Book Review: The Four Tendencies

As a general rule, I'm skeptical of personality typing systems. I badly want them to work, but for most of them, I'm not persuaded that they provide any more insight into your personality than looking up your zodiac sign.

But I admit I found this book... intriguing.

In short, her thesis is that there are two types of motivation: Internal Motivation and External Motivation. People broadly fall into 4 categories: Those who respond to Internal Expectations, those who respond to External Expectations, those who respond to both, or those who respond to neither. Which category you fall in is a big part of your personality, and very influential in how you go about accomplishing your goals

I suspect that a lot of the Personality Types she builds around them are bogus, but I still think there's something to that dichotomy of motivation. It's something which I've found helpful in understanding myself and the people around me.

For example, she talks about how, if you respond to external motivation, its important to have accountability in order to achieve your goals.

"Accountability" is a weird idea to me. I genuinely don't understand what it means, and I privately doubt that it is a meaningful concept at all.

I understand "Responsibility". I think its hard to underestimate how important Responsibility is. But when people talk about "Being accountable for this deadline" or say things like, "We need to hold each other accountable", I mentally replace "Accountable" with "Afraid of being punished"

And yet, many people around me seem to consider Accountability a positive thing, a thing they embrace and that helps them achieve their goals, in way that means something much more positive than "I need to be afraid that somebody will punish me if I fail before I can be motivated"

Come to think of it, "Motivation" is similarly weird to me. I don't think I've ever even experienced this thing called "Motivation", and again, I privately doubt that its a real thing at all. I simply do.... what I want to do. If there's something I set out to do, and then don't do it, I assume it was because I didn't really want to. I examine my reasons for not wanting to, and ask myself in hindsight if they were good reasons, and whether I should re-evaluate my priorities next time. (I admit, the reasons I want to do things aren't just momentary impulses. I also want to hit long-term goals and want to honor the obligations of love and gratitude to the people around me)

And yet, motivation appears to be a very important thing to many people, and a huge component of what drives them towards their highest purposes.

I feel like Gretchen Ruben's system gives me a key to understanding these odd concepts. People who value things like accountability and motivation are those who respond strongest to external expectations.

It's just a quiet little increase in my understanding. It's a reminder that ideas which don't seem useful to me might provide a great deal of value to someone else.

I think that made the book worth reading.

In conclusion: