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Comment by brl | Hacker News Reader

Are you by any chance an INTP? What you describe is a strong indicator for that personality type.

http://www.intp.org/intprofile.html

"The drive to understand things that are not yet understood is a very powerful force in the life of an INTP. Where the Ti preference is strong, this drive can override the experiential element so strongly that the INTP will become quickly bored with anything that he has successfully analysed to the point of understanding it. Once understood, it has nothing left to offer, once the satisfaction which comes with achieving the goal of understanding diminishes."

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Thanks, that explains a lot for me. I've slowly come to realize this is my problem, and have been surrounding myself with "finishers". It's akin to running a race, where you are always told to run through the finish, but once you see it, there is little drive to continue.

In other words, the chase is more fun than the kill. Yep that's me, although I see that kind of activity all around me - I'm not sure if I want to 'understand' something so much as experience it, and to that extent I think my ability to get bored has been facilitated by a culture which values the novel and the new. But this makes sense in high economic growth societies - your consumers need short attention spans if you want to keep selling them stuff.

INTJs are like that too, but they see the whole picture and still want to push the product to completion. Contrary to INTPs, they are not satisfied with just solving the technical problem, they want some elegant closure as a whole through deployment. But they still have a hard time completing those last little tasks to cross the finish line, because it's already crossed in their head through their vision.

Incidentally, readers might think that this is psychobabble, but as an ENFP with ENTP/INTP tendencies, I've continually struggled with starting projects that I never finished. Then I met my cofounder. He's INTJ/ENTJ. In our working relationship, he's continually pushing towards completion. The amazing thing is that then completion actually happens! It's wonderful!

Yes, I am, actually. Not sure if I'd noticed that I fit that trait of INTPs so well, though. :)

Heh,I didn't even feel like finishing the quote.

I really need to get a handle on that.

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