Personality Styles and Vacations

Just before leaving on this trip, I spent two days in a Kiersey temperment style training course which was very interesting. The most interesting part for me is really "getting" that in this model, all people loosely fall into four basic temperments and that the key motivators for each temperment are extremely different. In general, we have:

Guardians - who pursue social respectability and security
Artisans - who pursue fun and want to make an impact
Idealists - who pursue personal growth and self-discovery
Rationals - who pursue knowledge and intellectual superiority

We all tend to think everyone gets the same "meaning" from life that we do. But they don't. They are completely driven by different things. I simplified the motivational drivers - so if you don't see yourself neatly in a category don't panic. (I'll write more about this model in my other blog - once I get back to thinking work).

So, you may have guessed that I'm an idealist, and I always am looking for deep insights about the meaning of life and all that stuff. And, up until now, I've assumed that most people seek these similar things and need to feel a sense of inner meaning and purpose to feel happy. But now I see that they don't.

This was eye-opening, and allowed me to appreciate those close to me and see them more in terms of what would give them a sense of personal fulfillment, instead of what would give me that same sense of fulfillment if I were in their shoes.

There are also many aspects of personality I don't believe this model covers and two of them are impacting me right now, on this trip. One of them is goal setting. Another is how the brain functions.

We had this great "rational" in our training group who had done a lot of reading on how the brain works and one insight he shared was why we need 8 hours of sleep. He said it takes that long for the brain to process everything that happened the following day and get it all organized and sorted. When we wake up fuzzy in the morning, it's because our brain hasn't had the chance to do all that sorting.

The first thing I noticed when I got up yesterday, after eight good hours of sleep, was how incredibly clear my head felt, and I remembered what he said. The first thing I noticed this morning when I got up after about 5 hours of sleep is that my brain is fuzzy, and I don't like that feeling as much as the clear brain. I've known a few brilliant people who thrive just fine on about 5 hours of sleep and I wonder if they've just trained their brains to sort faster.

The other thing I noticed this morning is my inner conflict. I want to get on the road and go go go, so I can make it to my friend Donna's house in Iowa and hang out with her for a couple of days before having to get on the road again. So I have goals of getting to point X by such and such time and point Y by another time, and I get anxious if I'm "behind schedule". But at the same time I keep telling myself I'm on vacation, and to relax.

So we'll see how that balance pans out.