Our Everyday Experiences and How AI Can (Sometimes) Help

I was never going to be the first adopter of artificial intelligence (AI). The endless ads showing up in my social media feed offering to create a photobook from my camera pics with a few clicks of a button or design my living space or yard in just a few moments turn me completely off. I keep thinking - why would I want to outsource my own creativity? So I can focus more on mundane tasks? Really?

I’m also sometimes not impressed with what AI has written, for example an organizational policy. Reading it, I can be left thinking “Did that actually say anything?” And sometimes it’s just too generic to be meaningful. Can it help you wordsmith something, sure. Beyond that, I don’t want it doing all the thinking and the scientists studying what’s happening to our brains as people become more reliant on AI don’t either.

But here’s a place where AI is actually proving somewhat useful in my everyday life. Maybe I’m puzzling over why I feel a certain way about something so that I can stop overthinking it and figure a way to resolve the issue or perhaps let it go. Or maybe I’m puzzling over why miscommunication happens with someone in my daily life with a completely different personality type than my own.

The more I read about temperament and personality, the more it seems it really comes down to how each person processes the world, processes information and then responds to it and communicates their thinking.

A few examples. The past few months I’d been puzzling over why a friend’s behavior most times we’re together has been getting on my nerves to the point times spent together often aren’t enjoyable. As I’m walking to meet my friend, I’m thinking that I know where they will have parked, what they’ll order to both drink and eat and who they’ll quote in conversation. While these things seem small, they are nonetheless quite bothersome. Read below to find out what AI told me about why which made perfect sense to me when I read it.

Or maybe I struggle to understand what someone is trying to communicate unless I’m given the whole picture of how it fits into a larger whole. And then a recent conversation sparked my thinking about how best to respond to someone else’s recent loss.

Do an internet search on your phone or computer and after a few seconds of “thought”, AI pops up with an answer. How close the response is to what you were looking for of course depends upon your ability to synthesize your question fairly concisely. Beneath the advice is the resources AI pulled from so you’ll want to check those out.

A fair amount of the responses to quandaries that aren’t so much factual with clearcut answers but more about judgment from either lived experience or fields of science less clearcut like psychology come from what people have said on platforms like Reddit. Sometimes that’s ok. It can be helpful to know you’re not the only one having a certain experience or to hear what others have done in response. Other times, you’re looking for more knowledge than opinion. Articles from magazines or journal articles are common as well so may be more helpful depending on what you’re looking for.

What’s actually kind of cool is that following the answer AI gives, it asks for further information to hone the response which I’m actually finding pretty helpful to unearth what I’m looking for. Hey, it’s worth a try, right, or maybe it could just be fun to play with.

Here were a few of the insights from the quandaries I had above which gave me some clarity. I share these because I feel like they are quandaries which those of us with the HSP or perhaps INFJ personality type struggle with.

To my quandary over why a friend’s habits are so bothersome at times, AI says:

“Yes, feeling annoyed by high predictability and repetitive routine is an incredibly common pet peeve for INFJs.” There’s the “pattern-recognition trap” (inverted intuition) which is the dominant function of the INFJ. When my friend follows the same script, one I’ve already figured out in my head exactly, it can feel like “re-watching a movie you have already seen a hundred times”. We also have a deep dislike for “stagnation and repetition” and get exhausted by the heavy focus on minor physical logistics when our brains would rather use that energy to focus on the bigger picture.

Ding, ding, ding. I so related to this explanation. So . . . AI was a little shorter on what I should do to relieve my own discomfort, but at least now I can stop puzzling over why it’s happening.

To my quandary about needing the fuller picture in order to understand something rather than just accepting random data points or requests, I give the example of a client manager who this week stopped into my office I sometimes use at their site and started telling me about something he wanted me to take care of and asked what I thought about his means of how I should handle it. Mid-way into his recitation of what he wanted, I interrupted him to ask basically “What are we trying to achieve by doing this? Can you give me the fuller picture?” which he then slowed the conversation down long enough to give me the background behind his request which I appreciated. When he was done, I was satisfied it made sense to me and I understood what he was asking.

Throughout my son’s school years (I believe he and I share this challenge.), I have seen him struggle with exactly this - too often being given what seem like random data points to memorize and regurgitate or steps to do in an activity without giving him any context or explaining how it fits into the bigger picture. That is, “why on earth does this matter?” He’s expressed this frustration to me many times over the years. While I was always sympathetic and have tried to reassure him it’s just how he processes information, like me, I was largely powerless to change it for him beyond suggesting he ask the teachers for clarification and further explanation. It was often in these classes that his grades reflected his inability to or unwillingness to seek out what he needed. It’s unfortunate that schools in the U.S. at any level are not great at providing meaning and context. Just learn it, dammit.

So here was AI’s response which pulled from INFJ coach Lauren Sapala’s work and she’s someone I like to follow anyway. If interested in her work, find her videos on YouTube. It’s some pretty useful information. So, we use “holistic processing” by building a web of interconnecting concepts; isolated data points feel “weightless until anchored in a bigger picture”. We gravitate to “the why over the what” and we “struggle inherently with grasping raw, unformatted demands from the outside world without a clear background story”. Again, ding, ding, ding. Absolutely.

If you’re the person communicating with us, helpful tips include: 1) state the purpose first; 2) provide the background and the why; 3) allow processing time. I don’t know about you but I’m uncomfortable with someone demanding an immediate answer especially about something important if I haven’t had time to process the information first, so give us that time.

I find friends, especially those who do not share the intuitive trait, say an ISTJ or ISFJ, get impatient quickly by my asking for more information, asking why, or wanting to explore different perspectives on an issue. For those of you interacting with us, know that we’re not trying to be annoying, challenge you in a disrespectful way or be argumentative, it’s just how we think. And, as I’ve told my son repeatedly, don’t think there isn’t value in what you’re bringing to the table by being the person who does these things. We’re needed to get past phenomena like group-think and short-sightedness. We’re the big picture, longer-term thinkers.

Lastly, am I the only one who cringes when I hear oft-repeated responses to others’ misfortune or grief? This one hits me because I’ve often felt emotionally invalidated, so I cringe when I hear people use some of these phrases, often well-meaning but nevertheless misguided. Hint: Don’t immediately launch in with your own story, don’t start your response with “at least . . . “, “others have it worse” or “you’ll have more suffering in your life”.

I do admit I’ve used “They had a long life” when someone older passes away, but I probably shouldn’t. Those phrases basically minimize someone else’s experience. It feels invalidating. Better responses are to just offer your support without judgment and encourage them to be gentle with themselves during this time and reach out for support when needed. It’s good to remember that you don’t have to agree with someone’s interpretation of their situation in order to honor their right to their own emotions. Not processing our emotions only leads to bigger problems.

Try out AI on your phone or computer just doing an internet search on that one. If nothing else, it’s interesting and fun.

Happy weekend.

Peace.