I decided to take August off from writing to concentrate on some big changes in my life. And I definitely didn't think I'd do anything productive when I was sitting on a Romanian bus tour to see Dracula's castle. (It's a thing!) But after hours stuck in traffic, I accidentally turned inwards on a journey of self-discovery with my AI buddy Claude. And I think you'd like it, too.

Think of this post as the magazine you're taking with you to read on your beach holiday, just a bit more educational. Regular service will continue next month.

Come with me, I'll be your tour guide.

Why a personalised personality profile?

I realised that despite having taken various personality tests over the years, their insights were gathering dust, the PDFs forgotten at the bottom of my downloads folders. As I contemplated the changes ahead in my life, I saw an opportunity to make these neglected insights actionable.

Whether it's the crowd-favourite star signs, our basic business friend the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the Enneagram, Human Design, or one of the many, many others; these systems offer lenses through which we can view ourselves and our interactions with the world. You might hear someone say, "Such an Aries," "I can't work with ENTJs", or "As a Generator, I need to approach tasks this way." While these statements might be a little simple, they also provide interesting mirrors for self-reflection.

This guide will walk you through the process I stumbled upon—a method to transform scattered test results into a coherent, actionable personality profile. Whether you're on a long commute, at home, or during a break at work, you can embark on this journey of self-discovery and practical self-improvement.

🚨 On Privacy
We'll explore how AI might be useful to playfully explore your personality traits, test results, profiles and indicators. These are – as the name suggests – highly personal. Use your own discretion, and be aware of potential privacy implications. e.g. use a paid plan and turn off data sharing, or even use a local LLM to run these.

In just a few hours, I transformed scattered pieces of information about myself into a coherent, personalised, and – most of all – actionable profile. So whether you're on a long commute, sitting under an umbrella at the beach, sleepless at home, or during a break at work here's your 2024 AI-powered version of the gossip-magazine personality test:

Overview: Your Path to an Actionable Personalised Profile

1. Gathering Your Source Material

2. Creating a personalised Structure

3. Distilling Your Unique Traits

4. Crafting Individual Profiles

5. Integrating Multiple Perspectives

6. Designing Personal Practices

7. Living with your personalised personality profile

Step 1: Gathering Your Source Material

Use what you have, you don't need to take dozens of tests to do this. Chances are you have done one or the other test for work, looked up your star sign, or taken some more-or-less-serious tests online. Anything goes. Remember, we'll use these as a mirror to reflect about ourselves, rather than at face value.

Using Existing Personality Tests

The standard ones, these are a great start.

1. Collect results from personality tests you've taken (e.g., Enneagram, Human Design, Myers-Briggs).

2. Locate any PDFs, reports, or descriptions associated with these tests.

3. If you can't find your results, look for general descriptions of your type or indicator online.

Using Personal Reflections

If you have a journal practice, write a personal blog or similar, this can be great source material.

1. Gather personal writings such as journal entries, therapy session notes, or reflections on your experiences.

2. If you have voice memos containing personal insights, transcribe the relevant portions.

3. Include notes from coaching sessions or any other self-reflective exercises you've done.

Step 2: Creating a personalised Structure

Before diving into the analysis, create a structure that will make your final profile actionable and relevant to your life. Personalised doesn't happen by accident, take a moment to think about this.

1. Reflect on what aspects of your personality you want to understand better. Consider areas like:

   • General nature

   • Specific challenges and potential solutions

   • Relationship dynamics (work, personal, etc.)

   • Decision-making processes

   • Information processing and sense-making

2. Think about how you'd like to use this profile. When would you refer to it? What information would be most helpful in different situations?

3. Draft a basic outline. Here's an example to get you started:

1. General Nature
2. Challenges and Solutions
3. Relationships
   3.1 Work
   3.2 Personal
   3.3 Other
4. Decision-Making Process
5. Information Processing and Sense-Making
6. Daily/Weekly/Monthly Rituals and Habits

4. Customize this structure to fit your needs. You might add sections on creativity, stress management, or any other areas relevant to your life.

💡 Make it a game
Don't know what could be useful? Have a little chat with your AI. Open a new chat and paste this prompt:

Help me decide on the perfect structure for an actionable personality profile. I'm looking to summarise and re-format some personality tests I've done in the past to get actionable insights. Ask me at least 5 questions, one at a time, before you draft 3 outlines of a personality test report that is tailored to me. When you draft the outlines, simply respond with the headings. Keep the structure simple and concise. But first, let's start with the questions.

You'll get three structures, pick the one that resonates the most. Then edit it to feel just right. This is the most "manual" part of the process. Make it yours.

Step 3: Distilling Your Unique Traits

For each personality test or source of information, you'll create a separate chat with your AI assistant. The approach may vary depending on your familiarity with the test and the format of information you have.

Approach 1: The Quiz Method

Creating a personalised Quiz

Start a new chat with your AI assistant.

Upload or paste the description of your personality type. If you don't have any description or report, simply mention the test type and your result. Then use this prompt:

I have a description of my [personality type/indicator]. Can you create a quiz to help me identify which aspects of this description resonate most with me? Please present the quiz with numbered options for each question.

Taking the Quiz

Answer each question be referring to the numbers. Feel free to provide context for your answers. For example:

Q: Which of these resonates most with you?
1. I prefer to work independently on projects
2. I thrive in collaborative environments
3. My preference varies depending on the nature of the project

Your response:

 2 - I find that my creativity is enhanced when I can bounce ideas off colleagues, though I also value some quiet time for deep focus.

Or simply reply 2, if you get multiple choice questions, you can reply with 2,4,7,8 or add context like the example above.

Once you answered all the questions in the quiz, proceed to step 4 below to create your personalised profile.

Approach 2: Bring your own stuff

In addition to using established personality tests, I found it valuable to incorporate my personal reflections into my profile. These included transcripts from voice notes (you know I love voice notes, journal entries, and notes from coaching or therapy sessions. This approach allowed me to add a deeply personal layer to my overall profile, ensuring it reflected not just general personality traits, but also my unique experiences and self-observations.

Use this prompt to create a profile from your notes:

I'd like to explore my personality based on some personal reflections. I'll share some notes, one at a time. Respond to each with a one-sentence summary and a single follow-up question to gain a deeper understanding. 

Here is my first note: [Paste or attach the first note]

When you added enough notes, move on to Step 4.

Approach 3: The Shortcut

If you're already familiar with a particular personality system, or you just want to save time, you can ask the AI to summarise and personalise the information directly, combining this step with Step 4:

I'm familiar with my [personality type/indicator]. Based on the description I'll share, can you summarise the key points and how they apply to my life, using the following structure?

[Paste your personalised structure here]

Here's the description: [Paste or upload your type description]

If you don't have a description of your type, you can let your AI model use its built-in knowledge, and it'll work as well. Adding a PDF or copy/pasting a description can help ground the conversation and make it less "random".

Step 4: Crafting Individual Profiles

When you've finished the quiz, or added all your notes, it's time to get your personalised profile. In the same chat as you did Step 3, paste this prompt:

Please summarise the insights using this structure:

[Paste your personalised structure here]

Respond in MD.

Read the profile it made, it something feels wrong, add clarifications and ask for a new profile, or download it and edit it yourself.

When you're done, make sure to download each profile to its own file. With Claude, you can ask:

Please create a MD Artefact with the complete profile.

Step 5: Integrating Multiple Perspectives

Now it's time to combine all your individual profiles into one comprehensive view.

Start a new chat with your AI assistant, and introduce the task:

I'm going to share several personality profiles we've created. I'd like you to integrate them into one comprehensive profile. After I share each profile, please acknowledge it with a brief summary.

Share each profile one by one, allowing the AI to summarise each.

After sharing all profiles, ask for an integrated version:

Now that you have all my profiles, please create a comprehensive, integrated profile that synthesises insights from all of them. Use this structure:

[Paste your personalised structure here]

To make it easier to track the source of each insight, please use these emojis:
[List your chosen emojis and their corresponding profile sources, e.g., 
🔎 - Enneagram
🧬 - Human Design
♋️ - Astrology
📝 - Personal Reflections]

5. Review the integrated profile and ask for any necessary adjustments.

Step 6: Designing Personal Practices

The final step is to transform your insights into actionable practices:

Based on this integrated profile, can you suggest 5-7 personalised practices or rituals that would support my growth and leverage my strengths? Please categorise them into daily, weekly, and monthly practices. For each practice, explain how it relates to my profile and which aspect(s) of my personality it's designed to support or improve.

Step 7. Living with your personalised personality profile

Congratulations on creating your very own personalised, actionable personality profile!
Your tour through Personality Test Land is now complete.

I hope that going from a bunch of dusty reports on who you might be to this new format was fun. And maybe it gave you a tool for self-understanding and growth, rather than a rigid definition of who you are.

A few key points to keep in mind:

1. The insights generated through this process are inspirations, not absolute truths. Always critically evaluate the information and its relevance to your life. Especially since AI might have made up (hallucinated) a detail or two.

2. Your personality is not fixed. This profile is a snapshot of your current self-understanding and can evolve as you grow.

3. Regularly revisit your daily, weekly, and monthly practices. Adjust them as needed based on their effectiveness and your changing circumstances.

4. Consider sharing your profile with trusted friends, family members, or mentors. Their perspectives might offer additional insights or areas for reflection.

5. You could add another prompt like: How do I communicate my personality and working style in a way that allows my coworkers/partner/friends to understand me better?

AI only goes so far. It can be fun, but it's not a replacement for people. If you resonate with a specific system, consider working with a specialist to understand more. And if you want to explore how to integrate your newly gained insights into your life, Come for Somatic Coaching

Until then, have a great summer!

This article was first published at https://slow.works on the 20 Aug 2024