January 3, 2018

I’m an Introvert Who Likes New Ideas

Maggie Koerth-Baker says personality tests are all junk science except for one: the Big Five test. Fine. So I took it. Would you like to know how I came out? Of course you would! But let’s put it into chart form, shall we?

My comments:

  • Conscientiousness. I’m not sure I’m quite that conscientious. But, yeah, I tend to be a pretty focused and reliable kind of guy.
  • Openness to experience. I’ve always wondered what this really meant, and now I know. According to the writeup, it’s a mishmash of openness to experience and openness to ideas. I’m a person of settled habits who’s not all that open to new experiences, but I am open to new ideas. I love new ideas. This averages out to an above-average score, but it still seems to me that we’re using the same label for two different things here.
  • Neuroticism. Yeah, I have mood swings and tend to focus more on negative emotions than positive ones. On the other hand, I mostly stay calm and I bounce back from setbacks relatively quickly. So that all averages out and I end up…about average on this metric.
  • Agreeableness. I think I probably scored higher than I should have here. Sure, I’m generally polite, but I’m not especially well-liked or sociable. Then again, it’s not like I’m a monster or anything. This score probably isn’t way off. Maybe by 5-10 points at a guess.
  • Extroversion. I dunno. If I were guessing, I’d say I should have scored lower. Then again, I’m not a hermit and I don’t go to pieces around new people. I’d just prefer that they all go away.¹ I actually have my own score for this, in fact. I’ve discovered that I’m OK in groups of five or less. Six can go either way, though it’s fine if it’s people I know. Above that I tend to go pretty quiet. These are exact numbers, by the way, not estimates. The tipping point is six. Always six.

I would judge a personality by the extreme traits, not the ones that are just average. In my case, it means I’m introverted, conscientious, and open to new ideas. All in all, I’d say that sounds about right.

¹Oddly, I quite enjoy meeting up with readers when they happen to be in town. I suppose that fits, since this always falls well under the six-person rule. On the other hand, after I’ve met someone I tend not to stay in touch very well.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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