There Are Two Types of People
Which One Are You?
In life, everything comes down to balance.
Too much speed and not enough focus can turn into a car crash. Too many late nights at the office and not enough time at home can end in divorce. Too much thinking and not enough doing can create a whole lot of nothing.
Since I’m not a race car driver or marriage counselor, let’s focus on the last example in terms of entrepreneurship.
When you think about it, pursuing your own idea is nothing more than a series of decisions. These decisions may seem like an endless desert journey towards a distant mirage, but in the end, they can be distilled down into actionable steps that eventually turn into progress, little by little.
You might already be familiar with the two categories of people: those that see the overall forest and those that notice each individual tree. When I think about these this division, I tend to kick things up a notch and refer to them as stratospheric thinkers and subterranean doers, respectively.
If stratospheric thinkers have their heads in the clouds, subterranean doers have their hands planted firmly in the dirt. They have an innate ability to take long-term vision statements, break them down into actionable tasks, and ruthlessly execute each one of them, day after day.
Since I consider myself to be a stratospheric thinker, I have always struggled with taking action and seeing things through to the end. In fact, this is the very reason I have become hyper-focused on taking action and helping others to do the same.
In case you’re still not 100% sure what type of person you are, take a look at the profiles of both types of personalities:
Stratospheric thinkers are:
- Creative
- Emotional
- Imaginative
- Unorganized
- Focused on ideas
- Always asking, “Why?”
Subterranean doers are:
- Realistic
- Pragmatic
- Reasonable
- Methodical
- Focused on implementation
- Always asking, “How?”
As you can probably tell, these two types of people can work extremely well together when things are in sync. The thinker remains focused on where they are going and the doer makes sure they are doing what they need in order to get there. Without the doer, the thinker would never make progress, and without the thinker, the doer would most likely waste time on the wrong activities. It’s a perfect balance, the yin to the other’s yang.
This dream team sounds great in theory, but how do you make it work in practice? What happens if you lack some of the above qualities in either category?
No worries. There are very few people I’ve met in real life that naturally have the perfect mix of both personality types. For the rest of us mere mortals, we have one of two options: either work on developing the personality type we lack or find someone else to fill in our gaps.
Even with social media, it can still be difficult to find the type of person we need. After all, people aren’t walking around with t-shirts that say, “I’m a stratospheric thinker,” or, “I’m really good at implementation.”
It takes being patient and proactive to find someone else that aligns with your idea and has the skills you need.
William Frazier is a designer, writer, and founder who blogs about making ideas happen at The Imperfectionist. For helpful tidbits on making your own ideas happen, join his newsletter and follow him on Twitter.
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