Not long ago, while casually chatting about work with my boss, she suddenly asked, “Is there a ‘J’ in your MBTI?”

I instinctively replied, “Nope, I’m a P.”

She smiled and said, “Then I guess you’re the kind of person who gets different results depending on when you take the test.”

I mumbled to myself but decided not to respond right away.

But recently, I came across a YouTuber interviewing an MBTI expert, and that finally pushed me to write this.

To be honest, I quite like MBTI as a tool. I also enjoy astrology, I Ching, and other forms of divination. But before I learned how to properly use these tools, I, like many others, once fantasized: Maybe if I knew my type, I’d find out where I was meant to go in life? Maybe others would finally understand me? Or maybe, just maybe, I’d finally feel like I belonged somewhere.

Take this for example: I first tested as an INFP when I was younger. Back then, I wondered—does this mean I should become a teacher someday?

I still remember when I used to casually respond to my mother’s urging while playing games: ‘Wait a moment.’

Waiting for ‘this moment’ seemed like a kind of magic, as if it could reach unseen distances, yet it also seemed to stop abruptly under my father’s anger.

However, this inadvertent phrase has slowly seeped into my present self. Whenever I say ‘wait a moment,’ I seem to feel that I’m not truly committed to resolving the situation. I can’t help but wait for just a little longer, whether it’s about whether the activity will proceed as planned or if the project will progress as scheduled.

In order to break this year-after-year procrastination, I have successfully developed a habit of reading in recent years, starting to gradually complete a small piece of reading every day without realizing it. Today, I happened to learn from the book ‘Hidden Potential’ that procrastination is not a problem of time management.

Let’s agree on this: if you start to procrastinate, it’s not because you’re a bad person, lazy, or lack a sense of time.You simply want to avoid the feelings associated with the task, even though you know that procrastination leads to worse outcomes. But your emotions will still drag you from being the task machine who executes everything perfectly in your mind to the point of ‘I’ll do it later.’ I can only say that I often have this feeling, even I would say every day.

The method I’m currently using to combat procrastination is actually the one I used to find least acceptable.

In the past couple of days, I took stock of my reading endeavors in 2023 and discovered that I had completed a total of 19 books. On one hand, there’s a sense of accomplishment in achieving such a substantial reading feat. On the other hand, I encountered a dilemma in the latter half of the year, feeling a lack of interest and motivation in my reading journey.

Generally, I’m open to acquiring new concepts and ideas, a habit that has fueled my love for reading. However, as I needed to enhance my English proficiency last year, my reading goals shifted from merely seeking “new knowledge” to a combination of “new knowledge” and “language learning.” This was initially successful, evident in my ability to smoothly read scripts in English games by the year-end, showcasing the undeniable benefits of language learning.

However, in the latter part of the year, I found reading to be uninteresting and lacked the drive to complete books. The initial excitement of learning new knowledge seemed to have faded.