Last week I was downloading a nice Programming Calculator from a site called AnalogX, when in reading about the author, he pointed me to an online personality quiz.

Since I’m a fan of personality tests (I praised one I took earlier called “StrengthsFinder”), I was up for a free one from Keirsey.com – especially one as quick as theirs. And while they offer paid analysis, the free summary was informative in itself (click on the bottommost ‘View Report’ link for the Mini report on the summary page).

Is it worthwhile? I found the results to be interesting and meshed well with the previous one I had done via StrengthsFinder, but some of that could be bias. After all, who doesn’t want to hear they are in a 1-2% group, along with people like Isaac Newton, Stephen Hawking, and Bill Gates? But what I did get seemed to go along with my other survey, just not in as much detail – after all they can only say so much for free (in contrast, StrengthsFinder was $10 for the ‘basic’ analysis). As well, this is a temperament analysis, rather than a business-oriented one, so the results are more general (the StrengthsFinder was aimed at success in business, for example).

I’d recommend a few minutes to try it out if you haven’t done one before. You might find it helps clear up some confusion as to what you really enjoy working in – if nothing else, it might give you some insight why some jobs seem annoying, while some seem oddly interesting. And who knows? The results could help you in charting your life’s course…