The title of this post is an inside joke aimed at my friend who doesn’t really like Myers Briggs. He has been editing my Everything every week newsletter for bookkeeping, and I send drafts to him with the bracketed [jake] in the title when they are ready for him to review.
I was listening to a podcast about narratives, and they used Myers Briggs as an example of where there can be a tendency to use a tool as a narrative inappropriately.
Mbti can be a useful tool, was their point, but syncing into a narrative about myself as “being” one of the types and thus being tied to certain outcomes / limitations would not be useful and would be harmful.
This podcast was by the main people I learned Mbti from, Personality Hacker, so it’s not by a critic of Mbti but a proponent.
but it occurred to me that because I learned Mbti from their content, and because I think they’ve always had this perspective about the distinction between tools and narratives, I think it’s always lived in my head as more of a tool than a narrative.
and it occurred to me that the Main way people use Mbti is as a narrative not a tool.
becasuse to use it as a tool is a lot harder than to engage with it as a narrative.
And I was thinking then that probably it is best for me to notice where And when I’m slipping into a narrative approach, thinking that My life will go a certain way because “I am an entp” or something, and to deconstruct that narrative and drop it when it’s inappropriate.