for trying out changes. You may want to look at that resistance.

On the one hand, your well-expressed objections to their flights of fancy may help keep them from taking off—and taking you off—on joy rides that lead to nowhere. But, on the other hand, with their ideas and your ability to get things done, you may be able to accomplish great things as a team—if both of you give a little.

The perceptive in you tempers some of your sensing characteristics in the work place. Your perceptive side endows you with tolerance for diversity and with adaptability. While your sensing side prefers predictability, it's your perceptive component that makes you enjoy shifting gears in life, switching from one assignment to another, one technique to the next, just so long as the work doesn't require a lot of decision-making.

When a task requires repeated revisions, your patient sensing side and your open perceptive side join forces to help you follow through with the necessary alterations.

Without the stabilizing influence of your introversion and sensing characteristics, your perceptive tendency may drive you to start too many changes without being asked, revising when it isn't necessary. You'll need to be aware of this inclination; otherwise, many of these self-started projects may wind up in a desk drawer, first postponed, then forgotten.

Your perceptive quality ensures that you will always be curious, open, willing to hear all sides of an issue before deciding on a course of action. Of course, you may slip into a tendency to keep topics open excessively long. For some perceptive types, whose judgment is not developed, coming to a decision can be almost painful.

Many perceptives become masters of the delicate art of postponement.

As a perceptive you may lack patience with judging sorts when they jump to conclusions, point an accusing finger at your indecisive nature (which you generally deny or explain away!), and suggest that you're basically gullible to everyone's inputs, long after an issue should have been closed and settled.

Try to calm down when you hear those comments; try to weed out the judgmental indignation and see if your occasional critics might not have something worth considering.

After all, you know that there are both positive and negative aspects correlated with every personality feature. Let that perceptive openness lead you to personal revision when it's in your own best interests.

You're a thinker, and if your thinking eclipses your feeling side, you may seem to be a bit mechanical and computer-like in the work place. When it comes to matters you assign to your thinking side, you probably tend to be unemotional: not so much uninterested in people's feelings as simply unaware. It's not that you intend to be unkind, but—where work is concerned— thinker-types tend to make decisions on an impersonal, logical basis. You may hurt people's feelings more times than you know.

You can reprimand people when necessary. You can even fire them, when you feel the situation really demands it. No one would deny that can be an asset: the ability to do what needs to be done, free from self-recrimination and guilt. You may be aware that you crush people, from time to time, but— frankly speaking—you regard your ability to separate your personal views from your work personality as evidence of inner strength.

After all, you 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 in the fact that you are more capable than others of getting along without harmony.

The thinker-type can go far in business, and often does.

But 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: differences that are adaptive or maladaptive depending on the situation and your social circle. You may find added insight and sensitivity an asset, both in the practical and personal sense, when it comes to your co- workers.

So, getting more specific, what career choices are attractive to your personality type? For many sensing-perceptive types, careers that lie at the end of a long road of formal education are not attractive choices. Being such an experiential person, preferring to learn by doing rather than by listening or reading or watching, school may not be your cup of tea.

In learning, as in life, many people with your personality characteristics like to spend time actively, physically: making things, fixing things, working with your hands. Careers as diverse as production-type art and professional sports are attractive to people like yourself.

If you go the route of higher education, you'll find yourself in your natural element in any career that involves applying basic principles to impose order on great amounts of data. You are capable, to a remarkable degree, of organizing and interpreting facts and details.

That may translate to an aptitude for law—either as an attorney or legislator. If you're attracted to a career in science, you'll do best to avoid highly theoretical or abstract areas. Better to choose engineering or—if mathematics are your bent—try computers or statistics. Again, it's that sensing/thinking/perceptive combination coming through. You want to experience your life—watch it work.

Other fields which may attract those with your personality are economics, securities analysis, banking and marketing and sales research.

In general you'll be wise to let your personality type be your guide in selecting a work field. Make the best of your personal strengths, your natural modes of dealing with information, making decisions. In your case, settling into a field which makes great demands on your less-developed functions of intuition and feeling might be unwise.