[jdmn]

During this last year, I've seen myself in need to develop my Thinking function. Particularly the Extroverted Thinking function. I have lots of responsabilities, particularly doing a social project and several team work assignments. This has made me develop organization skills, organizing people and their roles and I have also found the need to be very pressuring and harsh with some people, in order to make them work.

But I find myself to be very stressed with this activities, as I don't like to pressure people in order to accomplish what we want. I also don't like too much to judge people according to their utility, since not everyone has the same skills, and sometimes they don't even know how to handle their strenghts. I like self sufficient people who can make things on their own, but I don't work with those people all the time. I seem to handle it well, but it takes me a lot of mental energy.

So, how do you handle your thinking function when you need to use it?

 

[saccharomyces]

well, for one thing, i used to think that i could be a thinking type for quite some time, because i genuinely enjoy purely intellectual challenges and am very successful in academic pursuits of my own choice, i can develop theories that turn out to be correct and applicable with great pleasure and i just love theoretical discussions, especially if that involves evaluating and criticising for improvement an already existing theory. then again, the fact that it's much more important to me to be considerate than precise in most situations (like, not really telling someone he's wrong in a harsh manner, even if i know the scientific theory that the person is trying to use better than the person himself and could point out numerous mistakes, rather trying to gently persuade the person to do more research on the subject or sth) and that emotional arguments DO seem very valid to me, i figured that the functions thing is not about the level to which they are developed, but about choice - i CHOOSE both consciously and unconsciously to rely on my feeling in most situations, even though i can use my thinking almost just as well.
i have an older friend who's also into socionics and has studied in the same school as i have, and she said that the people from our school do tend to be this way - even if you're a feeling type, if your thinking is not highly developed, you just can't survive academically, so we kind of turn out to be, umm, slighty 'bent' personalities, so i guess i might not be your regular respondent.

then again, i kind of think that maybe us rational feeling types might have less problems using our thinking function that irrationals, like, an enfj can rely on thinking much easier than an enfp, because, well, dominant analytical function does make you more accustomed to using that [analytical] channel, right? so you just kind of have to, umm, switch the material with which you work in that channel, like, from personal to impersonal facts, and you're there, whereas an irrational would have to switch between channels themselves, which would seem to me as slightly more difficult. then again, this is just how i see it, the theory says that our thinking is the inferior function, so maybe i'm wrong, but i like to believe that it's not that difficult to develop your other functions, not only dominant or auxilliary one, especially if the environment you're in requires it.

 

[yumiii]

I agree with saccharomyces, actually, though I'm not quite well-versed with the mbti. I have noticed however, that whenever I'm by myself, and I'm in school doing some sort of academic related things, whenever I test myself, I'd always come out as NT. I wonder if it's weird sometimes, that you can be aware of your 'two sides', so to speak. I am very aware of my NT-ish side, it's strange. It's completely different from my normal NF self. Whereas my normal self is completely carefree, always happy, extremely empathic, considerate and all that, my NT, while I can't say is harsh, can be brutally honest to the point of harsh and can't even be bothered with people's problems. Whenever I'm in this state, I often think of people's problems as nuisances, and it bothers me a lot, but's it's how I function in school-related projects.

That said, whenever I'm with my friends, the NT in me subsides, and I become 'normal' again. It's easier that way, I'm much happier, and I don't feel so uncomfortable by the seeming apathy that I usually feel during the moments when I use my Thinking function. It takes way too much of a toll.