malvasia bianca

Today is a warmup tutorial for AYE; the morning session ended with a discussion of Meyers-Briggs personality types.

What struck me the most this time was the discussion of the J/P split. This split is related to how you act: the J side (judging, scheduling) likes to have a plan and lists, while the P side (perceiving, probing) likes to go with the flow. (One of the session leaders described P’s as people who make late-binding decisions: until a P has actually done something, who knows how or if he will do it.)

Which shed a new light on yesterday’s post. My first recommendation, “At any time, figure out what you most want to do, and do it”, is pure P. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure a J could follow it as well: their responses would just have a different flavor, since what they most wanted to do (keeping in mind their deep-seated feelings as well as their surface desires) would more likely be to follow some sort of plan. Still, though, it’s basically an expression of the P ethos.

But then the other two steps, reflecting on what you’ve done and (especially) having them lead towards a longer-term plan is much more strongly J. Again, it’s not incompatible with P-ness: the plans are still created based on your feelings at that moment, and you don’t have to follow them, but the flavor this time is much more J’ish.

If I’m remembering correctly, when I took a sorting test in the past, I came out fairly strongly on the P side of the P/J split. This time, while I was still a P, I was much closer to the boundary. I attribute that largely to my GTD practice, with a side helping of lean Standardized Work thrown into the mix. Heck, if I drill down a bit further, maybe even a bit of pattern language / systems for creating life in there, too? (No, probably not: the latter is more fundamentally P, in that at any given point you really have to sit down and observe what the current situation is telling you, no matter what your prior ideas suggested.) Of course, the question remains whether I’m being swayed by superficial practices or uncovering something deeper about my psychology; check back in a few years and I’ll let you know.