Monthly Archives: December 2009

The Care and Feeding of INFPs, part 2

Speaking INFP

INFPs can be great communicators when they want to be. That’s the big catch: when they want to be.

By default, INFPs do two things that cause great frustration to other types.

1. Moving from point A to D while skipping points B and C.

Conversations with INFPs at times seems like a string of completely unrelated topics. I know I do that. I could be talking about Ethan Hawke and the next second, I could be talking about locus of control theory. The connecting thoughts are: Ethan Hawke was in Hamlet –> famous Hamlet quote “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” –> your thoughts are one of the few things you can control –> amount of happiness is proportional to how much control you feel you have in your life –> locus of control theory.

INFPs don’t vocalize those connecting thoughts. Conversations may seem like random jumps from topic to topic but those topics are related in the INFP’s head.

The Care and Feeding of INFPs, part 1

Give your INFP some alone time

INFPs need time to reset. We have this mental/emotional bookshelf where a book is an emotion or mindset. The acts of everyday living—going to work, interacting with people, striving towards goals, maintaining our lives—requires pulling a book off the bookshelf to access what we need to live in the day-to-day.

As we use those books, they pile up and as more things happen day after day, going through the piles to find the books we need takes longer and longer. Eventually, we have to take some alone time and put those books in our mental piles back onto the bookshelf. That’s what I mean by resetting.