Hey everyone, it’s Erik Thor here!
Whew. These last months have brought up and made me aware of many things in myself. My perfectionism as I keep working at and improving things and my dissatisfaction with “what is”. It’s still there, though I do my best to focus on positive thinking, I recognize even that is a bias. How do we see things clearly and objectively when our minds are clouded by limiting beliefs and thoughts? How can we see life as it really is?
When I took traditional personality tests, they always forced me to choose. Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Do you focus on the present or the future?
But the descriptions often sounded abstract, vague and stereotypical.
We don’t operate on a single, static track. Our minds are dynamic, adaptive systems. We have many contradictory thoughts. How we think when we are alone is often different from how we decide when we are under pressure at work, or how we protect ourselves in our closest relationships.
That is why I spent the last few weeks rebuilding my cognitive function test from scratch. I wanted to build a test that doesn’t just put you in a clinical box, but actually captures how you navigate the world in context.
Here is the story of why traditional tests feel so limiting—and how this new approach works under the hood.
The Problem with the “Static Box”
Traditional Jungian and MBTI tests usually ask questions in a general, context-free format:
- “Do you prefer to organize your time or go with the flow?”
- “Are you more focused on logical consistency or human values?”
The problem with these questions is that they assume your brain works the same way everywhere. But as I’ve learned through coaching and observing my own patterns, context dictates our cognitive priorities.
You might use The Stoic (Thinking Judging) at work—relying on spreadsheets, plans, and metrics, working yourself to absolute exhaustion because you measure your worth by output. But the second you step into a close relationship, you might completely pivot to The Mirror (Authenticity Orienting), absorbing your partner’s emotional state like a sponge and losing your own baseline in their feelings.
If a test only looks at your “general” state, it misses these vital shifts. It misses you.
How the New Test Works: Personality in 5 Contexts
To solve this, I designed this test to measure your cognitive functions across five distinct situational environments:
- General: Your baseline, default mental posture.
- At Work: Your professional, task-oriented strategy.
- In Relationships: How you interact with those closest to you.
- In Groups: Your social, community-oriented style.
- When Alone: Your private, reflective state when nobody is watching.
Behind the scenes of the test, the questions are mapped to these environments. Take a look at these examples of how the test measures Introverted Intuition (The Daydreamer) across different contexts:
- At Work: “At work, I think about what a new job or project will be like before it begins.”
- When Alone: “When I am alone, I imagine future conversations and how they might go.”
- In Groups: “In social settings, I focus on how my ideas about the future might play out.”
By splitting the questions this way, we can map out a situational chart of your mind. We can finally answer questions like: Do you become more structured at work but highly adaptable at home? Do you lose your logical objectivity when you’re around family?
Shifting from “Clinical Labels” to “Lived Loops”
The second major change I made was rewriting the results to focus on raw, lived experiences instead of abstract, psychological jargon. Nobody wakes up in the morning and thinks, “Ah, my auxiliary Extroverted Sensing is currently gathering concrete sensory data.”
Instead, we experience life as real behaviors, strengths, and autopilot traps (which I call “The Loops”).
In the results of this test, you won’t just see percentage scores. You will meet different parts of yourself:
- The What-If Machine (Extroverted Intuition): Endlessly chasing the next thing, struggling to enjoy the page of the book you are currently reading because your mind is already in the next chapter.
- The Ruminator (Introverted Sensing): Replaying past conversations at 3:00 AM, wishing you could edit moments that are already long gone.
- The Stoic (Thinking Judging): Hiding behind task lists, grueling exercise, and data to run away from emotional vulnerability.
Our personality isn’t just about what we are good at; it’s about how we cope when we get stressed. By identifying your dominant “Loop,” the test helps you see exactly where you are getting stuck on autopilot, offering an empathetic path back to balance.
Stop Trying to Fit in a Box
I built this test because I want you to become more aware of your thoughts and why you have them, and what triggers them. Is it your boss? Your friends? Your family? Or do these thoughts come from your “self”?
My hope is that this tool helps you understand why your mind shifts, shows you where you might be getting stuck on autopilot, and ultimately helps you navigate your life with a little more compassion and self-awareness.
The test is officially live and free to take. I would love for you to try it out and let me know: How does your thinking style change when you change your room?
It’s also translated to several different languages!
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