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In this episode, Joel and Antonia talk about the struggles Perceivers have with schedules.
In this podcast you’ll find:
- Scrum Board
- Schedule vs. rhythm
- Judgers create the schedule first then the rhythm comes from the schedule
- But for perceivers, we suspect the rhythm comes first, and the schedule evolves around it
- Perceivers can get unrealistic about how much they can get done at any given time, so they struggle with sticking to a schedule.
- They will abandon schedules because they never seem to work.
- When you have an extraverted Judging function higher up in your stack, it is easier for you to keep track of what is happening over a long period of time.
- EPs fixation is unfettered freedom, so schedules can feel like life has no color.
- They may unconsciously sabotage a schedule to maintain their freedom.
- Judgers put a schedule to paper, and it becomes their motivation.
- To check it off the to-do list.
- Perceivers hate To-Do lists.
- Schedules facilitate you to do the things you want to do.
- All of us have stuff we don’t want to do, but it’s the best way to get something done.
- Perceivers – Make peace with your schedule.
- Schedules don’t have to hurt.
- Find what works for you and craft your schedule around it.
- Schedules are a platform for opportunity.
- When you are trying to figure something out, you aren’t sure which rules you can break.
- So, Perceivers may often look more militant about maintaining schedules than Judgers because they don’t know how to adapt if something goes wrong with their schedule.
- Perceivers can tend to forget what they accomplish, too.
- Celebrate the things you accomplish.
- Create anchor events for yourself that are non-negotiable then fit the other things around the anchor events.
- Anchor events may not happen until you find your rhythm.
- Perceivers – Make peace with the schedule and go with the rhythms of your life.
- Go to bed at a decent time, so you have more energy to accomplish things.
- Drink plenty of water
- Exercise
- Eat nutritious food
- Put your shoes on every day
- Judgers need to make sure they don’t have too much energy sapping things in their schedule
- When they were designing Disneyland, there was a patch of grass people kept cutting through, so Disney told them to pave it and create a path.
- Judgers create this Stay off the Grass situation and force themselves into a schedule that isn’t energy efficient.
- Judgers – make sure you aren’t wasting time and effort by shoe-horning yourself into a schedule that is too arduous.
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33 comments
Seconding this as an INFJ who related to almost all of the struggles discussed.
I love yoga and ideally I would like to go at least twice a week. However I hate the idea of committing to a strict schedule of going every Monday/Wednesday. I don’t have the “Perceiver” thing of “Oh no I don’t want to make a choice of how to spend my time.” If my options are simply “You’re alone- what do you want to do in this moment?” I pretty much know exactly what I want to do. But I have the Fe pull of “Oh no what if someone I love wants to do something one Monday in the future and I’ve created this rigid routine and miss the chance to connect with them?”
I have a lot of Perceivers in my life so all plans tend to be last minute. If I had it exactly my way I’d probably make plans ahead of time with each person I wanted to see that week and write it all out on a calendar. But my Perceivers (I know from experience) hate when I do this too often. So Fe tries to keep my personal schedule as flexible and open as possible to accommodate their desire to do things spontaneously.
INFJ/Fe User Tip #1: The thing I’ve found that works around this is slating my “me time” for the hours of the day when generally nobody ever wants or needs anything from me. That’s early morning for me and so anything that’s very important for me personally to get done, I try to slate it for that time and generally following through on it is not difficult for me.
I do “get a lot done”, but that’s partly because I have leaned into my other extroverted function (Se) and developed the mentality of “Do it right now or you’ll forget/‘One day’ will never come.” I’m not good at all at what I consider “actual” or skillful time management. I get immersed in things and constantly lose track. Fe means that I’m highly motivated in fulfilling my obligations to others, but I generally do this in a very “Se” three year old way which is to just do those things as they come up, and keep hammering away at them until they’re done. It doesn’t help me achieve my own goals at all, and likely it is actually the thing that interrupts my personal goal achievement the most. Thus, I have to re-orient myself on a frequent basis.
Imagine if you had Ni-Ti constantly drawing up the perfect trip itinerary, but only Fe-Se is allowed to drive the car….. And it’s all like “OH HEY RANDOM PERSON ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD- What’s that? You need to go to Chicago? I mean I’m headed towards Florida, but I REALLY LIKE YOU SO YEAH LET’S DO IT!!!”
…
….
It’s a freaking nightmare.
I think the biggest difference I notice between myself and my beloved perceivers is that the desire to course correct and point myself back in the “right” direction comes up often and naturally for me, whereas my INTP boyfriend can happily live in a tornado of chaos and mostly finds the challenges it presents interesting and rewarding. Perceivers are definitely more like “The journey is it’s own reward” whereas I am ALL ABOUT plotting out my next destination and then getting there. When my car gets hi-jacked for too long I start to feel like I will never get “there” and then I feel sad and useless.
INFJ/Fe User Tip #2: The way I balance my weak time management skills with my desire to constantly be moving in some direction is to work off bigger time chunks and to “externalize” my goals. I make myself a weekly to-do list as opposed to a daily to-do list that I put on my fridge. So every Sunday I make my list of things that I want to get done that week but that I know I’ll want to put off or won’t be motivated to do because they aren’t for someone else. So I’ll put “Yoga x 2”, “Make an appointment with the dentist”, “Run x 4” etc. on the list and then I have the entire week to check it off. The list almost “externalizes” the expectations of myself and makes them as though they are the expectations of someone else. So having it there in front of me all the time motivates me to actually do it as opposed to just daydreaming about it or completely spacing out on it.
Hi PH family!
I really enjoyed this podcast, but if I may, I’d like to push back a little bit.
Let me preface this by saying I realize I might be an outlier and this is an anecdotal observation so take that for what it’s worth. However, I resonated so deeply with this content as an INFJ who left the 8-5 world to launch a business in February of this year that I’m speculating it applies more to those who lead with a perceiving function (probably even more so if it’s an intuitive function) than those who are perceivers overall. My Ni does not like to be bound by a schedule on bit. Conversely, my Mom, who’s and INFP is great at sticking to a schedule. My former colleague is and ENTJ lives by his iPhone calendar. Both of them lead with Judging and are continually baffled that even though I’m a big achiever, those achievements happens in sprints like you mentioned at the beginning of the podcast. My ENTP sister has similar issues with schedules—though they are so beneficial to her frenetic energy.Anyway, just some food for thought as I resonated so deeply with what was being said that I had one of those “Joel and Antonia are in my head again” moments and felt the need to rush over here and state my case for perceiving-dominant types.
Thanks as always for the great content!
Wow! LOVED the podcast! Fellow ENFP here who has major difficulties with time management and had NO idea how classic my issues are for other ENFP’s! Thank you so much for helping me understand the root of my disconnect with time and my resentment for schedules. I’m 43 years old and have beat myself up over this for years, “Seriously, why can’t I get my act together?!”! I have 5 kids – all in school now and I thought I would finally be able to live by a set schedule but I find myself in a slump. The constant interruptions when I finally get into a flow have discouraged me so much that I don’t want to start any projects and would almost rather sit and wait for the next interruption than to look at a another 1/2 finished project. My biggest problem though is not wanting to go to bed at night – like you said, my freedom is my ultimate desire and 11pm is when that starts. Please tell me how to change my mindset and go to bed earlier – I can have some “freedom” from 9 to 11 when they are at school but it doesn’t feel the same as 11 pm! Any suggestions on how to change this bad habit and how long did it take you to fully overcome those super late nights?