Life-in-Progress

Life is more than a day job.

The Curse of the NT

Posted by Alora Posted on Nov - 22 - 2010

At the Wizard Academy a couple of weeks ago, my hubby was talking to Roy Williams about accomplishment. Roy made a very interesting observation that applies to both my husband (an INTJ) and to me(an ENTJ). He said that it’s not at all uncommon for (Myers-Briggs) NTs to spend just enough time living in their own world that once they think something, in their mind it’s now done and so there is no need to actually do it in real life.

This is particularly interesting to me, because this has been my curse since I was a child. And it’s something that haunts me to this day: if this blog had HALF the articles on it that I’ve written for it in my head, it’d compete with HuffPo for volume. The trouble is, once I work through what I’m going to write in my head… I’m done with it, and never get around to actually sitting at the keyboard and writing it out.

As the absolute Queen of Unfinished Projects, I’m fascinated about how to mitigate this. From the time I was a child, I love ideas: the idea of a project, the idea of a trip, the idea of an event, the idea of whatever — and yet, the second I fall in love with an idea, I end up combatting one of two problems:

  1. Either the reality never comes close to the version in my head, and always ends up being a supreme let down, or
  2. I don’t have the patience and tenacity to stick with it to make it happen.

Because I’ve already accomplished in my head, the tedium of accomplishing it in real life quickly becomes more trouble than it’s worth. After all, why spend all that time and effort actually doing something, if I get the same sense of satisfaction just by thinking through it and mapping it out in my head?

As I continue to work through the next phase of my career, this insight is incredibly valuable to understand why project management has been getting harder and harder for me over the past few years. I simply don’t find the details needed to get a project all the way to the finish line worth the effort.

I have a self-fueling demotivational problem, because project management — which is really an SJ-type of profession, not an NT one, anyway — requires supreme attention to details. This is not my strength under any circumstances. But, when you factor in Roy’s observation, it makes even more sense.

For example, I have a new blog that I’m interested in setting up (or, maybe it’s just a new section on this one — I haven’t entirely decided yet), chronicalling my efforts to get healthy. The focus being, not only my new experimentation with meditation and yoga (and, hopefully, soon to include Muay Thai and/or Brazilian Jujitsu), but also how my husband and I can eat healthy on a $60 per week grocery budget. The unique slant on the blog is to be a look at the investment need for this effort: does it cost time, money or health quality?

The problem, however, is that last Friday evening, I mentally did it. I walked through the set-up of a new WordPress install. I picked a theme. I set up all of the plugins that go with a new site. I identified the categories. I designed the icons I wanted to use to represent my cost triangle. I did all of it. In my head. In my head, it is a great success that helps me stay focused, and which helps me find other people who have ideas that are very usable in my effort.

Of course, this poses a problem, because — in the reality that exists OUTSIDE of my head — I haven’t done anything on it. And yet, because I feel like it’s been done, now the actual act of doing it just becomes too tedious to bother with. It takes the fun out of it. And since this isn’t intended to be a chore, there is no point in doing it if it isn’t fun (and helpful).

So… I haven’t done it. And I don’t know if I actually will at this point.

What to do about this? Well, the first thing, I guess, is to stop mentally mapping these things out all the way. Don’t allow myself to do it until I sit down to a keyboard and start writing. This is the obvious solution, but I can’t imagine anything more difficult. Despite spending most waking hours per day in front of a keyboard, the fact is that I usually do this type of mapping while I’m AWAY from a keyboard — while I’m in the shower, driving, running errands, etc.  It is often my version of a “break” from work: it’s the intellectual equivalent of going for a walk or (ironically) going to a yoga class.  So this is an exercise that I often find very refreshing and gratifying.  Which, I guess, means that I need to reserve these types of mental gymnastics for projects that I do not actually have any real intention of doing.

Of course, this is far easier said than done. However, it is sort of reassuring to know that this is a fairly common problem for NTs in general, and not unique to me (and my hubby).

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Categories: Career & Professional, Miscellaneous
  • http://arborescence.typepad.com/ Karen (Arborescence)

    Hi There, Alora! What an fascinating post! I had a professor once who often mistook the intention to do something with actually having done it. While he was fine about getting our tests back to us in a timely manner, any task above that was impossible–returning emails or writing recommendations to graduate schools. This last caused me no end of frustration. The second time I applied I still asked him to fill out a recommendation for me (my thinking was he was really impressed by me and if/when he actually got around to doing it the recommendation would have been outstanding), but I also asked more people than I needed to fill out recommendations in order to avoid this mistake again. So a good question might be what steps do other people need to take to work effectively with dreamers?Also, I would love to hear about your experience with meditation and yoga sometime. Is it helping?Happy Thanksgiving, Karen

  • http://alorachistiakoff.com/ Alora

    Karen – That’s a really good question. And it is something I’ve gotten better at over time: be very clear about what everyone is expecting out of a situation (in order to consider it successfully completed), and you’re more likely to hit the finish line in a mutually accepted way.

    I think that my bigger problem is that this seems to haunt me most when it’s my own stuff that is only getting done in my head. Sure, it’s still a risk with external obligations (and, as Charles will agree, I am VERY bad about over-committing, which I suspect is largely related: after all, in my head things are done very quickly; in reality, they require time and patience, two things I struggle with), but because I am SO self-conscious about not disappointing other people, this is often enough to help keep me in-line.

    With my own stuff, though…. much, much harder. I started trying this today. I have another blog article I’m working on, which is part of a broader career transition explanation I’ve been discussing with my boss, and my normal pattern is to just work on it in my head (in the shower, while driving, before falling asleep, etc.) with the plan that, once I have it figured out, I’ll sit down and write it all out very quickly.

    Today I have repeatedly caught myself working on it in my head, and forced myself to stop and write down what I was saying. My entry in OneNote for it is getting very long and unwieldy, but once I’m done brain-dumping, I think I should be able to edit it down into something usable.

    It really is hard as hell to catch myself, though. But, gotta keep at it. All of the self-discipline research says to focus on tiny things consistently first, and the ripple-effect will benefit other areas, so my focus for the moment is: write it out, don’t talk it out (even to myself). Because once it escapes my lips, it’ll never get written. Very hard for an extravert who thinks by speaking.

    As for yoga and meditation… yoga I struggle with. Meditation helps a bit, but it’s very difficult. I’ve very ADD, so forcing myself to sit still and clear my mind usually results in me falling asleep. More difficult than you’d imagine. And I can’t say that I’ve noticed any benefits yet.

  • http://eurobubba.com Eurobubba

    You sound like a born entrepreneur. You conceive it, have your “people” execute it!

  • http://dlairman.wordpress.com/ Jim Adcock

    There are two ways to approach the problem. One is to try and change the dynamic, as it appears you are doing. It is always a good idea to get practice stepping outside your comfort zone.

    But the other approach also ahs its merits – playing to your strengths. If project management is becoming a drag because it isn’t a good fit for you. You might consider finding a corner of the PM space that fits you better, rather than trying to make yourself fit to a role.

    I was heading my career toward PM for a while, then discovered it was actually only a part of PM that really fit for me – requirements analysis, business analysis. In essence, the dreamer part of project management. Design the project/product in your head, figure out all the angles, model the thing… then pass it off to someone else to actually execute.

    I read a really interesting article about the future of busniess analysis and business process design – http://www.batimes.com/articles/why-is-business-process-design-the-future-of-business-analysis.html – that really spoke to the kind of work that I really enjoy as an “NT”.

    Of course, I also enjoy playing with toys, especially toys that I have built, so I continue to straddle the two worlds of designing (BPD) and programming (actually executing the design plan), occasionally pushing myself outside the comfort zone of dreaming up solutions….

  • http://alorachistiakoff.com/ Alora

    Jim — Interesting article. Some good comments, too. For me, the project management issue is largely put to rest. I do not want to be a PM anymore. My real struggle is that it’s the easiest skill I know how to market, despite how miserable it actually makes me (and how much I increasingly struggle with it). In reality, what I’m finding is that this particular inclination is actually getting in the way of accomplishing things that I do want to do, such as writing.

    Prior to Roy’s observation, I thought I was actually helping myself out by working through all the details of my writing in my head before I sat down to the keyboard. I was then always disappointed with myself that I could never muster the energy or enthusiasm I needed to carve out the time and just GET IT DONE. His observation was very valuable to me because it helped me become aware of something I’ve done all my life, but which I never stopped to think about. It was simply “normal” and — like most things we do which we think are normal — I thought my problem was in any number of a thousand other areas (starting with self-discipline).

    It wasn’t until Charles relayed that comment to me that I realized: I get the exact same sense of satisfaction from doing something in my head as I do from executing it in real life. But it comes without the tedium that goes with implementation. As soon as I recognized that, it clarified 1000 other things that I’ve spent my life struggling with — everything from unfinished projects (both personal and professional) to my tremendous impatience with other people getting things done.

    So, in effect, my real objective is to take this new understanding and use it to my advantage, instead of fighting against it — which is what I’ve been doing for the past 3+ decades. Because if there is one thing that I do know, it’s that fighting against it has not gotten me anywhere.

    Thanks!

  • http://alorachistiakoff.com/ Alora

    Ah, but I lack one truly critical characteristic of an entrepreneur: staying power. While I do occasionally stay someplace for longer than 2 years (I’ve done it twice in my career), the fact is that I do not go into it expecting that. And, in fact, the idea that I would NEED to stick around for longer than 2 years (for any reason) actually creates a great deal of anxiety for me, to the point of obstructing my performance.

    I also really dislike managing people, and I find the administrative (tax, legal, operational) side of the business so distracting that it paralyzes me from doing anything well. In the end, I have an enormous affection for and appreciation of entrepreneurs, and I go out of my way to surround myself with them and to work in VERY entrepreneurial organizations, but as Charles says, I am a “renter, not a buyer.” I need the business of the business to be someone else’s headache, so I can go off and be a crazy one-eyed pirate. As soon as I have to care about the business, I turn into a deer in the headlights and can’t get a damn thing done well.

    Plus, and this is a big reason that I make a lousy entrepreneur, other people’s ideas are more fun to me than my own. Again, probably because I work through my own in my head fairly quickly, I get bored with my own ideas much, much faster than I do with other people’s. The novelty factor is one of my single biggest motivators in life, and I find that my own ideas lose that far more quickly than other people’s do.

  • http://arborescence.typepad.com/ Karen (Arborescence)

    Thanks for your thorough response!

    Neither yoga, nor meditation work particularly well for me.

  • http://english-essay-writing-help.org/index.php english writing

    Implementation of projects it’s difficult and sometimes long process because people can make changes during this. 

  • http://customcollegeessays.com/blog/student-essay-help.html student essay

    You know, I have never heard about such curse! It is awful really

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