Miscellany / So what’s your story?

I’m struggling even more than usual to concentrate today, for a couple of reasons. One is that one of our co-workers left the company. She was pretty much the person here with whom I most identified, and the operation was six people, so it’s hard not to let that distract me.

Secondly, I had a conversation at lunch that really confirmed and even expanded my sense that I work on a site without a clear purpose. Perhaps it’s just a communication gap, whereby the boss has never clearly expressed the goals for this site. Or perhaps those goals and strategy really don’t exist, and the plan has always been to “Just put up a site on that domain and see if anyone shows up.” At any rate, this gets back to the stuff about me being MBTI intuitive. If I don’t know that there’s a bigger plan, then it’s really hard to motivate myself.

I have my fourth of six career counseling appointments on Wednesday. I think I'll beg my counselor to please please pleeeeeeease give me permission to quit in good conscience!

I’d like to use the blog as a means of communication with the adult ADHD community, and to learn about other people’s experiences. On one Web analytics blog that I love, the author makes a point to end each post with one or more questions. I don’t know if I’ll do that all the time, but I’d like to get in that habit.

So what about you, Dear Reader? What brought you here today, and what’s your experience with working life as an ADHD or INFP or merely jaded and frustrated adult? Or conversely, what makes you happy about your working environment? Let’s start a conversation in the comments.

Tilt

One of my coworkers is convinced that I need to be more direct in expressing my views to our boss. I've been trying for, well, for the better part of the last six months to suggest that we need to think more about the content that's lacking on the site I work on, and less about writing code to produce bells and whistles. I've been suggesting this diplomatically, and it hasn't gained any traction. Her premise, if I'm understanding it, is that I should go to my boss's office and say something tactful but direct along the lines of, "No offense, but we need to think about why people aren't using this site."

This just does not compute.

I'm trying hard to be open-minded enough to consider that she could be right. Perhaps the boss just isn't sensitive to subtle hints. But what I've learned through bitter experience is, you're never going to win in the workplace trying to convince someone that they're wrong. You're just not. Especially not your boss. Obviously our boss has a lot invested in this strategy of "hire software developers to put neat applets on the site." Trying to talk him into adapting that strategy, to seeing the value of anything besides hiring software developers, is sort of pointless. (Never mind the aspect of talking myself out of a job; at this point I'd be delighted to get severance and unemployment if they decided they needed something besides a developer.)

People in power don't care for those who question their fundamental assumptions, do they? I suppose I need to learn to present the idea in such a way that the boss thinks it's his idea. I don't know how to do that.

The whole situation is reflective of the tension that this work generates for me. Normal people can just turn this whole drama off, can be happy they're paid to dig a hole and then happy they're paid to fill the hole back in. If only. I'd love to be able to turn my brain off, to literally not care whether there's any point to my work or not, to really be apathetic to whether anyone uses the site I work on or whether people who see it for the first time consider coming back. I wish the big picture didn't always matter to me. But I'm cursed to be MBTI intuitive, so this matters to me greatly.

A fellow INFPer, Meyers-Briggs prayers, and more!

For work I'm learning about Google Analytics, and that's lead me to start checking these metrics on my own site to see who's out there reading this blog. One great thing GA lets you do is see those search terms that lead people to your site, and by running those same searches you can find some fun and quite relevant content.

Apparently a couple of people have found my blog partially using the search term INFP, which is awesome. Hi there, folks. One of the searches also led me to this post: cybette's blog: INFP = ADD = Depression. Very interesting stuff, and I like her hypotheses about different reasons why our personality type may correlate with depression and ADHD, especially this one:

So what causes depression? Stress (among other factors). Feeling the need to "fit in" a world dominated by ESTJ/SJ's, or at least a world where ESTJ type is encouraged (many U.S. presidents are ESTJ's, including George W. Bush). Also, a lot of gifted and creative kids are mis-diagnosed with ADD, simply because they are misunderstood.

Count me shocked, shocked!, that GWB would show up as a J. Anyway, it's very interesting stuff.

She also cited short "prayers" for each of the 16 MBTI types. Here are a couple:

• INFP: God, help me to finish everything I sta
• ENFP: God, help me to keep my mind on one th -Look a bird- ing at a time.

Pretty much, yeah.

Tell me what would make you happier -- no, tell me what I want to think would make you happier.

Imagine this scenario: [Anecdote removed. Although losing my present job wouldn't be a terrible setback in the long run, I'd prefer not to risk it or make myself subject to blackmail by getting too specific here. The point of the story was, the boss asked for some feedback, then embarrassed a person who gave it in a meeting because she gave not quite the precise feedback he wanted. This struck me as counter-productive and frankly rather detached from the big picture purpose of trying to improve morale, but hey, I'm not a manager so I don't get these things.]

Back in my naive days, I used to think that senior managers got to be senior because they possessed more of a big-picture view than the rest of the staff. Perhaps this was just wishful thinking on my part -- I'm MBTI iNtuitive, remember, which is a poor word choice by Myers and Briggs. They should have said big-freakiN'-picture. So perhaps it's self-serving to think that senior managers are supposed to have a big-picture orientation much like I do. But it has a certain logic to it. You'd think that the big boss would need to develop the broad strategy for the whole organization, and delegate the details to the specialists. Incidentally Strong listed "senior executive" as one of my Top 10 fitting careers, so I don't think I'm totally on the wrong track here.

But come to find out, there are probably plenty of people running companies who so get caught up in the details that they don't care much about the big picture. I can't imagine why running things makes them happy, but apparently it does.

Who knew?

CC2: Answering a lot of questions

I haven't blogged here for several days, for a couple of reasons. Mostly it's that I'm less inclined to write when I'm not suffering, and I've been working hard on leaving my career dissatisfaction to God and coping with the suffering (but not denying it!). That seems to be going relatively well.

Likewise, moving forward with the counseling has really helped. I still have issues, and indeed, the counseling is only confirming my impression that I'm not in the right career! But at least I don't feel so desperate to make something positive happen right away. I feel more inclined to trust that I can wait it out, because I know there's a plan in place to improve things. Some of my fellow Christian friends might see that need for a plan as a lack of faith. Perhaps.

And finally, despite the inadequate feedback where I work, I've gotten better at picking up on small bits of positive feedback. That makes me feel better about myself and feel valued here. Even though it really isn't a good long-term fit, it's a lot better for people like me to go to work every morning when we feel valued.

So then... about the career counseling.

I had session #2 yesterday, and to be honest it was more about Debbie reading my results to me than anything. I took the Meyer-Briggs Type Indicator, the Strong Interest Inventory, and the 16PF. I come out as:

• An INFP on the MBTI (strongly iNtuitive and weakly Introverted, moderate on the other two).
• SAE on the Strong
• I can't tell you what on the 16PF, but it certainly makes me sound emotionally unstable.

One of my favorite contrasts is that the 16PF gives me low potential for leadership (3 of 10), but one of the others indicates strong leadership potential. I think that reflects my ambiguous view of leadership: I love to motivate others to a common goal, but only if it's an authentic goal. I have no inclination whatsoever to be a bureaucratic middle manager, or for that matter senior manager.

I've been reading up on INFPs. I love this INFP profile from Typelogic. However, this one from personalitypage pissed me off with this graf:

INFPs do not like to deal with hard facts and logic. Their focus on their feelings and the Human Condition makes it difficult for them to deal with impersonal judgment. They don't understand or believe in the validity of impersonal judgment, which makes them naturally rather ineffective at using it. Most INFPs will avoid impersonal analysis, although some have developed this ability and are able to be quite logical. Under stress, it's not uncommon for INFPs to mis-use hard logic in the heat of anger, throwing out fact after (often inaccurate) fact in an emotional outburst.

However, the more I think about it (and about how MBTI defines "thinking" versus "feeling"), the more I realize why I'm so challenging. I'm not a typical F! To the contrary, I'm very good at logical thought. I just grow less enamored of it with each year of life experience, so I value logic only in situations that call for it. I think I come up F because I'm becoming more of a person who values feeling, even thought I'm still very capable of thinking.

In fact, I think this cuts to the heart of why it took them so long to diagnose me with ADHD. I've always done superbly in school, whereas most people like me can't focus on school. I guess it's a great reminder that four letters don't define who I am. It does remind me of my evil plan, with my best friend in college, to blow up the Greek system and replace it with 16 co-ed frats based around the MBTI.

In other news, a friend sent me a link to a careers-related blog, which led me to this fascinating NYT article about law and medicine being less prestigious than they used to be. It's a great point; in general our society values stability less than in the past. Maybe I'm well-positioned to gain in prestige as a vagabond -- as if prestige meant that much to me anyway.