3 Doors Down - Away From The Sun (Official Video) | Youtube
Drumdrops | Multitrack drums, drum loops, drum stems & drum samples
Eric Moore on Drums w/ Eros Ramazzotti | Youtube Song: Dove c'è musica by Eros Ramazzotti
1964 - Nobody Invades Switzerland (Perturbator - Humans Are Such Easy Prey) | Youtube
I just published the latest journaling template update.
This update includes:
The template does pull in my personal calendar and some other outside sources automatically, so there are references to that in the file.
Using this template lately has also helped me design a couple new keyboard shortcuts:
I also have some other changes planned:
As always:
I continue to use this template myself, and find that it has become one of my most useful tools for near-instant stress relief. Over time, this habit also tends to build a pool of documentation which can be used for knowledge capture.
Filed in: Technology /41/ | Interests /111/ | Productivity /119/ | Therapeutic Practice /144/
The founder of Boom Supersonic is lighting my INTJ buttons:
He starts his presentation at just under a minute in.
Important aspects:
OK, that last one is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but seriously, lots of us INTJs love our airplanes.
Or flight sims.
Or books about airplanes.
(You ever think that the interest itself might point at something …?)
Filed in: Technology /41/ | Careers /40/ | Interests /111/ | Feeling /64/ | Fi /35/ | People /74/
Lately I’ve been looking into more of the stories I’ve been told. Have you ever done this? It’s kinda hard, starting from the standpoint of “let’s question a thing I currently believe,” but it’s important.
I’m doing this more often these days, because years ago I started to realize that “looking into things” is one of those things that our introversion tries to prevent us from doing, even though it’s a pretty healthy activity and beneficial in a lot of ways.
And by “our introversion tries to prevent us,” I mean everyone’s introversion—extroverts included.
We’ve all got these deep and comfortable introverted personality aspects. We really like to think we know our past well.
From there we tend to automatically interlace two powerful meta-constructs: “Things I was Taught in My Past” and “My Identity”. When that happens without a healthy amount of looking into things, or exploring things, or testing things, then some really, really troubling problems can develop.
I remember when I first faced some of these problems in my own past. I had decided to look into the things I believed. Take health and wellness, for example. I challenged my mental models, learned some new perspectives, and tested some others’ models, and in doing so I lost a huge amount of weight and overcame challenging health conditions. That was a huge lesson. Afterward I felt really confused, and almost speechless. How could I have not known that things could be this good? How could I have just “decided” that my life was fine, or great, or not in need of examination of the status quo? In fact, my favored connection to my past, this introverted aspect, had blinded me to the possibility.
Then I watched some troubling problems develop in some people close to me, when they didn’t look into things. I also learned that you could see this happen in a whole organization—this one pattern alone is really incredible! People don’t look into stuff, and they try to convince their peers not to look into stuff. A conspiracy of introversion, conscious or not. The group might even push back with all their energy to protect their past, forming their identity as it does, but without ever really knowing why, or what the alternative might be.
Some Problems With Looking Into Things
The hard thing about this kind of activity is that it constantly threatens to upset the status quo. It’s like a natural enemy to stability. A group may in fact be wise to react against it in the short term, until the investigative effort proves that it has a good foundation and some momentum. After all, if the qualitative aspects of the new discoveries are really not so great, maybe you just destroyed an organization, or disrupted it, for no good reason.
It’s also troubling in the sense that it may cause you or your group to take steps that needlessly break down or hobble ongoing relationships of support and mutual appreciation. If you get upset and start lobbing truth-bombs at people, the emotional impact alone—long before the information is processed—will likely cause them to reevaluate your relationship. That’s a big deal. It may also cause neutral third parties to wonder if really you have a handle on your own emotion. This can call the new information itself into question.
Plus, we can’t look into everything. Sometimes we have to set a boundary. I think it’s wise to do this consciously, if possible. Like, “OK, I did a full day’s research and I’m pretty sure my aunt isn’t a serial killer. But I’m not 100% sure. Still, for now I’m OK hosting her here at my house with the following contingencies in place…” (Sorry—took some creative liberties with the example)
Finally, the Star Trek factor: You are charting a course into the unknown. If you don’t have much experience in working with the unknown, it can be really troubling. Some INTJs are good at this—they have developed frameworks for evaluating brand new, world- or life-changing information, for example.
Other INTJs are not good at this at all—in their rush to “never be caught not knowing something,” they have unwittingly left open a huge blind spot where new information is concerned, a blind spot which they papered over with improvised “pretendings-to-know” or “vaguely-knowing”. When a new and uncomfortable question arises, they are left to improvise, and sometimes it’s embarrassing to watch. Usually they talk faster, and even more informationally than usual, and trying to talk to someone like this can feel like you’re witnessing a computer that is overheating or something.
Why it’s Still a Good Idea
Even though there are risks, there are some really great rewards available when we look into things.
First, a lot of past beliefs are really low-hanging fruit. They’re easy to look into, very easy to research, and the conclusions are probably helpful, but probably also not destructively, explosively helpful.
For example, let’s say you keep regretting a career move you made in the past. You defend it when talking to others, but in truth you still have doubts.
It causes you to wince a bit, but you go back to your memory, write out the story as you remember it, and then you talk to some other people, or do some research about the alternatives. You realize that your intuition about the move was right, but maybe your decision-making process was hampered by a mind that was more closed off than it could have been. There were alternatives that you didn’t consider, that you should have. This is a lesson that’s probably not going to destroy your life, and you can apply it forward the next time you face a big decision.
Second, it helps to know that you made a decision grounded not only in your past, but also by your exploration of a broader set of current and future contexts. For example, maybe you made a spreadsheet of financial projections and realized that within a few months you’ll be able to afford a vacation you previously thought sounded really extravagant. Or maybe you were hesitant about adopting a pet and decided to talk to some friends about it. You shared your concerns and they came back to you with some really great feedback.
Third, people around you probably need this talent. And you’re good at it. INTJs tend to be good researchers, good investigators. We may be able to help people who are suffering with severe doubts and a lack of emotional energy, by showing them new informational aspects or facts they hadn’t considered.
As long as we can keep an open mind and communicate gently, we may even be in a fantastic position to help other people uncover life-changing information and make positive decisions about it. (Gentle communications are hard sometimes—especially, I find, if the new information is exciting or world-changing. Or if you think of yourself as a “straight dope” person, like a hard-boiled detective. Just keep in mind these types aren’t known for being deft relationship navigators.)
…I should also mention that you may need to be gentle with yourself! Your old self is likely very forgivable…
Fourth, the world needs this talent. And you’re good at it. We are, all of us, simultaneously hoping for, and fearing, the future. We INTJs can develop a sort of hidden superpower, in laying out an optimistic case and planning for a way to achieve it, plus maybe a couple of contingency plans. You know what I mean? It feels good to be idealistic, so let’s do that. But let’s also have the backup plans ready. We’re covering our bases, but we’re not giving up on a positive, responsive, and flexible approach to new problems and outcomes. In my experience, this balanced approach will usually bring good results, faster.
Conclusion
Personally, I will happily admit that I don’t know where this is taking me, and I’ve learned to be OK with that. In my experience, the activity is more helpful, the more I give it attention.
Does this make you more of an extroverted person? If so—fine. The idea here is transcendence of opposites, rather than swinging between two poles of introversion and extroversion. The new person you become over time will simply be better prepared after learning to fluently navigate a variety of different perspectives, stories, hopes, and fears.
Filed in: Therapeutic Practice /144/ | Essays /52/ | Relationships /78/ | Control /110/ | Openness /49/ | Feeling /64/ | Thinking /70/ | Productivity /119/
One of the cool things about science is that it can help us understand why primitive mental models were so great, or addictive, or apparently true, or whatever. It’s the “hey, you thought the sun was the center of the universe because of the way your perceptions work…” and on top of that, the scientific method also brings us these cool new models from which to work.
So part of the deal is, those old models still have some OK or even good leverage points. They can still be useful! Even in simple ways—and that’s really nice. It does unfortunately allow people to cling to those models and insist that they still work, which they do. But in many cases they also don’t work more and more, on a wider set of problems, with every passing day.
Some of those models use really comically archaic terms. Jung brought a lot of those to the surface, connecting current experiences with ancient archetypes.
(He also liked ancient archetypes…this was his language, insofar as it was the earth from which he emerged into adulthood…)
But also, science is doing this work by giving us new mental models. We humans are developing new model-types and model-archetypes.
So if you’re practicing a sort of personal science, you should find that new pattern-symbol-model overlays and possibilities emerge. New stuff should be available to you, and the combinations should be fascinating, addictive, large.
Sometimes as an INTJ or an introvert it’s all too easy to point at history and say, “history has all the answers about this.”
However that’s the big-picture view, the pattern view. Just make a broad pattern ever more broad, and the solutions of history will eventually fit the current problem set.
So it’s important to get into details—the historian who is projecting things forward can make big mistakes if they hold too closely to the past. Sometimes the future’s just different.
And if our brand-new models don’t conform to ancient archetype very well, or history, I think that’s 100% OK. Could be wrong, but in the case of archetype, the memetic nature of human society kind of gets at the way humans process and mold archetype in order to build new mental model reservoirs.
Drawing from the traditional reservoirs, we may emerge thinking, “OK today I’m going to be like Batman,” but we may also think, “nah, more like Gotham Girl or Batwing…” or something similar, but different.
This has been really enlightening to me. Some of this is also a benefit of paying attention to current societal trends and messaging. Especially insofar as they’re just the group—our group—talking to itself about things.
(Do Black Lives Matter, to you? I wonder. They matter to me. I would guess that there are a lot of INTJs to whom this question is absolutely qwetu2385u9zbpoiyuqpoiuy?.1!!! I mean, are there enough words in the universe for the Fi-driven take on this issue? So you have to be careful with that. Could cause massive problems, or could help you figure out a way through the problems. Hopefully the latter. But if you use Fi like a conspiracy theorist uses Ti, you can lock yourself out of the discussion entirely, with only yourself to blame.)
What it looks like to not do this
Without practice at this phase or frame of reference for mental-modeling, I would expect a person confronted with problems to either remain at their current level of grump, or get more grumpy over time.
Grump really plays into this, because a river of grump tends to run right up to the very threshold of the amazing world of new and unique and interesting stuff. It’s weird like that.
Which, grump is “OK” as a state of being in that Fi-sense of “do your thing and let me do mine, see, we’re all OK (not really)” but kind of much less OK insofar as a grumpy person never really comes off as a helper, in times of crisis…there are a lot of issues that require us to open up our perceptive arms and welcome any and all brand new solutions that never existed before.
This is much different from, and often much more powerful than, the grumpy take. Or the historic take. Or the my-models-are-grounded-in-my-own-past take.
It also draws heavily on the intuition, and I think highlights a unique leverage point for a lot of INTJs out there.
(Not only am I the president of New Outlooks on Grumpy Lifestyles, I’m also a client…)
Filed in: Essays /52/ | Fi /35/ | Energy /120/ | Intuition /62/ | Relationships /78/ | Openness /49/ | Fe /20/
Interesting paper: Mental Work Requires Physical Energy: Self-Control is Neither Exception nor Exceptional
The brain’s reliance on glucose as a primary fuel source is well established, but psychological models of cognitive processing that take energy supply into account remain uncommon. One exception is research on self-control depletion, where debate continues over a limited-resource model. This model argues that a transient reduction in self-control after the exertion of prior self-control is caused by the depletion of brain glucose, and that self-control processes are special, perhaps unique, in this regard. [Emphasis mine —Marc]
So, if you lost self-control lately, after you had it for a while, and then you found yourself stress-eating glucose-heavy foods…maybe this paper offers some thoughts to consider.
A bit more:
Ongoing research has been focused on understanding the nature of this depletion process. Most notably, researchers have been trying to determine what the limited resource is. Some have suggested that much of the depletion process is driven by expectations – that is, people believe that self-control is bounded by a limited resource and thus act accordingly (Martijn et al., 2002; Job et al., 2010). On the other hand, other researchers have suggested a physiological basis for this resource. The most prominent of these resource models is the glucose model of self-control depletion (Gailliot and Baumeister, 2007), referred to here as ‘the glucose model.’
I would love to read more of this paper. For now I love how it lines up with a lot of my own experiences, blogged about here before. ;-)
The Moderated Dirty Cut, for example, is pretty heavy in glucose-laden foods. And the reason they’re emphasized in this diet is simple: My body seems to request those foods as a result of my normal day’s work.
(I don’t expect papers to signal miracle correlations, but I like that people are looking into it…)
Filed in:
Interesting paper: Mental Work Requires Physical Energy: Self-Control is Neither Exception nor Exceptional
The brain’s reliance on glucose as a primary fuel source is well established, but psychological models of cognitive processing that take energy supply into account remain uncommon. One exception is research on self-control depletion, where debate continues over a limited-resource model. This model argues that a transient reduction in self-control after the exertion of prior self-control is caused by the depletion of brain glucose, and that self-control processes are special, perhaps unique, in this regard. [Emphasis mine —Marc]
So, if you lost self-control lately, after you had it for a while, and then you found yourself stress-eating glucose-heavy foods…maybe this paper has some thoughts to consider.
A bit more:
Ongoing research has been focused on understanding the nature of this depletion process. Most notably, researchers have been trying to determine what the limited resource is. Some have suggested that much of the depletion process is driven by expectations – that is, people believe that self-control is bounded by a limited resource and thus act accordingly (Martijn et al., 2002; Job et al., 2010). On the other hand, other researchers have suggested a physiological basis for this resource. The most prominent of these resource models is the glucose model of self-control depletion (Gailliot and Baumeister, 2007), referred to here as ‘the glucose model.’
I would love to read more of this paper. For now I love how it lines up with a lot of my own experiences, blogged about here before. ;-)
The Moderated Dirty Cut, for example, is pretty heavy in glucose-laden foods. And the reason they’re emphasized in this diet is simple: My body seems to request those foods as a result of my normal day’s work.
(I don’t expect papers to signal miracle correlations, but I like that people are looking into it…)
Filed in: Energy /120/ | Sensation /40/ | Si /19/ | Dieting /18/
While thinking about gentle communications, I found this interesting little nugget via Kottke.org
From @ProfSunnySingh, a tweet about debate
I would be delighted to accept an invitation in the future should there be an opportunity for a reparative and contemplative – rather than adversarial – exchange of ideas.
There’s something that really resonates here. I’ve personally been wondering lately: Why isn’t the classical debate really done so much anymore? And when it is done, why is it so niche?
TBH after watching some old debates and thinking about this, they were kind of cringe in that adversarial or exclusive sense. I had to think it wasn’t super necessary, and it may have even been harmful, to arrange a clash of ideas like that. And the idea of “winning” a debate…hmmm…that’s kind of a one-dimensional way to look at human creativity.
As much as this may pain some of us INTJs, we who prize the act of winning others’ deference with just the right knowledge-nugget or a statistic example shared at the right moment, it really could be that debate needs a replacement-activity.
It seems clear to me that really nailing the positioning of a knowledge-nugget or a stat or an example on a linear timeline, as part of a competition is quite different from the broader patterns around engaging in productive discourse, and probably pretty unnecessary—or maybe unnecessary depending on the context.
(I also believe we’re creative enough to come up with vastly superior replacements for things we don’t want to do anymore, in general. Kind of an underrated human trick. We INTJs can totally nail this with our intuition sometimes—take a new spec for a thing that doesn’t exist yet, and conceptualize the exact form of that new thing. And maybe we can do that with things like debate, when pained voices tell us that debate is hurting them. A “better debate” without those downsides is likely doable with some thought.)
In the past I have enjoyed some of the Intelligence Squared debates and they do seem a bit more like conversations than other debates I’ve watched or heard. But I also haven’t heard what the experience is like for the debaters.
There’s also the model wherein “NT” types are the “debaters,” in which for all we know, the other personality types find debate ridiculous, stuffy, annoying, embarrassing, tacky, insulting, or stressful. While this model is limited, it does surface the question of how suitable debate really is, for a society at large, as a cultural co-development tool.
A good question:
I am an INTJ female and I have a question about INTJ men. Do INTJ men ever wonder if they “feel” better or more effectively than the feeling personality types in their life? For example, sometimes I can easily feel the unspoken truth that someone likes or dislikes me. I usually have to do something about it because it can cause a very distracting effect. It almost feels like I’m the one soaking up the emotional impact for both of us. In most cases these are feeler-types, like ENFP, INFP, INFJ…
And you often end up acting on this before they do, right? This is a pretty wild topic…I find it really deep and interesting to think about, myself.
Maybe because I don’t think of myself as 100% Thinker…
And to answer your question, yes, I’ve met more than a few INTJs who are really impressively attuned to the Feeler-side of life. Here are some aspects I’ve noticed:
In a lot of cases, these individuals were raised by, or in part by, feelers. Maybe mom was an ESFJ and dad was an INFJ, for example. In some other cases, maybe both parents were Thinker types, and the INTJ ended up magnifying their Feeler-side in order to differentiate in some ways.
Some INTJs have told me it’s a bit “hard to watch” their Feeler friends who seem to deprive their feelings a voice. For example, an INFJ friend who constantly projects a thirst for the logical-analytical side of life during an ongoing relationship crisis, or an ENFP friend who is obsessed with information processing in the face of a mounting personal values crisis.
This is not to say those situations or approaches are “wrong” for those other people, but rather I think it’s fair to say that it can be frustrating to watch others ignore those aspects of life, when you yourself have found tremendous value in giving more direct attention to those aspects of life.
And if you’re relatively new to this kind of thing as an INTJ, maybe watch out for projection, the “I felt it first, and you’re not even able to get at your feelings, how sad is that” take.
You may also find that this additional capacity can indeed bring you to clarity faster, in some ways, than the others with whom you are working or relating. For example, you may find it necessary to communicate the fact that you’re just done with a process or context, because you already know everyone else is, too, through empathic intuition or communications.
At these junctures I do find it helpful to be forthright yet gentle in communications, but I also think it’s wise to ask for feedback during the process of disengagement or other decision-making. One of the worst things you can do is to act condescending or make assumptions. Being conflicted about one’s own feelings, and possibly feeling mostly one way or another is different from being completely decided about how one feels, and it can hurt others to treat them as if their minds are definitely made up, when in fact they are simply not sure how to express the depth and complexity of what they’re feeling.
As a final point to consider, I’ll just add that sometimes you simply can’t engage with Feelers or Thinkers in a Feeler way, at all. Maybe they’ve gone stubbornly silent, even though you both know that it’s time for them to express themselves.
I find that’s a good juncture at which to bring in a gentle sense of humor, or bring up a random thought, and see if it can help to lighten the mood a little bit. Sometimes the best thing you can do is allow people to move on to a different line of thinking, and often they’ll later demonstrate in other ways that they really got the message that you hoped they would get.
Anyway, it’s always good to talk about this, a worthy topic. Especially given a mental model with such a dichotomous look at personality aspects: Thinking vs. Feeling. But life is really much more complex than that.
Filed in: Relationships /78/ | Feeling /64/ | Fe /20/ | Intuition /62/ | People /74/ | Fi /35/
As my more frequent readers probably know, I am always working on new frameworks.
If I know I’m going to be doing something again in the future, or working more on a given topic in the future, chances are I’m starting a file on that thing, getting organized, and keeping track of my progress.
Here are some of my own recently-updated frameworks:
Regarding frameworks, sometimes I hear this from INTJs:
I don’t know. It’s like, I have this cool framework which helped a lot in the past, but things have just stopped working so well, even though I still have the framework. And I wonder if I’ve really made any progress at all.
This is usually an “I’m a beginner when it comes to creating my own frameworks” signal. WAIT, HOLD ON, HANG IN THERE is my first sentiment—a strong one, probably because I made some big mistakes here myself in the past.
Capture the Dip
You know how there’s this “buy the dip” concept in investing and trading? There’s a similar idea in framework-maintenance. I think I’d call it capture the dip. Every actively-deployed framework will encounter a slump from time to time. The old stuff no longer works as well as it used to.
The truth is, you may be right on the cusp of a powerful learning experience. You have to keep updating your frameworks, and this is especially true when a framework is not working as well anymore, or seems to have lost leverage.
I’m not talking about overwhelming yourself with details. Sometimes you get frustrated and need to back out for a day or a week or a month. That’s fine. Take a break and come back later. But what you have here is typically a very strong learning opportunity.
One of the best things you can write in your log is: “This isn’t working as well as it used to. I wonder why?”
But if you sell the dip, or in other words give up on the framework, you can only expect your motivation and energy levels to go down. You are draining your emotional capital. Don’t drop out on a dip unless you have strong, organized reasons as to why and when you are doing so. (Even as a trader, I don’t sell a security on a dip unless it meets specific, measured criteria)
In most other cases it’s best to regroup, strategize, and execute. Especially if you’re a beginner at this.
Grab the A2i Loop or your favorite iteration and leverage tool and start your detective process:
You got this—don’t give up. If you can perceive, you can reflect. If you can reflect, you can learn. If you can learn, you can grow. If you can grow, you can change. If you can change, you can build new success on top of stalls, failures, and regrets. You probably have no idea how awesome your life is about to be.
Filed in: Productivity /119/ | Energy /120/ | Therapeutic Practice /144/ | Control /110/ | Interests /111/
Some other notes received recently:
INTJs and Programming
Awesome blog! These two posts are particularly awesome:
- Successful INTJs: Less Tony Stark, More Iron Man
- How to be a successful INTJ computer programmer
I’ve also read the follow-up to the second post, An INTJ-friendlier Introduction to Programming. Reading your blog is like talking to someone that knows you really well, as weird as it sounds.
You are very welcome.
I will add that I know quite a few INTJ developers & software engineers who are doing OK. Check out Andy Sterkowitz for someone who’s new to me, yet seems to give off a lot of INTJ vibes.
I also understand that programming / software development can be a PITA job for a lot of reasons I outlined in those articles above.
It’s always a good idea to organize your thoughts on this stuff and work to framework it / manage it before the problems get out of hand. Identify strengths, build on them, measure progress. Capture weaknesses, isolate them, track them like a detective. Remain open to growth and leverage positive growth experiences into new areas where you know you need to grow.
Investing / Trading Resources
Do you have any other resources that can help with some fundamentals/principles of investing? Books/blogs etc
One book I would recommend without hesitation: Don’t miss O’Neil’s book, How to Make Money in Stocks, because it contains a lot of beginner material, plus a model for protecting one’s capital, trading under varying market conditions, etc.
IBD’s Investors.com, Investopedia, and AAII.com are also great web resources.
If you open a TD Ameritrade account, you’ll also immediately get access to ThinkorSwim, which has the most epic trading interface and that alone can provide some “how does this work, I want to drive the starship” motivation. ;-)
Filed in: Technology /41/ | Careers /40/