[SoftBoiledLife]

Hey all,

I've got a concern that's existed as far back as I can remember. I've noticed when it comes to learning stuff, say how to research topics for grad school or how to assemble a lego set, I'm always needing very very detailed instructions. If I don't have them, I'm often left feeling lost at sea.


Others around me don't seem to require such level of detail and thorough explanation. Some people seem to pick up new tasks and skills quite easily.


Is this common, or am I just born stupid? :sad:

 

[CallSignOWL]

i need instructions for research papers, yes. But with Legos and the like--I can usually get by on my own. (but that probably has to do with my favorite hobby being model airplanes. Sometimes you have to skip around a bit or ignore the instructions completely! :wink: )

OWL

 

[Rhee]

Is this common, or am I just born stupid? :sad:

You're not (dude, you're in grad school!). You're cautious, that's all.

Although I'm not as concerned about instructions per se, I have a similar learning problem in that I'm a slow reader. I read everything else really fast, but throw me a textbook and suddenly I'd start obsessing over footnotes. I used feel an inexplicable compulsion to understand/memorize every line as I went over them, which proved to be a problem especially in law school where I was expected to assimilate huge amounts of text in relatively short periods of time. So I learned to select and focus on the parts that mattered, trusting myself to pick out those bits that are really important. Things have improved vastly since then.

Like OWL pointed out, sometimes you just have to make skips and leaps. Life doesn't always come with detailed instructions, and situations will arise where you're forced to fill in those blanks yourself, think quickly on your feet and make snap judgments.

I think the key to speeding up things is to have faith in yourself. Trust your own judgment. You're smart enough to figure out the most logical research conclusions, and you don't really have to rely on every little detail and instruction for it to happen.

 

[ENTrePenuer]

LOW intuition.
You need stuff spelled out for you.
So yes you could appear to be stupid.
Does that make you stupid hmmm, I don't know.

NT's think they're geniuses but the world sees them as retards.


It's all about appearances, you will be good at anything you are taught so therefore you probably don't look stupid to people who don't see you trying to figure something out that you've not previously been exposed to.

Perception is reality so just keep your personal sense of stupidity to yourself.

 

[Diligence]

I'm like this as well. It might be an argument between judging and perceiving rather than between sensing and intuition. Perceivers go with the flow generally and tend to be exposed to new ideas and methods accidently, so they learn these methods more quickly compared to judgers. However, after cautious preparation and practice(like Rhee said), judgers could do these methods better and more efficiently(generally) than the perceivers because of their plan-orientated nature and sensing nature(more hands on approach). I wouldn't worry too much zeth006 because in many cases, its better to learn things slowly and efficiently than to jump in recklessly and mess up. Trust your decisions and balance the consequences of your decisions and soon you wont need detailed instructions to figure out what to do.

Hope this helps! :happy:

 

[lakamind]

Hey all,

I've got a concern that's existed as far back as I can remember. I've noticed when it comes to learning stuff, say how to research topics for grad school or how to assemble a lego set, I'm always needing very very detailed instructions. If I don't have them, I'm often left feeling lost at sea.


Others around me don't seem to require such level of detail and thorough explanation. Some people seem to pick up new tasks and skills quite easily.


Is this common, or am I just born stupid? :sad:

I have a hard time learning certain stuff....when I read, i sometimes have to read a chapter two or three times before I will understand, but give me a math problem and I, pretty much, can figure it out in my head.

Researching topics, when I was in school, was a major ordeal. I was never sure if I was picking the correct stuff.

People pick up things differently, so don't put to much into how fast they pick up new tasks compared to you.

Basically, We learn at different speeds.

 

[Namaste]

Hey all,

I've got a concern that's existed as far back as I can remember. I've noticed when it comes to learning stuff, say how to research topics for grad school or how to assemble a lego set, I'm always needing very very detailed instructions. If I don't have them, I'm often left feeling lost at sea.


Others around me don't seem to require such level of detail and thorough explanation. Some people seem to pick up new tasks and skills quite easily.


Is this common, or am I just born stupid? :sad:

I had trouble with this up until the middle of college until I started looking at the big picture of things which was quite the epiphany. Now I am the opposite: I have trouble with detailed instructions for essays because I prefer open ended. Same goes for tests: I dislike multiple choice and prefer open-ended essay questions to test my knowledge. This could be a type thing, but I always attributed it to the poor public school systems that teach us only how to get by by doing busy work and memorizing useless information without actually learning (but that's another rant). I could see it being a factor of our Si function, however.

 

[niss]

Hey all,

I've got a concern that's existed as far back as I can remember. I've noticed when it comes to learning stuff, say how to research topics for grad school or how to assemble a lego set, I'm always needing very very detailed instructions. If I don't have them, I'm often left feeling lost at sea.


Others around me don't seem to require such level of detail and thorough explanation. Some people seem to pick up new tasks and skills quite easily.


Is this common, or am I just born stupid? :sad:

No, you weren't born stupid, nor are you stupid. And ignore those that attempt to tell you otherwise. It is about learning styles and the way that you take in information.

Different learning styles exist throughout all personality types, and coupled with your preferred information gathering method, help determine how you approach problem solving. You are a sequential linear thinker, and you prefer to have the information given to you in that manner. In dealing with abstract concepts, it helps you to have relevance established and a concrete comparison in your mind. So needing detailed instructions is pretty normal.

Don't sweat it. You will become more intuitive in connecting the dots without having as detailed instructions, but it is unlikely that you will ever get to the point where you feel comfortable tackling something entirely new without those detailed instructions.

And ignore the perception is everything nonsense. You are who you are. Do the best you can and let the others deal with the falsehood of their own perceptions.

 

[IanUK]

me, i hate hand writing and long reading, give me the facts, sums or diagrams and i can work it out myself, i work in retail as a main job, install comercial alarm and cctv systems as hobby/odd job, dont forget normal house alarms are designed to be fool-proof, comercial alarm systems use electronic components in the sensors (resistors) depending which panel manufacturer they have different parts compaired to the home 6 wire basic system (2power, 2tamper, 2zone) so the comercial systems would use 4 wire and that be 2power and lets say (galaxy panels) would be 1k tamper-ok 2k-10k be open zones and open circuit will be fullty/tamper event. this is explaned over so many pages in the manual, i explaned it in so many lines,
so if you can understand that your better than most as most people have no idea on electronics :crazy:
so you see, maybe your to critical, your scared that your going to miss something so you need to read the whole lot, go with instint, dont forget this will not just change overnight as its a fear and our fears are allways hard to overcome, maybe knowing this and now you can start beleiving that you dont need all the information, its like a jigsaw, the last few peices you can see how and where they go i hope in some way i have helped and not bored you (and the rest) to death lol

 

[Mercer]

uhh, where the hell is nis?

i think i had this problem to. i actually saw a doctor, thinking i had ADD or something. he asked me if i was bad at math and science in school, i told him i was. he then suggested that i read very few books, which was not true, but they often go unfinished if they are fiction based. he then wrote down some math questions and asked me to do them. i got the first one right without thinking, i then got most of the other ones wrong. he took out a piece of paper and wrote 1/2 on it. he said "what most people see as this ou se as.." and he tore the paper in half.

the word he used to describe me was genius. but i dont know if a 20 minute visit with a general practitioner is enough to determine that.

i have always felt like i was stupid, and have been told that by my family. around grade 7 i gave up and spent all of highschool in college grade courses where i was able to just scrape by. now im in a comunity college course which is pathetically easy, but my gpa is high enough that i can go to university after graduation. i talked to a psychotherapist about my apparent stupidity, and he said something about a screening test.

so from the above answers we can see that this is not an uncommon problem among istj's. and if your in grad school you're obviously smarter than the average bear.

 

[Achi]

I learn rather slowly too compared to normal people, but here's an example as to why. When I start to learn something new instead of just taking the basics and running with them I learn all the aspects of everything and try to figure out how everything works.

When I'm given a machine to work with, if you don't tell me not to, I'll end up taking the thing apart to figure out how it works, what could make it stop working, how to clean it, and how to put it back together if something comes undone. So while I'm learning "useless" knowledge about one machine the other person could have learned how to use two more with just the basics, which makes me appear slow.

 

[SoftBoiledLife]

Whoa, so many helpful responses! I'm favoriting this thread so I can remind myself to calm down when I'm not understanding something.


I think this explains why I've always been one to question advertising ploys, political talking points, and flat out shallow claims I hear joes/janes in general making all the time.

 

[SoftBoiledLife]

uhh, where the hell is nis?

i think i had this problem to. i actually saw a doctor, thinking i had ADD or something. he asked me if i was bad at math and science in school, i told him i was. he then suggested that i read very few books, which was not true, but they often go unfinished if they are fiction based. he then wrote down some math questions and asked me to do them. i got the first one right without thinking, i then got most of the other ones wrong. he took out a piece of paper and wrote 1/2 on it. he said "what most people see as this ou se as.." and he tore the paper in half.

the word he used to describe me was genius. but i dont know if a 20 minute visit with a general practitioner is enough to determine that.

i have always felt like i was stupid, and have been told that by my family. around grade 7 i gave up and spent all of highschool in college grade courses where i was able to just scrape by. now im in a comunity college course which is pathetically easy, but my gpa is high enough that i can go to university after graduation. i talked to a psychotherapist about my apparent stupidity, and he said something about a screening test.

so from the above answers we can see that this is not an uncommon problem among istj's. and if your in grad school you're obviously smarter than the average bear.

Nope, just average. The one attribute that has pulled me into a school where I learn from and compete against some of the best minds around is my work ethic. I won't try to sound modest in saying that my consistency is what has saved my arse many a time. Now I'm fighting for my life to ensure that I stay at the top of my game and get things down on time and not before it's too late--and that entails learning to see the trees for the forest in my readings and learning the name of the game quick enough!

That brings me to a slightly OT challenge but one that relates to many super-introverted ISTJs: Making friends, networking, and learning how to flirt *cough cough* I mean hold interesting conversations with girls. There's this one girl in my club whom I've been mildly interested in getting to know. I think she's somewhat older, and even though I'm not interested in a relationship, I'd like to learn how to charm her as she also seems slightly curious about me too! :tongue: I've got a lot of work ahead of me in that field! :crazy:

 

[petals of stone]

I wouldn't say you are stupid at all. Its rather just another way of learning. Niss63 pretty much described that pretty well.

I remember reading in grapho analysis that there are 3 kinds of learners- the creative but slow type, the inquistive type and the extremely smart- easily able to grasp complex ideas type. 75% fit into creative type. Some 20% in inquisitive and a select few geniuses in the last type. I think you'll fit into the creative type. They are the ones who take time to understand things, but once they do- they get it permanently and well enough to explain it to anyone. Since the majority is of this type- you are in the clear. It it helps, then Thomas Edison and many smart people have been of this type.

I prefer detailed instructions as well in things that are very unfamiliar to me. And I am a half S and a half N. So, don't let anyone tell you that you are not smart. However, if I am not given any instructions, then I would have to experiment, in which case I'll eventually grasp the concept just as well- though it might take me more time.

 

[Allium]

I will be political incorrect on this one(I am a 'T' after all). To me, honestly, you seam slow. At least with tactile stuff. And it surprises me people say that's just how it is. Is the diff. so big between our types?

As a child I also played with lego, the more advanced stuff and I didn't need to read the instructions. Build the thing on the box? Just a quick look at the pic was all I needed. Build something else? I did it in my head far faster than my hand could put it together. I actually prefer to NOT read instructions and just see the things working in my head. And I don't think I am particularity bright. My problem lies in the abstract unmeasurable stuff, human interactions and art.

And look at my functions. It's an overweight on istj, not istp so I don't see it as a function "problem".
I understand this could have sounded harsh but I mean no harm, I like never do. It is just how I see it and you deserve to know the truth, how I see it.

 

[niss]

@Allium--

Maybe I'm mis-reading what the OP stated--or reading more into it than is there, but I was not thinking lego like a simple cart, car, boat, whatever, but a much more complex space ship, rocket, sailing vessel, castle, whatever--you get the idea. Personally, I have little problem with understanding the concept or the tactile ability, but I do not want to mess something up, so I take the time to read the instructions. Some times it's a waste, but some times it has saved my bacon.

 

[Allium]

Are we talking about the thing from Denmark aimed at kids? Plastic parts with electrical components and motors? Or something similar?
Those space ships are included, if they are model toys.

I thought we were not talking about unmanned vehicles capable of reaching extreme heights and safely land. Then I too would read the instructions, twice... and I take back what I said, parts of it.

 

[niss]

No...we are talking about lego brand products. Some of them are a little more complex than others.

Toys for Kids, Big Kids? Toys, Building Toys | LEGO Shop

 

[Allium]

Yup, thats the stuff I played with as a kid. Now I play with more expensive toys.

 

[kittychris07]

I have had some trouble reading through books quickly because I get bogged down in all the details. I think my lack of wanting to have to read a lot of information has led me to take on my Business Administration major and my math major (math because there aren't too too many things I need to read. . . it's terse but you have to think about math which is better than getting caught up in a web of details from gigantic readings in other subjects).

I like details instructions too (since they often speed up the process of doing something like assembling furniture). I hate having a lot of limiting instructions on papers and stuff like that. I do want enough detail so that I will know what to do.