[ESTJ] Ask an ESTJ!

[SD45T-2]

Oh, there are hundreds of those (do you know the one where they lock an engineer,a physicist and a mathematician (a topologist) into a room with a can of food and no can opener?)

Nope.

 

[Red Herring]

Nope.

They lock a physicist, an engineer and a topologist into a cells with nothing to eat but a can of spaghettis and no can opener. After a few das they unlock the cells and find:
- the engineer in a cell that has spaghetti sauce all over the walls, the can is covered with dents but open and he obviously enjoyed his food.
- the physicist sittin next to a neat, clean empty can, smiling
- when they come to the topologist's cell, they find it empty, a lot of calculations written on the wall and the intact can on the floor...until they hear his voice from inside the can: "damn sign error!!!"

EDIT: There's also this alternative I just found on this site:

There was a mad scientist (a mad SOCIAL scientist) who kidnapped three colleagues, an engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician, and locked each of them in separate cells with plenty of canned food and water but no can opener.
A month later, returning, the mad scientist went to the engineer's cell and found it long empty. The engineer had constructed a can opener from pocket trash, used aluminum shavings and dried sugar to make an explosive,and escaped.
The physicist had worked out the angle necessary to knock the lids off the tin cans by throwing them against the wall. She was developing a good pitching arm and a new quantum theory.
The mathematician had stacked the unopened cans into a surprising solution to the kissing problem; his desicated corpse was propped calmly against a wall, and this was inscribed on the floor in blood:
THEOREM: If I can't open these cans, I'll die.
PROOF: Assume the opposite ...

 

[Coriolis]

There is a surprising amount of truth to these. The first time my SO (an engineer) and I (a physicist) cooked together, it went a bit like that.

 

[The Great One]

Nope, totally makes sense. Same exact thing with Fi. It's understanding and the ideal that's most important, because proper implementation can't take place until those things are fully achieved.

Well, I'm glad you understand at least.

 

[The Great One]

Completely agree. The real world is overrated

Do you know the one about the mathematician who wakes up at night and sees his bedroom is on fire, looks around, sees there is a fire extinguisher in the corner and turns around to sleep some more because the problem has an unambiguous solution?

I'm glad you agree.

Re: Ti vs Te...
A while ago, my husband and I watched this Ted talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html We also have an ongoing discussion about that. He's convinced I'm making myself miserable by not being contented with what I have. In the words of the talk, I'm not using that artificial happiness thingy (enough). According to him, I'm forgetting to enjoy myself while telling myself "If only I had this, if only I could do that"

But I'm terribly afraid I would miss a chance if I got too used to my situation. I'm afraid that, by being contented, I would not work as hard to make things better.
I'm happy if I can improve the world, even by a little bit. So I'm constantly, like The Great One describes, evaluating all things and see if I can improve anything - be it the next meal, be it my working routine, be it my teaching. I'm constantly finding things to improve. And that doesn't make me unhappy. What makes me unhappy is the fact that I have to spend nearly all my time and energy maintaining the status quo. So I'm struggling the whole day to get the house, the yard, the school work ready... and then I'm exhausted and I didn't even make some pancakes to improve the day. I'm not happy with any status quo - even if the status quo would have me as a novel writer as famous and rich as J.K. Rowling. Then my next book will need to be better yet.

Husband - and I guess more Te/Si users - are happy if they did well, are happy to spend the evening relaxing, they make their decisions and don't look back, confident that they have made the best one, or at least, that trying to change it now will be more trouble than it is worth. So it's useless to look back. I do that all the time, telling myself to do better next time.

I know what you mean. Whenever I see something and it looks half baked, I just sit there and ponder, "How can I make this better". Also, one thing that really hurts me is when I have a big problem that I can't seem to possibly fix no matter what I do. Then, it seems like I will get nothing done the rest of the day, because I will have a tsunami of endlessness thoughts on how I could make this problem better. I can't eat, I can't sleep, I feel like I'm trapped. I hate when this happens. Luckily I think I have learned to compartmentalize problems in order to get on with my day. It's almost like playing a video game and pressing the "save button" and coming back to the game later. However, I always have to finish the game.

 

[Winds of Thor]

Have you ever lived with any ENTP(s)? I have read that ESTJs and ENTPs living under the same roof is like ideal roomates.

 

[SD45T-2]

Have you ever lived with any ENTP(s)? I have read that ESTJs and ENTPs living under the same roof is like ideal roomates.

No, I've never lived with an ENTP. I don't think EJCC has either.

 

[Winds of Thor]

No, I've never lived with an ENTP. I don't think EJCC has either.

Thanks and the reason for the question is because I have lived with one, but they are part of my direct family. So the question still intrigues me. (It's hard to know because family would be another kind of dynamic added, I expect).

 

[The Great One]

Have you ever lived with any ENTP(s)? I have read that ESTJs and ENTPs living under the same roof is like ideal roomates.

I've lived with an ESTJ. It wasn't that bad.

 

[Winds of Thor]

I've lived with an ESTJ. It wasn't that bad.

Fair enough. BTW you been to 5-points in Jax?

 

[The Great One]

Fair enough. BTW you been to 5-points in Jax?

Yes. It's near the riverside on the Westside basically. It's a pretty cool place. I go to a hookah bar down there called, "The Casbah" all the time. Why do you ask?

 

[Winds of Thor]

Yes. It's near the riverside on the Westside basically. It's a pretty cool place. I go to a hookah bar down there called, "The Casbah" all the time. Why do you ask?

Ohh..Been there too..not The Casbah..but other places.

 

[The Great One]

Ohh..Been there too..not The Casbah..but other places.

Yep, it's a pretty cool part of town. It's very open-minded as well, which I like.

 

[Tamske]

Have you ever lived with any ENTP(s)? I have read that ESTJs and ENTPs living under the same roof is like ideal roomates.

I'm married to an ESTJ :-D. Still get along very well, and I'm sure we'll be able to stand our vows into eternity. Well, almost sure. Only that pesky mortality thing stands in the way.

By the way, my ESTJ did solve a problem of mine very beautifully, and I'm itching to tell you guys.
The concrete guise of the "Ti/Te/decisions and regrets" thing was this. I'm a teacher and I would like to be a writer. Right now, I'm working crappy interim jobs and ANY writing job would be better, if only I make some money with it. But if you teach long enough, you'll get a priority treatment for jobs soon enough and, after that, you get tenure. Everybody agrees tenure is the holy grail for teachers: a steady job, a steady income - even steadier than most non-governmental jobs would be. But.
Picture this: a 40-something old Tamske, with a good, steady job as a tenured teacher, and getting my first book published and my first writing money coming in. How difficult would that be to give up the teaching job then? How difficult would it be to convince my ESTJ that, yes, writing is the thing I want to do, even if that job is anything but steady? While on the outside, I say "yes, I want a steady job; yes, I want a job closer to home," on the inside I scream "NO I don't want a better job! Because if it's good, I wouldn't be able to give it up!!"

I told him all this. And I also told him that, yes, I knew it's stupid to wish for a crappy job only because I'd be able to switch to the writing one better. But I wanted to hear from him: "okay, here's a minimum you have to earn from writing and then you can switch, and that minimum won't change even if your day job earns you a million more", so I would genuinely strive for better jobs.
His answer?
"Well, actually it's the other way around. It's about a teacher's job, isn't it? A tenured teacher can take leave for as long as she wants, and if she comes back they have to give her the job back. So you've got a safety net when the writing fails. If you're tenured, you can try and jump to the writing one earlier!"

... REALLY?? :-D Now I can say "I want to get a steady job as a teacher" and be 100% honest!

 

[Winds of Thor]

Why not do both? Is your passion for writing a burning platform inside your soul? What do you write about? What would you feel best or strongest writing about, if I may ask?.

 

[Tamske]

Why not do both? Is your passion for writing a burning platform inside your soul? What do you write about? What would you feel best or strongest writing about, if I may ask?.

I am doing both, of course! Only the work gets in the way quite often. If you're officially jobless (writing doesn't count, especially not if your income from that is negative), you can't afford to be choosy about jobs. If I ever get into the more steady/secure position, I'd gladly ask for a part-time job.
About writing: stories, novels,... Especially fantasy and science fiction or some mixture of both. The magic in fantasy is always quite scientific... A burning platform, indeed, that's how it feels. At the moment, I'm writing a science fiction novel taking place in the United Cities of Europe, where friendship is mandatory and monitored by government, and where imagination is a mental disease and can be cured. And where, if you aren't an official friend of a missing classmate, you're not supposed to realize the classmate is missing.

Edit: I'm sorry to get off-topic here, but if someone asks about my writing, I can't help but get enthousiastic about it!

 

[EJCC]

Will reply to old posts soon, now that I've revived the thread, but for now I have a question that is not quite fully formed, that I'll ask here because I'm not sure where else it would go.

There are people I've met throughout my life, who have tended to switch conversational moods extremely abruptly. They'll be cheerful one moment, jovial, pleasant, in high spirits, and then at the drop of a hat they become as serious as death. (I'm not including abrupt mood switching from cheerfulness to angry venting, because I've seen that in a TON of people, especially Fi users.) It doesn't surprise me when a conversation partner does that to me, but I know that it surprises others, because I tend to do that in conversation, and I've seen others react that way to me. I can't think of particular types that do it, except my own, and possibly ESTPs, since I've seen [MENTION=6109]Halla74[/MENTION] make post transitions like that on TypeC, and I know that his online self is a good reflection of his real life self. (I haven't met him, but my gut tells me that this is so!)

Like I said, none of this is fully formed in my head yet; I can barely articulate what it is that I'm observing. All I know is that plenty of people don't communicate like that. For example, I've never seen anyone with Fe dom or aux communicate like that. So I was wondering: is it type-related? What have you folks' observations been, regarding this, of ESTJs and others? Do you have ANY idea what I've been rambling about?

 

[RDF]

Will reply to old posts soon, now that I've revived the thread, but for now I have a question that is not quite fully formed, that I'll ask here because I'm not sure where else it would go.

There are people I've met throughout my life, who have tended to switch conversational moods extremely abruptly. They'll be cheerful one moment, jovial, pleasant, in high spirits, and then at the drop of a hat they become as serious as death. (I'm not including abrupt mood switching from cheerfulness to angry venting, because I've seen that in a TON of people, especially Fi users.) It doesn't surprise me when a conversation partner does that to me, but I know that it surprises others, because I tend to do that in conversation, and I've seen others react that way to me. I can't think of particular types that do it, except my own, and possibly ESTPs, since I've seen [MENTION=6109]Halla74[/MENTION] make post transitions like that on TypeC, and I know that his online self is a good reflection of his real life self. (I haven't met him, but my gut tells me that this is so!)

Like I said, none of this is fully formed in my head yet; I can barely articulate what it is that I'm observing. All I know is that plenty of people don't communicate like that. For example, I've never seen anyone with Fe dom or aux communicate like that. So I was wondering: is it type-related? What have you folks' observations been, regarding this, of ESTJs and others? Do you have ANY idea what I've been rambling about?

I had to think about it a bit. But for example:

1) My ESTJ step-mother can switch gears very quickly. She can be holding forth loudly like a used-car salesman, then suddenly lean in close and buttonhole you and talk quietly like she’s taking you into her confidence, and then switch back to a loud forceful approach, etc.

2) If you tell my ESTP sister a problem, she often laughs uproariously for a couple seconds and then turns completely serious and discusses solutions to the problem. I think the laughter is supposed to dispel concern and keep things light, but at the same time she wants to treat the problem and the person seriously. She can be very changeable, switching easily and quickly between laughter, mimicking accents, "putting on airs," and then instantly turning dead serious to make a point.

I equate these kinds of things as a form of “theatricality.” For example, when I took a public speaking course, the instructor said it’s not good to give an entire presentation with the same one intonation or approach throughout--it’s boring. Instead, when you’re up in front of an audience you should take people on a roller coaster ride: harangue them loudly, then lean in close and talk to them like old buddies, then stride back and forth and boom like a Marine Corps drill instructor, etc. He said that anytime you’re in front of an audience, you basically become an entertainer of one sort or another. So entertain your audience.

It’s funny that you compare ESTJs and ESTPs on this, because those two types don’t have a single function in common in their top four functions. So I think this kind of communication style would be due to Extraversion in general plus maybe a natural Sensor "ear" for picking up and using a “theatrical” approach to communicate well. I think a lot of the top actors and other entertainers in the world are ESTP and ESTJ, for example...

Anyway, I don’t know if that’s what you're asking about. But since taking that public speaking course I’ve tried to use a little more intonation myself and avoid the traditional flattened "introvert montone." Also I enjoy just sitting back and admiring the “theatrical” personality types when I run across them. Nothing wrong with a good showman plying his or her natural trade...

 

[Catzilla]

...My God, this thread is enormous. Ah...many of my questions have probably been asked before, but I can't bring myself to read all 188 pages.

I recently made a thread (here) asking whether my boyfriend was ENTJ or ESTJ. Well...after much analysis, it appears that he's most likely NOT an intuitive. Someone actually introduced the idea that he COULD be an ESTP, which is quite a likely option. I've done some research on both types, but it seems that my boyfriend doesn't COMPLETELY fit either one.

His similarities to ESTJs: He's very responsible and stable. He is committed and loyal. He does not allow boredom to influence big decisions (he won't flippantly quit a job or leave a relationship if it becomes stagnant). He focuses more on his responsibilities and close relationships (me, and family) rather than having a wide circle of acquaintances. He feels compelled to be the "provider" in our relationship, and is pretty good with money. He's quick to point out logical fallacies in others' thinking. He learns from his past mistakes. He's guided by strong moral values. He's ready to accept responsibility and consequences of his actions. He doesn't feel the need to TRY something if he believes it's bad (he's firmly anti-alcohol and anti-drugs). He values honesty and truth above almost everything.

His similarities to ESTPs: He is VERY fast-paced in his thinking, making him very witty and an excellent debater. He's extremely adaptable and lives in the moment. He's spontaneous when he can afford it. He's a huge jokester and has a laid-back personality. He doesn't hold much personal regard for rules (though he will follow them if he really has to, like in a job situation). He values the freedom to be himself and make personal decisions as he desires. He doesn't care to be very formal and isn't concerned with pleasantries (unless, again, he's in a job situation and would be reprimanded if he wasn't polite). He doesn't value tradition unless it's proven to be a good and/or practical method.

So basically... He's responsible and stable WITHOUT being a stick in the mud or a stickler for rules. He's spontaneous and loves freedom, yet remains committed and STEADY for important aspects of his life (he's extremely loyal in our relationship and wouldn't leave just because of boredom or if someone new came along. He also knows to not quit a job if it means he'll have stability).

After reading all sorts of descriptions of ESTJs, I keep getting the impression that they're all anal about rules and don't know how to have fun or be spontaneous. My boyfriend just isn't like this at all. He's fun and lively (he has ADHD too), yet isn't irresponsible or flippant or disloyal. Are many ESTJs like this as well? They can't all be like your stiff manager at work, right? And for that matter, surely ALL ESTPs can't be easily bored or irresponsible or uncommitted or hedonistic?

 

[Fourplay]

...My God, this thread is enormous. Ah...many of my questions have probably been asked before, but I can't bring myself to read all 188 pages.

I recently made a thread (here) asking whether my boyfriend was ENTJ or ESTJ. Well...after much analysis, it appears that he's most likely NOT an intuitive. Someone actually introduced the idea that he COULD be an ESTP, which is quite a likely option. I've done some research on both types, but it seems that my boyfriend doesn't COMPLETELY fit either one.

His similarities to ESTJs: He's very responsible and stable. He is committed and loyal. He does not allow boredom to influence big decisions (he won't flippantly quit a job or leave a relationship if it becomes stagnant). He focuses more on his responsibilities and close relationships (me, and family) rather than having a wide circle of acquaintances. He feels compelled to be the "provider" in our relationship, and is pretty good with money. He's quick to point out logical fallacies in others' thinking. He learns from his past mistakes. He's guided by strong moral values. He's ready to accept responsibility and consequences of his actions. He doesn't feel the need to TRY something if he believes it's bad (he's firmly anti-alcohol and anti-drugs). He values honesty and truth above almost everything.

His similarities to ESTPs: He is VERY fast-paced in his thinking, making him very witty and an excellent debater. He's extremely adaptable and lives in the moment. He's spontaneous when he can afford it. He's a huge jokester and has a laid-back personality. He doesn't hold much personal regard for rules (though he will follow them if he really has to, like in a job situation). He values the freedom to be himself and make personal decisions as he desires. He doesn't care to be very formal and isn't concerned with pleasantries (unless, again, he's in a job situation and would be reprimanded if he wasn't polite). He doesn't value tradition unless it's proven to be a good and/or practical method.

So basically... He's responsible and stable WITHOUT being a stick in the mud or a stickler for rules. He's spontaneous and loves freedom, yet remains committed and STEADY for important aspects of his life (he's extremely loyal in our relationship and wouldn't leave just because of boredom or if someone new came along. He also knows to not quit a job if it means he'll have stability).

After reading all sorts of descriptions of ESTJs, I keep getting the impression that they're all anal about rules and don't know how to have fun or be spontaneous. My boyfriend just isn't like this at all. He's fun and lively (he has ADHD too), yet isn't irresponsible or flippant or disloyal. Are many ESTJs like this as well? They can't all be like your stiff manager at work, right? And for that matter, surely ALL ESTPs can't be easily bored or irresponsible or uncommitted or hedonistic?

Really insightful. Thanks for this.

There is a misconception that all types have to be confined to some rules.

I could be extremely serious and detailed orientated when I need to be. Sometimes I go through phases where there are months upon months where I am acting in this role. At other times I can be really laid back and completely ADHD. It just depends on how we use our two dominant functions to focus on our goals and there we are mistaken that somehow any of our types must be confined to some field or way of being.