[Function]

I'm wondering how Ni might be deliberately developed. I'm primarily interested in its effective application to tangible social and logistical tasks (including conceiving, running, and completing projects of any kind). I'm writing this post here because I suspect that this forum has members with sufficient knowledge and interest to contribute significantly to the process of answering this question. I'm talking like a robot for currently indeterminate reasons.

My current plan for answering this question is as follows:

-Outline what seem like the most convincing ideas about Ni, what they might imply about the question (how can Ni be most effectively be developed?), and any differences between them.

-Outline of suspected advantages and disadvantages, skills and pitfalls, when using Ni. Work out preliminary ideas about what characterises high functionality and what characterises dysfunctionally.

-Identify specific examples, both role models and the reverse, and develop formerly formulated ideas in relation to them. Also just note and alter procedure in accordance with any significant information noticed during this study.

-Following the former stage, speculatively outline ideas about what is and is not to do with Ni in terms of development. Distinguish from, and identify the proper relation to, general maturity or efficacy as a human.

-Survey potential techniques, including examples from non-typological contexts which might nevertheless actually be techniques that work on Ni.

-Ongoing reports on efficacy of techniques.


That's my personal plan. I'm not suggesting anybody also follow it, although they're welcome to. Suggestions are also welcome. I'd just like to hear whatever members have to say about, or have experienced in relation to, the question I'm trying to answer. I'm posting before as opposed to after undertaking further investigations in the hope of having more useful information during their course. Perhaps the auxiliary function working in co-operation with Ni (Te vs. Fe) will make techniques appropriate for INTJs and INFJs slightly different, but I'm sure there's ample common ground.

I'll note any interesting results in this thread as my studies proceed.

[MysteriousGnome]

I'll just throw out some ideas that come to mind. First of all removing fear of unknown. To get the full potential of Ni you have to be able to bend your mind in positions that may invalidate many well established assumptions. Try intentionally questioning your beliefs and try to imagine a world where the opposite holds. Imagination plays an important part so I would add exposure to fiction.

[Ambra]

I'm not answering all of that unless I am getting a grade, or paid.

What I will say about Ni is, yes people can develop it, but there seems to be a clear distinction between whether it is developed by nature or choice. Most significantly in its accuracy.

Ni is like the pictures in the middle of the mall that look like nothing, but if you focus your eyes in such a way, you see a sailboat. It can also be compared to the lenses or shutters of a camera. With each change of magnification you see something differently in the picture (I don't know a whole lot about cameras).

What I have noticed with people who use Ni naturally and effectively is that we see the same things in the same picture. Others who have different levels of magnification see things differently than I or others do, but they see something different than most people too so they will claim they are uber Ni.

Ni is not delusion, conspiracy theories. It is seeing the Wizard instead of Oz. The thing that ties everything together. It is usually in some effort of time, noticable to others as well.

I am not sure how futuristic thinking and imagination or creativity play a part in Ni.

[Mogura]

How do you consciously develop a function that, for all intents and purposes, works in the subconscious mind?

It would seem to me that the only functions that we can consciously "develop" are our extraverted ones (in the case of INFJs, Fe and Se)...

[MysteriousGnome]

I like the lens analogy, except the lenses are not so much about magnification. Some are, but there are others that apply other more interesting transformations. A well developed Ni will have a large collection of lenses and be able to effortlessly swap between them, find one that works best in a given situation, and keep on applying other lenses on top of it until it gets to a solution.

It would be interesting to think about what's more important for Ni development, collecting a lot of lenses or how effortlessly you can swap between them.

[followthehippos]

	Originally Posted by Mogura To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	How do you consciously develop a function that, for all intents and purposes, works in the subconscious mind? It would seem to me that the only functions that we can consciously "develop" are our extraverted ones (in the case of INFJs, Fe and Se)...

Ni does not function in the subconscious mind, solely. It may seem to take more of a back seat as an individual gets older, but I distinctly remember as a youth using Ni very fluidly.

[Fecal McAngry]

	Originally Posted by Mogura To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	How do you consciously develop a function that, for all intents and purposes, works in the subconscious mind? It would seem to me that the only functions that we can consciously "develop" are our extraverted ones (in the case of INFJs, Fe and Se)...

Do you find that you do not have conscious awareness of your own use of your dominant function? That seems unlikely to me...

Have you not been consciously able to develop your facility with use of Ti?

[Straynger]

	Originally Posted by Mogura To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	How do you consciously develop a function that, for all intents and purposes, works in the subconscious mind?

"Why did he lie to me?"

Options for solution: painstakingly consider every factor (Ne) you can conceive of accepting or discarding based on logical consistency (Ti)...

Or, "what does my gut tell me?" Sit with brow furrowed until answer appears from mist. "does that really seem/feel true?" if no, discard and repeat, if yes, you just developed Ni.

[Mogura]

	Originally Posted by Straynger To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	"Why did he lie to me?" Or, "what does my gut tell me?" Sit with brow furrowed until answer appears from mist. "does that really seem/feel true?" if no, discard and repeat, if yes, you just developed Ni.

Being an effective lie detector involves healthy doses of Se and Fe to counterbalance some of the shit that Ni comes up with, no?

[Fecal McAngry]

	Originally Posted by Mogura To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Being an effective lie detector involves healthy doses of Se and Fe to counterbalance some of the shit that Ni comes up with, no?

Probably--for an INFJ. Joe Navarro wrote a book on lie detection, and his writing reads as if written by an ST, perhaps an ISTJ:
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[jndiii]

	Originally Posted by Mogura To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	How do you consciously develop a function that, for all intents and purposes, works in the subconscious mind? It would seem to me that the only functions that we can consciously "develop" are our extraverted ones (in the case of INFJs, Fe and Se)...

	Originally Posted by followthehippos To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Ni does not function in the subconscious mind, solely. It may seem to take more of a back seat as an individual gets older, but I distinctly remember as a youth using Ni very fluidly.

	Originally Posted by Mogura To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Being an effective lie detector involves healthy doses of Se and Fe to counterbalance some of the shit that Ni comes up with, no?

Ni for Ni doms isn't "subconscious" so much as "who we are." The question is one of self-awareness, not consciousness.

The core pieces of Ni appear to be:

1. an ability to quickly visualize a problem
2. an intutitive understanding of the dynamics, on top of said visualization
3. "Thinking" is non-verbal. This seems "normal" to Ni-doms, but most of the world appears to "think in words."

A secondary piece of Ni is the ability to take abstract ideas and discuss them clearly and precisely. It doesn't always work, but in comparison, Ne tends to verbalize things randomly, in a stream-of-thought kind of way. Ni instead prefers to compose thoughts, only speaking them after thoroughly reviewing how to say them. Ni doms, if forced to speak thoughts on the fly, do end up sounding sort of like Ne doms in such a circumstance.

How to "train" Ni?

It's difficult to explain, but easy to do, for an Ni dom.

The first step is to understand that one is using Ni, not "thinking" or "feeling" or random a-ha intuitions in general. Ni is so poorly described by many authoritative sources that it can be difficult even for a "well-developed" Ni dom to realize one's mode of thinking.

Assuming one has correctly determined that one uses Ni, then there are several key things to keep in mind for training:

• Ni doesn't think in terms of "things". In particular, one does not think in terms of nouns or labels or objects. One thinks in terms of dynamics, how objects tend to move or change or adjust to the environment.
• Ni tends to think in terms of "movies" or "stories" or "internal dynamic models" not unlike computer models. A similar analogy is that Ni thinks in terms of "visual reasoning" like Venn diagrams, not symbolic reasoning, like algebra.
• If an Ni dom is good at math, then he or she will tend to excel at word problems, not at arithmetic or formal logic. Ni is very good at taking "the real world", modelling it, and using the model to derive an answer that others don't easily see.
• Ni is very good at answering a specific question. This is both a strength and a weakness. It is a strength because if the question is right, the answer is almost always right. The weakness is that if the question is wrong, the answer is only correct by accident. (The second case is known as "confirmation bias.")
• Therefore, Ni users should focus on asking whether the current question, the current line of thought, is a correct line of thought. Perhaps a better criterion is whether the current line of thought is "productive" or "useful."
• Ni doms should realize that they need a CONTEXT in order to think quickly and clearly. As noted previously, a specific question can provide a context, and the real work lies in determining the correct context. Finding an answer given the correct context is almost trivial.
• Without a context, Ni doms generally cannot provide quick answers. In a broad, abstract issue, Ni is better off testing a hypothesis in several contexts instead of trying to methodically evaluate the logic of the hypothesis.
• For INTJs, physical objective contexts are the most easily evaluated. For INFJs, "people contexts" are the most easily evaluated.

In short, for training Ni, one should focus on how things flow, how they work, in particular contexts. In order to have a complete evaluation, Ni should keep in mind switching out contexts in order to test the core Ni building blocks (functions, dynamics, flows, evolution) against reality (things, objects, places, situations).

There's nothing mysterious about this, it's just difficult to put into words. Ni types can put things into words, but usually not on the fly. It helps to write a note or an email, instead of trying to speak extemporaneously. Or, failing that, just practice explaining things to oneself: the bad explanations will be obvious. With practice, one generally ends up with good explanations, though there will always be new ideas that will require new practice to explain. For example, I've been practicing explaining Ni for years now. I think my explanations are pretty good, in that they help fellow Ni doms to realize that they're using Ni, but they aren't good enough to help Si/Ne types to understand/see how Ni "works." (in part because, they don't think in terms of how things "work", that's Ni/Se territory.)

...

Oh, and as for "lie detection", Ni isn't as good as Se or Fe at this. Se reads things in the here-and-now that Ni misses most of the time. And Fe sees the emotional cues that lying is occurring, that INTJs easily miss. Ni's real strength in the "lie detection" realm is that it looks for consistencies where liars don't generally think of when trying to come up with a consistent lie: a lie can be completely logically self-consistent, but still miss key consistencies with respect to cause and effect or dynamics in general.

Another thing to keep in mind for lie detection is that Fe and Se tend to sense cues like defensiveness as indicators of lying. Ni can help filter out whether the defensiveness is normal or expected. A good example of this is along the lines of saying to a person, "Who was that girl I saw you walking home with yesterday?" when one saw no such thing. The person to whom one is speaking will tend to be defensive mostly because the question itself makes untrue statements, and it can result in all sorts of unintended flustering and embarrassment, even though it's a lie. The target of such a question might say, "I didn't walk home with a girl yesterday. Heck, I drove home, not walked," and this can sound like defensiveness to the questioner. In fact, every denials sounds like "proof" to the questioner, who is only relying on emotional cues, and not paying attention to the fact that there is no response the target might make that doesn't sound "defensive." (Another way of looking at this is that claiming that the target is being defensive is not all that different from saying that the target is "stupid" or "evil": there is nothing the target can say to alter the conclusion, because the target is already tinged by the accusation of defensiveness, stupidity or evil.)

[reckful]

	Originally Posted by Mogura To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	How do you consciously develop a function that, for all intents and purposes, works in the subconscious mind? It would seem to me that the only functions that we can consciously "develop" are our extraverted ones (in the case of INFJs, Fe and Se)...

Although Jung viewed N (both Ni and Ne) as involving a special ability to perceive certain contents of the unconscious, he also believed that a person's dominant function was predominantly conscious (with the auxiliary being more of a conscious/unconscious mix and the other functions tending to be mostly mired in the unconscious). He didn't view how conscious your use of your dominant function was as depending on whether it was introverted or extraverted, or whether it was an N function or not.

"In intuition," Jung wrote, "a content presents itself whole and complete, without our being able to explain or discover how this content came into existence." But Jung viewed N as similar to S in that regard and, in both cases, the perceived contents present themselves to the N-dom's (or S-dom's) conscious dominant function.

As a side note, I'm not particularly endorsing Jung's perspective on N. To Jung, most of what I'd call the abstract/concrete component of (modern conceptions of) N/S was part of I/E instead, but Myers (rightly, IMO) mostly moved abstract/concrete from I/E to N/S and downplayed the "unconscious archetypes" aspect of Jung's concept of intuition.

[Fecal McAngry]

Originally Posted by jndiii To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

[*]Ni is very good at answering a specific question. This is both a strength and a weakness. It is a strength because if the question is right, the answer is almost always right. The weakness is that if the question is wrong, the answer is only correct by accident. (The second case is known as "confirmation bias.")[*]Therefore, Ni users should focus on asking whether the current question, the current line of thought, is a correct line of thought. Perhaps a better criterion is whether the current line of thought is "productive" or "useful."

This is good, and squares with my perceptions. Ben Bernanke, for example, is an INTJ, and a very bright one (He scored 1590 on the old, harder SATs, summa cum laude Harvard grad, etc.)--yet he's an idiot. He is very efficiently, effectively, with vigor and innovation helping to tank the American economy for decades to come.

[Straynger]

	Originally Posted by Mogura To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Being an effective lie detector involves healthy doses of Se and Fe to counterbalance some of the shit that Ni comes up with, no?

Not necessarily, it depends on how evolved your intuitions (Ni) are. To your point, a lack of Se/Si could result in a lack of data, depriving your Ni of a sufficiently large enough 'pool' to draw on in making its connections & conclusions. This is where evolvedness of your Ni comes into play. A good sniper needs only one bullet, but a pistol or machine gun would require pocket fulls of bullets to hit the same target once--assuming its obscure.

[nowt]

Teach yourself a thing with very little use of secondary sources. Only allow yourself to learn this thing when inspired--

Which might be an odd way of saying think for yourself and don't overthink.

[Function]

Ni is very good at answering a specific question. This is both a strength and a weakness. It is a strength because if the question is right, the answer is almost always right. The weakness is that if the question is wrong, the answer is only correct by accident. (The second case is known as "confirmation bias.") Therefore, Ni users should focus on asking whether the current question, the current line of thought, is a correct line of thought. Perhaps a better criterion is whether the current line of thought is "productive" or "useful." Ni doms should realize that they need a CONTEXT in order to think quickly and clearly. As noted previously, a specific question can provide a context, and the real work lies in determining the correct context. Finding an answer given the correct context is almost trivial. Without a context, Ni doms generally cannot provide quick answers. In a broad, abstract issue, Ni is better off testing a hypothesis in several contexts instead of trying to methodically evaluate the logic of the hypothesis.

This aligns very closely with my own experience. If it becomes central to your identity to answer a question which you don't know how to, or simply can't, approach in an effective manner, then there's the possibility of Ni becoming more and more all-encompassing and imbalanced in its attempts at an answer. In lieu of the correct context it constantly generates different contexts and answers, with an ever expanding scope, in an attempt to make sense of the motivating concern. So you have a progressively degenerative general dysfunctionality combined with intermittent resurgence of incredibly high functionality when answering questions to which Ni actually can be applied. In Jung's terms, this seems to correspond with the introverted ego's attempts to achieve transcendence of the external object, resulting in a catastrophic and forced re-adjustment as it comes crashing back down to reality. The external world itself becomes the problem without proper context-identification.

Before the fall-- which Jung would see as the unconscious' attempt to redress the imbalance of bloated inner perception that isn't useful in terms of current external conditions-- there's often a kind of kaleidoscopic chaos of Ni-perspectives and data and increasing disconnect from effective external action. This makes the world itself a riddle, but isn't really helpful for engaging with or solving that riddle, except by means of stripping away any assumptions and comforts that might have otherwise prevented an accurate perspective.

I think there's something of a trade-off here, though. If we look at Ni-lead founders of world-religions, we might suspect that they reached their absolutely immense functionality and catalytic power by dedicating themselves entirely to the most fundamental and difficult of questions. Some very beautiful and wise literature also, to me, seems to come from a panoramic Ni-focus, that accepts the world itself as its problem: George Eliot, Emily Bronte, Mary Webb...

I think Dario Nardi's research points to the relevance of this. Ni, according to him, works best-- achieves its characteristic state of effective whole-brain synchrony, corresponding to Mihály Csíkszentmihályi's flow-- when focusing without distractions upon a single problem. Perhaps the need to answer very large-scale problems requires an ability to stay the course, a depth of human experience and an immersion in the world that can provide a trade-off against the etherealising/transcendent tendencies Ni might otherwise have. So your context becomes those experiences, the overwhelming totality of life, and the world itself.

Which actually might pertain to the whole relationship with Se. Perhaps Ni can go further and further with more and more interaction with, and balance from, an active use of Se. But just becomes imbalanced and self-referential without this input. That matches with my experience so far, but I want to examine the idea more closely...

Some preliminary thoughts:

I've
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about how we might see the problem of Se-- its discomfort and painfulness and intrusiveness-- as the overarching problem than many of Ni's solutions attempt to solve. That data from Se provides an impetus for the pattern-finding/attempt-to-navigate of Ni. And that Se is really what Ni acts upon. Some tantric schools have this idea that the more deeply or fully or diversely you engage with the outer world, the vaster the scale of your insight becomes. And traumatic life-experiences do seem to have a very often positive effect upon Ni user's insight.

Perhaps, then, intense engagement with Se is necessary to shake-up-- cleanse-- and allow the development of Ni? Perhaps this cycle can also be undertaken in a less dramatic way, by a constant and effective feedback-loop between, say, idea and implementation (Ni-Te).

I've actually deviated somewhat from my own focus here. I'm trying to work out how to apply Ni to specific situations effectively. Perhaps the points raised here might also be relevant to that.

[scorpiomover]

It depends on what you think Ni is.

[Function]

	I'll just throw out some ideas that come to mind. First of all removing fear of unknown. To get the full potential of Ni you have to be able to bend your mind in positions that may invalidate many well established assumptions. Try intentionally questioning your beliefs and try to imagine a world where the opposite holds. Imagination plays an important part so I would add exposure to fiction.

Exposure to fiction definitely matches my experience. As does the rest of your post, although I've had the experience of taking it far too far. There's only so far you can go with that kind of questioning before it consumes you, and there's not stable ground left to come back to. I think balance and a knowledge of what matters to you, probably combined with guidance from others with a depth of experience, is necessary.

---------- Post added 04-15-2012 at 04:39 AM ----------

	Originally Posted by Thatgirl To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Ni is not delusion, conspiracy theories. It is seeing the Wizard instead of Oz. The thing that ties everything together. It is usually in some effort of time, noticable to others as well.

I agree with you generally, but I also think those conspiracy theories and delusion often are Ni. It's just that they're Ni with too great a focus for the intellectual capacity and honesty of the user. In trying to see and understand a wizard far too complex and vast for their comprehension, they come up with over-simplifications. There's also a very large element of fear, which I think has a lot to do with needing to pin down an intimidating and changing Se and not having the capacity to do so.

Personally I'm not sure whether it actually is worth trying to attempt problems on that scale. Perhaps it's actually a sign of a retarded or immature Ni, in that after a certain point you realise that either a) you can't pin the world down, the number of possible perspectives and experiences is infinite or b) if there were a God perspective, you're not going to be able to reach it. Perhaps you can reflect after a lifetime well lived, but you're not going to be able to take on the problem and slay it right now.

So perhaps we need something outside of Ni, something or people we care for or just a balanced life, in order to actually apply Ni within its proper scope. And in that scope, where it doesn't rule the entirety of your action and desire to apply itself to the world itself, we can begin really refining it and developing. Seeing precisely how effective its solutions were, and honing it with that more objective (because smaller scale and end-focused) input to aid us.

[jndiii]

Originally Posted by Function To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Before the fall-- which Jung would see as the unconscious' attempt to redress the imbalance of bloated inner perception that isn't useful in terms of current external conditions-- there's often a kind of kaleidoscopic chaos of Ni-perspectives and data and increasing disconnect from effective external action. This makes the world itself a riddle, but isn't really helpful for engaging with or solving that riddle, except by means of stripping away any assumptions and comforts that might have otherwise prevented an accurate perspective. I think there's something of a trade-off here, though. If we look at Ni-lead founders of world-religions, we might suspect that they reached their absolutely immense functionality and catalytic power by dedicating themselves entirely to the most fundamental and difficult of questions. Some very beautiful and wise literature also, to me, seems to come from a panoramic Ni-focus, that accepts the world itself as its problem: George Eliot, Emily Bronte, Mary Webb... I think Dario Nardi's research points to the relevance of this. Ni, according to him, works best-- achieves its characteristic state of effective whole-brain synchrony, corresponding to Mihály Csíkszentmihályi's flow-- when focusing without distractions upon a single problem. Perhaps the need to answer very large-scale problems requires an ability to stay the course, a depth of human experience and an immersion in the world that can provide a trade-off against the etherealising/transcendent tendencies Ni might otherwise have. So your context becomes those experiences, the overwhelming totality of life, and the world itself. Which actually might pertain to the whole relationship with Se. Perhaps Ni can go further and further with more and more interaction with, and balance from, an active use of Se. But just becomes imbalanced and self-referential without this input. That matches with my experience so far, but I want to examine the idea more closely...

To me, the
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appears to be an "Ni manifesto".

What is Ni?:

1 The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. The unnamable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things. Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations. Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source. This source is called darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gateway to all understanding.

How does Ni relate to the real world?

	11 We join spokes together in a wheel, but it is the center hole that makes the wagon move. We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want. We hammer wood for a house, but it is the inner space that makes it livable. We work with being, but non-being is what we use.

The intrusion of Se:

	12 Colors blind the eye. Sounds deafen the ear. Flavors numb the taste. Thoughts weaken the mind. Desires wither the heart. The Master observes the world but trusts his inner vision. He allows things to come and go. His heart is open as the sky.

Ni reframing the question:

29 Do you want to improve the world? I don't think it can be done. The world is sacred. It can't be improved. If you tamper with it, you'll ruin it. If you treat it like an object, you'll lose it. There is a time for being ahead, a time for being behind; a time for being in motion, a time for being at rest; a time for being vigorous, a time for being exhausted; a time for being safe, a time for being in danger. The Master sees things as they are, without trying to control them. She lets them go their own way, and resides at the center of the circle.

One way to understand the above is that INTJs are reputed to be master strategists, INFJs are reputed to be master manipulators. But in reality, Ni doms don't rearrange an entire system to their tastes, they instead watch it and understand it, especially in terms of dynamics. They look for the right time to do things, then act (ENxJs conversely tend to do things first, and think on them later). In other words, an Ni dom brings an umbrella because he knows it will rain, but he doesn't make it rain.

It kind of looks like this:

	45 True perfection seems imperfect, yet it is perfectly itself. True fullness seems empty, yet it is fully present. True straightness seems crooked. True wisdom seems foolish. True art seems artless. The Master allows things to happen. She shapes events as they come. She steps out of the way and lets the Tao speak for itself.

I'm not advocating "Taoism" per se, but it's one of the best examples of Ni-style thought I've read, and it is a good primer how to resolve the tension between Ni's affinity to want to control things (a la Nietzsche's "will to power") and the reality that most things cannot be controlled. The Tao's particular answer is this:

	33 Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power. If you realize that you have enough, you are truly rich. If you stay in the center and embrace death with your whole heart, you will endure forever.

I should note, however, that not all of the Tao Te Ching reads as elegantly as these passages. It tends to drop into weird mysticism, or projections of the author's particular values onto the real world. (It was written in the 6th century BCE, after all.) But the "Ni parts" and the resolution of typical Ni difficulties are a treasure for any Ni dom, I think.

[reckful]

	Originally Posted by Lao Tzu
	36 He who feels punctured Must once have been a bubble.

[Arguendo]

This is one of the best threads I've ever read. I admit that I read it 3x.

[Distance]

Originally Posted by Function To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

I'm wondering how Ni might be deliberately developed. I'm primarily interested in its effective application to tangible social and logistical tasks (including conceiving, running, and completing projects of any kind). I'm writing this post here because I suspect that this forum has members with sufficient knowledge and interest to contribute significantly to the process of answering this question. I'm talking like a robot for currently indeterminate reasons. My current plan for answering this question is as follows: -Outline what seem like the most convincing ideas about Ni, what they might imply about the question (how can Ni be most effectively be developed?), and any differences between them. -Outline of suspected advantages and disadvantages, skills and pitfalls, when using Ni. Work out preliminary ideas about what characterises high functionality and what characterises dysfunctionally. -Identify specific examples, both role models and the reverse, and develop formerly formulated ideas in relation to them. Also just note and alter procedure in accordance with any significant information noticed during this study. -Following the former stage, speculatively outline ideas about what is and is not to do with Ni in terms of development. Distinguish from, and identify the proper relation to, general maturity or efficacy as a human. -Survey potential techniques, including examples from non-typological contexts which might nevertheless actually be techniques that work on Ni. -Ongoing reports on efficacy of techniques. That's my personal plan. I'm not suggesting anybody also follow it, although they're welcome to. Suggestions are also welcome. I'd just like to hear whatever members have to say about, or have experienced in relation to, the question I'm trying to answer. I'm posting before as opposed to after undertaking further investigations in the hope of having more useful information during their course. Perhaps the auxiliary function working in co-operation with Ni (Te vs. Fe) will make techniques appropriate for INTJs and INFJs slightly different, but I'm sure there's ample common ground. I'll note any interesting results in this thread as my studies proceed.

You do realise you're doing exactly what your function order dictates? You're using your Ti-tert relief function, to break down Ni.
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[Arguendo]

	Originally Posted by Distance To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	You do realise you're doing exactly what your function order dictates? You're using your Ti-tert relief function, to break down Ni. To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Thats exactly what I was thinking too!

[Function]

That was kind of the point :-) .

I think that the structured perception the auxiliary and tertiary functions can provide is essential to using Ni efficiently. Using them allows you to harness the mass and force of Ni's perceptions in pursuit of a particular goal, instead of flailing around in a sea of intuitive sensation and impulse. This also allows you to measure and refine the precision of your intuitions, instead, again, of simply drifting from one to another.

More later!

[jndiii]

Originally Posted by Function To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

That was kind of the point :-) . I think that the structured perception the auxiliary and tertiary functions can provide is essential to using Ni efficiently. Using them allows you to harness the mass and force of Ni's perceptions in pursuit of a particular goal, instead of flailing around in a sea of intuitive sensation and impulse. This also allows you to measure and refine the precision of your intuitions, instead, again, of simply drifting from one to another. More later!

When describing Ni working with other functions, I describe it as an iterative process. Ni guesses, Te/Fe implements, Ni looks for failures in implementation, Te/Fe corrects, wash, rinse, repeat.