Weekend fun: is your personality suited to blogging – take a test and find out

Have you ever had a personality test? I have. I was forced to take one in college. Everyone in the RN program had to. I guess they wanted to make sure that none of us were crazy patient killers. Well that, and it was during psych clinicals, so it taught us how personality tests work. That’s besides the point though.

I took the professional Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (mbti). It’s in-depth and if you’re honest, some believe the test can indicate the job you’re best suited for. Most people were happy with their results. Everyone was all, “Hey, I was born to be a nurse!“  Me; not so much. Not only did my test say that I was totally unsuited to nursing, but I was the only one in my entire class of 60+ to get an original score. Most people matched more than one other person in the class, but my score was ENTJ, and I matched no one. Talk about feeling left out.

ENTJ personality types are not likely (on average) to be found in a care giver profession. I’m not saying that’s why I changed my mind about careers, but I sometimes wonder if it had something to do with it. Without going into all the test details, my score noted that I’m VERY extroverted, (as in off the charts), intuitive, thinking, and big on judgments.

ENTJ types are leaders,  usually organized, like to argue, and can be overly critical. They also like problems, and solving said problems. They think ahead and tend to hate routine. ENTJs are super social and like to run companies or be in charge; they aren’t so good at taking orders.

My test was pretty spot on, and some of these things, I think, make me well suited to blogging.

In blogging:

• As my test indicated, I’m not the best at taking orders. I do take orders from editors, but if someone gets too damn annoying with the barking of said orders, I’ll get more and more frustrated and finally up and quit. This is not some great job skill, but it does keep me happy, and staying happy should be a job skill you cultivate.
• As a blogger I get to try new things every single day, learn new things each day, and stuff changes very fast. I like that, because I’m not so much the fan of routine, as my test noted.
• I am very social and extroverted which is the major reason I went FT blogging over other sorts of writing. In magazine and business copy work, I felt more alone. Yes, I chatted with businesses and editors, but not closely or frequently – it’s more do the work, send the work, done. In blogging, a friend is only a click away. In blogging, it really does help to be social (or good at faking it) because you need to interact with new people every day to expand – new readers, new blogs, new editors, and so on.
• I do like to be in charge, and being a blogger, I control much of what I do. I don’t tend to work for places that demand stuff I’m not willing to give.
• I’m also as my test said, big on judgments and overly critical, something that has gotten me into trouble in my offline life, but in blogging it helps, because I don’t BS my readers, plus I’m able to look deeper into issues and say just what I think. I think I’m nicer than I am critical to be honest, but I also won’t ever hide what I think. Lastly, I’m able to take a stand. I can’t stand wishy washy bloggers that float back and fourth on a whim. Making a judgment call, in my opinion, is a good blogger trait.

I don’t think personality tests should form what you think about yourself, your life, or your work, because people can change, personality tests can be wrong, and overall, YOU not a test controls your life. However, in my world, I have seen some correlation between my test and my blogging, which is interesting. I also think that other personalities serve blogging just as well; differently than my personality, but that’s why we have such a cool range of blogs out there.

Do you know your personality type? Take a shortened test and find out. Then come back and tell me which traits serve you best as a blogger.

This upcoming week, we’ll be discussing a few more PR issues, along with some other blogging goodies.

[image via stock.xchng]

Thanks to Tweeter MimAbbyMason for the reminder that I should post this topic.