The Career Nightmare of Every Myers-Briggs® Personality Type

Have you ever wondered what kind of job would attract someone of your personality type? Do you ever feel trapped or de-motivated in your current career? This article is going to go over some of the “nightmares” each type hates to deal with in their work-lives. Do you agree with your section? Let us know!

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Here are some basics before we get started:

Intuitives – These types enjoy careers that allow for a lot of conceptualizing and theoretical analysis. They are skilled at envisioning and seeing the big-picture.

Sensors – These types enjoy jobs that take advantage of their pragmatic, realistic nature. They enjoy working with facts, getting their hands on things, and seeing a real-world immediate impact.

Introverts -These types prefer a quiet, calm work environment where they can immerse themselves in reflection and analysis. They tend to dislike working in an open-office setting more than extroverted types.

Extroverts – These types are energized by working around others, although if they lack common interests they will prefer to work alone. Collaborative opportunities inspire them and they enjoy bouncing ideas or plans off others.

Thinkers – These types are good at weighing the pros and cons and considering the logic of a situation from an unbiased, impersonal perspective. They are direct and prefer direct communication in return. They may struggle with diplomacy and tact sometimes.

Feelers – These types are good at assessing the personal needs of clients or team members. They struggle when they have to work in places that are overly-competitive or lack harmony. They can also struggle to dish out criticism or correction at times.

Perceivers – These types want variety and spontaneity. Rules and routines can feel stifling to them. They like to be able to innovate, change things up, and mix work with action. They are stimulated by a deadline and tend to “cram” at the last minute.

Judgers – These types like having clear expectations and rules. They tend to work on one project until it’s finished and they are usually anxious to finish tasks ahead of schedule.

The Career Nightmare of Every  Myers-Briggs® Personality Type

The ENFP

As an ENFP you love generating ideas and working with a creative team of people to envision and achieve far-reaching goals. Your work-related nightmare would be doing routine, detailed tasks that lack scope for the imagination. Being forced to do things “by the book”, and having to pay attention to a lot of minute details in order to succeed will quickly drain you of energy. Without variety and creativity, you feel stifled and bored. Rigid systems and individuals are your arch-nemesis.

Work-Related Struggles for ENFPs:

• Impatience with people who lack vision or creativity
• Boredom with nitty-gritty concrete details
• Losing inspiration after the creative process is over
• Frustration with repetitive tasks
• Being micro-managed or overly-controlled
• Having to keep things neatly organized
• Impatience with rule-abiding people or rigid systems
• Can struggle to follow through on details after the “idea” phase is over
• Distaste for doing things the “traditional” way

Read This Next: The Unique Intelligence of ENFPs, ENTPs, INFPs and INTPs

The ENTP

ENTPs have a gift for generating options and troubleshooting complex problems. Your type is typically future-oriented, creative, and logical. Your work-related nightmare would be one where you are forced into a box and unable to be creative or innovate. Being forced to work alone or with a group of “by-the-books,” individuals can make you feel devoid of inspiration. Having to focus on nitty-gritty concrete details and adhere to every rule without exception is a recipe for boredom and depression. It is only made worse if the procedures forced on you lack logic and are filled with needless bureaucratic standards that slow things down.

Work-Related Struggles for ENTPs:

• Impatience with long, detail-oriented projects
• Frustration with unimaginative or rigid individuals
• Difficulty with organization
• Focusing extensively on the possibilities rather than what’s actually in front of you
• Revulsion at doing things the “traditional” way
• Aggravation when dealing with nitty-gritty detail work
• Dealing with boredom and a tendency to find distractions when work isn’t mentally stimulating
• Dislike of repetitive tasks
• Impatience with incompetent/uncreative people
• Frustration with people who take things too personally

The INFP

Perceptive and big-picture oriented, you crave a job that allows you to be creative and make a positive difference in the world. For you, the purpose of the job is more important than the pay or the esteem. You want a job that fulfills a personal value. Your nightmare would be working for a corrupt or authoritarian organization that forces you to do nitty-gritty detail work that lacks meaning. Knowing that you spend 9-5 doing repetitive, detailed tasks that will benefit no one (or even harm others) is a recipe for anxiety and frustration. Being micro-managed or forced to handle a lot of impersonal tasks with strict, frequent deadlines can also cause you a lot of stress.

Work-Related Struggles for INFPs:

• Difficulty prioritizing and organizing projects
• Hesitancy and confusion when dealing with projects that conflict with your values
• A distaste for doing things in the “traditional” way
• Boredom with tasks that lack creativity or innovation
• High expectations for a career and dissatisfaction with many of the options available
• Dislike for being overly controlled or managed
• Anxiety about deadlines
• Hesitancy when forced to criticize or discipline others for poor work
• Difficulty in predicting how long a project will take to complete
• Stress when working in overly-competitive environments

Read This Next: 10 Things That Excite the INFP Personality Type

The INTP

Intellectually curious and big-picture oriented, you bring objectivity and creativity to your career. You want a job that allows for innovation and original thinking. Without a challenge or the opportunity for independence, you can struggle with boredom and apathy about your work. For you, a career nightmare would involve working in an open-office environment surrounded by people who are constantly interrupting your mental flow. Having to chit-chat and make small talk to get by is exhausting for you, and it’s made worse if you have to focus on repetitive, detailed tasks at the same time. Rigid environments, overly-controlling managers and hyper-emotional co-workers are the bane of your existence.

Work-Related Struggles for INTPs:

• Not having enough privacy
• Excessive noise/chaos in the workplace
• Boredom when focusing on a lot of busywork or extraneous details
• A tendency to avoid doing things the “traditional” way
• Stress when dealing with controlling, rigid rules and standards
• Dislike of doing repetitive tasks
• Difficulty expressing complex thoughts in a way that everyone can understand
• Frustration when working with people who lack imagination or creativity
• Irritation at working with incompetent people

Read This Next: 10 Things You Should Never Say to an INTP

The ENFJ

Productive and charismatic, you desire a career that will integrate you with creative people. You tend to be organized and driven when you believe in what you are doing so you prefer a job that aligns with your deeply-held values. A career nightmare for you would involve working for a company that is either corrupt or all about money to the exclusion of helping others. A highly competitive environment where criticism and tension fill the air can make you edgy. Working alone all day, especially in a job that has no opportunity for advancement or creativity, will make you feel drained and exhausted. You want to explore ideas and human potential and impersonal detail-work fills you with boredom.

Work-Related Struggles for ENFJs:

• Anxiety when working on projects that conflict with your values
• Lack of inspiration when work has no human element or impact
• Stress when surrounded by competitive, critical individuals
• Impatience when dealing with incompetent or unproductive people
• Frustration when dealing with procrastinators
• Reluctance when asked to discipline or critique co-workers or employees
• Boredom when dealing with nitty-gritty detail work
• Frustration when working with rigid or uncreative people

The ENTJ

Strategic and decisive, you constantly seek challenge and intellectual stimulation in the work environment. You like working with concepts and creating systems and models that can be used to achieve your objectives. You’re a quick learner and are extremely motivated. Your career nightmare would involve answering to an incompetent manager while being surrounded by chatty, indecisive individuals. Dealing with procrastinators and overbearing, distracting people will make you feel like you’re in one of Dante’s nine circles of hell. You also hate being confined by a rigid, confining set of rules that stop you from innovating or improving anything. You want the opportunity to achieve, transform, and to eventually take on more control and/or leadership.

Work-Related Struggles for ENTJs:

• Impatience with people who procrastinate or don’t learn quickly
• Boredom when dealing with mundane detail-work
• Frustration with being unable to improve a system that isn’t running effectively
• Irritation with overly sensitive or emotional co-workers or leaders
• Lack of motivation when a job opportunity has no challenge or opportunity for achievement
• Working in a disorganized environment

The INFJ

Independent and imaginative, you have a gift for seeing future implications and organizing your life to your objectives and goals. You have a skill for detecting trends and understanding people, which makes you gifted in the worlds of psychology and marketing. All this considered, a career nightmare for you would involve working in a busy, open work environment where you are constantly interrupted or distracted by meaningless conversation. Having to stifle your creativity to do repetitive, detailed work can also feel aggravating to you. More than anything you want to feel like your job has some big-picture purpose or meaning and without that, you can feel bored and restless.

Work-Related Struggles for INFJs:

• Being interrupted or having to work in a loud environment
• Uncertainty when working on a project that conflicts with your values
• Struggling to communicate your complex ideas in an easy-to-understand way
• Difficulty handing out criticism or complaints
• Stress when having to change course or direction quickly on a project
• Confusion when trying to plan out how long a project will take to finish
• Boredom when dealing with repetition or busy detail-work

Read This Next: 10 Signs of an Unhealthy INFJ

The INTJ

Complex and intellectual, you are someone who is valued for your strategic insights and ability to forecast future possibilities. A career nightmare for you would involve doing nitty-gritty detail work with no opportunity for advancement or competition. Being surrounded by people who are only trying to do the bare minimum because there’s no reward for competence aggravates you. Procrastinators and overly-sensitive, incompetent co-workers are the bane of your existence and make you feel trapped and irritable. You want to delve into complexity and strategize over long-term goals and objectives. The last kind of job you want is one where you spend all day doing the same repetitive, mundane tasks around people who lack ambition or vision.

Work-Related Struggles for INTJs:

• Boredom with mundane, repetitive work
• Having a job that forces them to focus on nitty-gritty details rather than the big picture
• Having their directness unintentionally cause offense to co-workers
• Having their vision and outside-the-box thinking dismissed
• Not having opportunities for advancement and achievement
• Being in an environment that is loud or where there are frequent interruptions
• Frustration with the diplomacy and “sugarcoating” involved in some jobs
• Working with incompetent, lazy individuals
• Losing interest in a project once the idea or problem-solving phase is over

Read This Next: 10 Things You’ll Relate to if You’re an INTJ

The ESFP

Energetic and spontaneous, you bring common sense and fun to nearly any environment you encounter. You enjoy a job that offers variety, teamwork, and rewards your practicality and willingness to take risks. A career nightmare for you would involve working alone in a mundane, colorless office doing the same repetitive tasks day-after-day. Dealing with a bunch of administrative details, being subjected to excessive rules and bureaucracy, and racing to meet rigid deadlines is a recipe for disaster for you. This doesn’t mean you can’t do a job like this well, but it will most likely feel stifling and de-motivating.

Work-Related Struggles for ESFPs:

• Working in a career where you can’t be creative or “go with the flow”
• Being subjected to rigid rules and a highly-structured workflow
• Having to be alone for too long
• Annoyance at working with people who are uptight or humorless
• Boredom when dealing with repetitive, mundane tasks
• Stress when a job requires an excessive amount of long-term planning
• Difficulty working with unrealistic, impractical individuals
• Being in a critical, tense environment
• Being micro-managed

The ESTP

Observant and competitive, you want a job that challenges you and offers a lot of variety and action. You enjoy troubleshooting, negotiating, and having to think on your feet. A career nightmare for you would involve being sedentary for long periods of time, working on repetitive tasks without any opportunities for companionship or camaraderie. A job that doesn’t reward competence or lacks the opportunity for achievement feels oppressive to you. You also struggle when you are surrounded by people who do things “by the book” and are unwilling to think outside the box. It’s even worse if these people are overly-sensitive, uptight, or thin-skinned.

Work-Related Struggles for ESTPs:

• Restlessness when a job is sedentary or repetitive
• Frustration at being micro-managed or controlled
• Boredom when a job lacks opportunities for achievement
• Dealing with overly sensitive or nitpicky individuals
• Working alongside individuals who are unrealistic or lack common sense
• Frustration when projects are long and time-consuming, but the benefits won’t be realized for a long time.
• Having no room for flexibility or spontaneity
• Not getting enough time with other people

The ISFP

Realistic yet passionate, you crave a career that lets you get in touch with the world around you and express yourself and your artistry or values. Whether this means you’re an artist, performer, baker, or psychologist, you want to be able to adapt to the needs of the moment and do something that will bring people joy. Most importantly, you want a career that aligns with your deeply-held values. Your career nightmare would involve working in a strict, regimented job without personal freedom or creative expression. Your work wouldn’t benefit anyone but the people in charge and your boss would rarely give you anything but critiques about how you could organize your time better or reminders of upcoming deadlines. You’d deal with large, complex projects that required a lot of planning and estimations.  While you might succeed at a job like this, it would likely be frustrating and overwhelming.

Work-Related Struggles for ISFPs:

• Frustration at overly-critical, competitive people
• Stress when organizing long-term, complicated projects
• Anxiety over giving out criticism or correction
• Pressure to meet deadlines or organize tasks efficiently
• Having no room for creativity or experimentation
• Feeling cooped up
• Having no freedom to decorate or personalize your work environment
• Difficulty when working on a project that conflicts with your personal values

The ISTP

Pragmatic and logical, you have tremendous powers of observation and can quickly size up a situation and solve problems in the workplace. You like working independently or alongside other competent individuals to achieve a goal. Your career nightmare involves catering to the whims of superficial or overly-sensitive people. Jobs that force you to work up-close-and-personal with other people make you feel drained and irritable. It’s especially bad if there is a lot of oversight and you’re forced to conform to a lot of meaningless bureaucratic rules. Being sedentary is also frustrating for you because you want to see a real-world impact for everything that you are doing. Getting your hands on things, troubleshooting, and being respected to accomplish tasks in your own way is important to you.

Work-Related Struggles for ISTPs:

• Having to be especially diplomatic or concerned with the feelings of others
• Being forced into a sedentary, mundane schedule
• Feeling mistrusted and micro-managed
• Not being allowed to independently handle projects in your own way
• Boredom when dealing with overly theoretical long-term speculations
• Irritation at having to work closely alongside dissimilar people
• Not having enough variety in tasks

Read This Next: 5 Reasons Why You’ll Need an ISTP During a Zombie Apocalypse

The ESFJ

Organized and people-oriented, you enjoy a career that is clearly structured and allows you to help people in practical ways. You enjoy working with a team and are good at orchestrating your surroundings to make them harmonious and peaceable. But this doesn’t stop you from being productive and striving to be the best at what you do. A career nightmare for you would involve working under very unclear, incompetent management. Being told to produce something without any specifics of how to do it can feel overwhelming to you. Being around procrastinators or wishy-washy individuals makes you feel restless and irritated. An atmosphere of competition over cooperation makes you feel stressed, especially when people become combative with each other. You want to work alongside people who have each other’s backs, who have a clear direction, and an appreciation for common-sense and hard-work.

Work-Related Struggles for ESFJs:

• Dealing with criticism or conflict
• Having to deal with a lot of unexpected change and improvisation
• Loneliness when working alone or without any sense of teamwork
• Difficulty dealing with opposing viewpoints and contradictions
• Emotional exhaustion when taking on other people’s worries and problems
• Anxiety when there is no clear structure or sequential directions
• Irritation when the environment is messy or disorganized

The ESTJ

Practical and ambitious, you’re someone who knows how to stay organized and achieve objectives in a sequential way. You pride yourself on your decisiveness, common sense, and strong work ethic. A career nightmare for you would involve being in a messy office, surrounded by incompetent, overly emotional individuals. Procrastinating would be the norm and rather than a specific, clear-cut direction, your leadership would vomit up a whirlwind of theoretical ideas and look at you as if to say “Just make that happen”. You’d be expected to change directions at the drop of a hat, and when you expressed criticism you’d inevitably deal with other people’s hurt feelings or damaged egos.

Work-Related Struggles for ESTJs:

• Dealing with people who switch gears and seem unfocused
• Struggling to see theoretical possibilities or narrow down the ones that make the most sense
• Having to react to change frequently and unexpectedly
• Being under incompetent leadership
• Having to be overly-careful with the feelings of others
• Being in environments that are messy or disorganized
• Frustration when you’re not given the freedom to make a system or process more effective
• Having your ideas dismissed or ignored

The ISFJ

Dependable and detail-oriented, your focused energy and conscientious nature make you a prized member of any team. You value structured and calm environments where everyone works at a team and has each other’s best interests at heart. A career nightmare for you would involve being in a haphazard, disorganized environment without clear direction or structure. Your boss would give you ideas about what he wanted, but there would never be enough specifics for you to work with. Deadlines would loom and conflict would abound. When you completed tasks you’d be berated for not meeting an unspecified vision that your team leader had failed to express. You’d lack the alone time to process information privately and you’d face frequent interruptions and unexpected changes.

Work-Related Struggles for ISFJs:

• Dealing with unexpected or frequent change
• Unclear direction or leadership
• Stress when handing out criticism or correction
• Not getting enough alone time
• Being interrupted or forced to change directions regularly
• Having to adapt or innovate rather than work with what you know
• Anxiety when in an overly-competitive environment
• Being in messy, bright, or loud surroundings

Read This Next: Why ISFJs, INFJs, ESFJs and ENFJs Struggle to Let Go of Bad Things

The ISTJ

Precise and focused, your ability to stay the course and break down large tasks into manageable pieces makes you valued. You have a strong work ethic and a firm sense of responsibility. Your career nightmare would involve being in a chaotic, disorganized environment that lacked structure or clear direction. Open office plans where you are continuously interrupted leave you feeling stressed and irritable. You like a quiet, calm space where you can focus your energies and be as thorough and detail-oriented as possible. Having to deal with incompetent leadership, workplace gossips or irresponsible, unmotivated people will drive you crazy.

Work-Related Struggles for ISTJs:

• Having to deal with frequent or unexpected change
• Having to submit to unfocused, wishy-washy leadership
• Being surrounded by incompetence
• Not having privacy or personal space
• Frustration when there isn’t clear structure or expectations
• Struggling to be flexible and adaptable
• Boredom when there is no opportunity for advancement in a career

Read This Next: 10 Things You Should Never Say to an ISTJ

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