Just Like Nietzsche...

Today's phase of self-discovery relates to my traits or personality type. There are lots of these personality tests and quite a bit of literature on the subject.

First of all, I did a quick and dirty little Meyers-Briggs test online (pretty sure this is not the official version). According to this test, I am an INTJ or, what Keirsey.com calls a "Mastermind". (It sounds wicked cool, but they've all got good names like that. Except for maybe the "Supervisor" -- that doesn't sound very cool). Anyway, my I, T, and J are all fairly strong. The N is mild (which makes me a borderline "Inspector").

Now, I will say this -- from what I can tell, INTJs are relatively rare (<<1% of the population) and yet a relatively large number of Product Managers are INTJs (see my previous post about personality disorders). In my previous company, all four of us on the PM team were INTJs. Either this is quite the statistical anomaly or there's something to this personality-driven career path thing.



According to the Jung Career Indicator, I should be a:

• Computer Programmer
• Natural Scientist
• Natural Science Educator
• Engineer
• Manager
• Entrepreneur
• Lawyer
• Librarian

The best description of INTJ career options I found comes from TypeLogic:

In the broadest terms, what INTJs "do" tends to be what they "know". Typical INTJ career choices are in the sciences and engineering, but they can be found wherever a combination of intellect and incisiveness are required (e.g., law, some areas of academia). INTJs can rise to management positions when they are willing to invest time in marketing their abilities as well as enhancing them, and (whether for the sake of ambition or the desire for privacy) many also find it useful to learn to simulate some degree of surface conformism in order to mask their inherent unconventionality.

Since nobody knows what a Product Manager is, I'm unsurprised it's not on the list, but it does seem to fit.

Now, I've also recently taken a Birkman test. It's a similar thing, but uses a different taxonomy. It was kind of interesting. It had three parts, each of which had 125 questions (but it didn't take that long to do). The first part asked about whether a statement was true about other people; the second had the same statements, but for you; the third part asked you to pick which two professions (out of four) you would choose assuming you had the skills and they all paid the same. Like: Carpenter, Fisherman, Professional Singer, Accountant. You could see it had some kind of internal algorithm because it kept adjusting the choices and they got harder as they went along.

Anyway, the results from this test have to be compiled and I'm still waiting on those. I'll provide an update when I get them.

However, all of this has to be taken with a pretty sizeable grain of salt. These tests just tell me what I'm suited to do based on my personality traits. What does that have to do with my heart's desire? What if I'm suited to be an Accountant but really want to be a Poet? What if Birkman tells me I should be a Captain of Industry, but I really want to be a 6th-Grade Math Teacher? Is your destiny written by the time you're 25 or can you shape it yourself? Am I doomed to failure if I try to go in a direction for which I'm not tempermentally suited?

It'll be interesting to see how all these results come together.