What I find so appealing wit the I.D. assessment is that is going in depth on why you have behave in certain ways, what motivates you, what are your instinctive drives, and then gives you practical and sound advice how to make the best out of your strengths and potential pitfalls.

The profile report is looking at four areas, your drive to Verify, to Authenticate, to Complete, and to Improvise. Each drive rated from 1 to 9, 5 being neutral and 9 indicating absolute strength.

• Verify: The drive to Get It Right. Being strong in Verify means that you probably need to understand the objective of something before acting, you prefer written documentation so you can study it in detail and you check and make sure things are on the right track to Get it Right!
  More on Verify.
• Authenticate: The drive to Make It Real. If you’re strong in this drive you are likely to mean what you say, you expect things to happen as promised, you deliver sustainable solutions that are fit for use and purpose, and you are good at visualizing outcomes to Make It Real.
  More on Authenticate.
• Complete: The drive to Keep It Whole. “Completers” are the kind who want clear expectations and make a detailed plan to ensure that they deliver to expectation and in time. They make sure they have time to finish the task in time (or they may not even start) and deliver solutions that fit well in the bigger picture to maintain harmony and Keep It Whole.
  More on Complete.
• Improvise: The drive to Make It Possible. If you’re strong in Improvise you are driven by passion and excitement and you make quick decisions based on your gut feel. You probably take risks since you naturally say ‘yes’ to new ideas. You thrive in an fun environment with loads of things happening and you are good at inspiring others since you often make a strong and positive first impression. Since you’re very optimistic your natural response to a challenge will be: Make It Possible!
  More on Improvise.

The personal report you receive after taking the assessment is supplemented by a “manager report”, a one-pager with tips for your manager (partner, friends, etc) on how to leverage your strengths and how to avoid making you stressed and vulnerable .

The I.D. assessment is developed by Australian company Link-Up, founded by Paul Burgess, I recommend that you read more about Instinctive Drives on I.D. Central where you also can order online access to take the test.

Me? ID:6673

Get organized

There is an established concept called Getting Things Done, GTD. This is the 101 on GTD!

The concept of GTD has as many variations as users for the simple reason that we all are wired differently. Nevertheless there are some “best practices” to get you started, implement it and refine as you get used to it.

For many David Allen is the man to look up to when it comes to getting things done (GTD). Although the principles of GTD is a lot of common sense David Allen has structured the approach and boiled it done to three main models. He has even registered Getting Things Done and GTD as trademarks.

His version of GTD is summarized by himself as follows (from his book “Ready for Anything”):
“Get everything out of your head. Make decisions about actions required on stuff when it shows up — not when it blows up. Organize reminders of your projects and the next actions on them in appropriate categories. Keep your system current, complete, and reviewed sufficiently to trust your intuitive choices about what you’re doing (and not doing) at any time.”

The principles of GTD are used by numerous companies in the time management business and all aim at giving you a system for managing tasks so that they are prioritized correctly, actioned in a timely fashion, none is dropped and you sleep better at night!

The simplest approach and system is to get a notepad, preferably of a size that allows you to carry it with you at all times, that is reserved for tasks. As soon as you create a task for yourself write down in your notepad. Consult your notepad on an hourly, daily basis and decide which task to action. As soon as completed mark it as completed in your notepad.

Note that I write “as soon as you create a task for yourself”. An important realization is that the task is not yours until you have accepted it. It doesn’t matter if your boss comes and drop a task in your lap, there is no such thing as “I was given the task to…”, you must adopt the correct attitude and say “I accepted the task to…”. Remember to communicate your decision to accept or deny a task. Guess who’s the fool if your boss thinks that you accepted a task but you did not…. ? But more on this in a different article. Back to GTD.

Your next step may be to prioritize the tasks, this should be done in two phases. Firstly, as you write the task down in your notepad make a note of the deadline for the task, if there is no specific deadline note the importance of the task, as simply as 1-3, 1 being the most important. Secondly, when you review your complete list of task it is important to prioritize between the tasks to ensure that you have reasonable workload.

Writing down the tasks as you accept them you may not have the complete overview of tasks and therefore be inclined to make everything important and end up with everything having to be done today, or you find that most of your tasks´ deadline is on the same day.

You may even want to estimate the time requirement per task to be able to plan more efficiently. Estimate each task to multiples of 15 min blocks and combine tasks to make up a full working day.

Once you’re into the habit of prioritizing your task list your next step may be to implement a systematic review of your list of tasks. I suggest that the main review and planning is done at the end of the day. There two main reasons for this, (1) you have probably accumulated a bunch of tasks during the day and its good to prioritize and plan while you still have it fresh in your mind, and (2) you will sleep much better knowing that you have control of your tasks as soon as you open your notepad the following day, no more laying awake at night trying to remember all the things you didn’t get done today.

Do a quick mid-day review to fit in any urgent and important tasks to your afternoon schedule. To take it one step further you could do weekly review, lets say Sunday evening, to get an overview of the coming week.

I will soon write an article on urgency and importance of tasks to guide you in deciding how to prioritize and plan your tasks.

Until then, GTD!

To read more about David Allen’s approach to GTD check-out Wikipedia or his corporate website.

I’ve done the official test 3 times and various free versions of the test 2-3 times. I’ll share my four letter profile further down.

The objective of the MBTI is to indicate preferred behavior (as opposed to actual behavior). So, what is your natural inclination. In a room full of people you’ve never met before, would you (a) introduce yourself, or (b) wait to be introduced?

You may have a professional role where you’re expected to take the lead and be extrovert so you have conditioned yourself to meet that expectation but is it truly you?

It’s important to remember that the MBTI is, as the name states, an indicator. I would recommend using as a starting point for reflection and conversations around personal development and team building. Don’t treat it as science and don’t make hiring decisions based on the MBTI.

Read about MBTI from the source, the Myers & Briggs Foundation.

The best free online test I’ve come across on the web is from SharedPaths.

So, back to my MBTI type… The first couple of times I did the MBTI I came out as ENTP or INTP with very weak E/I. Now, almost 10 years later I am still pretty neutral on E/I and I still have a strong T: I come out as an ISTJ. How can it be so different? In my early twenties I was probably more answering from what I would like to be whereas I am more true to my natural inclination answering the questions nowadays. Guess that’s what’s called “growing up”.