(Part 3) Top products from r/intj

Hmm. Both.

I've found the Five Love Languages materials (easily found online) to be pretty interesting.

I got a book called No Nice Girl Swears, which was written for girls in the 1930s. It's interesting to pick up on the places where the author is being sarcastic-- it's social commentary on modern dating and courtship for women who were trying to figure these things out 80 years ago.

A friend recommended The Invisible Heart as a good story for people who like romance to include logic and statistics. I enjoyed An Abundance of Katherines for that reason, even though it's a light, funny read about teens and not relevant to my research on adult relationships.

I've been doing a lot of secret (but deliberate) observations of people on dates when I'm in coffee shops or restaurants. In my town, the first wave of weddings happens about 2 years after high school graduation (for people who didn't go to college), and then the final wave of weddings happens 1-2 years after college graduation. I generally have to go into the city to see people older than 24 on dates. I love when I find couples on first dates-- sometimes you can tell the "chemistry" is there and they're both nervously trying to figure out how to not screw this wonderful thing up, and sometimes things aren't going well and I feel awkward for them, and sometimes it's a little of both and it feels like a job interview with both people trying to appear confident and gracious while reciting generic date questions and commentary and responses that sound like they were rehearsed and memorized in advance.

I've also created a few online dating profiles mainly to see who I get matched with and what single men in my cohort are saying to try to attract women. Coffee Meet Bagel is an app that takes your Facebook friend list and asks you a few basic questions about what you're looking for and then shows you one eligible friend-of-a-friend each day that you might want to date. It's unexpectedly fun. I like trying to figure out who our mutual friends are (it doesn't immediately tell you who they are-- just how many you have). Match.com is interesting because it confirms my suspicions about single men in my area: they believe they look most attractive and impressive while holding up a red solo cup or the big fish that they caught in their fishin' hole somewhere. Their dating profiles all seek a woman who "won't play games" and "likes to go out and have fun, but is also happy to spend an evening at home." Many of them are looking for a "country girl." In short, I'm really happy that I'm single, and there are times when I'm tempted to give up on the experiment.

I have been out on one dinner date and a few "mini dates" so far, and it's definitely a learning experience. I think my INTJ avoidance of casual physical contact is going to be a problem with my research. I cringe at the thought of awkward post-date hugs goodbye. If I were attracted to these guys, I wouldn't mind the contact, but it's so weird to have zero chemistry with a person, barely know them, and yet be expected to press your body against theirs while lying about how you had a great time and will keep in touch. I wish it were acceptable to end bad dates with a smile, a handshake, and a hearty "best of luck in all your endeavors!"

More books!

"The Millionaire Next Door" as I said is a must-read. For real estate, I actually learned a lot more just through Reddit and BiggerPockets than any books I read. Most of the books I read I would classify as entertainment rather than guides. I read this book on short sales after meeting the author on BiggerPockets and it's pretty useful. Tim Ferris' "The Four Hour Work Week" is a good book to read and steal mentality from, but with massive cautions; treat Tim as an eccentric madman and don't take his advice as gospel. He would tell anyone to just start an online business and then fly around the world blowing money. Trying to hype the reader up by encouraging rampant materialism is a big part of his writing style. Don't take the book too seriously, but there's a lot of really good mentality bits you can steal from it, specifically the stuff on the Pareto Principle.

I consider this book purely entertainment, but it was still a decent and easy read. I also read a book on Forex trading (this one) that taught me quite a bit on risk management and chart technicals, but I don't know that it's entirely relevant. I spent a few months trading Forex with extremely low-risk strategies and was averaging 1% a month, but I didn't like the disconnect I felt from the actual business, and I found I could make money faster in real estate (I'm doubling my net worth annually from buying the houses).

If you struggle with weight, read "Why We Get Fat" (or the bigger, harder read "Good Calories, Bad Calories") by Gary Taubes. It's the perfect book for INTJs and will completely spin your mind around on the concept of nutrition without being a dry read at all. It kept my attention the whole way through (Why We Get Fat, that is- GCBC is a dryer read and targeted at doctors, but even more informative). I would say "Why We Get Fat" is the book that had the biggest effect on my life. Even if Taubes simplifies things considerably, you quickly realize just how much nutrition advice is complete crap. I used to try to eat healthy by packing a bunch of bananas to work. No wonder losing weight was hard. (I am skinny now- didn't used to be.)


I'll send you anything else that pops in to my mind; this is just off the top of my head. I read a lot more online than actual books. FlyerTalk has the most credit card churning stuff, and BiggerPockets has the best real estate stuff. I subscribe to /r/investing , /r/realestate , /r/personalfinance , and /r/financialindependence.

Don't take anything as gospel; always analyze for yourself and ask "Why". If everyone tells you to do something a certain way, they're probably simultaneously right and wrong. It's probably the conservative option, it probably has the best risk/reward ratio, you probably can do better, but you'll probably get screwed if you try unless you're better than everyone else.

For example, most people shouldn't use credit cards for rewards. Why? The psychology aspect. It will trick you in to spending more than you would with cash or a debit card, unless you're disciplined enough to not let it. I am. So I use it. I wouldn't tell my poorer friends to get a credit card just for rewards...they'll screw up.

Common knowledge is like that. /r/investing will tell you to use nothing but index funds, or spread your money across 20 stocks. They're right to give that advice. Completely right. Most people try to be clever, but overcentralizing exposes you to too much risk and the vast majority of people who overcentralize in one stock get burned down in the end.

But when I suggested these real estate ideas with a throwaway to /r/investing, I was told "You aren't Warren Buffett" and that I shouldn't try and would lose everything. The groupthink becomes too strong.

My key advice:
Don't take advice as a law; figure out the principle behind that advice, and why that advice is given.


Oh! And learn to play Poker. Seriously...pick up a book or something, or find some serious players who will play serious games without money. (Don't gamble...but learn to judge risk/reward like a gambler. Poker is not true gambling. The best player will consistently win the majority of games.)

I wouldn't worry about college; you'll be studying things more attuned to your interests, and you'll be surrounded by similar sorts of people. College is actually great for figuring yourself out for this very reason, since you'll be exposed not just to all sorts of different types of content and perspectives, but you'll also get some chances to go more in-depth on particular topics of interest, especially once you start taking upper-level courses that expect specialization. My favorite college memories are actually of afternoons in the library reading, taking notes and putting papers together. I loved this so much I've even started writing my own stuff post-college.

As for getting to know yourself, I'd recommend reading. Since this is the INTJ-sub, I know everyone here prefers things to be a bit more direct, and while I certainly read more nonfiction, I've found things like art, music, poetry, film and fiction are great ways to understand yourself better than any nonfiction work could tap into. I got into fiction via Joseph Campbell, a literary critic who himself was heavily influenced by Jung, and from there it was writers like Hermann Hesse, James Joyce, George Saunders and Olga Grushin that taught me things about myself that I doubt any nonfiction work could. This isn't to downplay the importance of nonfiction (Heidegger, Marion and Kierkegaard have all been huge for me as well), but since fiction and the arts in general don't seem as valued throughout reddit, I thought I'd throw that out there. Read.

If you’re at the stage of looking into comparable websites during your development, check out Helen Fisher’s TedTalk about her research into love and hormones. She designed the test you take when creating an account on Chemistry.com, and I find it to be another really cool way of categorizing people and analyzing what matches work best most of the time. The book The Confidence Code actually talks about mutations in proteins related to some of the hormone traits Fisher describes that I didn’t know about until recently, pretty cool stuff. I hope it helps you in your search!

I’ll try to find the exact video later as I can’t find it right now.

Edit: here is the talk from Helen Fisher, it’s actually a Google talk

Honestly, the hardest part of him is where to start. Ask five people and you'll get six answers.

But as a general recommendation, stick primarily to Walter Kaufmann's books, and you can't go wrong. He was one of the leading scholars on the school of his thought, and I find his translations of Nietzsche to capture the dramatic emphasis of his prose the best.

For a brief introduction I'd start with his Biography by Kaufmann, this is useful for understanding the time in which he lived, the philosophical climate, and debunking myths about him, followed by Basic Writings, and then The Portable Nietzsche which contains his more complex works, Twilight and Zarathustra. Each of these contain complete texts, as well as discussion and expositions to give them more context, and are extremely helpful in understanding the work.

Also, If you're a materialist already, an Atheist or an agnostic, start with The Antichrist and you'll fall in love with him in the first pages. Its a summary of his view on Christian morality, and it doesn't hold back at all, a quick read at about a hundred or so pages. If you want an appetizer, peruse The Will To Power, his book of aphorisms, to whet your palate (this is also where most of the romance quotes live). These were my introductions, and I never looked back.

Not really written or marketed as "self help" but I think Ralph Nader's "The Seventeen Traditions" is a lovely book about the important things in life, what we should be focusing on to be happier, contributing members of society. While it's autobiographical, it touches on a lot of keystones of morality and how productivity/determination/gratitude lead to satisfaction.

There might be some but I've studied psychology in college and did a lot of my own research when I was thinking about grad school. Myers-briggs is a well known pseudoscience in the field. It's just not part of the conversation for serious academics.

I think this is the book I started with, it does a good job of laying out the different models psychologists use to get a handle on personality. The most popular is the big 5. It's been around for a while and there are whole journals filled with supporting evidence.

Sure. I like these specific ones, but they are hard to find. If you google the model number you mind be able to find them. I buy them for $5 ea at a near by Asian mart. I font know where there are online.

This one is nice too.

Honestly look up "problem solving notebook" or if you want a more technical version, "A3 Problem Solving notebook" and you'll get a bunch of results. There are a million variations so you can find one to suit your needs. I like the ones that do not include a calendar/planner because many of my projects/ issues aren't schedule or date specific. I feel like this helps the notebook last longer too. I recommend a bound one if you find the right one because my paper bound one is beat to hell.

Thanks, I've read the first and now I've ordered the sequels.

Try http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Demonkeeping-Pine-Cove-Series/dp/0060735422. That was a good one.

Verbal Judo by Dr. George J. Thompson - Teaches you how to talk to people.

A Mind for Numbers by Dr. Barbara Oakley - Teaches you how to learn effectively.

I use Trello (which is available on anything that connects online) with a layout inspired from the book Getting Things Done.

First, it's good that you've gotten to this point early in your career. I took me many years.

Second read this book.

As I've been reading in Susan Cain's book, Quiet, being an introvert also has to do with hard wired biological reasons, but can be developed to a different pathway to a certain extent.

Well, read instead of whining

https://www.amazon.com/Freedom-Known-Jiddu-Krishnamurti/dp/0060648082

There are no bad or good days. Just days. Did your dog just die? Still another day. Events happen, many outside of our control. Assigning the arbitrary day they happened a meaning is pointless. It's really hard for us not to though.

I remember watching a TV show where they locked a bunch of people in a room and they had to escape. There were all sorts of little things they had to try to escape. The only thing keeping them there was time. But they started to assign meaningless reason to their actions. When they finally escaped they all thought they had done something, but in reality the timer on the clock ran out.

This is what you're doing. A timer on a clock ran out, something happened, you prescribe it happened because you were wearing or doing x.

I also highly recommend reading this book - http://www.amazon.com/House-Stairs-William-Sleator/dp/0140345809
Take the time to consider the wider implications and what it would mean for you.

When I am depressed, I read The Book of Disquiet. When I'm ready to pull out of it, I read The Consolation of Philosophy. These are my ying & yang.

Career Management: Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. I used to be extremely judgmental, angry and confused about how a career was "supposed to" work. This book has been a goto of mine since early 2010, and I refer to it often when evaluating my career path.

Self-Improvement: The 4-Hour Body. As someone who has struggled and given up on weight-loss for more than a decade, I mastered my body composition for the first time in my 40+ years by losing 60#. This is my proudest self-improvement goal, by far.

Operating System: The Obstacle is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph. This was my introduction to stoicism, which I've adopted as my "operating system" for life. I found this to be more accessible than Seneca's On The Shortness of Life or Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, both of which are difficult for me to digest.

The first one that comes to my mind is an insect colony. Some conservative politicians are fond of thinking of society in terms of a corporation or a factory. Poor urban neighborhoods are often conceived in terms of a war zone or a jungle (especially in gangsta rap!). Tensions between different economic classes are metaphorically spoken of in terms of military battles ("class warfare"). Unwelcome intrusion of government into the private lives of citizens is usually portrayed in the language of totalitarianism or fascism.

Since reading Lakoff and Johnson's Metaphors We Live By I see conceptual metaphors everywhere.