INTP Advice: Most Self Help is Worthless (What can Work)

Summary

In this video, Tyler from INTP Survival Guide discusses the shortcomings of self-help books for INTPs, who often struggle with depression and anxiety. While initial motivation from these resources can fade quickly, Tyler suggests that true change comes from establishing small, consistent habits, as described in 'Atomic Habits' by James Clear. He recommends dedicating at least 20 minutes daily to actions that align with personal goals, insisting that internal logic must deem these actions necessary for any real transformation.

Highlights

• INTPs often feel dissatisfied and turn to self-help, but most resources provide only temporary motivation 📚🤷‍♂️.
• Tyler talks about his experience with 'Think and Grow Rich', noting how its lessons faded over time 📉.
• The INTP cognitive function stack is revisited, highlighting strengths and weaknesses that affect productivity 🧠🗂️.
• Creating small daily habits, as advised in 'Atomic Habits', can lead to significant life improvements over time ⏳📈.
• Tyler emphasizes the difference between action and motion in making real progress in life 🎯🚶‍♂️.
• He suggests actionable habits like 20 minutes of cleaning, exercise, or working on personal projects daily 💪🏠.
• The video concludes with a focus on leveraging the Ti hero function to believe in necessary life changes 🧠💪.
• An INTP Discord community exists to continue these discussions and build connections 🤝🔗.

Key Takeaways

• Most self-help books provide temporary motivation that fades over time 📚⏳.
• INTPs often struggle with maintaining a consistent positive mindset, especially when life gets tough 🤔🌧️.
• 'Atomic Habits' by James Clear is recommended for building lasting change through small, daily actions 📖🛠️.
• 20 minutes of committed action daily can lead to personal growth, whether it's exercising, cleaning, or pursuing a hobby 💪🏡🎨.
• Consistent habits work better than fleeting motivation and lead to sustainable improvement over time 🐢⏲️.
• INPs need to leverage their dominant function (Ti hero) to truly believe in and commit to these actions 🧠⚡.
• The INTP Discord community offers support and connection for like-minded individuals 👥🌐.

Overview

The video addresses the limitations of traditional self-help methods, especially for INTP personalities, who often seek continuous improvement but face challenges like depression and anxiety. Tyler notes that while self-help books like 'Think and Grow Rich' can provide initial bursts of motivation, this often fades, leaving INTPs reverting back to old patterns.

Tyler advocates for a different approach to personal development—one focused on building small, consistent habits. Drawing from James Clear's 'Atomic Habits', he advises INTPs to commit to at least 20 minutes of daily action. This consistent effort, whether it's exercising, working on a personal project, or even cleaning, is framed as more effective for long-term growth than fleeting motivational highs.

Furthermore, the video highlights the importance of engaging the Ti hero function, the INTP's dominant cognitive process, to instill genuine belief and commitment to these small actions. Tyler suggests that INTPs need to align their internal logic with their goals to truly effect meaningful change, and he invites viewers to join a community on Discord for ongoing support and discussion.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction and INTP Struggles with Self-Help The chapter titled 'Introduction and INTP Struggles with Self-Help' addresses the dissatisfaction often experienced by individuals with the INTP personality type, who may struggle with depression, anxiety, and feelings of worthlessness. Tyler, the speaker, discusses how INTPs might feel they could achieve more in life, leading them to explore self-help as a possible solution. However, Tyler suggests that not all self-help materials have been effective for him.
• 01:00 - 03:30: Overview of INTP Cognitive Functions The chapter discusses INTP cognitive functions and reflects on the general inefficacy of mainstream advice, particularly self-help books. While such material might provide temporary mindset shifts, individuals often revert to their previous state over time. However, the author suggests there is one effective strategy for INTPs, though it requires effort and isn't a quick fix.
• 03:30 - 06:30: First Introduction to Self-Help The chapter introduces the concept of self-help for individuals, particularly focusing on the INTP personality type. It suggests that INTPs who are looking to change their lives might find the advice given in the chapter useful. Before delving into the main content, there is a brief overview of the INTP cognitive function stack, which is important for understanding the rest of the chapter. The TI (Introverted Thinking) hero function, which dominates the INTP's cognitive process with logical thinking, is mentioned as the most powerful function.
• 06:30 - 10:00: Shortcomings of Motivational Self-Help The chapter titled 'Shortcomings of Motivational Self-Help' delves into personality functions and how they relate to motivational self-improvement strategies. The chapter focuses on four main areas: the hero function (NE), the parent function, the child function (SI), and the inferior function. It discusses characteristics like the desire for possibilities and different methods of accomplishment associated with the hero function NE, and a childlike attachment to SI-related concepts like family and comfort.
• 10:00 - 14:00: The Potential of Atomic Habits In the chapter titled 'The Potential of Atomic Habits,' the discussion revolves around the challenges people face due to their insecurities, particularly in social situations. This often leads to feelings of awkwardness or difficulty in engaging in small talk. The text hints at struggles with TE (which could refer to a personality element like Thinking-Extroverted in some typologies), emphasizing that although it's a strong aspect for individuals, it's not something they inherently enjoy. The chapter teases future content that will explore these themes more deeply, particularly through the lens of socionics, a typological theory.
• 14:00 - 19:00: Suggested Daily Actions for INTPs The chapter discusses the struggle of INTPs with self-criticism and feeling undeserving of good things in life, including relationships. The speaker emphasizes the importance of rejecting such negative beliefs and asserting one's right to pursue personal desires. Additionally, the chapter briefly touches on the 'SE trickster' concept, identifying it as a significant challenge for INTPs, related to their difficulty in being present in the moment.
• 19:00 - 22:00: Conclusion and Final Thoughts In the conclusion, the speaker discusses the connection between violence, danger, and the SE (Sensing) function, implying that many people are unaware of these due to a weak SE. The speaker also touches upon the Fi (Feeling) function, indicating it is not favorable for INTPs, particularly when it acts as a demon function. This occurs when INTPs are provoked to anger or their inferior function is challenged, forcing them into an Fi demon state. The speaker references having a separate video that explores this topic further.

INTP Advice: Most Self Help is Worthless (What can Work) Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 Hey, what's going on guys? This is Tyler and today's video is entitled INTP advice. Most self-help is worthless and what can work. So, I think a big theme with INTPs is a lot of times we're not very satisfied with our life. INTPs are prone to depression, anxiety, uh feelings of worthlessness, and we can just kind of get this feeling that we could be doing better than what we are right now. So, something I've turned to before, and I'm sure a lot of INTPs have as well, is self-help. But after reading
• 00:30 - 01:00 or at least starting many books, I can tell you that most of it is absolutely worthless. It may work for a short time of period, or it may change your mindset in that moment. But as the weeks and months go by, you slowly start reverting back to yourself until before too long, you totally forget what you even read or watched. But I do think there is one thing that can work for INTPs. It's not something that's easy. It's not something where you can just wave a magical wand and you'll be better. But I
• 01:00 - 01:30 do think if INTPs are really looking to change their life right now, it can be something they can try. And I'll get into that at the end of the video. All right, before we get into everything, I just want to quickly go over the INTP cognitive function stack. If you already know this stuff, you can probably just skip by this part, but it is going to be an important thing to kind of know about this stuff while watching the video. So, first off, we got TI hero. Uh, this is our most powerful function. Logical thinking, uh,
• 01:30 - 02:00 concrete logic. That is our hero function. Parent, we have NE. So, we're always interested in all the different possibilities, all the different ways of getting things done. SI child. So we have like a childlike love for SI which is family being comfortable. These are things that are really focused with SI and we have like a childlike love for it. Uh our inferior function this is
• 02:00 - 02:30 something that we are insecure about FE the feeling of others. So we can a lot of times come off as awkward or not being able to really do small talk well that sort of thing. TE nemesis. So, this is something else that we can kind of struggle with. Something I'm going to talk about in a later video is socionics. And socionics actually shows us that TE is a strong function for us. We just don't enjoy using it. Uh, but that'll be a topic for another video. Ni critic. So, this is
• 02:30 - 03:00 something very hard for the INTP as well. We can really be critical of ourselves and what we really want. Many times we can believe that we don't deserve the good things in life, don't deserve maybe the beautiful woman or beautiful man. And I made a whole separate video about this if you want to check it out. But uh you have to reject that. You have to say, you know, I am an INTP and I deserve to get what I want out of life. Anyways, SE trickster. Um so this is our worst function, which is being in the moment.
• 03:00 - 03:30 Violence, danger. That's what SE is about. And a lot of times we're not aware of our surroundings, things like that. And that's because we have a very weak SE. And then Fi demon, Fi is also not a good function for us. But with the demon function, if someone really is making the INTP angry or really calling out their inferior function, then we can go to Fi demon. And I actually have a separate video about that as well if you want to check it out. All
• 03:30 - 04:00 right, with all that being said, I first want to talk about my first introduction to self-help and how I kind of first got into this stuff. So, the first book that I read concerning uh self-help was Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. This book was written in like the 1930s, and I mean it's it's sold millions of copies. A lot of people have read this book. It's very popular. I honestly don't remember how I stumbled across it, but uh somehow I did and I began reading it.
• 04:00 - 04:30 In this book, they kind of talk about having a burning desire for success. If you want to have some more success in your life, you really have to want it more than everybody else. So, just having a burning desire for life can really help you move you in the direction of getting what you want. And keep believing fully in your goal and burn it into your subconscious until it becomes true. This book argues is if you want to become a millionaire, you need to truly believe you're already a millionaire. If you truly believe you're
• 04:30 - 05:00 a millionaire, you're going to start acting like a millionaire. You're going to do things that millionaires do. And eventually, if you keep driving this into yourself, it's going to eventually reach your subconscious, and you're truly going to believe you're a millionaire. And you will then make steps to make that come true. Also talks about, and this is just a quick summary. This doesn't even cover all the points, just the one I thought, just the ones I thought were the most important. Another thing it talks about is most people will give up at the smallest sign of failure. And it really implies to keep going.
• 05:00 - 05:30 Have such a desire for success that nothing can stop you. No failure, no amount of time wasted, anything like that should stop you from reaching your goal. It kind of argues that intelligence really isn't the driving force of whether you'll have success or not. It's how much you outwork everybody, how much more desire you have for everybody. Intelligence doesn't really play a role. It's more about doing everything that is necessary to become successful. And this book kind of
• 05:30 - 06:00 introduced the power of positive thinking. You know, always having a good mindset, always believing in yourself, believe you're going to become a millionaire. Do everything in your power during your waking hours to make this happen for yourself. basically saying if you want it bad enough and you're willing to give your absolute all to get it, you will eventually get it. You know, whether it be money or, you know, social success, anything like that, you just have to want it more than everybody. So, you know, at the time I was a college student. I was still very young. And at that time, this book did
• 06:00 - 06:30 really have an impression on me. At that time, I really felt like I was a changed man. I felt like I had finally found the secret that I was searching for my entire life. As an INTP growing up, it's not easy. Just objectively, we have a lot of things going against us as far as our cognitive functions are concerned. So, I just always had this feeling that I wasn't quite fitting in. I didn't quite have the confidence in myself that I really wanted. But now, after reading this
• 06:30 - 07:00 think and grow rich, I know what I need to do. I just have to want it more than everybody. I have to know in my heart of heart that I'm going to be wildly successful, that I'm going to have a lot of money, a lot of social status. I didn't know exactly how I was going to get there, but with this current mindset that I was in, I felt like it was going to easily become true. So, like I said, I became instantly ultra confident. I felt like nobody could stop me. I felt like I was kind of smarter than everybody else because I didn't think anybody else would read this. And I just
• 07:00 - 07:30 became a much more confident version of myself. I wasn't as nervous. I wasn't as awkward in social interactions. You could hear the confidence in my voice. You could see it in my actions. I truly made myself believe that I was really going to become, you know, all these things that I hoped for. With this confidence, I started to have an elevated mood as well for 2 or 3 weeks. This didn't this didn't just last for a day or two. that time it was day after day I was waking up in this great mood
• 07:30 - 08:00 and this today's going to be success and didn't really have a positive impact on me at that time but guess what guys and I'm sure you can understand this as an INTP the morning comes the morning comes where you wake up and you're just not feeling confident that day you just want to go back to sleep you're feeling kind of depressed you're feeling a a little bit anxious, believed in this stuff. I really truly believe I was going to be a success. But
• 08:00 - 08:30 when I woke up feeling like this, it felt like that was just all out the door. As the day went on, I had to work myself back up to the confidence, work myself back up to the elevated mood. The information of this book wasn't as fresh. It wasn't always in the back of my mind like it was before. I would still think about it. I would still have, you know, good moments. I would still have moments where I was confident, where I wasn't as awkward. But very surely I did start
• 08:30 - 09:00 reverting back to my old self. It's just a very difficult thing to wake up every single day and be in this great elevated mood. It's hard to always have that burning desire for success and always have that belief. And I mean, nothing bad happened. There wasn't any bad thing that happened that, you know, made me rethink this, but it just kind of happened on its own. Time finally caught up to me. I still believed in everything that the book said, but it just wasn't
• 09:00 - 09:30 working. And I tell you guys, and this is kind of sad, but the way I even talked about Think and Grow Rich was because I had to ask Chat GPT what a summary was. As the months and years go by, I didn't even remember what it was about. I knew it had something to do with positive thinking, but I had no idea what was actually in the book until I looked it up on chat GPT. There's weeks and months just start catching up with you. And it's just hard to have this positive mindset at all times. And Think and Grow Rich by
• 09:30 - 10:00 Napoleon Hill was not the only self-help book that I read. I'll be honest, I haven't finished a lot of books, but I have started a lot and, you know, got the main points. And I can just tell you that the long term it's just not going to work. Self-help that relies on giving you motivation is just going to be fleeting. Sure, it can help you in the very short term gain some motivation, feel more elevated, having more positive feelings in that moment, but as something that's really going to make a true impact on your life, it's probably
• 10:00 - 10:30 just not going to happen. Life's going to finally catch up with us. bad things might happen. And it's hard, especially for INTPs, to always have this positive mindset. I already said this. I would venture to guess that this is just going to be fleeting. You're going to feel great in the moment. You're going to feel great for a week, but in a month, and a year, and 5 years, are you even going to remember it? You cannot simply rely on motivation to make positive
• 10:30 - 11:00 changes in your life. Having a consistent elevated mood is not, like I already said, not easy for INTPs. Life already is not that easy for INTPs overall. So, always waking up feeling great, always waking up in a great mood, ready to take on the day, that just does not happen. It's a very unreliable thing to count on. But with all that being said, I will say there is a reason I said that most self-help is worthless, not all. because
• 11:00 - 11:30 there is something that I believe really could truly work for INTPs if you make yourself commit to it. The book Atomic Habits by James Clear, it describes how small daily actions can add up over time. This would be, you know, small daily tasks that you perform every single day. It's going to make small 1% changes in your life that will eventually add up to some good results if you keep doing it. This is
• 11:30 - 12:00 not asking you to make a big life change for yourself. It's about taking a very small amount of time out of your day just to make your life better. In my opinion, if you can do a 1% change over an entire year, that's going to beat out any sort of short-term motivation that you have for a month and it just leaves you. It's kind of like the story of the tortoise and the hair. The tortoise was slowly making its way to the finish line where the hair would, you know, get a
• 12:00 - 12:30 big burst of motivation and run. A big burst of motivation and run. But what happens? He finally falls asleep. If you can just make yourself commit these small things every single day, then that's going to be good for you. And the theory is is that if you do something for so long, they'll eventually become habits. There's some debate on how long it takes to do that. You know, some say 21 days, some people say something like 63 days, whatever. And I don't even
• 12:30 - 13:00 really care if you make these a habit. What I care about is you just getting this done. But if you believe in the concept of habits, then time is going to work with you instead of against you. With the motivation, self-help, you're going to get a quick burst of energy that can be very good for you. But as the days go by, as the weeks go by, you start slowly reverting back to yourself over time. But if you're doing small daily tasks, then in theory, they're going to start becoming habits and
• 13:00 - 13:30 they're going to be something that you do automatically without even thinking about it. So in this way, time is theoretically at least working with you. So all I'm asking for the INTP to do is to commit to at least 20 minutes per day of action. And that is a key word action. You cannot confuse action with motion. Motion is planning to do something. Let's say you know you're making a YouTube channel for example.
• 13:30 - 14:00 Motion would be buying a camera, buying sound equipment, checking algorithm stats, but you're not actually making any content doing this stuff. What else would this include? Watching motivational videos on YouTube, reading a motivational book. You might feel like you're getting something done by watching these motivational things, but you're not actually doing anything. Those videos and books are about things that you can possibly do or possibly accomplish, but you're just sitting
• 14:00 - 14:30 there watching a video. And I'm going to talk about on the next slide what, you know, some of these action things can be, but I think you get the idea. If you're, you know, starting a YouTube channel, the action is actually making the video. Actually hitting the record button and making content. And 20 minutes a day is not that long. There's 24 hours in a day. You might sleep eight of it. So that gives you 16 hours in your day. You might work a day job. So you have eight hours now. So out of that
• 14:30 - 15:00 eight hours, and let's just even say you only do this 5 days out of the week. You might have a day where you take a break, and that's okay. And you might have another day where you take a break. That's okay. That third day is going to be the key day. If there is a third and fourth day that you don't perform your daily task, then you're not doing very good. And that can definitely happen especially for INTPs. But this is at the end of the day is what you're going to have to do. Remember when I talked about the cognitive functions, TI hero is the
• 15:00 - 15:30 primary function for us. It's the dominant function. Ti hero is a gift to us. Our TI hero makes it so that we can truly be special. But many times we let it go to waste. When I'm talking about this forming habits stuff, the only thing that's going to matter if you actually do it or not is convincing your TI hero that it is necessary. If your personal logic says that you need to lose weight and you have to do it, then you will do it. If your inner logic says
• 15:30 - 16:00 that it'd be nice to lose some weight, but it's really not a big deal, you're not going to do it. So these things that you do, it has to be something that you truly believe you need. It's not what everybody else is telling you you need. It's not what your boyfriend, girlfriend's telling you that you need. It's what you in your own head think is what is necessary for you to have a better life. That is going to be the key in if you're going to do any of this or not. So, if you can truly convince your
• 16:00 - 16:30 TI hero that you need to do these 20 minute a day tasks to better your life and to do them at least five days out of the week, then you're very likely going to do it. So, that is going to be the key for you to actually start forming these habits. So, I posed this question in the Discord the other day and I got some really great answers. I do appreciate everybody that participated in that. What are some good habits for you as an INTP to form? You know, this one was
• 16:30 - 17:00 mine. Cleaning your house. I think it's very important to live in a clean environment, especially as an INTP. If you look around your house and everything's thrown everywhere, there's dishes everywhere, laundry, it's all going to appear very chaotic. And that's going to in turn make you feel like your life is out of control. And honestly, a lot of times that's true. So, if you could just force yourself to clean for, you know, 20 minutes a day, 30 minutes a
• 17:00 - 17:30 day, your area is going to start being more tidy. You're going to start feeling more in control of your life. When you get home from work or whatever, you're going to feel better about yourself. And I mean, if you don't have kids or anything, you might really honestly only need to clean maybe three days a week. But just getting stuff done around the house, making your environment appear more in order. The most popular answer in the Discord was exercise. I think we all as INTPs know how good exercise could be for us. And I'm not even
• 17:30 - 18:00 talking about the physical benefits. Working out or doing some form of activity can release endorphins in your brain that improve your mental health. And as INTPs, I think we should really try to do anything we can to improve our mental state. And these don't have to be complicated exercises, guys. You might say, "Well, I don't have time to exercise. cuz I just don't have the time of my day. I don't have any equipment. I don't have a gym membership. Just look up 5minute exercise videos that you can do from home. Even just getting your
• 18:00 - 18:30 heart rate up for 5 minutes a day is going to really improve your life. I believe somebody had mentioned, you know, trying to do combat sports. Any form of exercise that you can do, no matter if it's 5 minutes, no matter if it's 2 hours, it's going to be beneficial for you and something I would recommend you do. working on personal projects. This 20 minutes of daily action, this doesn't include going to work. This doesn't include making money for somebody else. I think it's important for INTPs to have their own
• 18:30 - 19:00 little personal project that they are working on. That might be a YouTube channel. That might be some kind of business they're developing, a book they're writing, anything like that. I mean, just think 20 minutes a night for 365 days. you know, it's not going to be 365 days, but let's just say 300 days. I don't have a calculator with me, but how much time does that add up to? Small daily commitments are going to slowly build over time. And it is something I believe the INTP can commit to. Another good thing you can do is, you know,
• 19:00 - 19:30 going to social events, trying to develop your FE. I don't necessarily think you should, you go out to the bar or something like that. I think if you can join some kind of class, if you live in a bigger city, maybe they have improv class, something you're interested in, maybe computer programming, DND, what have you. But if as an INTP you're working on developing your FE, becoming better with people, I think that is going to have a big benefit on your life. And who knows, maybe you could find some friends, maybe you can meet
• 19:30 - 20:00 some connections. There's really no downsides to doing this besides possibly feeling awkward. So, I do think that could be good for you. And the final thing I have here is meditation. Meditation since ancient times has shown to be beneficial. It can relax you. It can improve your mood. It can get you in a better mindset. So I do think meditation could be a good habit that you form. So in conclusion for today, in my humble opinions, most self-help is worthless. You can't rely on motivation
• 20:00 - 20:30 to get things done. It's going to be fleeting. Two or three months after you read the book, you're probably not even going to remember much about it. So don't ever expect to just read a book and your life magically change. It's going to take small daily commitments to get you where you want to be. So force yourself to do at least 20 minutes a day of action. Obviously, the more the better. If you're a young INTP and you don't have too many commitments, maybe instead of playing video games for 3 hours, you just play video games for two hours with that other hour being working on something or working out, things like
• 20:30 - 21:00 that. Just do what you can as long as you can do it at least five days out of the week. The hard thing is guys, our cognitive function stack really works against us and getting things done. We have SI child that makes us want to just sit around in our house all day, be lazy, be comfortable. We have TE Nemesis, so we don't like TE, which is all about action, getting things done. We have FE inferior, so we don't always like to go out in public. We feel awkward sometimes. It's not easy for us to get
• 21:00 - 21:30 things done, but at the end of the day, we have Ti hero over top of everything. If our inner logic truly believes that something needs done, it will find the way to do it. And I'm not asking for anything life-changing here. Just small daily 20inut things that slowly improve your life as the years and years go by. That is the only thing that can truly work. Well, I appreciate you guys watching. Hope you enjoyed the video. Leave me a like if you thought it was helpful or informative. And if you haven't already,
• 21:30 - 22:00 please subscribe to the channel to get more videos like this. I'm hoping to get an upload every two weeks, so watch out for those videos. Also, we now have an INTP Discord if you would like to join that. And there we have daily conversations. We already have INTPs connecting, talking to each other. We have some really cool things going on. So, I do hope you join that. The link will be in the bio and also in the pin comment. So again, thank you for watching.