Q&A: Why Does Ti Reinvent the Wheel?

The Email

Hi !
In your “I spy Fi” article. You mention right at the end that High Ti users are they type of people that would reinvent the wheel. I can actually relate to that, and would like to ask a little more insight as to why that is??
Why is it Ti does this. I tend to do it with a lot of my everyday activities. To me it’s like I’m “recreating the wheel” so that I can find the perfect wheel. Or something along those thoughts.
Any feedback would be much appreciated. Thank you!

My Answer

Mara here (ISTP). The oversimplified answer is that Ti doesn’t understand what it can’t recreate from scratch. (Bear with me…I’m going to try give an explanation that makes sense, lol) The Ti mind is basically like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Ti users use relative logic, which means that we understand things in relation to other things… which is why, for this entire response, I’m going to have to fight the desire to explain Ti in contrast to Te, and how it works in conjunction with Ne or Se. >.<

In order for Ti users to feel like we truly understand something, we need to understand the inner workings, or how all of the pieces interconnect. Of course, the best way to do that is to rebuild it. The NTPs will merely require a conceptual understanding, while the STPs will require a more tangible one. (This is why NTPs are known for abandoning projects part way through, while STPs are known for taking things apart and putting them back together again.)

The more “wheels” Ti users reinvent, the more understanding they gain. Te users will probably find Ti users frustrating in that way because they’ll see something for its function, and in an effort to be efficient, they’ll just apply what has already been invented to fill the missing role. Ti users, on the other hand, will have a hard time shaking the desire to understand how or why something functions the way it does.

To give you an example from my life, I have been playing around with website development since I was a preteen. For the longest time, I built websites completely from scratch. Ryan (ISTJ), thought I was crazy and wasting my time, because there are tools out there that could do some of that work for me. I struggled with the idea of using them though, because I wanted to know exactly how everything worked, and didn’t want some stupid tool writing bad code for me in the background. Now, I actually use some of the tools out there, but the fact that I didn’t for so long has been very helpful because I have an in depth understanding of it all now.

“I’m recreating the wheel so that I can find the perfect wheel” sounds about right. Ti users will feel deeply bothered when something doesn’t quite make sense, so Ti users might get stuck on making refinements, and find themselves struggling to move past something. It’s similar to getting lost in the details, like the Si users. I worked on this group project once where some of the individual components didn’t quite make sense together. Individually, they were fine, and good enough to pass, but something just kept bugging me so I kept tweaking them and tweaking them until they all fit perfectly. This type of stuff will drive me insane until I can figure out what’s not quite right and then fix it.

Final Words

Thanks for reading! Feel free to send in anymore questions, and Ryan or I will answer as best we can.