TLDR: See the first paragraph and Lessons Learned at the end.

Few days ago /u/WhySoRuff published a great post The MBTI personality type is to man what an Astrological sign is to woman. Here's my analysis of the INTP personality. Written mostly for my own use. I hope it will start a discussion on our roadmap. If you haven't taken the personality test yet, you can try it out at 16personalities.

While a lot of advice I've come up with has already been reiterated in TRP, this analysis allows you to identify those points as the most important to you.


Overview

The INTP personality type is fairly rare, making up only three percent of the population, which is definitely a good thing for them, as there's nothing they'd be more unhappy about than being "common". INTPs pride themselves on their inventiveness and creativity, their unique perspective and vigorous intellect. Usually known as the philosopher, the architect, or the dreamy professor, INTPs have been responsible for many scientific discoveries throughout history.

  • Fear of being common - perceiving being a weirdo as a good thing
  • Prone to break Law 38: Think as you like, but behave as others
  • Might be related to the phenomenon described in NMMNG: Boys with no good male role models grow up to be proud in how different they are from other men, especially their fathers.
  • Prescription: Force yourself to be more of a boring, ordinary man

  • Great inventiveness and creativity

  • Prone to over-innovate things that already work

  • Prescription: Don't fix it if it ain't broke. Get comfortable with things being good enough

  • Proud of their creativity - risk of down-playing importance of other personality traits.

  • Prescription: Admire, cheer for and learn from people excelling in other ways.

They love patterns, and spotting discrepancies between statements could almost be described as a hobby, making it a bad idea to lie to an INTP. This makes it ironic that INTPs' word should always be taken with a grain of salt – it's not that they are dishonest, but people with the INTP personality type tend to share thoughts that are not fully developed, using others as a sounding board for ideas and theories in a debate against themselves rather than as actual conversation partners.

  • Prone to share thoughts just to test them out.
  • Risk of unwillingly outraging people
  • Losing control over one's image
  • Prescription: Shut up. Talk less. Only when you are certain of what you are saying and how you are conveying it.
  • Prescription: Notice patterns of how people react to your words. Accept your responsibility over that.

This may make them appear unreliable, but in reality no one is more enthusiastic and capable of spotting a problem, drilling through the endless factors and details that encompass the issue and developing a unique and viable solution than INTPs – just don't expect punctual progress reports. People who share the INTP personality type aren't interested in practical, day-to-day activities and maintenance, but when they find an environment where their creative genius and potential can be expressed, there is no limit to the time and energy INTPs will expend in developing an insightful and unbiased solution.

  • Dislike for mundane, systematic repetitive work. Always like to climb the mountain on the north face.
  • Prescription: Have a schedule. Stick to it.
  • Prescription: Take up activities where there is no hard-to-find-but-short path to success. Lifting is an obvious one.

  • Prone to over-invest in problems that are not significant but enjoyable for the intellectual challenge.

  • Prescription: Before taking on a challenge, evaluate the expected outcomes against expected investment required.

They may appear to drift about in an unending daydream, but INTPs' thought process is unceasing, and their minds buzz with ideas from the moment they wake up. This constant thinking can have the effect of making them look pensive and detached, as they are often conducting full-fledged debates in their own heads, but really INTPs are quite relaxed and friendly when they are with people they know, or who share their interests. However, this can be replaced by overwhelming shyness when INTP personalities are among unfamiliar faces, and friendly banter can quickly become combative if they believe their logical conclusions or theories are being criticized.

  • Appear dreamy.
  • Prescription: Get more grounded. But how?

  • Shy around unfamiliar faces.

  • Prescription: Attend more social events, where you don't know anyone.

  • Prescription: With people you don't know, assume are friendly, but sometimes you don't get it.

When INTPs are particularly excited, the conversation can border on incoherence as they try to explain the daisy-chain of logical conclusions that led to the formation of their latest idea. Oftentimes, INTPs will opt to simply move on from a topic before it's ever understood what they were trying to say, rather than try to lay things out in plain terms.

  • Prone to get over-excited and speak incoherently.
  • Prescription: Be aware of excitement rising. When that happens, make a habit of speaking slower, use simple terms, finish your train of thought before moving on. Err on the side of sounding narcoleptic, patronising, and like a simpleton. Excitement should become an anchor triggering this mode.
  • Prescription: Again, talk less.

The reverse can also be true when people explain their thought processes to INTPs in terms of subjectivity and feeling. Imagine an immensely complicated clockwork, taking in every fact and idea possible, processing them with a heavy dose of creative reasoning and returning the most logically sound results available – this is how the INTP mind works, and this type has little tolerance for an emotional monkey-wrench jamming their machines.

  • Have difficulty understanding subjective communication, feelings, emotions.
  • Risk of misunderstanding, coming off as uncaring, etc.
  • Prescription: Develop Emotional Intelligence (But how?)

Further, with Thinking (T) as one of their governing traits, INTPs are unlikely to understand emotional complaints at all, and their friends won't find a bedrock of emotional support in them. People with the INTP personality type would much rather make a series of logical suggestions for how to resolve the underlying issue, a perspective that is not always welcomed by their Feeling (F) companions. This will likely extend to most social conventions and goals as well, like planning dinners and getting married, as INTPs are far more concerned with originality and efficient results.

  • Provide poor emotional support, looking for a logical solutions instead.
  • Prescription: Only give advice when asked for it.
  • Risk of disregarding social conventions for the sake of efficiency or originality.
  • Prescription: Give more respect to social conventions. Follow them, unless there is a good reason not to (efficiency often is not good enough)

The one thing that really holds INTPs back is their restless and pervasive fear of failure. INTP personalities are so prone to reassessing their own thoughts and theories, worrying that they've missed some critical piece of the puzzle, that they can stagnate, lost in an intangible world where their thoughts are never truly applied. Overcoming this self-doubt stands as the greatest challenge INTPs are likely to face, but the intellectual gifts – big and small – bestowed on the world when they do makes it worth the fight.

  • Paralyzing fear of failure. Overanalyzing, worrying.
  • Prescription: Believe in yourself more (Good books on that: Gorilla Mindset, The New Psycho-Cybernetics)
  • Prescription: Desensitize yourself to failure and fear of failure by taking up endeavours with low success chance.

Strengths

Great Analysts and Abstract Thinkers – People with the INTP personality type view the world as a big, complex machine, and recognize that as with any machine, all parts are interrelated. INTPs excel in analyzing these connections, seeing how seemingly unrelated factors tie in with each other in ways that bewilder most other personality types.

  • Great at identifying complex and non-trivial patterns and inter-dependencies.
  • Prescription: Leverage that ability in all areas of your life. Whenever starting a new endeavour, spend significant time observing, investigating, studying, especially successful people. Since this activity might be more productive for you, it's worth spending more resources on it, compared to other personality types.

Imaginative and Original – These connections are the product of an unrelenting imagination – INTPs' ideas may seem counter-intuitive at a glance, and may never even see the light of day, but they will always prove remarkable innovations.

  • Might lead to over-innovating.
  • Prescription: Again, be happy with things being good enough.

Open-Minded – INTPs couldn't make these connections if they thought they knew it all – they are highly receptive to alternate theories, so long as they're supported by logic and facts. In more subjective matters like social norms and traditions, INTPs are usually fairly liberal, with a "none of my business" sort of attitude – peoples' ideas are what matter.

Enthusiastic – When a new idea piques their interest, INTPs can be very enthusiastic – they are a reserved personality type, but if another person shares an interest, they can be downright excited about discussing it. More likely though, the only outward evidence of this enthusiasm will be INTPs' silent pacing or their staring into the distance.

  • Prescription: When feeling burned out and lacking motivation/discipline to keep going, try a new idea that might get you enthusiastic.
  • Difficulty with expressing enthusiasm.
  • Prescription: Err on the side of exaggerating your enthusiasm about ideas.

Objective – INTPs' analysis, creativity and open-mindedness aren't the tools of some quest for ideology or emotional validation. Rather, it's as though people with the INTP personality type are a conduit for the truths around them, so far as they can be expressed, and they are proud of this role as theoretical mediator.

Honest and Straightforward – To know one thing and say another would be terribly disingenuous – INTPs don't often go around intentionally hurting feelings, but they believe that the truth is the most important factor, and they expect that to be appreciated and reciprocated.

  • Expecting honesty to be appreciated, prone to overestimate its importance.
  • Prescription: Practice telling made-up stories, exaggerating, lying, while its understood what you are saying is not true.
  • Prescription: Speak as everyone else, when you are not among people you can trust.
  • Prescription: When talking to another person and your higher or at least equal status has been already established, leverage your controversial, non-reactive honesty to boost your status further.

Weaknesses

Very Private and Withdrawn – While INTPs' intellectualism yields many insights into their surroundings, their surroundings are ironically considered an intrusion on their thoughts. This is especially true with people – INTPs are quite shy in social settings. More complicated situations such as parties exacerbate this, but even close friends struggle to get into INTPs' hearts and minds.

  • Prescription: Force yourself into more social interactions.
  • Prescription: Express yourself more freely, err on the side of mumbling about your inner thoughts and feelings, especially with friends.

Insensitive – Oftentimes INTP personalities get so caught up in their logic that they forget any kind of emotional consideration – they dismiss subjectivity as irrational and tradition as an attempt to bar much-needed progress. Purely emotional situations are often utterly puzzling to INTPs, and their lack of timely sympathy can easily offend.

  • Prescription: Fake it till you make it. Observe empathetic people, social conventions they follow. Mimic them, even if it doesn't make much sense to you. Especially highly emotional situations.

Absent-minded – When INTPs' interest is captured, their absence goes beyond social matters to include the rest of the physical world. INTPs become forgetful, missing even the obvious if it's unrelated to their current infatuation, and they can even forget their own health, skipping meals and sleep as they muse.

  • Prescription: Learn focus and mindfulness. Gorilla Mindset has good chapters on that. (Many people will probably recommend meditation, but having very extensive experience, I'm sceptical of that)

Condescending – Attempts at connecting with others are often worse than INTPs' withdrawal. People with the INTP personality type take pride in their knowledge and rationale, and enjoy sharing their ideas, but in trying to explain how they got from A to B to Z, they can get frustrated, sometimes simplifying things to the point of insult as they struggle to gauge their conversation partners' perspective. The ultimate insult comes as INTPs give up with a dismissive "never mind".

  • Prescription: When attempting to explain something, have patience and willingness to walk the other person through your thinking. Practice analogy and metaphor. Practice with small kids.
  • Prescription: Acknowledge that rationality, knowledge and intelligence are not objectively superior to other skills and traits.

Loathe Rules and Guidelines – These social struggles are partly a product of INTPs' desire to bypass the rules, of social conduct and otherwise. While this attitude helps INTPs' strength of unconventional creativity, it also causes them to reinvent the wheel constantly and to shun security in favor of autonomy in ways that can compromise both.

  • Prescription: Follow existing rules, including social conventions. Even if they don't make much sense to you
  • Prescription: Learn to be content with things being good enough.
  • Prescription: Learn to be part of the team/mob/etc. Show more willingness to sacrifice your individuality and autonomy.

Second-Guess Themselves – INTPs remain so open to new information that they often never commit to a decision at all. This applies to their own skills as well – INTP personalities know that as they practice, they improve, and any work they do is second-best to what they could do. Unable to settle for this, INTPs sometimes delay their output indefinitely with constant revisions, sometimes even quitting before they ever begin.

  • Prescription: When you know you will have to make a decision or commit, set a hard deadline for yourself to make it. Feel free to use any reminders, TODO apps, etc.
  • Prescription: Learn to value effort and struggle more over perfection.
  • Prescription: Have more trust in yourself and ability to perform well enough. Again, The New Psycho-Cybernetics is a good book to develop that.

Relationships

When it comes to romantic relationships, INTPs have an interesting mixture of traits that often pleasantly surprise their partners. People with this personality type are always full of ideas, but they have few opportunities to explore their more romantic notions. As with any of their theories, INTPs love sharing with others, and in finally meeting someone where romantic thoughts are appropriate, they show themselves to be excited, enthusiastic, and even playful, flirting with word-play and intellectual games.

  • Prescription: To leverage your intellect and wit, focus your efforts on sarging during the day, online or in lounges, as opposed to loud venues at night.
  • Prescription: Be careful not to overinvest. Show less excitement than you really feel. Especially when you meet someone you click really well with.

None of this is to say that these relationships come easily to INTPs – they are shy and withdrawn individuals, and getting out and meeting new people, risking rejection and making themselves the center of attention in emotionally delicate situations are far from being their strengths. It is more likely that INTP personalities will leave a trail of breadcrumbs for a potential partner, allowing them to make the first move and committing to their partner as an act of reciprocation rather than bravado.

  • Prescription: Get out more. Force yourself into social interactions.
  • Prescription: Desensitize yourself to rejection.
  • Prescription: Accept your responsibility to make the first move.
  • Prescription: Keep persisting even after previous rejections.

From the start, INTPs take their relationships seriously – their imagination and vision, and the challenge of getting to know new people, make them all too aware of how important it is that they're involved with someone, and they will prove themselves surprisingly loyal. Even early in the dating phase, INTPs are unusually direct and honest, doing their best to express their mindset and create mutual understanding, believing that this shared knowledge will help to minimize misunderstandings and avoid conflict.

  • Prescription: Learn to be comfortable being single.
  • Prescription: Learn to be funny and less serious when dating. (I find Cocky Comedy And Other Conversational Skills by David DeAngelo to be a great product for that)
  • Prescription: Remember that until you have both committed to each other, you have no obligation towards your date. Remember also, that she's probably spinning plates.

As their relationships progress, INTPs' daily needs prove remarkably simple. Gifts, surprises, complex social plans and date nights are all fairly unimportant to people with the INTP personality type, but this is also one of their chiefest weaknesses – their partner may very much need these things, and it won't even occur to INTPs to plan them out. For all their analysis and attempts at mutual understanding, INTPs are notoriously bad at picking up on others' emotional needs.

  • Prescription: Get more unpredictable and spontaneous in your life, and let it translate into your dating. Write down your Bucket List.
  • Prescription: Read up on date logistics, understand the concept of changing venues.
  • Prescription: Again, work on your Emotional Intelligence.

When it comes to conflict, there is a certain willful ignorance for INTPs, and they often set aside their partners' feelings, and their own, for far too long.

  • Prescription: Get into the habit of calling out the elephant in the room more often.

When these conflicts do arise and are inescapable, INTPs will do their best to find a logical solution. But this hardly helps if the problem is logic itself, that INTP personalities aren't meeting their partners' emotional needs. INTPs should keep this in mind, and try to meet their partners halfway by communicating on an emotional level – if they make this effort, understanding partners will recognize and appreciate the gesture, clumsy though it may be. After all, they need to afford INTPs the same benefit, and meet them halfway with logic and simplicity as well.

  • Prescription: Learn about female psychology, shit tests and drama.
  • Prescription: Do not treat her words literally.

All this material asceticism and conflict avoidance support one primary goal – to free up mental resources for more important things. INTPs' creative, vivid imagination make for a surprisingly enthusiastic, passionate, and romantic partner. While INTPs may prioritize their inner world too much, imagining interesting and exciting intimate situations that are never expressed to their partners, they also use this rich inner world to achieve as much as possible in intimacy – they rarely want for ideas.

  • Prescription: Your rich inner world is what sets you apart. Share it with her and show it.

Physically, intellectually and with a little effort emotionally, INTP relationships are rich and rewarding connections. Partners who share the Intuitive (N) trait are usually best, along with one or two opposite traits to create variety and balance, but so long as INTPs remember that they are with people who have their own, independent wants and needs, and so long as their partners remember the same of their INTPs, these are long-lasting and satisfying relationships.

  • Prescription: Beware of your own solipsism. The fact that you feel some way, doesn't mean she feels the same.

Friendships

Many of the usual motivations for making friends – emotional support, social validation, shared routine – simply don't apply to INTPs. More likely, these concepts are met with disdain, as people with the INTP personality type prize intellectual depth above all else. It is not easy to become good friends with INTPs, but if there is a common interest and a common train of thought, the connection is likely to spark instantly, surprising everyone else who thought they had this distant personality type pegged.

  • Prescription: Keep in mind people's need for emotional support, validation and shared routine. Satisfy it to win friends.
  • Prescription: Read How to win friends and influence people.
  • Prescription: Get more involved and closer with people you don't have much intellectual understanding or connection with.

INTP friendships are knowledge-based, defined by the exchange of ideas, theories, and concepts, and those who aren't able to keep up with this, or who have sharply differing tastes (don't talk to INTPs about celebrities) will find stony faces that border on rude. To INTPs, communication is often more of a nuisance than a pleasure, and conversation is reserved for topics that they find meaningful, or for people they already like enough to stick it out.

Unless there's a natural affinity for this intellectual style, few have the patience to try to penetrate their shields, and INTPs are left with a naturally small circle of good friends.

  • Prescription: Make smalltalk with everyone
  • Prescription: Participate in conversations you consider pointless (weather, pop culture, cuisine, etc.)
  • Prescription: Talk to intellectually inferior people. Find aspects of those conversations you enjoy.

Other Analyst (NT) types are a natural fit for INTPs, who share their passion for new ideas, riddles and solutions. People with the INTP personality type are knowledgeable and intelligent, and have a great deal of respect for those who can keep them on their toes in this regard. They will gladly help to tackle any dilemma thrown their way, offering up sound advice and rational solutions. As valuable as these qualities are though, they are not always the best approach – when it comes to emotional support or advice in dealing with matters of the heart, INTPs are at a loss.

  • Prescription: Don't give advice unless asked for.
  • Prescription: Even when asked for advice, consider whether logical solution is being requested.

It's not that INTP personalities don't feel – quite the contrary, they actually have very strong sentiments. But Feeling (F) is one of INTPs' least developed traits, making their emotional reactions strong, untrustworthy and naturally in need of being tempered by their well-trained logic and rationalism. Still waters run deep.

  • Prescription: Learn to tame and control your emotions. (Again, Gorilla Mindset is a good book on that)
  • Prescription: Develop male friendships, for emotional support.

While they may not be able to help directly with these sorts of problems, INTPs help indirectly with unambiguous and reliable friendships. INTPs' friends need never worry about power games or emotional baggage – they are liked for their minds and abilities, not their status or possessions. While it may not be easy to establish true friendships with INTP personalities, once the link is made, they will provide years of understanding and thought-stimulating ideas, making them well worth the effort.

  • Prescription: Examine the list of your friends. Do you keep some around for their intellectual abilities, even though they hold you back from improvement? Cut them out.
  • Prescription: Again, seek connection with intellectually inferior people, who are successful in life.

Career

INTPs are solitary, eccentric, and independent – none of which is listed as desirable for corporate positions, which are usually designed for very different personality types. INTPs duly struggle in finding careers that meet their needs, but what they do bring, qualities in much higher demand, are creativity, a passion for theoretical methods and ideas, and an entrepreneurial, innovative spirit. If they are able to put this better foot forward to secure a position in a suitable line of work, people with the INTP personality type will find that, whatever the job listing says, these "less desirable" qualities will prove an asset after all.

  • Prescription: Become a team-player, behave like others and listen to others' advice.

Chief among INTPs' interests is exploring and building models for underlying principles and ideas, even going so far as to find these concepts, in their own way, beautiful – this makes them natural mathematicians, systems analysts, and career scientists, especially in more abstract fields such as physics. There are many other careers that allow INTPs to explore these interests, but many of them are far too rooted in uninteresting practical applications. As useful as it is to develop a better vacuum cleaner, it is no Large Hadron Collider.

  • Prescription: Appreciate practical problems. Train yourself to find something interesting in those.
  • Prescription: Consider career in STEM.
  • Prescription: Balance it with hobbies and activities that expose you to social interactions.

INTP personalities are self-driven and have very high personal standards – "good enough" is never good enough – but have few environmental needs. Despite this relative simplicity, they are often hard for more people-centric types to understand. INTPs live primarily in their own heads, and have little interest in social distractions like chitchat and motivational speeches. All INTPs really want is to immerse themselves in an interesting project, and anything that interrupts that, be it overactive managers, the need to manage others, or office parties or meetings, are simply unwelcome burdens.

  • Prescription: Give up on your perfectionism. Learn to be OK with things being good enough.
  • Prescription: Evaluate your pursuits. If they don't have much value other than intellectual challenge, consider cutting them out.
  • Prescription: Find appreciation for chit-chat and other social interactions.

For this reason, the flatter the workplace hierarchy, the better, making small, technical workplaces and fields such as law, forensics, and laboratory research very desirable for INTPs. Insightful and open-minded managers who can accommodate these needs will find their INTP subordinates to be a tireless generator of brilliant and unique ideas. However, many people with the INTP personality type may do away with the immediate hierarchy altogether, opting instead to provide their services on a freelance basis as consultants.

  • Prescription: Become your own boss. It will make you feel better.

Where INTPs do not thrive is in workplaces that require them to provide a high degree of emotional satisfaction – cruise ship masseuses they are not. INTP personalities struggle to understand emotional exchanges, and service-oriented positions will prove baffling and exhausting for them. Though INTPs are talented analysts who are perfectly capable of understanding the theoretical importance of customer service, the day-to-day application of such a scheme is simply better left to more people-oriented personality types.

  • Prescription: Work on your understanding of emotional exchanges. Improve your interpersonal and emotional intelligence. How to win friends and influence people.
  • Prescription: Build endurance for those kinds of situations.

Business is growing more complex every day, and this complexity is managed with technical systems, economic theories, and data. The need for novel approaches is stronger than ever for people and organizations to distinguish themselves. Though general people skills are often phrased as a must, it is the technical work that creates something to talk about, and it is in this pursuit that INTPs thrive.

  • Prescription: Work on your people skills.

Work as business analysts and corporate strategists is well suited to INTPs, but they can also move things forward as data analysts, mechanical, electrical and software engineers, and even as technical writers and journalists, provided the field is interesting enough. If they can smile and shake hands just long enough to establish themselves as the brilliant innovators that they are, people with the INTP personality type will find that whatever the expectations for social conduct, it is the qualities unique to them that are truly in demand.

  • Prescription: Build endurance for following social conventions. Attend social functions more.

Workplace

In the first comment, due to the size limit.


Lessons learned

Inner Game

  1. Get comfortable with being more ordinary. Keep in mind that rationality, knowledge and intelligence are not objectively superior to other skills and traits. Learn to appreciate other skills in people, especially those intellectually inferior to you. Examine the list of your friends. Do you keep some around for their intellectual abilities or originality, even though they hold you back from improvement? Cut them out.
  2. Confront your perfectionism and desire to innovate. Learn to be happy with things being good enough. Learn to value effort and struggle more over perfection. Desensitize yourself to failure and fear of failure by taking up endeavours with low success chance.
  3. Believe in yourself more. Have more trust in yourself and your ability to perform well, especially in the face of unknown. Get more unpredictable and spontaneous in your life. Write down your Bucket List.
  4. Learn to tame and control your emotions. Learn to be comfortable being single.

Work Ethic

  1. When you know you will have to make a decision or commit, set a hard deadline for yourself to make it. Feel free to use any reminders, TODO apps, etc. Get more organized. Have a schedule, stick to it.
  2. In virtually all areas of life, success is achieved by long, mundane hustle; not sudden breakthroughs. Accept it. When feeling burned out and lacking motivation, try to find a new idea or perspective that might reignite your enthusiasm.
  3. Evaluate challenges you choose to face. Are some of them going to bring low ROI, but you like them for the intellectual challenge? If so, drop them and invest your time more productively. Appreciate practical problems. Train yourself to find something interesting in those. Get more grounded (but how?)
  4. Whenever starting a new endeavour, spend significant time observing, investigating and studying. This activity might be more beneficial for you than for other personality types. Learn focus and mindfulness.
  5. Learn to be part of the team/mob/etc. Show more willingness to sacrifice your individuality and autonomy. Listen to others' advice. Follow existing rules. Even if they don't make much sense to you
  6. Consider career in STEM. Become your own boss. Find someone in your workplace whom you can collaborate with. If managing a team, work with a person of great people skills.
  7. Lift.

Social skills

  1. Observe empathetic people, social conventions they follow. Mimic them, even if it doesn't make much sense to you. Especially in highly emotional situations. Learn social conventions and respect them. Develop Emotional Intelligence (but how?). Work on your understanding of emotional exchanges. Build endurance for those kinds of situations. Speak as everyone else when you are not among people you can trust. Show some desire to be liked. If necessary, fake it. It will put people at ease to see this vulnerability in you. Get more involved and closer with people you don't have much intellectual understanding or connection with. Find aspects of those relationships that you enjoy.
  2. Attend more social events, especially those where you don't know anybody. Assume they are friendly. If it seems otherwise, your perception might be wrong. Balance your (probably) technical work with hobbies and activities that expose you to social interactions.
  3. Only give advice when asked for it. Even when asked for advice, consider whether logical solution is being requested. Take note whether you offer your advice too cheaply. Maybe you don't benefit from it and it only takes your time. Maybe you could start charging for it. Or use it for negotiating higher salary.
  4. When talking to another person and your higher or at least equal status has been already established, leverage your controversial, non-reactive honesty to boost your status further.
  5. Develop male friendships.

Communication skills

  1. With people you don't know, talk less. Say things only when you are certain of your message and the way you convey it.
  2. When with friends, express yourself more freely, err on the side of mumbling about your inner thoughts and feelings. Practice telling made-up stories, exaggerating, while its understood what you are saying is not true. Err on the side of over-exaggerating your enthusiasm about ideas.
  3. When attempting to explain something, have patience and willingness to walk the other person through your thinking. Practice analogy and metaphor. Practice with small kids.
  4. When you get excited, consciously slow your speech down, use simpler terms, finish your train of thought before moving on, make sure you were understood. Err on the side of sounding narcoleptic, patronising, and like a simpleton.
  5. Make smalltalk with everyone Participate in conversations you consider pointless (weather, pop culture, cuisine, etc.)

Pussy

  1. To leverage your intellect and wit, focus your efforts on sarging during the day, online or in lounges, as opposed to loud venues at night.
  2. Desensitize yourself to rejection. Accept your responsibility to lead. Keep persisting even after previous rejections. Be careful not to overinvest. Show less excitement than you really feel. Especially when you meet someone you click really well with. Learn about female psychology, shit tests and drama. Beware of your own solipsism. The fact that you feel some way, doesn't mean she feels the same.
  3. Learn to be funny and less serious when dating. Let your increased spontaneity translate to your dating life. Read up on date logistics, understand the concept of changing venues.
  4. Remember that until you have both committed to each other, you have no obligation towards your date. Remember also, that she's probably spinning plates.

Reading List

  • Gorilla Mindset
  • The New Psycho-Cybernetics
  • How to Win Friends and Influence People
  • Cocky Comedy and Other Conversational Skills