Getting away from navel-gazing

A few weeks ago in a thread on GlobalChatter I asked for some INFP-oriented feedback about this blog. It's a little disappointing that only one person, the thread-starter, actually jumped in. However, that feedback that Tom of Dare2Believe provided was very valuable:

I found... the tone of your writings too self-centered.

Unsure if people care about our lives enough to invest in frequent trips to a blog to read more. I think blogs need to be about the reader, not the writer.

This is great advice, and I've been vaguely aware that this site's archive reads like a whining session. So Tom's comments were great to actually propel me to action and force me to come to terms with something I knew to be true.

Now, it's easiest to write about one's own experiences, but that doesn't mean it's most beneficial. At times it may be beneficial, when my experience connects to broader themes and patterns that may apply to others. But it's still good to have other sources of content too.

So I'd like to throw open the question: What content here would be most helpful to fellow INFPs and other assorted career-misfits?

One simple way to get going is to stay up to date on other career-oriented blogs, big ones, and perhaps adapt the concepts there to our specific needs as INFPs/etc. I've already quoted from Penelope Trunk's Brazen Careerist a couple of times, because she writes some good stuff. But it's dangerous to treat any such advice as one-size-fits-all.

In Five signs that your career is about to get vapid she makes some really good points, and some others that in my mind require a little adaptation:

1. The generalist/specialist topic is a great one. We INFPs/etc. have a tendency to have a lot of interests, and that makes it hard to specialize on any one for any length of time. I think having lots of interests is fine, but specialization is valuable too. For example, back when I was subcontracting, I got stuck on a project that the guy I was subcontracting for never should have picked up, involving a technology none of us knew. We ended up hiring a consultant who gets $100 or more to work with this system. So when you need his expertise, you really need it, and are presumably willing to pay for it.
   
   So specialization is great. So what's the INFP to do? Well, you can specialize but still develop a diverse, composite career. First of all, as Trunk points out, finding your specialty means trying out a lot of diverse things:
   

   Usually you will pick wrong. So what? Keep trying. When I was trying to figure out what I was great at, I wrote a lame novel, I pitched stupid articles to Marie Claire and I got dumped as a feature writer for an alternative Weekly. This is how I learned that I should be writing career advice.

   Moreover, it seems to me that you can have a composite career, working on two or three projects at once, but still have each of those advancing your niche in the specific field. For example, I can play poker 20 hours a week, specializing in learning how to beat live $2-5 no-limit hold 'em, but also write code for 30 hours a week, specializing in using PHP frameworks to develop more efficiently for the Web.
   
2. Book deal.... hmmm. We tend to like to write, but I agree that this shouldn't be all-consuming and I agree that sharing your ideas on a blog is more valuable. Is aiming for a book deal still a common temptation?
3. This one's a little tricky. Like many INFPs I believe pursuing a romantic relationship just to have one is idiotic. So I've tended to have fewer of these than most people my age. Nevertheless, she makes a good point about "looking at yourself through someone else’s eyes." But I think we tend to be empathetic and hypersensitive so we can probably accomplish that through friendships or other relationships more easily than most.
4. Do any INFPs/etc. lack strong opinions? My problem is finding situations where I don't have strong opinions, where I can keep my mouth shut and say, "Yes, boss!" and not care that what I'm doing is totally unengaging.
5. Well, I don't know if many of us think career advice is stupid. We definitely should be MBTI intuitive, which means we don't make career decisions in isolation but try to plan them out to aim for a positive pattern. Therefore, a particular piece of career advice may be good, bad, or indifferent; but the process of planning one's career is certainly an important one to INFPs. Presumably if you're reading these words, you see value in thinking about career stuff.