Judging vs Perceiving

Last week I wrote about the Myers-Briggs personality type system, and how it is a great tool for understanding yourself and others. One particular trait it is very helpful for understanding is organizational ability, or the lack thereof. It turns out that organization is strongly associated with one of the four letters in your type - the P (Perceiving) or J (Judging).

Here is a brief overview of these functions from Personality Pathways, an excellent online resource for Myers-Briggs information:

All people use both judging (thinking and feeling) and perceiving (sensing and intuition) processes to store information, organize our thoughts, make decisions, take actions and manage our lives. Yet one of these processes (Judging or Perceiving) tends to take the lead in our relationship with the outside world . . . while the other governs our inner world.

A Judging (J) style approaches the outside world WITH A PLAN and is oriented towards organizing one's surroundings, being prepared, making decisions and reaching closure and completion.



A Perceiving (P) style takes the outside world AS IT COMES and is adopting and adapting, flexible, open-ended and receptive to new opportunities and changing game plans.

Applying these traits to organizational ability, you can probably see that people with a dominant Judging function not only like to be organized, but are actually driven to be more organized than someone with the Perceiving function. What may be less obvious from these descriptions is that the Perceiving attitude of being flexible and open-ended tends to make the people who are dominant in this function more likely to hold on to things, because they "might" need them later. As a result, Perceiving people tend to be perceived (especially by Judging people) as disorganized!

This revelation was so helpful to me in my job. I worked at a company that heavily favored the Judging function in its employees. However, being a person more dominant in the Perceiving function, I was always the one with the messy desk and the stacks of unfiled papers. I usually felt guilty about this, but despite brief bursts of organizational effort, my desk always somehow managed to get away from me sooner or later.

Once I learned about this difference in personality types, I wasn't so hard on myself. The important thing for me was that I really did know where everything was on my desk, and in fact I was very successful at my company. Being aware of these functions helped me to understand that filing and staying organized would always be more challenging for me than it would be for my Judging peers, but what others considered "messiness" was not a fault or character defect in myself.

Despite all of this, most of the Judging types I've known, especially at work, tend to feel superior and look down on us "messy" Perceiving types. Many of them really do perceive our fundamental difference in organizational styles to be a matter of "right" and "wrong," and Judging supervisors tend to be harsh and critical toward their Perceiving subordinates, trying to get them to follow their "system" for getting things organized. I can't help but think that more awareness of the Myers-Briggs personality types would help people be more tolerant and understanding of organizational differences.

I also want to add that, despite being dominant in the Perceiving function, I am not hopelessly disorganized. My house is clean. I pay my bills on time. I make my bed every morning. Organization is not a black-or-white proposition. What's most important to realize is that differences in organizational ability happen to be a part of what makes individuals who they are, and the Perceiving function gives those of us who are more dominant in it equally valid and important strengths in other areas of life.