I Will Not Die

While I was reading Ari’s book review of Steve Pavlina’s Personal Development for Smart People, Ari said that he felt something was lacking in the book because he was a polar opposite of Steve’s personality type. I found this to be really fascinating.

While I had heard of the Myers-Briggs personality test (MBTI for short), I had never taken one before. Curious to know what my type was, I set off to take the test myself. What I found was even more fascinating. In fact, knowing about your personality type could be so useful, that I decided to write a comprehensive guide that includes all the information I found regarding the MBTI.

The first part of this article will be about the test and the types in general, and I’ve provided links to various free online tests and lots of material about all the different types. Afterwards, there’s a discussion about my specific MBTI type.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Personality test

The MBTI test asks questions that determine your personality based around several areas. The result is a four-letter type that can be used to say certain things about how you generally react to things, how you perceive certain situations, and how you make decisions.

The first letter represents your Attitude and is either Extraversion (E) or Introversion (I).

The second two letters represent Functions, the first of two being either Sensing (S) or iNtuition (N), and the second being either Thinking (T) or Feeling (F).

The fourth letter represents Lifestyle and is either Judgment (J) or Perception (P).

So based on your answers to the test you are assigned a combination of:

[E or I] [S or N] [T or F] [J or P].

To read more about the test itself in detail, visit the Wikipedia article.

Some free online tests like the Myers-Briggs

(The official test is trademarked and registered to the publisher of the test: CPP, Inc.)

These are the two I actually took. I took a second one to confirm the first one. They had completely different questions but they produced the same result for me.

• Here is the test on Humanmetrics.com
• Here is the test on Similarminds.com

Information about your type

Once you’ve taken the test(s), you can use the table below to learn lots of information about your MBTI type. In the table below, the types are listed alphabetically on the left, and various resources from the web are linked to across each row (each link will open in a new tab). The resources include:

• The Dr. Keirsey temperament description (I found these to be the most vivid descriptions on the entire Internet)
• Type descriptions by Joe Butt and Marina Margaret Heiss on Typelogic.com (I found these to have much depth and they also include many famous people of each type)
• Concise list of traits, favored careers and disfavored careers from Similarminds.com (which is the site the second test is found on; I found the career lists very interesting).
• Personality type portraits from Personalitypage.com (The descriptions are different than the Keirsey ones, and offer many other insights into each type)
• And the last column links to the Wikipedia article for each type (which has lots of different information about each type).

	Keirsey	Typelogic	Similarminds	Personalitypage	Wikipedia
ENFJ	X	X	X	X	X
ENFP	X	X	X	X	X
ENTJ	X	X	X	X	X
ENTP	X	X	X	X	X
ESFJ	X	X	X	X	X
ESFP	X	X	X	X	X
ESTJ	X	X	X	X	X
ESTP	X	X	X	X	X
INFJ	X	X	X	X	X
INFP	X	X	X	X	X
INTJ	X	X	X	X	X
INTP	X	X	X	X	X
ISFJ	X	X	X	X	X
ISFP	X	X	X	X	X
ISTJ	X	X	X	X	X
ISTP	X	X	X	X	X

About My MBTI Type

I am an INFP, a healer, an idealist, who hates all office jobs. I am apparently like Homer.

I love it. What I found most interesting about the type I was identified as was my apparent use of heart over head. I think that’s interesting because I’m rather analytical. I gauge my surroundings using the vocabulary of probability. I believe in facts. At the same time though, I do feel passionate about the earth in sometimes great abundance.

I think of the big picture and view my goals often only in relationship with the scope of the grand whole, no less. When it comes to questions of my preference for justice versus mercy, I will always choose mercy. Always.

One thing I found most helpful about the test is that it helped me to identify why I feel like no body cares about anything. That’s probably not true, but rather, I just care about many things to a much greater depth. For instance, one of the things that has plagued me as an adult has been the seeming apathy I sense among my peers and colleagues no matter the setting. I think to myself, “But don’t you care about [XYZ]?” No one ever seems to really give a damn about things. At least now I can say that they probably do; the issue is really that I care about those things so much more.

Also, I’m often plagued with hopes and dreams on a large scale. I don’t just want the job, the mortgage and the retirement that follows. I want to make an impact on the world. No less.

The descriptions of the INFPs seem to reinforce that. They also label, correctly, the fact that I am a rebel of sorts. “Screw the traditional rules, policies and procedures” could be a mantra of mine.

Finally, the Keirsey article said that I “can make errors of fact, but seldom of feeling.” I’ve always felt the opposite. Interesting.

So what type are you?

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Dereck :: Oct.25.2008 :: Life, Perspectives, Purpose, Tips :: 32 Comments »

Michael Miles at Effortless Abundance invited me to speak with his audience. For the occasion, I wrote a piece titled This is Your Life. I encourage everyone to go check it out. You can read it here. If you enjoy it, please consider giving it a stumble or sharing it with your friends.

While mentioning events from the blogosphere, I want to take a quick moment to also share with you some other bloggers who are helping me spread the word about my bike tour fundraiser.

Orna Ross wrote an article that highlighted my activities as inspirational ones. Thank you Orna. You can read the article Inspiring Lives #3 Dereck Coatney here. Orna, it is people such as you who I find most inspiring.

Also, Razvan Dobre at RazvanDobre.com has added my fundraising badge to his sidebar. Thank you Razvan.

One of my favorite bloggers, Paul from Destination Unknown recently wrote a post that mentioned my bike tour. You can read that post here.

And finally, JJ from Stem and Root, in an article where he talks about his preparations for Hari Raya, also took the time to mention my efforts there. Thank you JJ. Reading about Hari Raya has been fascinating, so if anyone wants to learn about it first hand I encourage you to read many of his recent articles on the event.

Dereck :: Oct.21.2008 :: Blogosphere, Site Related :: 7 Comments »

To the StumbleUpon community:

This might sound a little cheesy, but I love you

For me, the StumbleUpon community is probably the best community for writers like me. Why so?

In my experience, it’s primarily this: the type of crowd.

In case you’re wondering, I’m also an active user of StumbleUpon. When I click the magic Stumble! button, I find things I would never find on other social bookmarking sites. For instance, I often find art. I never find things like that through the other sites.

The StumbleUpon community has been extremely kind to me. Almost all of my short stories have done extremely well on StumbleUpon (Playgrounds in the Night got over 15,000 visits and is still going). In fact, the majority of my traffic has come from you. The figurative affirmation where each of you say yea or nay, motivates me to continue writing what I am passionate about.

I would like to ask you for your help with something specific I have been trying to achieve since June.

I have a dream I am trying to pursue. I decided to abandon my cubicle so I could ride across the U.S. and do everything I could to help people I meet along the way whether it’s telling their story, helping them achieve some small task, or trying to garnish the support of their community on their behalf by using the reach of this blog. I want to express love and kindness to strangers. At the same time, I want to see where the journey will take me as an individual.

When I originally came up with the idea, I made plans to try to leave within 60 days.

That time passed and I wasn’t able to leave because I couldn’t find a sponsor who could help me afford to go. As a result of that failure, I decided to try to raise the funds over the Internet.

If you would like to read the entire story so far, you can do so here.

Not everyone is able to help me financially, especially in light of the economic conditions right now. I completely understand that many people simply may not have the few dollars to spare to help me get going. In addition to that, there are likely people who could spare a few dollars but who wouldn’t unless they knew my full story.

Most of the people who know my history well enough, who know what I’m trying to do with this bike trip well enough, and who also happen to have a few dollars they can donate, are more than willing to help set me off.

The problem is finding those people. To find them, it’s going to take spreading the word to a very large audience. If you are able to help me spread the word about this event, I would be grateful.

I’m more than 10% of the way toward my dream. Can you help me push the rest of the way?

Dereck :: Oct.19.2008 :: CUBE :: 11 Comments »