A few years ago, I got into the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, a popular metric used for personality based in Jungian psychology. While clinical psychologists are more likely to use the Big 5 personality traits to assess personality because it is more scientific (i.e., based on observable behaviors) than MBTI, I find myself coming back to the latter.
Without getting into the cognitive functions that underlie how it works, MBTI is simple enough, straightforward, and easy to assess for yourself: your personality type is represented by four of eight letters: Introverted (I) vs. Extroverted (E), Intuitive (N) vs. Sensing (S), Thinking (T) vs. Feeling (F), and Judging (J) vs. Perceiving (P). The site 16personalities.com is a good starting point – it has cute infographics and does a nice job explaining what your results mean for various aspects of your life. Other versions of the tests are a bit more technical, with some asking different types of questions and others that focus on those aforementioned cognitive functions.
A Breakdown of the MBTI Types
 |
| Beech, Jake. (2014). Myers Briggs types. MyersBriggsTypes.png (1920×1080) (wikimedia.org) |
I take a lot different tests from different sites, often for fun, and across the board I almost always test as INTJ. I’ve scored as INTP a few times and even got ENTP once when I was feeling really sociable, but I would agree that INTJ is my most accurate descriptor: I’m fairly reserved most of the time and work well on my own; I’m in my head more than I’m in the moment; I try to make choices based on objective data without letting emotions sway me too much (though I honestly feel like emotions play by some logical rules, too); and as much I have fun being occasionally spontaneous, I prefer to be organized and avoid leaving loose ends.
MBTI may not be the only metric by which we can know our personalities, but like any metric on its own, it’s a good starting point for discovering and understanding our strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies as well as the way we perceive the world, relate to others, and solve problems.
Once you have a clear idea of what your MBTI type is, you can apply that knowledge to a lot of things--in this case, how to approach writing your thesis or dissertation, regardless of where you are in the process. Even things as simple as planning your work schedule and knowing when to take a break can benefit from this insight.
As an INTJ, it’s been helpful lately for me to trust my intuition and make connections between disparate patterns among the sources I’m reading. At the same time, it’s also been helpful to stay focused on the broad conceptual level and not tweak my thesis every time new evidence or connections enter the picture. I have a clear vision for what I want to argue and unless something drastic changes, I plan to stand by it. On the other hand, knowing my type has also helped me be more aware of my weaknesses and areas where I can improve. Like I said before, I’m in my head a lot, and writing is a physical activity, something I’ve got to do in the physical world. Furthermore, resuming after a break can be overwhelming – finding the place where I left off, rereading feedback to know what to address, and being aware of what comes before and after so that the content I add and the gaps I fix make sense.
There are lots of little sensory details than can be overwhelming to process all at once and keep track of, so it’s been helpful to practice being aware of little-picture things in all areas of my life: consistently organizing my workspace, keeping up with dishes and laundry, and lighting scented candles to make my workspace cozier.
In a basic sense, my strengths lie in staying focused on big-picture goals at the expense of embracing the smaller, more mundane (but just as important) tasks of processing and doing. On other hand, someone with, say, an ENFP personality type might excel at being open to lots of different ideas that emerge throughout the research process but struggle with buckling in and condensing those concepts into a singular vision. An ISFJ, however, might excel at checklist-like organization and take care in connecting research to the real world at the expense, perhaps, of welcoming lots of disparate ideas while writing, especially if those ideas are more abstract than practical.
No type is objectively the best or worst, and even two people of the same type may approach life differently due to different values, goals, and so on. Nonetheless, MBTI is a useful tool for knowing ourselves and understanding our potential. This self-knowledge has a wide range of applications, and you can definitely use it to develop better approaches to your thesis or dissertation.
