I just woke up from a nap and wrote down a post-nap “9/10 appraisal” of my day, accompanied by glowing notes like “things are pretty good. I think (crazy hectic project) will turn out well.”

This happens more, the more I learn to take productive naps. And today it was so pleasantly shocking, in its own way (I have traveled many moons from the harsh desert climate of those 3/10 days), that I thought I’d once again point out the importance of periodic naps, and share some of my notes.

Here are some of my most common napping-related practices:

Noticing when I’ve “furrowed out”

My body seems to run in cycles from high energy to sleepiness. I have learned to notice when I’ve hit a furrow, or the bottom of a cycle where I’m relatively sleepy. If I wait too long to fall asleep, I might not be able to get there.

When I’m headed toward that furrow, it’s a great time to think about a nap.

Noticing high-anxiety activities

Some of these activities naturally point to the need for a nap. For example:

• Listening to loud music
• Overeating / stress eating
• Getting into Internet arguments
• Making no headway on important to-do items
• A feeling of being slightly agitated or keyed up in an uncomfortable way
• Surfing too much web

Pre-nap Executive Thinking

Being a J personality (judging – executive / organizational), and yet a Pi-dominant personality (Ni in this case; can be too perceptive-focused and ignore the executive work) at the same time, I have found that some structure and organization is usually or even always helpful to me.

It helps me to do some executive thinking before a nap. That is, instead of just taking in information, like “oh yeah, a nap feels like a great idea”; directly address the question of tiredness, what you’ll do about it, and how it will affect your work or other plans.

I find that if I don’t do this, concerns can pile up in the back of my head and make the nap difficult, if not impossible. Or, I may just wake up early and feel agitated.

It helps if I can somehow both justify and rationally explain how the nap will coexist with and support my other tasks, in other words.

This is best done in speech or in writing. Today, I talked it out with my wife casually as we ate lunch.

It’s important to get some thinking done regarding my post-nap work, as well. I don’t usually plan my immediate post-nap sequence in detail ahead of time, but I do like to have a basic written idea (not in my head! Too easy to forget) of what I will need to do in order to get started on my post-nap work.

In other words, I want a handle on my work so that I can more easily pick it up. Otherwise I have to rely on my innate memory, and my mind is great at blanking that stuff out unless I work to trick it somehow.

Pre-nap preparations

• I send a message to my wife and let her know I’ll be laying down for a while.
• Lights off
  • In my office there’s a skylight, so having something like a hat to place over the peripheral vision helps
• Relaxing music on – Example
• All phone notifications off
• Computer notifications off
• Attention paid to comfort level of body
• Shoes off, maybe socks off
• Items taken out of pockets
• Blanket, hoodie, or both available as needed
• Drool-proof pillow (kidding, just clean the pillow. But man, one of my least favorite parts of having a beard is naptime drool beard)
• Alarm only if absolutely necessary because an alarm can prevent sleep

When laying down, attempting to sleep

Sometimes I’ll read just before sleep, and I have to tell you that Sherlock Holmes books are fantastic for this. :-) Also helpful are biographies and other calming titles, for example Michael Crichton’s Travels is another favorite here, as is The Andromeda Strain, which I find incredibly calming for a thriller.

Putting the book down, I usually try to find a mental image that calms me into a meditative state. I can’t often predict the imagery that will work. Today I imagined my middle son growing into a healthy adult. The mental image of him standing healthy and happy in his athletic clothes and preparing to play some sports on a warm summer day calmed me down and I drifted into sleep for a few seconds. When I woke up I thought, “that’s cool, I like that image, I’m proud of my son” and then I was out.

I do find it common to fall asleep, wake up, and then repeat this a few times before finally falling into deeper sleep. I do my best to persist through it.

Back when I spent a lot of time building models out of paper, imagining the process of building a MiG-21 model out of paper seemed to put me to sleep within a minute or two every time.

When the imagery isn’t working for any reason, I find that focusing on my breathing can help.

After waking up

While I’m still in a drowsy post-nap mode, I try to take a quick glance at a clock to see if more sleep is either needed or appropriate.

Sometimes I’m able to capture the relaxed mode of my brain immediately after a nap and use it to get really good answers to hard questions (“I’m locked up in situation X, what do I do?”), or do silly things like rapping for a few minutes in a way that I’d never be able to repeat outside of such a mode, or cracking funny jokes. Try it sometime—it’s kind of fun.

After a bit of that though, it’s common to feel a need for an executive-type “break out” and a way to take the nap energy forward into a productive day.

During this time I tend to grab my phone and make a quick to-do list. As a productivity hack, my to-do lists never include general descriptions of things (everything must be broken down into max 2-5 minute tasks), so today’s list was:

• Take supplements (100mg caffeine, 200mg L-Theanine, Gingko & Phosphatidylserine). I like to take some caffeine after a nap to capitalize on the productive circumstances. L-Theanine seems to reduce my natural anxiety floor just a little bit. And the G&P, IDK what those do. Oh yeah! They support good memory, or something like that. (Still in the prospective phase with this one)
• Transcribe meeting notes from yellow note pad
• Print out PDF document
• Hydrate
• Put a movie I’ve already seen, or a podcast, on in the background

After I’ve written “enough” to get going I’ll know it because one of the tasks feels easily doable and even motivating to think about, or I’ll think an anxiety-inducing thought (if I go into the house right now, so-and-so my wife’s friend might not be there yet) and find myself instantly getting up.

Back at Work

After doing that simple post-wakeup stuff, I inevitably find myself back at the office desk. At these times I try to keep up the executive tempo by filling out my journaling template, and otherwise getting the thoughts out of my head and onto paper, or the computer, etc.

When a Nap Can’t Happen

If the nap simply can’t happen, simply getting into a relaxed position (I prefer to lay down) and listening to energizing music while e.g. doing some light reading or closing the eyes is very helpful. In addition, if I can do some active imagination, this is also helpful. In order to accomplish active imagination in a productive way, I try to imagine a healing area from my memory. One of these is a favorite park I visited as a child. I then let my intuition change my experience and I stay open to various interpretations.

There are so many specific forms of meditation that I hesitate to call such an activity “meditation,” but I find that the resulting feeling of re-balancing is similar.

Summary

Phew, I can’t believe how much information that was, yet I just do that all naturally at this point. So keep that in mind—it took me a while to learn, and it may take you some time to get yourself into a comfortable state where you do this kind of therapeutic napping in an improved way.

Good luck with your naps!

Filed in: Thinking (71) | Anxiety (32) | Productivity (120) | Therapeutic Practice (149) | Te (36) | Energy (121) | Rest (22) | Sleep (10)

So it was, indeed, a fun UFO weekend. I listened to a few podcasts, did a lot of UFO-related web surfing, and spent some time on Simeon Hein’s Youtube Channel. After watching an hour of his videos, I’m comfortable saying that Simeon strikes me as an ENFP personality type, and ENFPs are often found in journalism (journalism being the role he’s naturally playing in the community).

By the way, the thing I like most about ENFPs in journalism is that they value the story and are willing to just listen for long periods of time. This lets the rest of us into the research with what I’d call “minimal filtering based on subjective informational construct”. Speaking of ENFPs as a group of course, their subjective filtering would tend to circle around relationship-values, so in areas like UFO research which are fairly devoid of human relationship drama, this saves us information guys a lot of time in having to weed out “here’s my own grand idea and personal agenda” from “here’s what people are actually reporting.”

In between videos I reflected on the psychology of it all: What are the implications, what can be done, what theories can be tested. And, can other models be applied or developed; if so, how, and to what end? After all, us NTs love to think of ways to “address and adjust the system” when we observe unwanted, human-psychology-based, emergent effects. As an ENTP friend once said to me regarding a sticky human problem, “we can solve it with software.”

I also did a bunch of ham radio hobbyist stuff, and coordinated with a friend to set up a WebSDR server for our local area. If you haven’t used a WebSDR before, let me just warn you: It can be really fun AND you can get into a UFOs, crypto, & Black Ops area of this hobby pretty quickly. The SIGIDWIKI.com HF database has been very helpful to me in identifying what I’m hearing in the past. And also, sometimes it’s nice to just sit back and listen to a couple of ham radio operators chat about this or that.

Finally, I also made a personal record, a low-power simplex wide-band FM contact of 15 miles, using my Yaesu FT-65 handheld transceiver, a speaker mic, and a 42 inch telescoping whip antenna. Longer distances than this are definitely possible, but it was a lot of fun for a casual on-air chat with a new friend. Where I live it’s also helpful; in this case the friend let me know about a wildfire (it turned out to be a controlled burn in this case) that was approaching his area, which is the kind of information which in an emergency can buy you valuable time.

In between ham radio and UFOs—I never fill you guys in on this stuff, but: I watched my three beautiful children play and swim in a creek, catching tadpoles and finding heart-shaped rocks. My wife and I shared an absolute monster of a chocolate ice cream cone at a local burger joint, and I played almost an hour and a half of ping pong with an ESFP friend who’s a medical doctor; we exchanged theory and discussed experiences and I don’t think I’ve ever kept a rally going so long in my life (not the full hour and a half, but really consistently long rallies while we talked about all kinds of things at the same time). At one point I had to ask him: “Do you think our keeping this ball in play for so long could be something psychological?” Certainly there’s a lot of cognitive similarity to consider in this opposite-type, similar functions-balance relationship.

While at UFO-play, I also reflected on the fact that a lot of this hobby is just pure, speculative fun, and it can be just as healthy as any other hobby or sport. Along those lines, I imagined myself throwing a UFO party and thought I’d talk to some friends and try to get something scheduled. This is just personal health-level stuff—it’s about taking care of yourself.

But having been out of the action for a while, I was surprised to hear someone in the UFO research community nearly echoing my own psychology-based coverup theory, be it somewhat less dramatic than the usual coverup theory.

I happened to be listening to a Phenomenon Radio podcast interview with Black Vault’s John Greenwald, and John spoke to this directly.

The real meat of John’s findings starts at about 35 minutes in when he says the following:

“…not only is there a UFO coverup, but they [government / miltary] simply have no idea what they are. They really don’t.”

And…

“…I think the national security threat is not only the existence of the phenomena […] but more than anything else, that they may just end up being clueless.”

Wow. To me, this is also perhaps the most frustrating and concerning part of what I’m learning so far, if you remember what Colonel Halt, USAF said himself — “I think this is beyond us. So quit worrying about it.” This perception and accompanying shallow judgment is a maddening echo of the overall military psychology.

John and I may differ a little bit in that John seems to think that the motive for the coverup is “we don’t understand it, therefore let’s keep this under wraps,” while I tend to think the prevailing psychology effectively transforms information of this kind into the proverbial water off a duck’s back: Lack of applicable perception tools (intuition zone of conceptual awareness) leads to a shallow judgment process, which leads to the information effectively being discarded as “likely worth nothing to us or even worse if pursued institutionally” and tremendously undervalued.

I do also see a “heads up” risk as perceived by the ISTJ organizational psychology. That is, in an ISTJ organization, you keep your head down. If you start talking about the unknown, this creates chaos and attention. Attention is the last thing you want; to be seen as an attention-seeker generally runs counter to the organizational values except in cases involving institutionally-approved attention-seeking; the war-hero general, etc. But going “heads up” regarding UFOs—that’s crazy. You just don’t know what they are, and you don’t know what will happen to you if you raise the topic. So your psychology effectively blocks it.

But coming back to John’s conclusion—where he and I both really seem to synchronize: “they may just end up being clueless.” That’s the disaster, right there.

It’s the kind of thinking which is not just an offense against our NT theorist values, blocking out potentially helpful information because of a fear that it’s “beyond us;” it’s also an existential threat to our world.

It may seem to be dramatically oversimplifying things to say that “ISTJ-style organizational values are subverting human progress” but such an abstract viewpoint does seem to promise some leverage in this case. It could also potentially help define new approaches to the problem of coverups, detecting them, freeing important information, and let’s not forget the big one: Advancing human progress, technology, and awareness.

[While we’re at it, spare some good thoughts for our ISTJ friends who are actually keeping the government running. Every weakness comes with an accompanying set of huge strengths…]

Filed in: Interests (112) | Therapeutic Practice (149) | Openness (49)

OK, here’s a theory regarding the sudden UFO-related “let’s look into this more than we were” stance.

This is in response to an article I just read, titled What The Hell Is Going On With UFOs And The Department Of Defense?

Remember how I talked about the way the military’s organizational personality might make it an unwitting sponsor of UFO cover-ups?

Now let’s take the reverse. What kind of personality type would you bet would want to know? Like really want to know exactly what a thing is?

First, extraverts would be my bet. And I mean—as a group, right? Because type is a group thing. And Jung’s position on extraversion was that it essentially indicated a type of person who was energized by “outside objects”.

Anyway, zooming in a bit further, I’d have to give the “would want to know” award to the Se-dominant ESTP.

Which: We have an ESTP Commander-in-Chief right now, here in the USA.

So imagine with me, a conversation…

• Navy Admiral: “Mr. President, it’s nice to meet you sir.”
• CIC President Trump: “It’s very nice to meet you Admiral, thank you for your service, you guys are—we have an amazing Navy today…” (Blah blah blah ESTP Fe-Se stuff)
• But Still President Trump: “Hey listen, what do you make of these UFOs. You’ve seen the videos—that was a Navy incident right? Back in 2004 or something.”
• Navy Admiral: “I…I don’t know, sir. It’s a mystery for sure.”
• President Trump Going Full Sensor: “But don’t you want to know? I mean, I’d want to know. These things, they fly faster than our jets, and they can really maneuver!”

And that, right there—I’d say a conversation like that could 150% cause the aforementioned “what the hell is going on” stir within the Department of Defense. The guy is the CIC, we’re the Navy, he wants to know something, and we HAVE THE INFO. Well, we have some info at least. And we did make the darn video.

So: 1 + 1 = 2, intuitively speaking in this case of course.

Another factor to consider is the emergence of To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science, which has attempted to exert pressure on the US Congress. To what degree this has been successful, I have no idea. The team and its communications strike me as near-bizarre, but I haven’t made a very deep dive. [Does DeLonge feel to anyone else like a rocker ESFP who has taken a sudden hard turn toward the INTJ sphere of interest? Reminds me of a few people I know…and you never know what kind of e.g. publicity or other help they can lend to us intuitives. Also, when the guy sets up three corporate divisions and those divisions are Science, Aerospace, and Entertainment, I mean it’s getting hard to reach another conclusion here, right?]

The The Drive article linked above is great though, and links to some interesting Youtube videos which I haven’t finished watching yet.

And Jason Turner, in that last video, talks about the existence of a SES, or Signal Exploitation Space, within the USS Princeton. How freaking cool is that name? Apparently it’s existed for some time now but it’s the first time I’m hearing of it. And I mean, you know how I hesitate to really boost your ego, but given the way Ni works you could safely say that the INTJ brain is a Signal Exploitation Space. Right?

This weekend just went into the UFO zone. Man I swear at least 75% of my weekends do this.

Filed in: Sensation (40) | Se (25) | Openness (49) | Technology (41)

If you get Thinking over-involved in solving your procrastination issues, you’re gonna wear yourself out at some point.

Some thinking will help. My Productivity Triangle model can help in that way.

To over-involve thinking looks like: Jumping from one productivity tool to the next, trying to find the holy grail, then getting to the point where you feel like a failure, yet still hold out hope for a solution, a way to leave no project unfinished!

But a lot of INTJs, ISTJs, ESTJs, ENTJs, and on and on…need to get away from thinking for a bit and learn how to develop, and maybe more importantly normalize their system of boundaries. Make its expression sound less selfish, or learn to express it with more nuance.

Here’s one way that can look:

Mental Model

“It’s just part of who I am. I procrastinate some things.” See, Fi is, at least partially, about developing a model for what makes you, you. And what makes you acceptable and even valuable in the face of your weaknesses.

Remember the article about Se and how badass we’d love to look? This can get in the way of a perfectly fine solution to procrastination, one where we give ourselves the freedom to laugh at ourselves and admit that we procrastinate.

And…

Additional Considerations

Here’s how that can look. Imagine that your romantic partner just asked you to build them a gazebo, and the last one took you almost 6 years to complete (which culminated in an amazingly busy weekend in which 80% of the work was done).

• You know what kinds of projects you procrastinate (you’ve analyzed these right? Example: Stuff other people requested; stuff that’s really sensory, etc.)
• You know how you feel when you procrastinate (the distance between real and imagined self has never seemed so great)
• Therefore, because this project seems like the kind of thing you would procrastinate…
• “I’m sorry, I really wish I could take it on and do an awesome job for you, but I think you should ask X to do it instead.”

Nailing the Communication of that can be Hard

It’s easy to piss somebody off if your Fi hasn’t been sprinkled with a little Fe. So give that some consideration. Nobody likes to hear “I could help you, but I won’t.”

If you have decided to set a boundary and you are not going to take on the project, consider your relationship to the person making the request. If they’re relatively close to you, see if you can provide a little help in some other way. Say you’re sorry about it. Give some suggestions on who to ask. Or, offer to get the project started and then mentor them on it, as a way of teaching a new skill.

Another layer of Fi which can help out

Another part of this is doing more things you personally value in your life. This can help you understand that you can make a difference, and that what you want can be enough for yourself, even if it doesn’t seem enough for others.

Maybe this means changing your job, or maybe it means understanding your job even better, or maybe it means concluding that life outside the job is so fun that I don’t even care about my job not being a perfect expression of my gifts anymore. I can live with it now, and by doing so I just saved myself a huge amount of trouble.

You never know where Fi will take you, but it should generally help you feel more energetic about, and appreciative of, life.

Summary

People procrastinate different things for different reasons. INTJs are possibly least likely type to procrastinate things that are important to them. By definition, they tend to find themselves automatically doing those things. But that can leave others in a lot of pain, if the communication is mishandled.

By the way: All types struggle with procrastination. The dynamics are different, and not everybody needs to learn about Fi for extra help. Some need to learn a little bit of Te in order to not get fired because they literally cannot take seriously the boss’s request to make a checklist, for example. As weird as that is to hear for INTJs…

Filed in: Fi (35) | Procrastination (23) | Feeling (64) | Control (112) | Thinking (71) | Te (36) | Productivity (120)

Just to integrate into your systems a bit better, we now have an RSS feed. It’s in the sidebar. Thanks to C. for the nudge & kind blog feedback.

RSS Reader Applications

C. tells me he uses the Tiny Tiny RSS reader, which looks good, and seems relatively easy to set up on a LAMP server. Personally, I’m in this “back to traditional desktop apps” phase myself, so I’m using Liferea which also seems to “synchronize with” C’s Tiny Tiny RSS app.

I periodically export an OPML file (like a list of my RSS sources—blogs and things) to Dropbox so that it’s available on my phone or other devices if I want to try out a reader app there.

How do you even say that?

After using it for years, I still don’t know how to pronounce “Liferea” in any way that doesn’t sound like a symptom of a tropical disease. The FAQ contains this gem of an explanation, which left me with an even worse possible pronunciation:

“‘Liferea’ is the abbreviation for Linux Feed Reader. It doesn’t really matter how you pronounce it. I sounds pretty strange when trying to pronounce it like an English word so I’d suggest to pronounce it like a Latin word.”

Now here we have a psychology which resists the canonical. “It don’t matter, baby.” I personally can’t but cringe when I try the Latin version. “I’m using Leaf-eh-ray-uh, which is um…”

“Sounds like a Linux app with a website from 2006 or something?”

“Yeah.”

I’d prefer to pronounce it like “Life-ray,” which intuitively feels pretty cool as it personally gives me those happy Japanese mass-murder cult vibes in a cutesy sort of way.

But I’m guessing it’ll never come up in spoken conversation. And I mean, the app itself works fine.

Filed in: Technology (41)

I always appreciate reader feedback on the blog. Here are some ideas I’ve received from a reader recently, for topics to address:

Paralysis in the face of an overwhelming workload

Throwing out a few of my favorite techniques here:

• Begin to craft your anti-paralysis science. You’ll need at least a log and a calendar to start with.
• Take opportunities to get out of your normal environment. While in the new environment, bring your ideas around to the paralysis and make a simple action plan.
• If you’re not talking, or writing, or singing, or otherwise getting it out of your head, the paralysis has a greater chance of winning.
• Yes, it matters to you to get better at this stuff. There’s always some existential excuse for why it doesn’t matter in the big picture. But once you feel yourself getting a little better at it, your overall sense of well-being will improve.
• In the future, consider changing your boundaries to reduce the likelihood of this happening again, if possible.

Getting trapped in what I think is good work vs. what employer values/measures/rewards

I probably need more specifics on this one, but if you can list exactly what your employer values, that gives you tremendous value to the organization. Even just saying it out loud in meetings can help the organization feel a sense of calm and provide you with protection. Compliment your coworkers and leadership on those values. Don’t generally accept compliments in the area of those values, just explain that you have a long way to go. Especially in SJ organizations.

Meanwhile, do your best work on your personal projects. Never let up there. You need to maintain a sense of pride in your work.

And: Start working to forge a career that ties more deeply into your value system. Everybody needs that.

Wanting to brag vs. wanting to share cool things

So much of this is subject vs. object psychology. If the object, the person with whom you’re sharing cool things, is a good person to share these cool things with, it’ll go well. If not, it won’t. So watch for that. What do they think is cool?

It’s nice to have someone to brag to, but we INTJs also kind have an unreasonable fear of weakness. See if you can work your way through that.

And when it’s time to brag next: Have an intuitive conversation with an ESFP in your journal. If you haven’t done that, pick a well-known ESFP, or let one appear to you and talk to them.

I remember once on a long drive through the SF Bay area during the sunset hours, I had a back-and-forth imagined conversation with Larry Ellison. The guy came out of nowhere. He’s a known ESFP, but I didn’t know that; I knew next to nothing about him. I guess my subconscious picked up on him somehow, and we had a long talk.

Larry let me brag. A lot. I wouldn’t brag to anybody else like that, but I’m telling you, that conversation (not so much the bragging, though it was definitely there) changed my life. The comfort I received from that simple mental exercise with my subconscious mind has paid huge dividends ever since and marked a pivot point in my adult life.

So yeah—brag when it’s appropriate, brag when you feel comfortable doing so. And, watch out for those opportunities. Reflect on what you’ve done! Every INTJ I meet has done a LOT of cool sh*t, no matter how they see themselves.

Getting emotionally wrecked when someone accuses me of cheating them

This definitely feeds into our need to be perceived as a certain type of person.

Keep in mind that people who make accusations will often do so not because they really feel their argument is a good one, but because they’re being prospective. They are being analytical, feeling you out, trying to see what will make you take the wrong side of a very small-picture negotiation.

There’s a science to this—log it, keep track of it, watch it, and you’ll get it.

Also keep your ear to the self-care world. This world really cherishes and protects Fi topics like vulnerability, personal worth, etc. It can help an INTJ out in this area.

Filed in: Relationships (78) | Coaching (28) | Productivity (120) | Therapeutic Practice (149)

(This post was updated in October, 2022)

One zone or topic of study that I really enjoy, as an intuitively-driven person, is the fringe territory of human concern. Examples within this area include UFOs and Ufology.

Personally it’s unthinkable to imagine growing up as an imaginative, conceptually-fascinated kid without developing a talent for finding every library’s UFO book section, and feeling that natural, inner-intuitive connection to the question “what kind of mysterious stuff is out there?” Metaphorically this has always risen up through my consciousness as an attractive, naturally-chaotic spectre.

And I think chaotic is an important word to consider. To explore Ufology is to open yourself up to chaos, in that you immediately begin to upset traditional mental paradigms. Especially if there’s pressure to name stuff or decide what stuff is or what it means.

“Sometimes,” my coach told me, “you have to stir up a little chaos, see what happens.” And we’re good at that. Us intuitives stand out in our level of comfort with ideas. We make good planners. And in a lot of cases, we like the idea of stirring up the current thought process or accepted body of theory with something new, sensational, and mostly unknown. Does it make others feel uncomfortable? Yes, especially if they love the already-known, like that guy who has eaten a Big Mac every day for decades. But, sorry, life is like that; humanity is like that. Get used to it. It’s part of growth to look into the unknown and maybe even learn to stare it down.

Getting into four-letter Jungian type, for example, us INTJs even take that further and happily predict that chaos is simply part of our future, and furthermore we tend to say, “it’s OK, we can plan for it and harness it,” and this can really freak other people out.

Because how can you really know that? How can you even know you can do something about this unknown chaos?

Moving one letter away in personality type, and yet still managing to shift over to a different psychological world in many ways, our friends the ISTJs are a great example of a type that does not particularly enjoy chaos and future-intuition or prospective intuition. Individuals differ, but as a group, definitely.

You know who’s a great fictional ISTJ? Agent Scully. She’s a fantastic counterpart to Agent Mulder’s shattered-ideals intuitive type, the ENFP pursuit-of-truth persona.

In The X-Files, Agent Scully is Mulder’s interface to the government. She’s assigned to him, and she reports about him.

This makes sense, because the government and especially the military, judiciary, and law-enforcement aspects of government are famously compatible with ISTJ psychology.

You can even say that most of these groups generally have an ISTJ psychology, no matter which individuals of whatever personality types work within them. (This is called Aggregate Type, or Integral Type, by various authors.)

So, circling back to the non-fiction world: You know who I think might be a great real-life military ISTJ, who’s also one degree away from Ufology?

In the BBC World Service podcast, Witness History episode titled UFO Sightings: The Rendlesham Forest Incident (story starts about 35 seconds in), you can hear the account of one Lt. Colonel Charles Halt, USAF.

Colonel Halt went to investigate a possible UFO. He brought along a geiger counter and a tape recorder. He took measurements and made recordings. Nice work!

As I’m listening to this, I’m excited. He took these measurements—great! That’s helpful. “It must be under some type of intelligent control…” very interesting idea…

And what’s the Colonel’s take on the whole thing? I mean, as a first-person observer?

Guys, let me just say that his take on this is so ISTJ.

A direct quote:

“There’s no doubt it was something beyond anything we know or understand. […] I have concerns, but I don’t think we can do anything about it. I think this is beyond us.”

“So: Quit worrying about it.”

Sorry Colonel, WHAT did you just say? Did you just talk about increased radiation levels, a craft of unknown origin, a floating red eyeball-like object?

And then did you tell us to quit worrying about it?”

A theory, but maybe not a crackpot one: The Fear of Chaos Model

First: Let me just be clear that I’m not worried one bit, Colonel. Why worry in the face of such potentially valuable information?!

Second: This is where I’ll announce my UFO cover-up theory.

I don’t think there’s a grand conspiracy to cover up UFOs. I think it’s far, far more likely that world militaries and governments cover up UFO-related information out of this exact psychology, this “there’s nothing we can do, it’s beyond us” idea.

“Sure, it’s something radical, but it seems so beyond us, and really guys—what can be done?” Shrug.

The coverup happens because there’s no value proposition to the subjects involved. There’s no intuitive “prospecting” at work on their end, just a whole lot of introversion (in the “new and strange stuff drains your energy levels” sense of Jungian introversion) and fear of chaos.

See? That’s also a coverup. Especially where INTJs, and NT types in general are concerned. Because we can do something with that information. But at the same time, we can’t guarantee that it won’t upset the SJ / Stabilizer organization and cause any kind of chaos.

Well: For these and other reasons, we INTJs and NTs in general don’t typically run the military or match well its organizational psychology. So as a result there’s this natural, psychological information dam regarding the prospective / intuitive field of UFO research, and I think that’s the coverup, if there is one.

It’s simple to explain, it’s based in organizational and individual psychology, and I believe far more effective a thought-model than the “behind-the-scenes conspiracy” stuff.

To clarify regarding ISTJs

“Marc, so you’re saying that ISTJs are behind a world UFO coverup?” Sweet Jesus No. I’m saying that a specific psychology can cause a coverup of certain information, no matter the type of the individuals who are covering things up, or just preventing exploration-motivation from spreading within an organization.

I have lots of ISTJ friends, and I’d hate for them to be painted with a “wow you guys lack imagination” brush or worse. The fact is, they’re all different. Really what I’m aiming at here is group and organization psychology. I’ve witnessed it first hand; I’ve been a part of it. Keep your head down, stay on track, don’t deviate, and deliver what everyone expects you to deliver—stability. Some things we just leave untouched.

INTJs and INTJ groups of course build their own “information dams” too (though not generally with topics like science fact/fiction).

Phew. That was pretty fun to write. I have other theories on this stuff but I’ll bet you guys would hate to hear them. Really out-there stuff…

By the way, the US Navy just announced new rules for reporting UFOs. Let’s see how things unfold from here.

Filed in: Si (19) | ISTJ (2) | Ni (42) | Interests (112) | Ne (17) | Openness (49) | Intuition (63)

I’ve been playing tactical skirmish wargames lately, likely a reflection of the tactical skirmishes in which I find myself at work. ;-) Some days it’s like playing calendar warfare…

Anyway, I wanted to mention that One-Hour Skirmish Wargames is a really fun wargaming system reference book, and the system is easy to learn. I played through a game last night and I’m excited to do so again, and again, using different settings and scenarios. You can read the author’s blog post about his book and purchase it through popular online book stores. I’ve no relation to the author, just a happy customer.

One unique aspect of this game is that it uses playing cards for calculation rather than dice. At first I thought this would be a pain, but it’s actually very intuitive (easy to figure out; easy to remember) and logical. It’s easy to see how you could abstract these rules into a general simulation, even non-combat.

I was feeling lazy, so instead of playing with miniatures I set up my own playing area and “figures” (colored squares) using LibreOffice Draw.

Yep, playing against myself. Under some circumstances I would hesitate to include that little bit out of embarrassment, but doing so here might encourage my INTJ audience to pretend to be something they’re not. Winky-winky

Here’s a screenshot:

In this screenshot you can see that the Blue Team player at upper left just charged into close-quarters combat with the final Red Team player and finished him off. Which was pretty exciting during gameplay and the game managed to give it a low-technical-overhead, cinematic feel. And of course the poor guy was defending against this random surprise attack on his vehicle depot anyway, so there was a certain tension in the air that emotionally biased me toward the defenders.

The Blue Team won, though the Reds were outnumbered 2:1 and had no additional advantage via skills management. You can see the dead characters on the right side of the image. Sadly, the Blue guy sitting on top of the vehicle just lost his buddy, though he did use the body for cover! The light blue bars you can see on the map are movement rulers.

The game adds some randomization to turn configuration, so it’s possible for one player to get more turns than the other via luck of the draw. Also, if a player draws a joker card at any time, their turn is instantly over! This is a fascinating element and added a bit more “who knows how it will turn out” character to the game.

I enjoyed discovering that not only does the game cover historic settings like Napoleonic battle, it also goes right up into future settings with all kinds of cool gadgets. In addition, there’s a skill system by which you can design an elite “dead shot” sniper or a naturally athletic soldier who runs faster than others, among the various possibilities. Crew-served weapons and tanks are also designed right in. In retrospect, it’s easy to see how a couple of my Blue Team players could have at least fired up the crew-served HMG on top of the vehicle, and possibly even run over one or both of the Red Team infiltrators, from an unassailable defensive position.

I could have also given the Red team rockets and had them yell WOLVERINES or something.

…and heck, I could have thrown in Doctor Who and the TARDIS for some interdimensional fun.

Well.

Next time. Dammit.

Anyway, if you like this kind of thing, definitely take a look. My simple play-through was intense and enjoyable. Next I’m thinking of going straight from a modern setting into fictional-feudal Japan. A powerful castle concealing a dying warlord, attacked by a desperate invader with a deadly secret of their own…

Other Stuff

I’ve also made a deep dive into investing and have already shared some of my learning outcomes with clients; they’ll probably have preferential access to this information for now as I work out additional client benefits to send their way. (Suffice it to say, active coaching clients are getting lots of good stuff. If you want to be a coaching client, or just want to try it out, fill out the form at www.marccarsoncoaching.com and we’ll get you set up.)

For kicks and giggles, as I was studying others’ investing models, I started developing a psychological investing model of my own in parallel. It lacks some parts for its heat-seeking warhead, so to speak, but I believe the payload is solid. We’ll see how that sensor suite turns out.

If you’re like me and you hate being excluded from things due to publisher fiat, and always want the full informational deal, pitch me on any ideas you have for publishing this stuff without necessitating you being a coaching client. I’ll listen.

I’ve also been researching the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo cult / religious group as it has been really interesting for me. One of my favorite books on the topic is Religious Violence in Contemporary Japan, by Ian Reader.

You can see one of my favorite interviews with Aum cult leader Shoko Asahara here. I believe he was an INFJ, and you can see a fascinating aspect of this in his positive engagement with the male co-host, Takeshi (ESTP). These opposite-type attractions are always interesting to watch. In this particular case the culmination is probably around 11 minutes in where INFJ Asahara pays the highest compliment possible in telling Takeshi that he could even be a cult leader himself! Rewind a bit to learn more about the high esteem in which a cult leader places the ability to communicate with charisma.

Speaking of charisma and ESTPs, take a look at Sri Gary Olsen (YouTube clip) for an example of a religion / group started by an ESTP (MasterPath). And I feel I should mention—I can’t give any kind of recommendation here, just sharing info!

Heading closer to our cognitive home as INTJs, the Mormon church is currently headed up by a member of our opposite type: The ESFP, Russell Nelson. You can hear him discuss his strong, and more effeminate, Feeler-type aspirations right at this point in a recent address. Another example of a charismatic leader. “Take your vitamin pills” was his first uttered hint of an agenda which has been rather chaotic and full of changes to the traditionally ISTJ-natured modern Mormon church. I say “modern” because the long-deceased founder of the religion itself was another charismatic ESFP, Joseph Smith. Backing up his charisma was a remarkably hyperbolic interpretation of what was called “second sight,” “spiritual eyes,”—in Jungian terms, the opposite of ESFP Se: Introverted Intuition, or Ni, the dominant function of the INTJ. We INTJs know Ni very well (and probably have a firmer, less hyperbolic grasp on it), but that charisma…

Well, bummer as it is, charisma is not generally a big selling point of the INTJ type, though individual INTJs can often develop it to some degree. Instead we mostly fantasize that we have the ability to pull apart cults of personality like they are the most basic of knots. ;-)

I do have a friend who lights up my INTJ-meter and who is a pastor, and you can listen to one of his sermons if you’re interested. Again, I’m not affiliated and can’t recommend it for anything but curiosity reasons here, though Pastor Chris is a good guy. The charismatic vocal characteristics are present, though somewhat less notable than is the appearance of extraverted sensing (Se) values through the use of a small physical object lesson, a Lego.

“Of course an INTJ pastor would bring a Lego to teach a lesson.” Right? Curiously he also uses the “what’s wrong with this picture” approach, which I use all the time in lessons in front of people. The thing that surprises them, tricks them (ESFP); throws them off. We do like that stuff.

Just a bit more on analyzing religious groups

If you’re new to the experience of examining and analyzing religious groups, let me share one important secret with you: The religious person is attempting to communicate a given set of psychological values. Using this viewpoint, you can make the process of analysis somewhat less personal and avoid getting your feelings tangled into it.

In Jungian psychology, psychological values can be broadly divided into two groups: Perception and Judgment. How does the group see things—what kind of information do they pay attention to, and what do they think should be done about it? In what way do they think others see or perceive incorrectly, and in what way do they think others act or judge incorrectly? These are really powerful lines of inquiry.

Filed in: Books (10) | Therapeutic Practice (149) | Rest (22) | Energy (121) | Interests (112)

Looking back at my university years, there was no one quite like an INTP professor to get me participating in a class. And on top of that, I automatically seemed to become the challenging voice in those classes. The “critical parent” model of communications, which compares the subject’s 6th (non-Socionics) cognitive function to the subject’s dominant function, does a great job of showing why.

As the theory goes, if you receive feedback which speaks to the role of your 6th cognitive function (this is Ti for INTJs), you instinctively feel like you are being criticized or ignored (thus the “critical parent” voice), and a pressure arises within you to push back, to react sharply.

Within a two-way, mirrored-functions communication like the INTP (Ti & Ni) and INTJ (Ni & Ti), what’s going on is that the person you’re talking to metabolizes information in a different order than do you. Their subconscious mind is attempting to block the information you’d prefer to metabolize, and it demands more readily-metabolized information instead. This often feels frustrating for both parties.

As a student, I felt my INTP professors’ viewpoints were overly details-focused, nose in the weeds, and practically blinded to the big picture.

For INTJs, the INTP’s dominant Ti message, “be precise and logical, show your work, make sure to communicate WHY the pieces fit together” often sounds like, “you should get mired in all the details rather than relying on what you know will be the outcome!”

For INTPs, the INTJ’s dominant Ni message, “use your intuition, think of the big picture, see the outcome” in the critical parent mode often sounds like “you should make assumptions rather than using all that precise logic! Anyone can see how this will turn out! What are you thinking?”

Note that I said that’s what those voices sound like. Ni and Ti are both extremely beneficial in their own ways.

As a personal observation, the INTP will sometimes refer to “history shows that…” or “if you do this you will know the system in detail and thus improve your memory” outcomes (Si – recall) to justify the use of more Ti.

The INTJ will sometimes refer to “if you do this you will improve the overall values / quality” outcomes (Fi – valuing) to justify the use of more Ni.

A Personal Example

Discussing philosophy with an INTP recently, I had this exact discussion:

• Me: So I am encountering this precisely-detailed problem with this [specific philosophy], and I have this idea for an intervention.
• Him: What’s your idea?
• Me: Well, I think that with the right focus on principles like X and Y, the outcome of Z could be accomplished, rather than the previously undesired outcome B.
• Him: Okayyyy…but in all of history we’ve never had that happen. It sounds like you are just assuming you can change that.
• Me: (Remembers he’s talking to an INTP precision-guy) Well, that’s the problem with such deep work—I don’t have time to get into all the details with you right now unfortunately, but I’m looking forward to diving in.
• Him: …but you don’t even know what you’ll do?

You see how the INTP was craving details? INTPs metabolize those details extremely well. They’d like the details to come first. Not as much the sensory details, as the theoretical details—the chain of thought. For an INTJ, the outcome comes first, with details kept vague—all that Ti work will come later.

So What?

The main benefits to knowing this are:

• Being able to properly contextualize the results of communications with INTPs, including criticism or push-back
• Understanding why you might act differently in certain academic settings, and even perform worse, depending on the professor’s preferred methods of information metabolism
• …and even learning to recognize a Ti-emphatic third-party process, one which can instantly subvert an INTJ’s learning or other goals.

There are other helpful things to know about communicating with INTPs. For example, when feeling social stress, they often quickly identify people who seem to want to feel big and important (a trait which can accompany the INTJ approach to social stress), and they generally feel a strong dislike for those people. So if they see a bit of that within you, the INTJ, they might magnify that, dwell on it, and begin to feel inferior, triggering their ESFJ processes in an unhealthy way. This is also a good reminder to INTJs to stay humble, or to recognize times when we might inadvertently act less humble due to personal or social circumstances.

Going beyond just the INTP (they’re swell people of course—no criticism of INTPs as a type is meant here), additional aspects of this Ti-Ni tension can be observed in all kinds of intertype relations.

Personally, just knowing about this has helped me maintain my sanity and make better decisions about when to smirk at the group and start making other plans, as compared to resigning myself to becoming the “voice crying in the wilderness.”

Filed in: Ni (42) | INTP (7) | Ti (30) | Thinking (71) | Intuition (63)

You’ve probably been there: INTJs can get sucked into Collecting Information mode. Browsing, linking, piling up resources, buying books, bookmarking websites, liking Youtube videos.

This is a lot of things: Smart, resourceful, clever, and perceptive—“ah, I might need this later;” that kind of preparatory, contingency thinking.

This is not: Deep (it’s shallow, relatively speaking—or perhaps “broad” is a better term). It’s an extraverted task in that breadth-first way.

This is not: Learning, so much.

Some alternates to consider alongside this activity:

Learning Mode: Developing your depth-knowledge of a thing. The following can help with that:

Organizing Information Mode: Dive into the thing and start giving it your own method of organization. Plan your study.

Testing Information Mode: Running an experiment after having learned something, or theorized about something.

Producing Information Mode: Writing or illustrating or speaking about what you’re learning.

Filed in: Goals (52) | Books (10) | Interests (112)