Ni. I love Ni. It is amazing, not mystical. Though it might seem mystical on the outside.
I don't know what the Ni Te combo looks like. Talking with my ENTJ friend and my ENTJ BIL really make is sound very different about how that combo works. Of course, both are great in business, organizing, delegating, etc. One is an entrepreneur with a greatly expanding workforce and the other is the youngest manager ever in his position for a major multinational corporation and likely be in corporate management relatively quickly. I can talk with them, and we relate very well together, but what they see and do is just very different than how I role. That isn't a bad thing at all, of course, but the Te & Ni show just plays a very different tune than the Fe & Ni show.
So, what is Ni to me? As a child, it meant a hunger. I devoured information nonstop. I needed to feed Ni to give it info to add to its grand understanding. Now, being it is Ni & Fe not Ni & Te, it isn't some neat and easily explained Te structure here. It is messy and complex and deep and I will try to give it an adequate description.
Ni is knowing a 80 to 90% understanding of something without effort, which is an adequate understanding level for my Fe to act on. Errors are OK in most cases, because it usually isn't worth the effort to get to 100% accuracy, especially because we can almost never know the complete information to judge anyway.
Here is an Ni example from my life:
A few years ago, I joined a project for work, which almost every other person had been on for a year. Everyone on the project was smart. All had a graduate degree and experience in the field. As I chatted with them all, I learned that some were truly brilliant people, others just moderately smart, but still smart folks.
For me, I quickly saw the entire picture come together within days. A month later I was promoted. The project manger said I was the only one she had confidence in and made me the lead person on the project, no matter I had barely been on the project and they had been on for a year and more.
A few months later, one of the people who had been on for a year before me, who I knew to be a very intelligent person, had a "A-ha" moment and finally understand a very small part of the matter. I was shocked. His insight was something I had experience after a few days.
This story is largely typical in my experience. I just see things, the deeper meaning and understanding, so quick, as Ni and Fe work together in a magnificent whole.
Now, I can rarely explain the reasoning that got me to my understanding. That takes a little longer to get there, but the vision pops in.
Ni is very willing to reassess the vision in light of new information. But it is not always a quick process.
And for me, since, Ni is in service of Fe, Ni does not get to call the shots. It seems that Fe does not let it have free reign. Instead, Ni needs to sneak in an insight at times, like a shift kick to my backside, to get Fe to accept that things have changed. This radical reshaping can be painful, especially when it takes a core understanding and replaces it with something new. The more central the new concept is to the core, the more difficult it is to accept. But eventually, it will settle down into an
whole.
So, does Ni narrow perspective, especially in relationships, Amargith suggested in another
thread recently? I don't feel it does for NJs, but it might for SPs. I take in new information, run in through Ni and it slaps in a new conception and understanding. This is usually a pretty fast process for me, but not necessarily so. It does come to a single giant idea, but Se is constantly bringing in new information and the singular conception is not static.
For SPs, it might be different, so I do not know if I can speak for them and maybe an SP can address this issue.
Ni is quite a mystery to me, but I still feel that I relate to it more than most functions.
