The other day my intuition (introverted intuition, or Ni) and introverted feeling (or Fi) combined in a surge of paranoia and negative fortune-telling. “It’s going to happen, I can feel it,” I told myself. “I need to prepare.”

A problem had come up, and, feeling powerless for a moment, my tendency to get a bit gloomy about the problem seemed to be getting the best of me.

One big problem with this is that I can be biased, in those situations, toward the most hyperbolic solutions. Like say I find a hole in my boat, while I’m out on the lake. What I tend to do (not in a real boat, of course) is decide, “this boat sucks. It’s old and probably isn’t worth fixing.” Then I jump out and start swimming.

Well, fine, if it’s necessary. But often I look back and realize that the swimming was not necessary at all.

As a solution to this kind of situation, this time I asked the oracle. The result was exactly the clarity I needed.

If you find yourself in a situation where you need more clarity, I suggest you give it a try, too.

It may help to get as specific about the problem as possible when typing in possible actions.

Also, I find it helpful to fill in all five slots (at least), as a way of pushing ourselves to ideate on solutions. INTJs are not the best ideators, generally preferring to converge toward one or two “best answers.”

I find it interesting that the Ask the Oracle tool connects with our INTJ extraverted thinking (Te), our need to take measurements and get an objective picture of the worth of various possibilities.

Since we will often “jump the stack” from Ni to Fi (First to Third function) in high-anxiety thinking, this sort of measurement system can be very useful. Our second function, extraverted thinking, is considered the INTJ “problem-solving” function.

Some INTJs already use it in abundance, but many INTJs never really naturally picked up on it and tend to jump the stack, from Ni to either to Fi or to Se (extraverted sensing). The latter would involve indulging one’s senses in order to solve problems, which rarely works out exceedingly well for INTJs. (Personally, I can go on the world’s longest run, or eat the world’s best-tasting sandwich, or walk on the world’s most beautiful beach, and return home without a single problem solved.)

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