ENTJ trap: Making plans to make plans
My friend sent me the todo list she got from her boss. He’s a former A-list director and his career is shrinking. He hired her and two other people to turn him into an AI powerhouse.
I love this list because he’s delusional in the same ways I am. This is what an ENTJ looks like when they’re losing control.
He can see exactly what needs to happen for him to have influence. He has no idea what the path is to get there. So the list reads like this:
List of people we can go to for dev funds
Ping priorities on LinkedIn with message about project
AWS — waiting for offer
Get Sam into GenJam
Amazon MGM direct — Wendy? Or my LI contact Lance H.?
Every item is outreach to somebody who might hand him a position. Nothing on the list is work.
I do this constantly. I tell myself I have a huge pile of unpublished posts I should turn into a book. Then I read them and they’re terrible. I see people teaching courses I could teach, so I make lists of courses and how to turn them into something big. Then I sit down to outline one and remember: oh right, this is why I don’t teach this.
ENTJs need to separate ideas for areas from ideas for action. Action to find an area is not action. It’s an area you’re so far from you’re not even in it yet. Action comes after you’re standing where the action is.
The boss needs funding for his AI ideas, but he has no track record in AI. So the list includes making him influential in AI by getting him to judge contests. It’s circular. You judge contests because you did the work. You don’t do the work by judging contests.
He thinks he already cleared his biggest hurdle: he hired a team. But hiring a team is only a hurdle inside an ENTJ’s head. We hate moving forward without an army, so assembling one feels like progress. It’s just recruiting soldiers for a war you haven’t located.