(*Over
a past few days, through books and the Internet, I have been taking some
personality tests in an attempt to answer an uneasy question: “Who am I?” MBTI
tests' results revealed that I am an INTP, so-called “the Thinker” or “the
Architect.” Basing on MBTI explanations and my own experience, I have tried to
make a list of characteristics that a MBTI’s typical INTP would have.*)
You
don’t like having daily routine. Monday, you eat lunch at
11.30 am, Tuesday 1 am and Wednesday 2 am. Before going to sleep at night, you
write a to-do list for the next day, getting down to the nitty gritty. Yet,
waking up, you suddenly get interested in some unscheduled activities. Needless
to say, your to-do list finds a place in your trash bin. When you are an INTP,
it is not easy to follow a schedule or a commitment.
You
get bored easily! You are writing an essay about
technological development, and 15 minutes later, you find yourself checking
NASDAQ indexes. You are trying to find answers for Syria Civil war, and then
just by some clicks, you are downloading U.S. Congressional annual bills. When
you are an INTP, almost nothing can capture your full attention for too long.
You
love designing! You regularly change your room, tearing
your working table apart, replacing your bookshelf with a new TV and painting
your walls. You are the psycho in chemical lab, enthusiastically conduct chemical
experiments and crazily mix every tubes at hand together to see how they would
react. When you are an INTP, the world is something needed to be analyzed and
redesigned.
You
are never tired of learning. You have a list of various
things you want to learn, ranging from science, technology, arts to gender
discrimination, cooking and playing piano. Sometimes, you only wish there would
be 48 hours per day and 1000 days a year, so that you can study as much as you
want. When you are an INTP, not money or love but knowledge is the thing you
treasure most.
Trivia
and common talks bore you to death. Being surrounded by people’s
endless stories about Korean singers, Hollywood movie stars, or newest fashion
trends, you just want to disappear. In your opinion, if a conversation cannot
provide useful information or practical lessons, it is not a thing worth
spending time and efforts. When you are an INTP, serious, one-to-one talk is
something you seek for.
You
love correcting people (inside your head!). When somebody
tells you a story, you simultaneously check its logical incoherence and pay
attention to its incompatible details. These thoughts inside your head are so
clear, and so loud that you try hard to constrain your intentions to speak your
thoughts out. When you are an INTP, you can’t stand grammar errors and weak logical
structures.
People
criticize you for being coldhearted. Even though you
sincerely want to say “I love you” to your dear friend, your mouth couldn’t
open. Instead of being a trash can for your closed ones to spill their guts,
you suggest solutions for their problems. As the result, people assume that you
are made of stone. However, when you are an INTP, you sometimes don’t even care
to defend yourself from that assumption.
When you are a female INTP , you belong to 1% of the
population. It means that if you make 100 friends, you can find a female
soulmate. Yes, if you can make 100 friends....
It is not always happy to be an INTP. However, I
stop my piece here with a quote from Forbes magazine:
“You
are lucky, in a way that no one else is. Now, what are you going to do with
your good fortune?”