Changing personality types

Since late 2015 and every 6 months or so after, I have been taking a
Myers-Briggs test by way of 16Personalities.

Can’t really remember, but I think the reason I originally took the test was
because my Dave had asked me what my personality type was as a way to
understand why I’m the way I am.

It eventually turned into an every 6 month ritual as I started to feel like my
bi-annual work retreats were a time of personal growth for myself.

After taking my 4th test this past week, I thought it was about time to share
and discuss the results a bit. The results are as follows:

Date Personality Type
December 2015 INFP-T
July 2016 ENTJ-A
December 2016 ENTP-T
May 2017 INFP-T

Before taking the test recently, I thought that maybe I was starting to get out
of my shell and become a bit more extroverted in nature. I mean, that’s what the
test results seemed to be telling me.

Seeing INFP-T again threw me for a bit of a loop and got me thinking about what
would have caused the shift back to being introverted from extroverted.

Ended up reading a bit on the subject and it seems that some folks acknowledge
that your personality can in fact change while others lean towards it being
inborn and would never change.

I believe in free will and thus believe that we can in fact change.

Right out of the gate, the obvious issue here could simply be that the test I am
taking isn’t all that great so it’s natural for the results to skew a bit.

The type could have shifted because I started to take the test immediately after
an alleged personal growth period and not a few weeks later after I’ve settled
back into my actual personality type (as I did with the first one).

Could be low hanging fruit that the circumstances in my life right now have
pushed me back towards being more of an introvert.

Very well could be that I am can potentially be introverted or extroverted. The
whole duality of being a Pisces. Or some sort of multiple personality
disorder…

Hopefully not that one.

Something else that I found interesting is that when the “-T” was present in the
type, the percent of turbulence has went down with each test. I’m a fairly
turbulent person by nature (again with the Piscean duality) but have been
feeling like that’s improved significantly over the last few years.

What’s really interesting is that I am feeling more introverted as a result of
the results of the test. Unsure if it’s just a self fulfilling prophecy at work
or if it’s just that I’m still fairly exhausted from the last week.

Hard to draw a ton of conclusions since there really isn’t a lot of test data at
play here and probably way more variables than I’m able to realize.

I’m considering maybe starting to take the test a bit more regularly, perhaps
quarterly, to start getting some additional data and data that’s more related to
how I’m feeling at that time and not just when I’m riding a post-work retreat
high.

Speaking of work retreats, we have a new careers page over at Sumo
and are looking for great people to be a part of the Sumo Family!

Josh Sherman - The Man, The Myth, The Avatar

About Josh

Husband. Father. Pug dad. Musician. Founder of Holiday API, Head of Engineering and Emoji Specialist at Mailshake, and author of the best damn Lorem Ipsum Library for PHP.


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