From the profile of an INTJ, or “Architect.” Click for the website by NERIS Analytics Limited, which includes a free test and explanation of these personality classifications.
Getting Things Done, Part 1
The school year, regardless of course or level, comes down to two elements:
The GAP process governs our units of study, whether you are an AP student practicing for the exam in May or a tenth grader reading a novel in November. Grade abatement profiles, skills, and traits govern our learning. You receive three profile scores per quarter.
Your personal or community-based projects will be the focus of most Fridays. You’ll be in charge of how you spend that time. Each course will have a calendar that indicates when these projects will be presented and shared, too.
These two elements require you to be organized, and organization is one of the universal skills and traits you need. Load the grade abatement profiles, skills, and traits, and notice that the foundation of your learning is organization. The rest of the components concatenate1, but they can’t be linked together without organization:
This screenshot is from one of the older iterations of grade abatement, and I’m using it to highlight the header:
Above all else:
Explore, create, learn
“Explore, create, learn.” That really is the focus of our work, and when you’re immersed in self-directed writing or putting time into your Pareto Project, it’ll be exciting work. But it’s the much-less-exciting work of organization that gets us into that maker mentality.
You are reading this post because you need to organize the academic stuff you have on you. That word, stuff, comes from a root meaning “to equip,” and that’s the idea: You equip yourself every day in order to deal with school and the work it requires. You gear up.
So you need a frank assessment of how you do that. You need to assess your organization. Divide that assessment into these four categories, and then use our in-class discussions and workshops to improve each one.
① Physical Organization
Start by opening up your backpack or bag, any and all notebooks you keep for your classes, your vintage Trapper Keeper, etc., and then pouring that stuff out onto a table. (That can be a metaphorical act, of course.) Then assess the extent to which you have a system in place. Can you find materials you need? How ordered is your physical stuff? What does it all look like?
② Digital Organization
You probably have a number of tabs open right now, as you read this instructional post. Start there: How do you keep track of what you’re reading and studying online? Do you have a system for organizing those tabs? Then consider specifically your use of Google, especially Google Drive, Google Classroom, and Gmail. Do you have a system of folders in Drive to keep your work clear and accessible? Do you use a system to sort through email? How do you keep track of assignments, announcements, and instructional posts?
③ Schedule Organization
Your schedule overlaps with the first two, but it has been helpful in the past to separate it. Consider specifically your use of a calendar or planner. Do you use the calendar provided for this course? If so, to what extent? If not, how do you organize your days and weeks? How do you keep up with your responsibilities?
④ Mental Organization
This category overlaps with the rest, too, but it helps to isolate it. It is, in essence, about the grade abatement profiles, skills, and traits that direct all of your learning:
To what extent do you understand the universal skills and traits at the heart of this process? How do you organize your work in here around those skills and traits? Do you use the profiles to map out your work during each GAP triptych panel? What does that learning map look like?
⑤ All Together
Your goal is to find the room for improvement in each one of these organizational categories. To do that, you need accurate self-assessment and observation, discussion with your peers and teachers, and concrete plans for improvement.
If this post is assigned formally, you will be given further directions. You don’t need them, though. You need to test your improvements. You’ll know if they work by putting them into practice.
Getting Things Done, Part 2
As a possibly important sidebar, let’s talk about your personalities. Your self-awareness and sense of self-efficacy are tied to that amorphous idea of “personality,” and you can gain some important insights through simple, online tests.
Start with an introduction to the concept we’ll be using, and then jump right into the test itself:
This isn’t required, of course, but you’re likely to be interested enough in the concept to take the test. It will give you a four-letter code and a detailed explanation of what those letters mean. Once you have the code, either before or while you are reading the explanations, make sure you know what the Forer effect is:
No online test dictates who you are. Understanding the Forer effect is one way to ward off taking these things too seriously. These sorts of tests can help, though, and here is why: When we’re talking about how you organize yourself in here, we’re really talking about you as a whole person. A personality test, especially one as steeped in good research as this one, might be useful, if you are cautious and remember how powerful the Forer effect is.
The idea is not that a personality test is inaccurate or useless. It’s that you must be metacognitively vigilant about anything a website tells you, especially when your goal is self-improvement. I have long thought of myself as an INTJ, for instance, but I see more and more of myself in the description of an INTP these days. I don’t need to take the test itself again; I can read through the differences and apply that knowledge to myself. Since I believe those differences are crucial to my development as a teacher, I have a starting point for meaningful metacognitive discussion and writing.
It’s the same for you. You want a sense of yourself as a whole person:
This kind of self-assessment is organizational because it can generate forward momentum. It can improve the efficacy of other elements of your approach to learning. If you take this online test — or any others; here’s a much lengthier one called the IPIP-NEO that some students have said taught them about themselves — be sure you read all the context and explanation the site provides, keep the warning of the Forer effect in mind, and then do some reflective and metacognitive writing and discussion.
From the profile of an INTP, or “Logician”
Look that word up. I’ve always liked it because it sounds like its definition — like links being clipped together. ↩
I took this test and got a Protagonist. But I feel as though it does not define me correctly. While answering some of the questions I realized I had many opposite answers and found it difficult to choice which one to answer with. I feel as though I am a varying person, some days I can follow my heart and only my heart and don’t want to hurt people’s feelings. But sometimes I follow my mind and use logic and reason and don’t care if the truth hurts. This test could work for some people but for me, I feel as though I can’t be categorized.
Head back into the instructional post and find the article on the Forer effect. Read that carefully. It will give you the language to talk about the idea of not being “categorized” by a test like this, and it provides necessary context, in general, for the self-assessments we’re doing.
I took this same personality test during health class last year, and I find it interesting to compare my results. Just now, my result was a campaigner: “Enthusiastic, sociable, and creative free spirits, who can always find a reason to smile.” Although I think this description fits me, I read the article on the Forer effect, which makes me doubt that this is truly a definition of my specific character. I believe the given description would pertain to virtually anyone reading it. This description is relatively vague, and it could describe anyone with a positive outlook on life. I like to think that this result is very specific to me, but I have realized that there are many prominent characteristics of myself that are not included. Also, I remember taking the test last year, and receiving much different results. My results were along the lines of argumentative and strong-willed, which I also agreed with. This also adds to my doubt of the accuracy of this personality test, as I believed both responses suited me, even though they are very different.
Find the section of this instructional post with information about the Forer effect. That’s what you’re describing, and it’s why we must be careful about how we use these sorts of data. At the same time, it sounds like you have an opportunity for true metacognition through an analysis of the differences between your responses.
I took the personality test and it said I have the Executive personality. This implies that I like to take control of things and bring people together. I think these are great qualities to have, but ones I’m still working on.
I have read all these class comments and don’t find it necessary to chime in. I agree with everyone that the Forer effect can change your way of thinking. But besides that, we all have different personalities and this we know.
I took the personality test and I got consul. People who share the consul personality type are, for lack of a better word, popular – which makes sense, given that it is also a very common personality type. I think that there are some points that match me but some that don’t so there are some things I could work on.
I have taken the personality test twice now. Once last year and once this year. Last year I was told that I am a Mediator and this year I was told that I am a campaigner. I find it interesting that even though I feel nothing has changed I received two different answers. It is interesting to me that the percentages for both personality types are the same. I am still as extroverted as I was before even though I am now a campaigner. However I find that I relate to both personality types. I find aspects of each that I can agree with, and aspects of both that I disagree with. I do not believe however that I can be put into one category. I feel like there are too many people in the world to be sorted into only 11 personality types. I think this is why I relate to more then one of the personalities listed.
I took the personality test and it said that I have the Logician personality. It says that these types of people rely on creativity and logic. I don’t know why I got this one.
I would say I am pretty organized. Staying organized makes me feel like my life is together.
I agree with everyones comments in the fact that this effect can alter your thinking process and that everyone has different outputs and ways that we go about.
I took the test and I was happily surprised that it gave me this personality because I really feel like this me. Because It says i’m assertive because I’m the commander type of personality and that fits me well. And if your wasting my time goodbye!
From the personality test, I got the personality of Entrepreneur and I got this last year as well. This means that I am an extrovert, I’m observant and I tend to do a lot of thinking. I believe that this trait means that I am motivated and want to be successful but still care about what people think and say.
When it comes to organization, I feel like I stay organized the best when I have physical documents to work with. My notebooks and binders tend to be easier to sort through than my google drive and online emails. (Example: I currently have 18,747 unanswered emails). I think that I tend to get overwhelmed by the unlimited potential of online sources, and prefer to be able to see it all in one hand. I have tried to combat these fears by organizing work into folders, and classroom. I have never been able to rely on an online schedule organization method, but I cling to my planner religiously and tend to run into few problems when working on that platform. I feel that my personality type (campaigner) was fairly accurate, even when taking into account the Forer Effect, as I could directly and specifically relate with many of the examples given. My mind is perhaps my least organized aspect, but I try to work on it as much as I can, to make sure it does not hinder me or the way I feel.
I’ve taken this test twice before, and both times I got INFP, or “The Mediator” both times. I feel the INFP description fits me well.
I pride myself on being paperless, and being organized while being paperless can be difficult because you can lose track of tabs, assignments, due dates, and important information. In years past I’ve been very on top of my online documents but some assignments have just slipped through my grasp this year, especially ones where no mandatory due date is present. Often times, when there is no due date set in stone, a procrastinator will just push work off and push work off and continue to do it forever because there’s nothing breathing on the procrastinator to get it done. SO, it is through my organization that I will attempt to remedy the problems I have, and I will do so by setting reminders to complete assignments without due dates in a reasonable time. I got the personality type Commander, the natural born leader, and I think that it makes sense, even when taking into account the Forer Effect, because of my extroverted and outgoing personality type that’s coupled with my intuition and assertiveness. I always make sure that my ideas are heard and considered, and I feel as though I exhibit the traits of a leader well.