We’ve all had the experience of taking a personality test, but what we might have asked ourselves as we marked the answers was: Is this really teaching me something about myself that I didn’t already know? A successful personality test is one that allows us to take inventory of our tendencies and reveals an aspect of ourselves we did not perceive before. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is one such test. Developed over decades by a mother and daughter team dedicated to making Jung’s theories more accessible to everyday people, it has survived until today as a starting point for introspection. Could the test also help its users identify the level of complexity they demand from a productivity system?

The Building Blocks of the MBTI

The MBTI is a test that tries to find an individual’s preference for four certain personality traits, or attitudes. The subject is then categorised as having one of the 16 personality types which illustrate all possible combinations of the four attitudes. These four were predominantly based on personality types defined by the pioneering psychologist Carl Gustav Jung. One of the more important contributions to modern psychology may have been Jung’s attempt to show that people did not behave in unnecessarily random ways. Rather, they behaved in orderly ways, which could be predicted if their personality types were correctly identified. He divided these types into three separate categories:

Extraversion and Introversion is the category devoted to a person’s attitude to the world and how they receive energy. An extraverted person gets it from the world around them and from physical interaction; an introverted person gets it from their own self and from the inner world of abstractions and ideas.

Sensing and Intuition refers to how people process the information they receive. Do they rely predominantly on the hard facts gathered through their five senses, or do they often rely on an intangible sixth sense, their intuition?

Thinking and Feeling divides people based on how they make rational decisions. Do they make them based on quantitative information and numbers? Or are they less analytical and more feeling, choosing instead to consider the harmonious whole?

Judging and Perceiving is the final category, added by the creators of the Myers-Briggs Test. Those who prefer judging are seen as more structured and apt to make plans, while those who prefer perceiving are seen as more spontaneous, adapting flexibly as their environment changes.

The Test, Then and Today

Isabel Myers originally developed the MBTI with help from her mother, Katherine Cook Briggs, to apply the theories of Jungian types in a practical way: job placement. The second world war found many patriots looking to help the war effort, but finding themselves in positions they disliked. The test was a way to show people that many types existed, all with potential strengths that could be maximised when paired with suitable expectations and environments. The test continues to be used in work environments today, to emphasise the variety of personalities, and to encourage people to find like types as well as keep communication open with personalities that may be naturally more conflicting.

Indicating, Not Defining

Taken through a series of forced answer questions (the number depending on the version of MBTI taken), the subject is asked to choose their preference for various, often similar, situations. The end result is a distillation of not the subject’s raw personality type (rarely is anyone 100 percent in accordance with any one trait), but of their leaning or preference for one of the two ends of each type. While individual takers may see one end of a type as more attractive than another, ultimately, the types reflect preferences, and each has strengths.

This brings us to perhaps the greatest limitation of the test: That its takers may mistakenly believe the results give them a definition of their type. In fact, because it shows only the preference, this means the non-preferred dichotomy is still very much existent. The test questions often force the taker to choose between two options which mutually exclude one another, and this must be kept in mind when considering the results.

Which leaves the question of how we can incorporate the results of a test such as the MBTI into our personal lives. Finding our type can be useful if we use it as a clue to better knowing ourselves, rather than an end-all definition, which can in turn help us choose our productivity systems better. An organisational system can be extremely helpful for stream-lining our private and professional lives, but not if it goes against our natural tendencies. A person showing a clear preference for sensing and judging may thrive under a system that demands control over the smallest detail of the day. Conversely, a system like that may be stifling for a person who shows a tendency to use their intuition or who requires a sense of spontaneity or flexibility.

The MBTI is another possible tool for identifying more clearly what kind of preferences we have when it comes to organising and productivity – and the more we know about our preferences, the better we can find the perfect system for ourselves.

Click here to take a free online version of the Myers Briggs Type Indicator.

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