A temperament test flipped how I see the world
We took a temperament test in class at university. I was not that interested, but what I learned changed a lot. A whole lot of things: why I keep wanting ever newer projects and hobbies, why a few hours of work ends in a mental blackout, and why “just pull yourself together” never stood a chance.
Source: unsplash.com
What this test actually measures
It is called FCZ-KT and it comes from Jan Strelau’s Regulative Theory of Temperament. It looks at how the nervous system, by default and with its package of genes, reacts to the world. How fast I switch between tasks, how long I can keep going (at anything), how sensitive I am to stimuli, and how much I want to be stimulated. These traits are not limited to one context, so when you see “low endurance” it can be both:
- I lose energy fast at the gym, so my workouts tend to be short
- One online meeting is already enough that I need to “rest”
Look at the results below:
| Trait | Score | Level | What this means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Briskness | 16 | Average | Normal. I do not hop from flower to flower, and I do not drag my feet either. |
| Perseveration | 14 | Average | Normal. If something needs doing, I finish it, but I do not lie awake all night with obsessive thoughts about an unfinished task. |
| Sensory sensitivity | 19 | High | I notice everything. Every look from another person, every broken piece of an app, a notification in the other room, my thoughts 24 hours a day, or the shape of a cat’s ears. |
| Emotional reactivity | 12 | Average | Normal. I feel stress normally. A client conversation does not flatten me. |
| Endurance | 2 | Low | Very low. My batteries run out fast. Tasks are sprints for me, not a marathon. |
| Activity | 17 | High | I want the new thing. Without stimulation I get bored fast. |
A Ferrari engine, but a tiny tank
It looks roughly like this:
High activity means I need stimuli and everything interests me. Great. A lot of people envy me that.
High sensory sensitivity sounds great on paper, because people congratulate me on being sharp and on noticing a huge number of details. It is also a straight road to overthinking and not deciding. At some point you already know so much that every option looks fine, and you still have to pick one. That is not simple.
Low endurance means I burn through my batteries very fast. So my work is frequent, short tasks. After them there has to be a break and rest, because I am spent. Add high sensory sensitivity and it is like driving a Ferrari with a 5-litre tank.
That is when I started to understand a lot of my behavior:
- Why 1–2 hours at a party is fully enough
- Why things many people do not think about day to day are obvious to me
- Why a gym session usually lasts one hour
Asynchronous work
A standard eight-hour day has never worked for me, and now I have better proof than “that is just a feeling in the back of my head.” So I have always, intuitively, steered toward asynchronous work:
- 60–90 minute sprints of clean work
- 1–2 set moments in the day when I answer messages (email, Slack)
- A break without scrolling the internet
- Order, and ideally an empty room with a computer and nothing else
The useful part
Knowing yourself pays off. Just when I thought there was not much left to discover, the world disagreed.
I recommend taking this test and learning a bit more about yourself. You can find it online without much trouble.
All the best,
Sławek
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