So, a really interesting topic came up in
one of the comments the other week and I
want to go through it here. The summary
of it is, I am curious about the
similarities of the ENFP personality
type and adult ADHD. Any thoughts on that,
or perhaps a video? Well, I don't mind if
I do, perhaps a video. So, if you don't
know about personality types in terms of
the Myers-Briggs or MBTI (MBIT?),
Jesus, I write books about this. It's a
slow day, sorry, I've been a little sick.
If you don't know about these
personality types, they're essentially
the four letter combinations and they're
sixteen types. So, you've probably done a
test about this at some point in school
or for a job, you have types like ENTJ,
ENFP, INFP, ISTP, whatever, these four
letter combinations. Anyhow, ENFP is one
of the types that is probably the most
all over the map in terms of, and I'm an
ENFP, so take no offense, fellow, fellow
friends here. If you talk to most ENFPs who are 20
or 30, the odds of them having one steady
job for the last ten years is about the
same odds as winning a lottery. It's the
kind of personality type where you tend
to change direction a lot, and so it's
natural to ask this question about ADHD
because ADHD is associated with getting
distracted, changing your, not
necessarily change your mind, but
bouncing around, doing lots of different
things, and this is something I've, I've
thought about before and what I would
say is that, the ENFP traits are related
to longer term life decisions. Now, I'm
not talking about five years or ten years,
that's way too long for an ENFP to ever
think about, but I mean of in terms of
maybe like weeks out, months out. So, the
ENFP wiring personality trait is more
likely to lead you to quit a job after
six months instead of waiting three
years, which in my opinion is a blessing
not a curse, because it causes you to
leave bad situation sooner rather than
stick around. But yeah, so the personality
type, I think, is a higher level, bigger
decisions, longer term effect on your life,
where ADHD is going to affect your
day-to-day a lot more. Now, of course, your
daily actions, your hourly actions really
are what shape your life. So, you know, an
example would be brushing your teeth. If
you don't brush your teeth every day,
it's two minutes, four minutes a day,
whatever of a habit, not doing that is
going to have a long-term consequence.
And so, ADD or ADHD functions or in
effects, I would say the short-term, day-to-
day, minute by minute actions, but of
course those can have long-term effects.
But ADHD is maybe going to impact your
ability to, you know, stay on track, sit
down and work for a long period of time,
certainly doing work you don't enjoy
like accounting or admin work. Now, these
same things also apply for ENFPs, so
generally ENFP types do not like
accounting, do not like administration
work, do not like just paperwork in
general, which combined with some of the
ADHD traits, which make it difficult to
do work you don't enjoy, and that can
obviously be quite interesting in terms
of the life that comes from it. Now, I
really want to talk about the positive
side here though, because I've taken some
flak in other videos for just focusing
on the negative and that's not how I
think. I really, I am into personality types
and studying this stuff to find the
positive. So, with ADHD and with the ENFP
personality type, and this also applies
to a bunch of other personality types as
well, it's really really important to be
doing work that you enjoy. So, believe it
or not, some people actually enjoy
accounting and enjoy paperwork. And a lot
of people are able to force themselves
to consistently do work that they don't
necessarily enjoy but it's a means to an end.
They assume that their job should be so
so, it's not supposed to be amazing, they
don't mind it and they get by with it.
Problem with people with ADHD and ENFP
personality types as well, is in both
cases, we don't like doing things for the
sake of it, you know, when the teacher
says, "You have to do this." "Why?" And, "Because
I said so," that's never a good situation
for, for either types, and in this case
with a combination of having both. And so,
having a career or business that's
aligned with your natural skills and
what you enjoy doing, it's going to make
a huge difference. Because despite the
stereotype, people with ADHD are capable
of long periods of focus. It's actually
one of the contradictory on the surface
of these traits of ADHD, is an inability
to focus because there's actually
hyper-focus, essentially, that comes up. So,
someone with ADHD, their frontal lobe is
less active in general, which is what you
use to focus and to change directions,
and to avoid kind of distractions. The
thing is, when you have ADHD, if you
get into a task like playing a video
game, or writing, or like editing
something, building a website, you can get
lost in it and have extremely high
levels of focus for hours on end, and
this sometimes confuses people, because
they, they're like, "How come I can focus
sometimes and not others?" I have some
theories on why that happens, but nothing
that's worth sharing publicly at this
point. So, in the same, I would say it's true
for people with ENFP. Sometimes on the
surface, outsiders will look and say, you
know, "You always change direction, you
don't commit to something," or you know,
when we're younger at least. And the, the
reality is that, when an ENFP is
passionate about something, they often
have more energy and more fire, and more
drive and focus than just about anyone
else, for better or worse. You can look at
the, the revolutionary leaders like Fidel
Castro who are assumed to be ENFPs.
So, when an ENFP gets a mission, they
are very focused and very dedicated,
which is why it's so important. If you
have either of these traits, the
personality type of ENFP or ADHD as a,
just a way of being, to really proactively
design your life. I know I'm the Life
Design guy, so it makes sense, I'll bring it up.
But in these cases, it's that much more
important, because you're not going to, or
you're much less likely to succeed just
trying to force a square peg in a round
hole, right, just trying to do something
because you think you should. So, yeah. I
think that's it. I hope that answers your
question and helps out with it. I'll probably
go on for this more, and if I do think of
more aspects of this I might make
another video or add it in the comments
below, here. The big takeaway here is there
are similar things of being an ENFP and
being, or having ADHD. They can manifest
in similar ways, but they're completely
unrelated and they're different things.
I'm sure they are misdiagnosed both
different ways, right? And that, either way
whether you're one of the two or both, in
my case, I think I'm both, it's really
important to proactively align your life,
align the work you're doing with what
you enjoy because then you can use
things like your hyper focus, your
passion, your ability to like get really
into something and get obsessed. You can
use that positively and create something
awesome rather than fighting it all the
time trying, to do work, or trying to fit
yourself into a role that you really
don't belong to. Cool, hope you've enjoyed
this video, if you have, definitely
subscribe here and catch you in other one.