The Copper Phoenix

Discipline means control of my time, energy, and emotions to advance my goals and achieve my dreams.

If necessary, yes. I'm always ready to physically defend myself and my loved ones without hesitation, I've emphasized health and fitness all my life to do so.

But I've also reached a point in my life where I can eliminate issues without putting hands on someone so it's now a last resort instead of a first option. When I was young, I had a lot of family dysfunction, a lot of anger, and not much to lose. Now that I'm older, I've finally built an awesome life that I'm not willing to gamble.

I do it through a few ways:

I'm extremely protective of my time both in and out of work: I actively cut and reduce as many meetings as possible. Meetings are stamina vampires and motivation killers, they're only used for discussions that require rapid back and forth exchanges of ideas or debates when teams can't agree on something and need to drive alignment. All other communications like status updates, one-off questions, newsletters, data readouts, etc. should be through Slack or e-mails.

I don't attend meetings where:

I have no perspective/opinion/expertise to share with the group to solve a problem.

The outcome of the decision has no impact on me, my team, my product.

I can find the same information somewhere else (an internal document, email, message, etc.).

The fewer meetings, the more mental stamina saved.

2. I write more than I talk. I'm big on clear documentation because it allows for organization of thoughts, the addition of visuals (graphs, charts, wireframes) for clarity of perspective, and the creation of a paper trail for future reference. In my role as a Product Manager, that's typically a 1-pager or PRD draft to summarize the problem statement, add supporting data, and outline risks and/or recommendations. I send this out before we meet so people can react to it and add their ideas/questions/concerns so that once we meet we already have 75% of the discussion done before the meeting.

If I don't have a 1-pager, then at the bare minimum, I always have a few bullet points outlining the questions to answer from the meeting. Never show up at a meeting or brainstorming session without anything prepared beforehand.

The shorter the meetings, the more mental stamina saved.

3. I leverage frameworks and solutions from comparable cases. Don't reinvent the wheel-- find solutions to similar problems, distill them into frameworks, and start from there. It'll cut down on the pre-discussions, discussions, re-discussions, and back and forth if we start 10 miles ahead of the starting line. A lot of time existing solutions aren't perfect fits, but they can be adapted to fix similar problems.

The less redundant work, the more mental stamina saved.

4. I lean on the expertise of the people around me. The one constant in my career is that I avoid working with stupid people. Period. Everywhere I've worked, I've optimized for being around very intelligent people and I've aimed for companies that have extremely high hiring bars. Break the problem into smaller pieces and distribute them to people whose skills are best matched. You shouldn't be in a room brainstorming the solution to all the problems-- only the ones you're best equipped to solve. There's that saying: "many hands make light work." Loop in other experts so it expedites the process.

The lower the intellectual burden, the more mental stamina saved.

5. I follow the impact. Don't just focus on the uninteresting topic/problem, trace its impact to the very end and see with your own eyes the fruits of your labor. I remember back when I was in global strategy being assigned to a process improvement project in Asia. I flew out to Singapore to optimize some processes which was a mind-numbingly boring exercise of designing process flows, launching internal tools, and training agents. However, the impact of the work was that people who were affected by dangerous situations during their international travels were able to be quickly rescued and made financially whole again. Reviewing charts and graphs isn't fun, but I would've lost sight of its importance if I didn't follow the impact.

The higher the personal fulfillment, the more mental stamina saved.

that way we know we’re from tumblr without revealing anything

I’m just going to say this to strangers until i find a tumblr person

must keep reblogering!! Im going to be so suspicious if any one tells me this now!

Remember the answer is: ”17 cocks”

I've brought these problems to my supervisor and manager before, informing them that these policies are not respected, the inefficiencies in what the process should be, what clients are doing instead of going back to their actual resources, and suggestions/feedback/constructive criticisms to improve all of these things. My supervisor and manager are both ISFJs and they have worked in this department for over a decade, enough to say "it is what it is; this is what it means to be in service." My coworkers are not nearly as motivated to enforce the policies either because they see no change throughout all the years they've been here, or they don't care for this job enough.

I know that my job is service-oriented and there's something called going above and beyond, but I feel like there is nothing wrong with me educating my clients and i don't want to change what I feel is correct. I feel like another INFP on the team and I are the only ones who feels this passionately about these problems and want to improve it, but this burden is so tiresome and my team thinks it's annoying for me to police everything. I know that this job is no longer for me, and I'm working on finding something else, but until then, what else can I do?

I'm probably just looking for some validation and feedback on what I can do better, but am I wrong? Do I just need to let this go and let things be as they are? Am I just not doing enough? Am I not enforcing this properly?

You can have my validation that you're not wrong, you're probably right, but that still doesn't fix any of the problems you've outlined. Culture change comes in one of two ways if leadership isn't open to change:

The 'judger way' (xxFJ + xxTJ): Become a leader yourself and cascade the change downward -> This requires an immense amount of time to stick around and climb the promotional ladder

The 'perceiver way' (xxFP + xxTP): Get enough influential people to agree with you and override leadership -> This requires an immense amount of effort and may get you fired

Both options require power. Without power, you're stuck at the mercy of other people's decisions inside and outside of work.

This conflict is also a key reason why many INFPs are miserable in corporate environments because they need to adhere to systems and processes other people in power make. Without any motivation to climb the ladder, become a person of power, and change the systems/processes themselves-- INFPs get stuck as passengers in a car that someone else is driving. This is why you see a lot of INFPs opt for freelancing careers, academia, or completely opt out of work (stay-at-home parents) to maximize freedom.

Moving forward, you're correct to find a company that's a better culture fit. Until then, I wouldn't waste another single brain cell stressing about things and people that refuse to change. Save your time, energy, and emotions for the next role so you can hit the ground running.

Related answers:

Any advice for Fi-Dom leaders? Do you think they can be successful at leading people?

Help Mr. Entj, have you ever seen an INFP leader or manager in action? What observations do you have of their leadership style? Do you have any advice for improvement?

Have you worked with an INFP before? What's it like for you as an ENTJ?

MBTI and career choice