I was thinking that this little example might help to illustrate the “giftedness” that an Introverted Intuitive (INF) can bring to the workplace…your circumstances and opportunity to exercise your own giftedness will differ, but hopefully you can get a sense that we quiet, introverted types ARE valid and bring significant wisdom to the company. I certainly didn’t see it that way at the time…perhaps if I had seen my work contribution as valid and “gift”, I would have been able to take better care of that gift (me) and not allow myself to burn out.

Anyway, I was the computer network administrator for a small company, looking after 75 computers and all the related paraphernalia…printers, servers, cables, software, user training, maintenance, troubleshooting and repairs. It was a very demanding job, physically and mentally, entailing long hours (including way too much unpaid overtime) of running up and down several flights of stairs in order to meet the constant demands for help.

As many of you know, troubleshooting computers can be irksome and baffling. Even with years of training and certification, determining the specific problem was still often more a “Sherlock Holmes” treasure hunt than a straightforward fix. I loved it, thrived on it. But one thing I learned very quickly is that users didn’t like being forced to wait while I sat there tinkering with their computers. So I had to find creative ways to problem-solve their computer’s idiosyncrasies without actually sitting at that computer. I did find a way that worked well, and became very good at my job, able to sit down at a user’s computer, go directly to the right dialogue box and fix the problem. My boss raved about my ability to do that so quickly, and praised me for minimizing user downtime.

Then one day he called me into his office and had a “talk” with me. Apparently one of the section managers, whose office was right next to mine, had spoken to my boss, concerned about the amount of time I spent “gazing out my window”. So my boss asked me why, with such an overwhelming workload, would I waste precious company time just staring out the window?

I explained to him that while I appeared to be gazing out the window, in fact I was troubleshooting someone’s computer. I was mentally sorting through the various possible causes for the problem, and for each cause, I would research and implement in my mind the solution; then I would analyze all possible impacts of that solution on the rest of the computer system. Often, by doing so, I would realize that the solution wasn’t going to be the most viable one. So then I’d begin all over again, until I found the one solution that would have the least impact on the rest of the system, and entail the least amount of downtime for the user. When I was satisfied that I had the correct solution, I would run through all the steps in my mind, or if possible, on my own computer, so that when I sat down at the user’s computer, I knew exactly where to go, what to do and how long it would take.

So my “staring out the window” was how I was able to deliver the very service that my boss had been raving about and praising me for all these months. He was impressed, and never questioned my window-gazing again.

[ September 21, 2005, 10:35 AM: Message edited by: Eagle Heart ]