Catalyst, Organizer, or Maintainer?

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I shared this concept in another thread that I didn’t want to derail, but a few people chimed in, so I thought I’d expand on the idea and let it be its own thing. I’m sorry for the big wall o’ text.

I have a theory that you can divide people into three different categories based on what motivates them, and it applies to the gym, work, recreation - but each has a shadow function.

Maintainers - They want a clear to-do list, then be done. If there is not a clear goal that is spelled out, they quit.
Organizers - They like to move things around, so coming into a new established idea or situation motivates them to get busy. But if they have to go into maintainer mode, they start creating chaos to give them something to do.
Catalyst - The person who thrives on newness and always is creating something. They are willing to dip out for the next new thing.

So to expand on it (since I’m an organizer,) I’m going to go deep and let everyone else go have fun. I feel that psychologic insight is what most people/coaches want anyway.

  1. Maintainers: Seeking Clarity and Closure

Maintainers thrive on structure and clarity. They prefer to have a clear to-do list or a defined goal to work towards. For them, the satisfaction lies in completing tasks and achieving objectives methodically. Without a clear goal or defined tasks, Maintainers can feel aimless or frustrated, potentially leading them to disengage or seek clarity elsewhere.

Key Characteristics:

Structured Approach -They prefer organized and predictable environments where tasks are clearly delineated, so it’s going through a checklist, like a premade program - that’s great for them.

Completion Orientation - Achieving closure on tasks or goals gives them a sense of accomplishment, like a competition.

Challenges with Ambiguity - Unclear or shifting goals can be demotivating, causing them to lose interest or seek clarity before proceeding. So no muscle confusion bullshit.

Maintainers excel in roles where consistency, attention to detail, and adherence to established processes are valued. They provide stability and reliability in teams and projects by ensuring tasks are completed efficiently and effectively.

They do best following a diet and exercise program that continues their progression. But eventually it’ll wear off, which is where we come to organizers.

  1. Organizers: Thriving in Dynamic Environments

Organizers are energized by the challenge of rearranging and optimizing existing systems or ideas. They enjoy stepping into established situations and finding ways to improve or innovate. However, when faced with prolonged periods of maintenance or routine tasks without the opportunity to innovate, organizers become restless and start disrupting their diet and workout habits to create new challenges for themselves.

Key Characteristics:

Optimization Mindset - They seek opportunities to streamline processes or reorganize systems for greater efficiency. They are focused on fixing a problem that already exists.

Adaptive Nature - Since we are expecting to be comfortable with change, we thrive in changing environments where we can introduce new ideas or improvements. If it looks stupid but, works, it ain’t stupid.

Restlessness in Stability - Long periods of maintaining the status quo without innovation can lead to dissatisfaction or a desire to shake things up so if your diet is boring, or your workout is boring, we find something new to shake up yourself.

Organizers think about roles where creativity, adaptability, and problem-solving skills are crucial. That’s like crack to me (obviously an organizer). They often take on leadership positions where they can drive change and improvement within teams or organizations.

So they do best when they follow a program or diet to learn, but deviate halfway through based on a multitude of feedback streams based on what works and what kinda sucks.

  1. Catalysts: Embracing Novelty and Innovation

Catalysts constantly seek new experiences, ideas, or projects to engage with. Catalysts are not afraid to venture into uncharted territory and are often the initiators of change or new initiatives. However, their enthusiasm for novelty can also lead them to quickly lose interest in ongoing projects or established routines.

Key Characteristics:

Innovative Spirit: - They thrive on creating new ideas, projects, or solutions to challenges, especially against the current world/physical culture…

Easily Bored - Routine or maintenance tasks may bore them quickly, prompting them to seek new challenges or opportunities to make faster progress.

Risk-Tolerant - Comfortable with uncertainty, they are willing to take risks to pursue new ideas or ventures to find the “best” option.

Catalysts excel in entrepreneurial roles, creative fields, or positions that require constant adaptation, like innovative methods of coaching. They bring fresh perspectives and drive forward-thinking initiatives within teams, organizations and do a lot of self-experimentation, like bio-hacking.

I wasn’t expecting to write an article, but it killed some time and gave me some practice

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Your three different categories, like Myers-Briggs, CT’s neuro training, and all other personality assessments, are just different interpretations and poor substitutes for the Big Five personality traits.

Big 5=Gold standard.

Openness to Experience
Conscientiousness
Extraversion/Introversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism
*IQ

Maintainers as you described would just be someone high in conscientiousness, potentially Neuroticism and lower in Openness.

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The Dude Yeah Well You Know Thats Just Like Your Opinion Man GIF - The Dude Yeah Well You Know Thats Just Like Your Opinion Man GIFs

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Could be. I’m just tossing out some half-baked ideas I came up from another thread for other (more intelligent than me) posters to weigh in on.

And if it’s a shitty idea, it’s a shitty idea, and I need to reevaluate my thinking.

It isn’t meant to be a complete psychological analysis, but a streamlined way to see where an employee would do best based on motivation. Them I realized it could be applicable to working out and nutrition.

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I would legitimately be interested in your thoughts.

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I don’t think one is exclusively one of those traits. I also think there can be overlap between them. Maybe, and I just thought of this as I’m typing, being exclusively one, being unable to function in situations that require the other traits, is a bad thing. I work with someone who is pretty much a maintainer. She lacks any ability to make executive decisions. Coworkers have seriously asked me if she has OCD. She’s a model of redundancy which is the same as saying she is inefficient. She’ll waste time reading a report in order to tell the person who is going to read the report, what’s in it.

I probably vacillate between organizer and catalyst. It’s why, if you look at my coworkers, I’m three times as productive. We keep a log of one of the tasks we do. There are six of us and whenever I look at the log, over 60% of the work is done by me.

I believe, if we use those three categories, that most people are maintainers. They may claim they have the traits of the other categories, especially in job interviews, but they don’t. They don’t like the risk or responsibility. They also don’t have the IQ to think conceptually.

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I agree, since this idea is my personal, completely unscientific analysis. That there are a range of other factors that come into play.

I’m an organizer for sure, but can settle into maintainer, or jump into catalyst when needed. These aren’t rigid categories like Astrology or Myers-Briggs.

I remember some story about a guy who got hired at a job where the order of operations was based on when the order came in, so they had to reconfigure each station per order. So the new guy gets hired and organizes each job by his station set up. So he only has to change it three times a day. At the end of the shift, they decidle to heckle the new guy and ask him how many jobs he did

“30.”

Jaws drop. The previous record was 8.

I’d agree - it’s about the paycheck. But since you spend a third of your life working, at least make it something you enjoy.

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Personally, I love certainty and structure, but I struggle with attention to detail.

At the same time, I end up being the “ideas person” in team projects, but that might be because I tend to be the one who cares the most. I’m definitely not a catalyst. Too much risk

My ethos is best described as “get shite done”.
Nothing bothers me more than useless red tape (e.g., excessive bureaucracy, rituals, superstition) or arguing over “aesthetics” (e.g., alignment of pictures, fonts, dress code)

Another caveat is that I set my own structure. I don’t like having one dictated to me.

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Yeah. I can get a paycheck anywhere. But if I don’t like what I’m doing or who I’m doing it for- I’ll go somewhere else.

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That’s one of the reasons I went into food. Everyone has to eat, so I’ll always have job security.

Yup. People don’t quit jobs, they quit bosses.

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That has always been the case with me. If I’m going to make somebody a couple million dollars worth of product per year, I don’t want to hear about cost. I know that I’m not just pulling my own weight, I’m pulling that new truck they just bought, their kids tuition, etc.

The one thing that got me looking elsewhere immediately is the “my money” shit.

The other is “We’re paying you, so just do it.”. That warrants immediate packing of personal Items and a quick exit.

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Come to New York if you wanna get really agitated!!! :rofl:

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You’re a maintainer.

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By the way, this idea is not a hierarchy where the CEO is the catalyst, the organizer is middle management, and the maintainer is the janitor.

Maintainers are “Get it done” people, organizers are half “I need to fix this,” half “I wonder what happens if I do this?”, Catalysts are “I see a void. I should fill it.”

It’s about what interests people rather than what drives them, which I get that there is entanglement between those. I guess this is more about the carrot, than the inevitable stick that is the big five.

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It is just too simple. You did not list broad traits, you listed attributes. What you did is create character profiles. This can work for a story, but humans are much more complex and nuanced.

I like to think of it like a video game. In old video games, you chose a character based on their class: Fighter, Healer, some type of Magician, etc. It would just list a few things; there would be no variance, no nuance, just a given set of attributes.

A person is more like modern games where you can create a player. There are listed characteristics that are broad but encompass all traits, and then there is a bar which may range from 1 to 100. Two players may share equal traits in some areas, but their personalities will widely differ based on others.

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It was supposed to be simple. And not all-encompassing.

If you say “Steak and eggs,” it’s not like every food that can be eaten ceases to exist.

I don’t expect anyone to read this and the rigidly define themselves by it.

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I live in LA and study in a large public school.

NYC has nothing on me :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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:slightly_frowning_face: i need to identify as something!

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This a relatively new concept. In the past, most people had no choice about what jobs they had. The idea of feeling fulfilled or work being an enjoyable experience would have been alien to them. You did what your father did, who did what his father did. There was no social mobility, let alone upward mobility.

Today we talk about fulfillment; feeling valued and feeling like you provide value. Many more people go to college than in the not so distant past. Still, I don’t think most jobs provide fulfillment. I don’t think most people really seek it either. I look at most jobs and think, “I would kill myself if I had to do that for 30 years.” I know other people think that way too. But, people do those jobs and are perfectly fine with it. I used to not understand how people could do it but as I’ve gotten older I realized that not everyone thinks about fulfillment or achieving something special. Not everyone has dreams. One person is perfectly fine with flipping burgers for a living while another sees himself as working his way up to owning a restaurant one day. I think most people in mundane jobs, if they enjoy going to work, it’s because of the social interactions with their coworkers.

An exception is the trades or other kinds of manual labor; I think many of those who work in them do get a sense of fulfillment. My father worked construction and he would point to a building while driving somewhere and say how he built it. I knew a carpenter who would show me a picture of an antique secretary then show me the one he built that was an exact copy. The guy was an artist. I buy raw milk from a local dairy farm and I’ve spoken with one of the farmers and you could see how much he loved working with the cows. The guy was giving me an impromptu lesson on dairy farming and even if you weren’t interested in the subject, his enthusiasm would have kept you engaged.

Anyway, if feeling fulfillment from work was a priority for most people, then either many jobs would remain unfilled or the suicide rate would go up. You have teachers who wanted to work in inner cities. They want the fulfillment of saving poor kids. Then the reality hits and you see kids graduating who can’t read. You haven’t changed the world and you see the same patterns and cycles every year. You’re lucky if you’re able to tread water. So some teachers get out and others stay. Those who stay end up going to work just to collect a paycheck. Their goal is to keep their job, not do it. Alcohol helps.

I know we can criticize the younger generations because of how they want mental health days and other accommodations from work, but I don’t blame them. If we seek fulfillment it should be from life, not work. If we get it from work as well, that’s great, but the reality is most jobs won’t provide it and shouldn’t be expected to provide it. However, people should have the free time to find ways to provide it for themselves. Just because we were too stupid to tell our employers we need more time for ourselves, and families, we shouldn’t belittle (begrudge?) younger people for demanding it.

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