What are you? ISTP? ENTJ?

(Updated: Feb 2024 - some links died)

ESTP? ESFJ? Confused yet? How about ISFJ? I’m INTJ. Pleased to meet you. Ok. It’s the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Follow the link if you want to get the grey matter tingling explanations. In simple terms it’s like a personality classification like your sun sign or Chinese animal. I have never put much stock in any of that but its fun to find out you are a water Ox and are going to have a bad time in the year of the Tiger and that Napoleon, Picasso , Chaplin and Walt Disney were ‘Oxen’. Cleverly worded phrases seem eerily spot on – as if your whole life can be matched to a star sign or revered animal. I just find it all amusing. Like getting your aura read and it picks up that pain you have had in your left butt cheek for years in some vague way, “You will suffer with physical pain in the lower half of your body sometime in your later years.” We all hanker to believe in magic and fortune telling has been with us humans for as long as anyone tried to predict the weather or when the next herd of woolly mammoth would come south.

The Myers-Briggs personality classification sounds a little more scientific but its equally fun to go through the tests and realise you are The Dynamo, The Provider, The Champion. I’m the Mastermind – almost fell off my chair laughing. Then I read a little more about my personality type and, as usual with all these kinds of thing, you read into it and make it match your view of yourself. I share my INTJ with the likes of Al Gore, Bill Gates, Dwight Eisenhower, Alan Greenspan, Ulysses S. Grant, Stephen Hawking, John Maynard Keynes, Ayn Rand, Isaac Asimov, Lewis Carroll, Cormac McCarthy, and Sir Isaac Newton. Grief, those are some names to live up to. I’m the least likely of all the types to believe in a higher spiritual power (spot on there). One of two types with highest college GPA – hmm… never went to college (does graphic design count?). Among types with highest income – hmmm, I am a stay-at-home Dad with zero income? Popular hobbies for the INTJ include reading (bingo!), cultural events (not), taking classes (so so – I like to learn all the time), appreciating art (definitely), computers (since I was 11) and video games (Skyrim anyone?), and independent sports such as swimming (yes), backpacking (yes), or running marathons (no chance in hell – have you ever seen a water buffalo run? Not pretty).

Can’t say how you could possibly classify the billions of people in the world as only 12 animals or 16 personality traits, but its always fun no matter how accurate or inaccurate these things may seem to be. Go on. I know you want to try it out for yourself. Here are some links..

Here is the test:

http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp

Here are the explainations of your resultant type (look after you have done the test Duh!):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indicator

Have fun.

ps. I have zero affiliation with any of these sites/services. Some even seem to lure you into getting more meaningful personality assessments through payment – all up to you.