Working With Nature
Align Your Daily Activities with Your Natural Functional Order to Achieve Balance and Fulfillment
When self-improvement became an exploding industry, it also became confusing. Teaching people to have and do more was not the same as becoming a higher-quality version of themselves. Quality is about understanding the difference between having, doing, and being. It involves recognizing that both “more” and “better” can become unhealthy.
Self-awareness is priceless—if you know who you truly are. Learn about your true nature in terms of functionality.
Unfortunately, many personality profile systems don’t fully recognize that personality is not about the exclusive behaviors you will always display. So when people are not acting in alignment with their nature, they may exhibit a wide range of behaviors that are not supportive of their functionality.
Functionality is about what you should do, from most to least, in order to stay in a healthy state. Humans are fully capable of learning to do many different things in many different ways. But ask yourself: what do you believe is worse—doing what you are not, or not doing what you are?
They occur at the same time, so it may be difficult to distinguish between the two. But the truth is, they are damaging in two different ways.
Not doing what you are inhibits your true nature from flowing in an organic way. Doing what you are not denies someone else the opportunity to be what they naturally are.
When you understand your functional order and begin identifying the activities that are most natural for you, your daily life begins to come together in a more coherent rhythm.
Ideally, you would spend:
- 7–8 hours daily performing your Dominant function
- 3–4 hours daily performing your Auxiliary function
- 2–3 hours daily performing your Tertiary function
- 1–2 hours daily performing your Inferior function
To determine your functional order, specify the four letters of your personality type (based on the E/I, S/N, T/F, P/J dichotomies). Then take the last letter (P or J) to determine which of your two middle functions (S/N or T/F) is extraverted. The other becomes introverted.
If you are an Extravert, you will naturally want to prioritize your extraverted-oriented activity. If you are an Introvert, you will naturally want to prioritize your introverted-oriented activity.
When you align your daily time with your functional strengths and perform them at a high level, you don’t need to struggle to feel balanced or fulfilled. Nature tends to maintain balance and harmony—you simply need to stay aligned with it in a high-quality way.
