Speaking of personality typing:

3) I try to figure out everyone’s personality type upon meeting them.

That means I probably have already typed you too. Even all the babies that come through my baby group at work have at least been loosely typed by me. It’s become something I do almost subconsciously now, unlike when I was first introduced to it a couple of years ago and tried to type everyone and everything with obsessive enthusiasm. I don’t mean to sort people into boxes, but as it is my current vocabulary for understanding people, it’s impossible not to use until I can find a better replacement. I don’t want to make too many assumptions about people so I try to keep myself open to new information and often revise the personality types I’ve assigned them. Of course, there are some people that I can “place” quickly and accurately and others who I keep having to go back to try and figure out.

If you spend enough time with me, I’ll probably talk you into taking some online personality test and letting me see your results. I used to need those tests to figure out what people’s types were for me, but now I’m confident enough in my personality typing skillz that I’m mostly trying to test the accuracy of the personality test itself – though sometimes watching them work answer the questions (yes, I am fully aware that those things are meant to be done alone) and seeing their results can often help me be more sure. If I had to bet between my deductions and the test results though, I would bet on me.

Yeah, I am arrogant enough to think that I know people better than most personality tests out there or even themselves, on occasion. You’d be surprised how terribly un-self-aware some people can be. All you INTJ wannabes, I scoff at you. Ha.

Undoubtedly, I am working with an imperfect system that doesn’t cover all the variables in people’s personality, but understanding certain basic patterns really helps me get to know people in a shorter amount of time. Christopher knows the personality typing system that I use well and if he uses it when telling me about friends/acquaintances of his that I’ve never met, I can feel like I know who they are and what he is talking about.

I really, really love explaining the personality typing system to people, and helping them understand themselves better but I don’t know if I’m really helping as much as I am seizing an opportunity to talk about one of my favorite subjects.