[infpblog]

For many INFPs after the diplomas, a day can be generally broken in to 3 groups of 8 hours: the work 8 hours, the sleep 8 hours and the flexible 8 hours.

The other thing about INFPs is that we have an idealized version of how we want our life to be and the kind of person we want to be. Also, it seems that INFPs generally value relationships, their art, etc. more than they value work.

So here's what I don't get? Why does it seem that INFPs focus on, complain about WORK. There are threads about not wanting some McJob, threads about the right college career, threads about the ideal job where INFPs would be valued. It seems INFPs are preoccupied about making the work 8 hours ideal when all the things we value fall into the flexible 8 hours.

Why aren't INFPs talking about how to make the flexible 8 hours ideal? We value relationships and some are having difficulty finding that significant other. However, I don't read about any INFPs doing a single hour of reading into what makes relationships work. It's seems like trial and error.

INFPs spend a ton of money and energy for a degree that may or may not make them happy. If something is important, shouldn't trial and error be the last thing we do. If relationships are more important than work, shouldn't we be paying someone to give us a degree in how to have meaningful relationships and use trial and error to find the right work?

What about the other stuff besides relationships that are more important to many INFPs other than work? If the flexible 8 hours are more important than the work 8 hours, shouldn't INFPs try to concentrate on learning how to make those flexible 8 hours as ideal as possible first instead of focusing on how to make the work 8 hours ideal?

 

[obz900]

We value relationships and some are having difficulty finding that significant other. However, I don't read about any INFPs doing a single hour of reading into what makes relationships work. It's seems like trial and error.

If relationships are more important than work, shouldn't we be paying someone to give us a degree in how to have meaningful relationships and use trial and error to find the right work?

Finding a meaningful relationship doesn't seem like something you can find in a self-help book.

 

[infpblog]

Finding a meaningful relationship doesn't seem like something you can find in a self-help book.

Do INFPs even look?

Meeting the right person is a probability game. If you're someone to who prefers being a homebody, you have a better probability of meeting the right person at a bookstore versus a coffee shop. Richard Wiseman has a book called the Luck Factor about how "lucky" people increase their probability of getting a desired outcome from how they behave and the attitudes they adopt.

What if you do end up meeting someone who could be the one? Do you know how to build rapport? Since most of our communication regarding attitudes and feelings is non-verbal, shouldn't we learn to be more aware of those non-verbal cues and figure out what we may do unconsciously to give off the wrong vibe. There's hundreds of books on body language, neurolinguistics programming and how to build rapport.

What about when you're in a relationships? How you feel loved could be very different from how your significant other feels loved. There's a book called the Five Love Languages. You may be a physical touch person. When your hugged and held close that's how you feel loved and maybe your lowest love language is words of affirmation. You could care less if someone tells you how great you are. People tend to assume the way they like to receive love is how others like to receive love. If you're significant other has Words of Affirmation as their highest, you would rarely tell them they looked pretty if our lowest was words of affirmation. Which then leads to your SO feeling less loved.

Okay, what about when you get married. INFPs seem to higher divorce rate, but I can't find a decent study on that. INFPs idealize marriage and when they end up having to deal with the day to day, they can't handle it.

The top three reasons why marriages break up are : Money, sex and children. In that order. I learned that from a book.

No single book is ever going to give us all the answers to make the flexible 8 hours ideal, but shouldn't we be looking at least?

 

[wanderingone]

I'm gonna have to disagree about looking for these sorts of answers in a book. Part of being idealist for me is about getting into a relationship "naturally" so to speak. All those things you discussed, while likely true, are the last things i want in my head when i meet someone... all i want in my head is them. This I'm sure is not the most effective method, but, it isn't always about effectiveness. We spend time and money reading books and taking classes for a career because money is meaningless. It's just a game that you have to play, and if you play it right then you can afford to survive. By playing the money game, we're focusing less on it... getting a degree and an hourly job and all that are a way of saying "the external model for this is good enough, it doesn't have to be perfect". I think for an INFP the real kind of focus comes in the form of perception and imagination, and i think more than anything, we're always looking for and imagining love. Love is too important and too real to be reduced to probabilities and the results of studies. Only an internal model and reference is significant enough to be considered.. for me anyway. When you meet your soulmate, you know, and it doesn't matter what you've read.

 

[A Better Tomorrow]

Right now in my life, I value finding work over relationships. Yes, i'd be nice to meet someone, but that is not my main priority right now. I am not trying to find an ideal career, just one that is low stress and I can be content with. I think these next few years of my life, a needed amount of idealism will be beaten out of me and I will probably return back to school for something. I have thought about going back school for counseling, hairstylist, graphic design, teaching, psychologist, computer science, phd to teach college, but in reality, I think all of these careers would get repetitive and unfulfilling after a short time, and expensive. To be honest, I like helping people, but don't feel a call towards it, and I already put enough emotional stress on myself as it is, so putting others stress on me too probably wouldn't be the best.

 

[Drea]

Doing a job I love is part of my idealism. I want to spend ALL 24 hours of my day doing what I love. 8 hours a day is a significant portion of my life and i'm not going to throw it away. Does this mean I'm sacrificing my other 8 leisure hours? Not at all!

 

[infpblog]

Doing a job I love is part of my idealism. I want to spend ALL 24 hours of my day doing what I love. 8 hours a day is a significant portion of my life and i'm not going to throw it away. Does this mean I'm sacrificing my other 8 leisure hours? Not at all!

The work 8 hours are part of the INFP idealism, and so are the leisure 8 hours. What I'm talking about is the matter of priorities.

A person only has so much energy, attention and focus in any given period of time. If the work 8 hours are your highest value then of course you should spend as much resources on making those 8 hours perfect first.

However, many INFPs don't say that work is their highest value. They're also the ones saying that the other parts of their life aren't going that well either.

Goethe said, "Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least." He was talking about getting our priorities straight. The things we value most should be the things we spend the most time and energy upon.

So what does it say about a person that knows their values, but doesn't live by them. If someone values all these other things over work, and these other things aren't ideal, what does it say when someone spends more time searching for a way to make work ideal then those other things.

 

[infpblog]

I'm gonna have to disagree about looking for these sorts of answers in a book. Part of being idealist for me is about getting into a relationship "naturally" so to speak. All those things you discussed, while likely true, are the last things i want in my head when i meet someone... all i want in my head is them. This I'm sure is not the most effective method, but, it isn't always about effectiveness.

...I think for an INFP the real kind of focus comes in the form of perception and imagination, and i think more than anything, we're always looking for and imagining love. Love is too important and too real to be reduced to probabilities and the results of studies. Only an internal model and reference is significant enough to be considered.. for me anyway.

Relationships share similarities with writing. There's two parts for both: skill and style.

The skill part or the craft part for writing is learning sentence structure, developing characters. All our favorites writers have developed their skills at effective writing. However, all writers have their own unique style when they write so no two stories are exactly the same. I don't think any of the writers thinks, oh the last thing I want in my head when I write is that a sentence should probably have a subject and an verb. Their taking the various skills they've developed and writing the book "naturally."

There's the something called the Theory of Multiple Intelligence. The theory's eight currently accepted intelligences are:

* Spatial
* Linguistic
* Logical-mathematical
* Kinesthetic
* Musical
* Interpersonal
* Intrapersonal
* Naturalist

Some people are "natural", on other words they intuitively and easily learn the skills in that intelligence. Someone with a high kinesthetic intelligence would be good at sports and dance. If some people are natural at a particular intelligence then there must mean that there are some people that just suck at a particular intelligence where it's harder to learn.

In other words, our "perception and imagination" in that particular intelligence suck. I'm talking about Interpersonal intelligence. If INFPs were naturals at Interpersonal intelligence, there would be less threads about how people misunderstand us and how our relationships end up badly.

So tell me if I'm interpreting this all wrong, but what I hear you saying is this:

Love is important. But even though we aren't naturally gifted at innately learning the skills to have a relationships, it's more "natural" to suck at it for a long time until we fail at enough relationships to learn what not to do.

When you meet your soulmate, you know, and it doesn't matter what you've read.

There's been a thread recently where an INFP wife dislikes it when her in-laws come over for weeks at a time and her ESTJ husband doesn't seem to care.

There are threads about how INFPs thought they were with their soulmates but ended up breaking up. So were these INFPs mistaken in thinking these people were their soulmates because a perfect relationship would have the issues that broke them up. Or do you think that even though someone is a soulmate doesn't bypass the need to learn relationships skills which INFPs aren't natural at?

Meeting your soulmate and having a good relationships with your soulmate are two different things.

 

[admama]

I think INFPs want a choice in how their time is spent! There is nothing worse, to me anyway, than feeling like I'm trapped doing something I hate for 9 hours a day. I honestly spend way more of my work day doing things other than working than I should. I rush through my work (though I do a thorough job) and then get to thinking and scheming and researching whatever I'm interested in that day. It's like I work all day, but for my own company that does not pay me. My mind has to be occupied and work doesn't do it for me!

Those 8 free hours, you have a choice to do whatever you wish with them. The 8 "prison" hours are ones you spend doing something meaningless to earn a paycheck. I want those 8 hours to be meaningful! That's why I'm going back to school soon to become an archivist or historian - because I sit at work researching history and genealogy all day just because I want to. I'm hoping that if I get a job in the field and I have to do it, it will still have the same level of enjoyment and wonder for me that my own research does.

 

[admama]

According to careerplanner.com, An INFPs job must offer meaning and value and it must be fun. I definitely identify with this!

 

[Ectoplasm]

I have tried to make my flexible eight hours better spent or more ideal as I came to the conclusion at work that I probably don't care or have the ability to make that particular job ideal. I try and plan things for my evening whilst grinding the monotony at work, what I will write here, what I will search on Google to try and find a life true to me etc. yet when I get here to the computer very little actually gets done. I've allowed myself very generous amounts of free time these past few years by keeping outgoings and social commitments small but having large amounts of time and few financial burdens hasn't stopped me procrastinating or being lazy. I lament how I was planning the same thing literally a year previously but still can't bring myself to make my flexible eight hours ideal and to carry them out as such. I can blame procrastination/tiredness/boredom etc. but I only have myself to blame.