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
Load the following calendar in a separate tab or window:
That calendar will be plastered everywhere it can be this week. It organizes two major components of our course for the rest of the year:
- Grade Abatement | You will pause every three weeks to complete a Google Form, which will be used as it was in Q2 and Q1 to generate a GAP score for that three-week period. You’ll have three GAP scores by the end of the quarter. They will be averaged together for your quarterly grade.
- Pareto Projects | On the Fridays indicated, we’ll set aside the period for focused Pareto work, including as many trips to the iLC as we can manage. Ignore the previous calendar for now1.
Remind yourself that there is a protocol for grade abatement that will, if followed specifically, allow us to post a GAP score every three weeks. Load a copy of that protocol here, or through any of the half-dozen links on this site. There are always extra copies in the classroom, too.
That protocol, like every iteration of every element of this course, focuses on how skills connect and concatenate2. And like every iteration and element, it emphasizes one skill as the one on which the others depend:
This screenshot includes the surrounding page material from the document, because it lets me emphasize again the need to “explore, create, learn” in here. (It also reminds you that the document is nine pages long, which means you have nine pages of information that you should have internalized months ago.) That is our focus, but it’s the less-exciting work of organization that gets us into that maker mentality.
For the next few days, you are looking at 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. Your assignment is to assess your organization of that stuff in four categories:
- Physical | Start by opening up your backpack or bag, any and all notebooks you keep for your classes, your vintage Trapper Keeper, etc. You could pour this stuff out onto a table, if you have the space, or just flip through. 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 look like?
- Digital | At this point in an instructional post, you should have a number of tabs open. That’s the first half of this category: How do you keep track of what you’re looking at online? Do you have a system for organizing ramiform reading? The second half is Google-driven and requires you to assess your Google Drive, Google Classroom, and Gmail organization. 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?
- Schedule | This is probably an extension of the first two, but let’s see if it helps to separate it. Do you have your schedule organized? To what extent do you plan out your days and weeks, and what does that plan look like? The calendar I’ve made for you is an example of organizing your time in this fashion. What do you do with those teacher-provided documents?
- Mental | Again, this is an extension of the rest, but it will probably help to keep it separate for this exercise, because we can focus in on GAP skills and traits. How do you organize your approach in this course and in other courses? What do you prioritize in terms of those universal skills and traits? Refresh your memory as necessary through this link.
Write down your observations after talking them over with your peers and/or me. The obvious next step will be to revisit and refine your systems for organization, but for now, concentrate on what’s in front of you. You will be able to put a copy of your notes and writings on Google Classroom.
Getting Things Done, Part 2
As a possibly important sidebar, let’s talk about your personalities. There is a caveat a little further down, but we should start with an introduction to the concept we’ll be using and then jump right into the test:
Free personality test | 16Personalities
Free personality test – take it to find out why our readers say that this personality test is so accurate, “it’s a little bit creepy.” No registration required!
This isn’t required, but you’re probably going to be interested in taking that test, which will give you a four-letter designation and a detailed explanation of what those letters mean. First, though, you’ll want that caveat:
What’s the Forer effect?
Have you noticed that you’re the kind of person who, while inherently empathetic, is also marked by a strong streak of independent thinking? Or perhaps you’re more the type who is a little self-critical and insecure, but can defend yourself when needed? Maybe you’re a human being, with various thoughts and feelings that sometimes contradict.
When we’re talking about how you organize yourself in here, we’re really talking about you as a whole person. That’s the universality our work drives toward. A personality test, especially one as steeped in good research as this one, might be useful. But that Forer effect is a real and powerful phenomenon.
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. Without taking the test again, I can read through the differences and apply that knowledge to myself. I believe those differences are crucial to my development as a teacher, which gives me a starting point for meaningful metacognitive discussion and writing.
Approach this Myers-Briggs diagnostic with the same understanding: It’s more about how you use the ideas to organize your self-analysis than it is about being judged by an Internet test. If you do take this test, discuss its efficacy here and elsewhere in our classroom. Be sure you read everything the site presents to you, keep that Forer effect in mind, and do some reflective writing.
From the profile of an INTP, or “Logician”
It’ll stay on the front page until I can insure that we’re able to use the new calendar. Remember that this sort of thing is iterative, which means it needs to be as flexible as it is focused. ↩
Look that word up. I’ve always liked it because it sounds like its definition — like links being clipped together. ↩
