Personality and Personal Growth: The INTJ Personality

If you test as an INTJ, there's a real benefit to studying what that means. Go in with only a vague sense of it and you can actually get in your own way when trying to grow. People with this type tend to be read as fixers. They notice where a process is clunky, then want to say so and offer a better version. Home, work, anywhere in between: they spot room for improvement and it bothers them to leave it alone.

Intellect drives most of what they do. INTJs gravitate toward activities that demand reasoning, and they spend a lot of time turned inward, picking apart whatever they're looking at. Other people's feelings are a different story. Emotions feel messy and hard to predict, so an INTJ would rather keep company with someone who can trade ideas and push their thinking.

Strategy comes naturally to them. An INTJ reads a situation the way a chess player reads a board: a set of positions to be worked through carefully. They want the mechanics of how things function and how one event leads to the next, and they're often good at calling the logical result of a scenario before it plays out. Once an idea or a project has their attention, they go in deep, and reaching a goal usually means a long stretch of focused, concentrated work.

On the numbers, this is the rarest of the sixteen types, and rarer still among women. Roughly two percent of the general population falls here. Look only at men and it's about three percent; look only at women and it drops to around one percent.

Hobbies matter more than people assume, and they land differently depending on your wiring. Pick ones that fit how you operate and you tend to get more out of them. For INTJs the pull is usually toward solo pursuits where it's you against the distance or the clock. Think backpacking, swimming, running a marathon.

A handful of patterns show up often enough to be worth knowing, since they explain a lot about how INTJs behave. As a group they're among the least likely to run into cardiac trouble and heart disease. They also tend to post high college GPAs and high incomes. Achievement ranks near the top of their personal values. Among women who start small businesses or pursue an MBA, this type turns up more than its small share would predict.

Trait surveys describe them as industrious, deliberate, methodical, discreet, logical and quietly self-assured. Of all the types, they're the least likely to hold a belief in a higher power. Careers cluster in technical and scientific work, law, and anything computing. And when asked what they prize, INTJs are the least likely to name financial security, community service, home and family, or close friendships.

There are well-known figures who share the type, and seeing how they move through the world makes the profile easier to picture.

You now have a clearer map of what the INTJ type involves, and you can put it to work. Use the traits as a check on whether your career actually suits you and whether the hobbies you've chosen will do you any good. Knowing what makes you tick is its own kind of leverage.

References: http://www.truity.com/view/types http://www.mbtilist.com/