“Perfect is the enemy of good.”
Productivity and Standards
For some, productivity might mean turning out x number of widgets in y amount of time. For Advocate (INFJ) personality types, turning out x number of widgets in y amount of time can be a fine definition.
But only if the people turning out those widgets are treated fairly in all possible ways, and if the company is selling widgets that genuinely improve the lives of others, and if their production isn’t just a way to make money. In some form, Advocates will always ask, “Is there a noble purpose behind these widgets?”
For some personality types, it’s sufficient to provide methods and techniques for boosting productivity. With many Judging personality types – particularly, but not exclusively, Intuitive, Judging types – productivity is more likely to slow down based on motivation rather than methods. As people who value order, Judging personalities are more likely to have explored what creates order, and the “what to do” is likely already firmly in place, at least in their minds. But knowledge needs the fuel of motivation to become productivity.
Productivity can flag for some Judging personalities when motivation and psychological issues get in the way of moving forward with what needs to be done. Finding the reasons why they are doing something – or why they are reluctant to do it – then becomes the most important fix for their productivity issues. Once they have the “why,” the “how” becomes easy. They likely already understand and appreciate the power that organization and orderly techniques have on getting the job done by virtue of their Judging personality trait alone.
Advocates are principled people who value standards that they may themselves have trouble meeting at times. A paralyzing perfectionism based on inflated principles can plague the progress of Advocate personalities who don’t balance their sometimes esoteric goals against universally sought-after outcomes.
The following is not about INFJ personality types ignoring their conscientious beliefs, standards, morals, best practices, or preferred methodologies. On the contrary, most people wouldn’t want Advocates to abandon their principles. The more people in society who are mindful of such things, the better it is for all of us. Advocates may want to aim for humanistic principles that remain essential factors yet strive to balance them against more practical and concrete results. Ethics and outcomes are not necessarily at odds, but principles alone may not put food on the table.
Discover your level of perfectionism by taking our Perfectionism Test.
Tips for Engaging the Practical
Keep Your Eyes on the Prize
Having a clear bottom line can be helpful for idealistic personality types like Advocates. Rather than only chasing vague goals without a clear target, idealists do best when they turn their standards into something more measurable.
One of the ways to keep all of this in balance is to ensure that you have a good handle on the motives for your work and other efforts. “So I can pay my monthly rent” is an altogether fitting reason to work.
Consider: List every “why” you can think of for what you are trying to accomplish. Certainly, prioritize items on your list by importance. But don’t forget that even the least important item on your list may be important enough to warrant a reasonable amount of your attention. For another way to look at your “whys,” check out our Career Values inventory.
Review your list frequently and try to ensure that each bullet point is satisfied.
Keep the Lines Open
As someone with an Introverted personality type, you may want to keep your own counsel. And you may sometimes also believe that others don’t fully understand you, or if they do understand you, that they may not give the same sense of importance to certain goals and tasks as you do. In addition, an overly strict sense of what “should be” may interfere with an Advocate’s openness to the thoughts of others.
Sometimes a lone-wolf stance works, especially if you’re doing creative work that involves self-expression. But mostly, feedback is a good thing for us all. We all have blind spots that can keep tripping us up, and in the long run, frequent redos or missed targets can cause our productivity to suffer.
People you trust and respect can often catch those blind spots and other oversights and provide valuable feedback. From their vantage points, these individuals can serve as advisors who can help you assure the caliber and accuracy of the things you produce or the services you provide.
Consider: Who do you respect as skilled enough to play devil’s advocate when you need one? Who do you trust with something as precious as the effort that you put into being productive? Is it a group of people who come to mind or just one person? If there’s nobody who can fill that role, where can you look for such a person? A workshop? A meetup? Someone you’re familiar with at your job but never had a chance to get to know better?
Find time to spend with these people and work to build trust. Your vulnerability and faith in the other people are necessary if their feedback will be worth your time. And keep in mind that someone who doesn’t have your best interests in mind can still give you valuable information. But that should only supplement a team of trusted people who can help you be more fruitful. (Don’t let mean-spirited critics bring you down.)
When you receive feedback from anyone, decide not to entertain your first reaction. It’s human to be a bit defensive. Don’t let your “shoulds” squelch the suggestions of others too quickly.
(Keep in mind that, if the feedback is not coming from a boss or manager, you likely have veto power that allows you to heed the feedback that you like and throw away the rest. Feedback is usually not designed to eliminate any personal power that you feel regarding your product. Just make sure that you don’t throw anything away until you’ve given your trusted advisors an impartial hearing.)
Keep a Sense of Purpose in Everything You Do
Without motivation, there is less likely to be productivity. Without a clearly defined and noble purpose, it may be difficult for Advocate personalities to find motivation. In order to bolster an Advocate’s productivity, it may require first bolstering motivation by clarifying their purpose.
Advocates need to believe that they are fulfilling an authentic purpose that is larger than completing a simple task. The greater the meaning, the more motivated the Advocate tends to be. For example, as a server at a restaurant, an Advocate may want to get the client’s order right. But beyond that, they may also want to ensure that each person they serve food to has a quality experience. They are likely to take the word “serve” seriously, as in “serving a fellow human being,” and they are likely to offer a bit more than simply placing food in front of their customers.
However, such a sense of purpose can be hard to find in many of the basic tasks that we are all sentenced to perform in life, and boredom from routine can be deadly to the motivation of some Advocates. And yet these chores may be essential to keeping things running smoothly, and not engaging with these mundane tasks could disrupt productivity. Taking care of such things clearly has a purpose.
Fortunately, an Advocate’s imagination is usually up to the task of reframing a situation. So rather than writing off the inevitable, mundane duties of life as not worth your full attention, consider finding ways to imbue them with meaning.
Practice looking for the purpose in everything. Treat finding the value of a seemingly pointless activity as a type of meditation. This form of mindfulness might light a fire under even the most bored Advocate.
Consider: Can stuffing envelopes announcing a retail sale be a noble activity? How might you reframe such a task to make it a more purposeful experience? List at least five ways to turn sales-envelope stuffing into a purposeful mission.
Reframing is sometimes only a matter of a little effort and maybe some practice.
(Note: If finding purpose in a job that you’re doing seems absurd, then to be more satisfied, you may want to set your sights on more meaningful work elsewhere.)
Keep in Touch with Your Judging Trait
Advocates value organization but not in the same way that Observant, Judging personality types might. The latter are more likely to accept the concept of an organized universe where fairness and other moral certainties make sense. Perhaps it’s overgeneralizing to say that Advocates’ attention to order tends to lean toward the cosmic and universal more than the ordinary, but probably not by much.
However, that doesn’t mean that they have no regard for the state of their desk or other work surfaces. They likely have some sense that order extends even to things like a filing system. Advocates are second only to one other personality type in saying that a well-ordered work environment makes them feel calm. However, due to their unique nature, Advocates may want to take special care to safeguard the order in their environment and methods.
Should they find themselves on fire over a passion project, Advocates may sometimes go macro in their zeal, looking at themes and concepts while overlooking some concrete micro matters. In time, the small oversights might add up and begin to look like a sizable mess. Advocates may begin to suffer from a sort of imposter syndrome if parts of their lives fail to reflect their appreciation for orderliness.
To feel the self-confidence that leads to increased productivity, Advocates may need to get down and dirty with organizational methods and technologies that help them meet the orderly standards that they value, even when it comes to things that may not appear to matter.
Consider: Explore and experiment with planners and calendars to find the best tool for managing time. Keep in touch with the latest ideas and organizational technologies by watching videos or reading articles. People who are dying to tell you how they organize their lives saturate platforms like YouTube and provide many opportunities to explore different methods for structuring your life and work. When you can, team up with someone who relishes details. Yes, they’re out there.
Why Not Celebrate?
Be sure to celebrate your victories along the way. In your idealism, you may set goals that are nearly impossible to complete. As a result, a triumphant end worth celebrating may seem elusive or slippery. This slipperiness is why it may help if you learn to celebrate your incremental successes and celebrate them often.
There is much to be said for rewarding yourself. Advocate personalities may not appreciate external rewards, but stopping occasionally and celebrating can help motivate even the most internally focused Introvert to put more energy into the next leg of the race. Stop and appreciate your work whenever you pass one of your many milestones.
You deserve it.
What methods have you tried for maintaining productivity? Tell us about them in the comments below.