Ti can be really draining for me to use so if you're experiencing same, I empathise!! But it is fun to learn to use. What's seriously difficult is that as a near-Si cripple, the clarity is really hard. So much easier to just hold the entire concept in mind, detail fuzzy, then go get detail when it's necessary.
Yes, exactly, it's easy to hold it in your mind intuitively, but working it all out - not so much. I get a tremendous kick out of the clarity and trying to work something out, although I'm clearly more like an enthusiastic puppy than a wise sensei in that regard, it's all a bit crude still I think, INPs are much more elegant and - yes - effortless about it. I have to really put myself in a certain mood in order to use it in a refined way, take it to the next level, manage a clear enunciation. And you're right it is draining after a while (possibly because we still want to hold it in our minds the way we do with the intuition, but it's heavy - still that is how we will manage to make crazy connections to/with/about it I think) and sometimes difficult to integrate into your general way of approaching the world. And you mention Ti, but based on the context in which it works best for me, the stuff I tap into, the "mood" I put myself in, I'd say it is Fi-related (as well). I spent quite some time being dissatisfied with Ni-Te (without realising it at the time I think), I (it) felt hollow...the progression to using more introverted judging, reaching for more substance, was rather natural. Was wondering whether you see Fi as playing a role in it at all.
Help me understand how you see INTP's helping you construct the details of a new box. Maybe a real-life example? Is it like you have a vision of what you'd like to do or where you'd like to go with something, but you don't really have the details of "how" that will be accomplished? And then the INTP is able to say, "just do a, b, c, x, y, z" and it'll work out just fine!" Is it something like that?
Actually, oddly enough, yeah. I can't really give you a "concrete concrete" example (I'm in academia), but say that I'm writing a paper and I have a nice and substantial shift and I've spent time trying to find tools and ways to think it out, integrating shifty ways of trying to conceptualise my initial shift with an actual way of conceptualising it (which means thinking hard, I don't have the feeling I actually *thought* much (consciously) before starting to use whatever can be related to Fi/Ti). If I give an INP a first draft of that they will not touch the shifts much, but they will help me improve my framework and see things (sometimes see things that are implicitly there, but I haven't managed to unearth yet or put into words) or hand me concepts that are extremely useful "you can do x, y, z and you should do a I think, then it'll be fine" and when I apply those things it does seem to bring things together. So yeah, I guess they see where I want to go and how I want to go about it and then help me get there. And sometimes while filling in your box you realise there are issues which would have remained obscured to you in the "intuitive mind-holding" mode or new shifts are triggered or it helps you think of the box as a circle connected to some odd blob-like thing, the possibilities are endless,but in this case not "empty"...I think that when you take an "enriched" idea back to RL (it's not my area, lol, but I don't think INTP ideas need to be Abstract Realm only) and apply it we might be able to solve complex and very real issues in ways that transcend the sometimes ad hoc character of (N)TJ solutions (BTW, I suppose those might help you out when you're feeling stuck in a situation because you" haven't thought it out properly" - in certain contexts)...hello philosophy I suppose.
Also, one thing that I've noticed is that when I write a piece I will, without realising it, bring the text together in the formal system of language...INPs seem to have the same with logic - it permeates what they write even though at first sight coherence might seem off (to me). It's kind of funny because as a perceivedly big bad serious INTJ I feel rather frivolous amongst these logic-savvy INPs.
As for effective communication - does it help to just realise where the INTJs you're interacting with are coming from? Or perhaps you could point out assumptions, thematise the communication issue when it pops up.