sorry if this is an immature question, but what makes Ti so much slower to use than Te?
No, it's a good question. Ti is very reflective. Because it wants to be so precise, so accurate, it wants to mull things over, weigh the pro's and the con's, almost turn things into a philosophical debate (that's at the extreme, of course). It doesn't just want to know what the best method of doing something is; it wants to know "why" it's the best method. What are all the possibilities and then let's break down each possibility to see which one is best. When people say to me, "Why are you doing it that way? Haven't you thought about X, Y, and Z?" The answer is almost always, "Yes. I've thought
a lot about X, Y, and Z. Like when I went home from work yesterday, and researched X, Y, and Z for 2 hours online and then read 50 pages of a book on X, and then laid in bed for 2 more hours pondering it some more. So, yes, I have definitely thought about it in a lot of detail."
I have read that Te thinks things through
as it speaks. As an extroverted function, when the Te user is communicating with people, the communication is helping them to figure things out. I know an ESTJ, for example, who will say stuff like, "OK, let's go over here and take this apart, then we will go over there and fix that other thing. Once we do that, then we'll be able to fix the other thing. Oh wait, that won't work. Maybe we should do this first...." He is figuring it out by talking through it.
Ti isn't like that. I do my best thinking when other people aren't around. Having to explain myself can sometimes be a distraction. I need a clear mind, without much noise, without much talking. If there's a lot of noise and talking, Ti doesn't work as well for me. I remember one job I had, I couldn't wait to go home because it was so noisy. I would think, "Now I can finally go home and do some
real thinking!
If you're ENFP, it might help to think about the differences between Ne and Fi. Ne, being an extroverted function, just speaks its mind freely. It doesn't have much of a filter. It just blurts some things out there. Fi, on the other hand, is more of an internal, "keep it to myself" function. It needs time to sort things out. You have to be patient with it. Like if you experienced something painful or hurtful, you might want some time alone to sort through Fi. That's how Ti is. It *can be* fast - like witty remarks and stuff like that. But, if it's something complex that has a lot of variables, it doesn't want to go fast. It wants to go at it's own speed so that it has time to learn, to weigh the pro's and con's, and to "really get it right". It's more concerned with accuracy, even if it takes several months. Ti hates to move forward if it knows that it might be wrong. It only feels comfortable moving forward if it *knows* that it's right - and sometimes that takes a long time.