Personality Tag ISTJ: The Duty Fulfiller/Inspector

RULES

1. (optional) Thank whoever nominated you/Post the above button

2. Find two favorite quotes for your personality type

3. Name three favorite movie characters that have your personality and one weakness in your personality that you're trying to change (or more if you really want to)

4. Tell us a little bit about your personality

5. Have you ever taken a personality test? If so, which one?

6. Tag three to five people 

I was tagged by my sister to explain my personality type, but first, Rebekah, a few things on the above image you said I had to post on my blog: 

1. Your blog name should be horizontally centered for the sake of continuity and aesthetic appeal. The title is horizontally centered, the background is a grid, and your blog URL is screaming "OUT OF PLACE!"

2. This font that you picked has letters that are all the wrong heights; the uppercase are smaller than the lower case. This demonstrates a shocking lack of respect for a rationally founded tradition. 

3. The title is encroaching horribly into the introvert spaces, while the smaller and less ostentatious URL is not blocking any of the extroverts letters. This is inconsiderate of the introvert half of the grid, who did not even want to be there.

I am an ISTJ. In other words, your typical detail and fact oriented boring but very responsible person. 

ISTJs are the most common personality among men, (twice as common among men than women), the most common personality over all in the British population, and are most the most common personality among police officers as men, and librarians as women. Other common careers for the ISTJ are management and accounting.

ISTJs are rarely the villain or hero in stories. Usually they are the pillars of society, either manifesting themselves as the Voice of Reason, or Ye Olde Fuddy-Duddy, depending on the perspective of the writer. Some examples of ISTJs in books and movies would be the following (I tried to use some of the movies Rebekah did, so you can have an idea how our personalities interact sometimes):

Master Shifu, from Kung Fu Panda

Javert, from Les Mis (though he may be extroverted, I am not sure on this one)

Bagheera, from The Jungle Book

Manny, from Ice Age

Aragorn, from the Lord of the Rings

Spock, from Star Trek

Eeyore, from Winnie the Pooh

Puddleglum, from The Silver Chair

Wemmick's office character from Great Expectations (we do also have the side that goes home and sets off cannons, we just do not display it to the general public)

My two favorite historical ISTJs are George Washington and the Duke of Wellington (the English chap who beat Napoleon). 

The ISTJ personality's dominant trait is actually introverted sensing. This is a rather interesting fact, because everyone sees their secondary trait, extroverted thinking, the most strongly because it is extroverted, however, the sensing function is gathering vast amounts of data all the time and internalizing it into some sort of organized structure. Very little of this data actually comes out, and that which does has been pretty thoroughly verified and backed with tons of other data, when it comes out it presents the ISTJ as a very strongly thinking person, though, because the data is usually objective and organized logically. 

The thing to keep in mind with ISTJs in your life is that they are observant first, and thoughtful second. So, while they may not be acting really enthusiastic about what you are talking about, they may be just internalizing the information and comparing it against their structure of the world they have already created with other data. I will seem the most excited about that which I have already learned, understood, and processed completely, because my thinking can act extroverted right away with this, but I am always looking for new information to add, it just takes me a while to process any new information to the point where I am comfortable actually displaying a reaction. ISTJs are therefore not as stuck in their ways as they seem. They are only stuck in their ways when people spring things on them with no time to process before expecting a reaction. This is when the ISTJ falls back on the already known data and digs their heels in. They like information, especially practical and useful information from people who they consider to be reliable sources of information relevant to their job, hobbies, or other interests and character areas they want to see grow in their own life. 

Maintaining friends take a great deal of effort for the ISTJ. We are introverted, but also a personality hesitant to commit at all without committing fully in projects.  People are hard to commit to, though, because they do not have deadlines or a concrete grading system. Too much fuzzy area for the black and white ISTJ. The result is that they will develop acquaintances with many whom they can learn from, but only have a few close friends. Both acquaintances and friends are very intentionally hand-picked by the ISTJ. If an ISTJ frequently and voluntarily approaches and speaks to you, that alone is a compliment. They think you have something to offer them that they lack. 

This all sounds very calculating and selfish. Sometimes, though, the ISTJ does make a sacrificial relationship. They see someone who needs them, and they are willing to take the responsibility for making that person successful in their project or comfortable in their surroundings (they much prefer and are better at the former). Sometimes they regret that they have taken on this responsibility, though, and feel resentful and trapped in by this duty-compelled project or relationship, even though they made the initial decision to commit. 

Introverted feeling is the ISTJ's third function. In other words, my feelings are in fact weaker than my thinking, but not nearly as much as they seem, because the thinking function is extroverted and the feeling function is introverted. Feeling is therefore EXTREMELY difficult for ISTJs to display, and when we try to force ourselves to act in a feeling manner it can end up seeming ridiculous to us and everyone else (I speak this from experience). ISTJs' intuition is extroverted, but it is also our fourth, and worst function. I think the extroverted intuition is why I like to stereotype people, but I am also bad at it because my intuition is crushed by my far superior and more reliable vast amount of concrete sensory data. When I stereotype it is not directed by my gut, but my knowledge that a particular observed trait in a person usually lines up with other traits I have observed in many other similar people.

Acting on feeling or intuition seems very unstable to the fact-grounded ISTJs, but we realize other people sometimes need the illusion of spontaneity, so we prepare for it by studying different subjects to talk about, and have to be intentional about showing emotion, affection, and so forth. This does not mean we are not actually feeling it, we just feel no need to express it externally (for our own sake, anyway). I don't know if other ISTJs do this, but I actually plan how I will react to some things before time, if I know external display of feelings is important to the person I am interacting with, and I care about them enough to stretch myself out of my comfort zone to give them personal satisfaction. This is very draining, however (even more so because doing this intentionally makes me feel slightly "fake", which is a terrible thought to the truth driven ISTJ). If I am displaying the more negative emotions such as anger, sadness, or anxiety, those are genuine and unplanned and I'm probably beating myself up for losing control. In fact I probably have a much higher threshold for displaying these than those who are emotionally impulsive, because that means the feelings were strong enough to get past all of my usual barriers of logic, self control, and the desire to uphold order and not be a nuisance. I never plan to display something that would distress someone else especially when its me centric.

The dry sense of humor is actually a large part of the ISTJs personality that many people do not recognize and/or appreciate. For one thing, most of our snarky comments we keep to ourselves, and for another thing, many times people do not even realize that we are joking, because we joke with a straight face. If I am not careful, my sense of humor can be quite cruel, because I use true, concrete facts about something at just the right moment to bring out the irony in it. If people are particularly attached to that thing, they may get offended on its behalf. Lots of times I am rather fond of the things I make fun of myself, and I like jokes that relate to the things I am familiar with and understand the most, since I can see the irony from the most angles with the data I have internally gathered that relates to said topic, so I do not necessarily see this as offensive, but the more sensitive types take it quite personally sometimes. 

Pretty much, don't take ISTJs personally. They don't mean it that way. If an ISTJ actually voices one of these snarky comments at your expense it is because they like you enough to have gathered a significant amount of data on you, and devoted time and thought to organizing that data into the perfectly timed jab. Be flattered. 

The one trait I would prefer to change is my general insensitivity. Sometimes this is nice, since I take criticism well, and am capable of providing criticism clearly and objectively. Errors jump out at me, so I see them quickly as well. However, this creates difficulty in relating to people, providing support and comfort, and being enthusiastic about things that are not extremely high quality and practically useful.

Sorry that was so long, but hopefully this post will clear some things up about the ISTJ personality for you. It is a common personality, and is generally uncommunicative of its own feelings and thought processes, so a lot of misconceptions have been formed considering the exact amount of boring and lack of emotion in the ISTJ.

Finally, I have taken this test in about a dozen different websites, and read the information provided on my personality on each to develop an idea of the general consensus on ISTJs, as well as to get some different perspectives on the issue. https://www.16personalities.com is one that seems fairly mainstream and accurate. 

The two people I am going to tag are: 

Madi Hageman at Once Lost now Found

Sharon Small at The Smallest Small

Field Trip!

Some days ago, it was brought to my attention, that one of our Illustrious Cousins (Oliver, age 10) had a desire to visit a used bookstore. Since this is an inclination to be encouraged, I made it a point to take him as soon as possible. 

Thus, on Tuesday, we found ourselves in the Tacoma Book Center, the largest used bookstore in Washington. More than 500,000 books line the shelves, stretching to the ceiling, and in every direction. I know what genres I like, so I spent the majority of my time in children's literature and military history, but we did make sure to go into each room. Oliver picked out a couple books, and I came home with a stack as well: 

(Ignore the top three; I acquired those elsewhere, but didn't want to bother with taking another picture.)

Since the titles are probably a bit hard to read sideways (and because I want to talk about my new books more...), here they are in list format:

1. Three Doctor Doolittle books (The Voyages, The Green Canary, and Doctor Doolittle's Garden.)

2. The Reluctant Dragon—this is not a whole book, but a short story by Kenneth Grahame in Dream Days. I picked up this version because it's illustrated by Ernest H. Shepard! Those of you who know my fascination with Winnie-The-Pooh will understand.

3. The Way of the Scarlet Pimpernel, first edition, because of the coolness factor. As if I needed to be more of a book snob...I half wish I was still blissfully unaware of there being such a thing as a first edition. 

4. Captain Blood, my favorite Rafael Sabatini book. There were several Sabatini titles there that I wanted to pick up, but this was at the top of my list, and I was running out of cash...

5. Deep Down, Red Rooney, and The Giant of the North, by R.M. Ballantyne. I've often lamented the fact that while G.A. Henty can be easily found in various hard back and paper back editions, Ballantyne is almost entirely out of print. I was delighted to find these, and would have bought all the Ballantyne titles they had, if my budget had allowed it. 

Well, those are the books I got for myself. I also got Oliver a pictorial encyclopedia of WWII Combat Planes, since we share a fascination with WWII plans. Really cool, with detailed diagrams. 

The best find, though, was something I picked out for our younger kids: two short stories by A. A. Milne which I had never seen or heard of before!! "Prince Rabbit" and "The Princess Who Could not Laugh". For a serious Milne aficionado, this was a stupendous discovery. As with anything written by Milne, they are hilarious.

Most of the books I got this time I've read already and plan to read again, since I'm trying to build up my library with books worth re-reading. Have you read any of these? and if not, what in the world? Get to it!