Breaking Down Personality: Intuition vs. Sensing – Everyday Fulfillment
No Vacation Required
One of the best things about doing this work is watching people "come home" to themselves. There is a specific moment when the right personality concept clicks, and someone feels like they understand themselves – and are understood – in a powerful new way… Sometimes for the first time in their life.
This week, we are exploring the final piece of the personality puzzle: Intuition vs. Sensing. Whether you are a big-picture dreamer or a grounded, five-senses realist, there is so much magic waiting for you here.
Onward and Inward,
COMMON QUESTIONS ANSWERED IN THIS EPISODE
❓What is the main difference between Intuition and Sensing personalities? Intuitive types (N) focus on patterns, future possibilities, and abstract ideas. Sensing types (S) focus on the present moment, concrete facts, and information gathered through their five senses.
❓Why does the Intuition vs. Sensing pairing work well in relationships? Unlike other pairings that can cause emotional friction, the N and S dynamic often complements each other beautifully. An intuitive partner can bring big-picture vision, while a sensing partner can bring the practical, grounded steps to make it a reality.
❓Can my personality type change over time? While your core personality doesn't completely flip, you can become more of who you authentically are as you age and shed the adaptations you picked up just to survive or fit in. It’s less about changing and more about "coming home" to yourself.
❓How do I know if I am an Intuitive or a Sensing type? Through a personality assessment. And when you read about your true type, it rarely comes as a surprise. It usually feels like a validation of something you already knew deep down. You will feel "right in the pocket" when you are operating from your natural preference.
❓Am I being fake if I have to act "out of type" for a social or work situation? No. Knowing your personality type actually empowers you to navigate situations that require you to stretch. For example, if you are an introvert at a loud party, knowing your type allows you to strategically take breaks so you can participate authentically without burning out.
CHAPTERS
(00:00) Mind Share: Orienting your life around what you love
(04:13) Understanding Intuition vs. Sensing
(06:05) Patterns and possibilities vs. raw data
(08:00) Why this pairing works so well (even when you're opposites)
(12:42) Stepping into your authentic self
(16:46) How to recognize your type
(19:24) Finding your “magic"
(22:59) Mailbag: Am I acting out of type when I adapt to a situation?
SUPPORT NO VACATION REQUIRED
If this episode resonated with you, please leave a review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube! It is the best way to help our message reach more people.
✅ Never miss an episode by hitting the follow button on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts
✅ Read The No Vacation Required Book
✅ Follow us on Instagram
✅ Talk To Us
TRANSCRIPT
Kent (00:00)
I've got a mind share this week. What? Something that's been on my mind. I don't know if just think about it with summer and you know how we always say summer's a lot to live up to, but people are in doing mode and I read a really cool, inspiring thing and it made me proud of how we live our life saying
Kent (00:19)
pick your things that you're into that you stand for and I think of the values that we try to live by. Right. And whoever was highlighted in this article was saying that should be your whole personality. You don't have to change what you care about just because
Kent (00:39)
it's a different season or you're on vacation or whatever. And something about that just felt really freeing. And I thought about how we talk so much because we're known as change experts and we talk so much about knowing yourself and personality. There's certain things worth changing and there's certain things that are not worth changing that people change just maybe to keep busy or to feel like they're doing something. So this idea like
Kent (01:07)
Pick things you love, pick things that feel freeing, pick things that feel important to you, and just try to do those things all the time when you're not doing the things you're obliged to do, like work and and other things that to most people can feel like an obligation. And I just appreciated that really refreshing simple take. And I haven't even told you this, so I figured you'd you'd appreciate that too.
Caanan (01:35)
I love that. I'm curious to know what that can look like in practice. I'm thinking about our own life and ⁓
Caanan (01:41)
Summer can feel like a lot to live up to for us because it's when we try to get all of our hiking done and we've got our list of like the fifty hikes we have to do every year and we try to get them all done. in the winter I guess that looks different because we can't hike as much, so we do things outdoors in other ways. Snowshoe, we still run, regardless of the weather. So I guess that could be a good example of
Caanan (02:08)
What you're talking about, but what if your passion is like jet skiing and you only got a season to do that?
Kent (02:16)
Yes, see that's interesting because I think the real conundrum here was you know, for was parents traveling with kids and having trouble finding a pacing 'cause you're on vacation and now we're in the car and now we're looking at museums and now we're looking at the architecture in Chicago. And the advice was just
Kent (02:41)
And I kinda glossed over this. I was trying to stick to that higher level thing, which I now understand could be a little confusing. The idea was like if your kids love animals, then you've got to incorporate animals into your traveling. Go plan a road trip through North Dakota and South Dakota and
Kent (03:04)
you know, you get to see the bison and your kids get to go horseback riding and one person loves golfing and you can golf. So to your point, yeah, if you just walked right into it, you didn't even know the topic, jet skiing, you need to like it's okay. Orient your life around that. Yeah. Hawaii
Caanan (03:21)
Go too.
Kent (03:23)
and go jet skiing. And you'll also take in some other really cool things. Experience awe
Kent (03:29)
Maybe you'll hike Diamond Head, maybe you'll you'll learn to surfboard. Right. Like it's okay to have these things that matter to you to
Caanan (03:38)
Yes.
Kent (03:39)
orient your quote unquote free time around.
Caanan (03:43)
And you don't have to have this idea if you're not interested in classical art, like I'm gonna go to Paris and I'm going to be a classical art
Caanan (03:51)
aficionado and I'm gonna walk around in a a beret and look at all the museums. You don't have to do that. Yes. You can do what you love to do where you go and yeah, center your life around those things. I love that.
Caanan (04:10)
We're in our final week of tackling personality, what are called process pairings. And this is a really fun week. Kent, I'm so excited to hear what you have to say about the process pairing this week, which is intuition versus sensing, intuition being the letter N.
Caanan (04:34)
Sensing being the letter S, and as we always say, our big disclaimer, those words can feel so wrong. Intuition can feel so confusing. But intuition versus sensing. And before we get into it, I just want to recap how we got here. This has been four weeks of talking about personality process pairings and sort of breaking them down. And our first week we talked about introversion versus extroversion, I versus E.
Caanan (05:03)
Our second week we talked about judging and perceiving, so J and P. And last week we talked about what Kent and I determined to be our favorite
Kent (05:16)
To talk about.
Caanan (05:16)
to talk about. F and T. So feeling and thinking. Yeah. And again, this week we're doing intuition and sensing N and S
Kent (05:28)
⁓ Yeah, let me just jump in and say those first two weeks are the structural keys. They determine how your core cognitive engines show up in your personality. And these last two weeks, last week T and F and this week S and F ⁓ are those core cognitive engines. And we're gonna get more into this ⁓ in future four packs ⁓ to the really good stuff. But we just wanted to touch on ⁓ each of these four ⁓
Kent (05:58)
pairings S and N being very focused on
Kent (06:03)
how you take in life, I think that's a good way to put it. with S being very raw. We often communicate this this to people by talking about the senses, by taking in very raw data.
Kent (06:21)
Those are your S's, your sensors, and then your intuitives are people who are just looking for patterns and possibilities and they're considering and reflecting and contemplating. And this is such a fun one because it shows up
Kent (06:43)
so often and in such a pleasant way, because this is one, unlike a couple others of the pairings we've talked about, that similarity works very well in, for instance, a coupledom or a friend or work relationship. And so does a difference here. Funny how if you notice every week we've immediately touched on that right away because this is what people want to know. Like
Kent (07:08)
should my boss be the same type here? Should my blah blah blah This is one that works well either way and where it's helpful to have
Kent (07:21)
an opposite thing going on because it's not as sort of volatile as the EI pairing, extroversion versus introversion, and the thinking-feeling pairing, which can produce so much emotion
Caanan (07:39)
Yeah.
Kent (07:39)
misunderstanding. Yeah.
Caanan (07:48)
Well, I think it's hard to have a story about Intuition versus sensing. And we do like to start with a story, but maybe I'll just make it a little more personal this week and say that you and I, Kent, are intuitive.
Caanan (08:06)
Which is interesting. I didn't always used to believe I was intuitive. I used to be much more sensing forward. Yeah. and that has changed for reasons we'll talk about in the future. ⁓ But I feel like a lot of our success ⁓ in our no vacation required life ⁓ comes down to ⁓ the way we ⁓ intuit ⁓
Caanan (08:30)
the information that comes to us in our
Caanan (08:35)
You can help me out here. The way we the
Kent (08:39)
Yeah.
Caanan (08:39)
way we look at the future, the way we approach ideas.
Kent (08:44)
Yeah, for sure. The work we do ⁓ It's a good fit. ⁓
Caanan (08:51)
It's a very good fit
Kent (08:52)
Yeah, it's funny, I was just giving Caanan the look like
Kent (08:56)
my God, I'm doing it again. Like it's a good fit because we know who we are. Yes. We know who we are. So we're doing work. We're living life that aligns really beautifully with that. So hearing you say that, I was thinking people have great resonance when we get into this mode with them. we just had a real powerful situation the other day where
Kent (09:26)
⁓ It can almost seem like magic. Magic is the word that came to mind. Now I'm regretting it because magic, like a thinker. Ha ha! Back to week three, a thinker might think, ⁓ magic. These guys are weirdos. ⁓ Magic, like. It can ⁓ appear to people like,
Kent (09:48)
"How do you know that you knew just what to say?" Yes.
Caanan (09:52)
Yeah.
Kent (09:52)
And here too, this is better than any story we could tell in this segment because this is what we want for you. ⁓ We want your entire personality to come together in a way that people in your life, your kids, your loved ones, your ⁓ love partner, your coworkers, ⁓ feel like you have ⁓ a special power.
Kent (10:17)
That is what personality alignment is like and Caanan I think that's kind of what you were walking into ⁓ as you were talking about the fact that we both have intuition and we exercise it ⁓ greatly ⁓ in everything we do and we are at a phase in our life due to ⁓ age and personal reasons and professional ambitions ⁓ where we have prioritized intuition ⁓ and the results have been astounding.
Kent (10:46)
In everything we've done, in our personal lives and as sought after business and career development consultants, we've learned one consistent thing. Most people just don't know themselves. NoVacationRequired.com is where we talk about how you too can build a life that you don't need a break from and how it all starts with knowing yourself. There you'll find all of our podcast episodes, information on services, and the scoop on us. And to really raise the bar, we model this as a couple.
Kent (11:16)
To show that a relationship doesn't have to be a compromise or a counterproductive union. When two people are each doing their own work, the heightened connection becomes a shortcut to building a no vacation required life.
Kent (11:31)
Something I've been intrigued by in our last three episodes on personality, and this is the fourth, so go check out those last three. but something I've been impressed with is this idea that we're gonna get into in future four packs of having curiosity, you know, first knowing your own personality and
Kent (11:53)
having curiosity not only about others, but also of course your own personality and how you can best function, how you can bo best build a life you don't need to break from, ⁓ and how you can support others in that too. So we're constantly in this quest of ours, being asked by people, ⁓ I say it all the time, who should I be with? How does this work? Caanan, I'd love it if you'd riff a bit ⁓ on
Kent (12:23)
when you thought you were an S and we're gonna again gonna get into all that at another time. It's way too much ink to spill now, but we did a really beautiful job as an S and as an N
Kent (12:38)
Doing life.
Caanan (12:40)
Yeah. ⁓ You mentioned that S and N pairings can be very harmonious, naturally harmonious, unlike some of the other pairings. ⁓ and that was definitely the case for us. We have this very interesting situation where ⁓ I am becoming more of my authentic type
Caanan (13:03)
over time and as I do work on myself and as you said I have curiosity about my own personality. and we'll get into all of that in future episodes. But I did used to believe very firmly that I was an S and I exhibited those traits very strongly. I was a raging S. and that actually worked quite well for us. It doesn't work as well it didn't work as well as
Caanan (13:30)
our both being intuitive now that I'm stepping into my authentic personality more and more. Yes. both of us tapping into our intuitive selves is working ⁓ astoundingly well for us. I'd say better than previously. But I brought I'm glad you brought this up because i I did ⁓ wanna talk a little bit more about it.
Caanan (13:53)
When I believed I was a Sensor my experience was very ⁓ external. ⁓ I was very aware of what was happening ⁓ in our life. I was very aware of our surroundings. I was hyper-attuned to ⁓ set in setting, if you will. ⁓ And some of that was negative, ⁓
Kent (14:15)
Yeah.
Caanan (14:15)
but a lot of it was ⁓ very positive for us as you ⁓
Caanan (14:21)
brought the intuitive side. Yes. We could tap into some of my hyper attunement. Yeah. And that allowed us to implement things in a really interesting, positive way.
Kent (14:35)
Yes, there's two things I wanna comment on here. Number one that ⁓ and I think we had a mailbag about this, you know, doesn't your personality change? Yeah. ⁓
Caanan (14:46)
Yes, we did.
Kent (14:47)
the professional belief and we believe ⁓ in this is that you your personality does change, but yes, you're becoming more of who you are. And in most cases that's becoming more of ⁓ who you were ⁓
Kent (15:03)
Right out of the womb. so it's getting back to who you authentically are because I want to make it clear you didn't swap and then swap again. Yeah,
Caanan (15:14)
Yeah.
Kent (15:14)
no, this is very common. Life messes up how people operate and they have to adapt in order to survive and then
Kent (15:23)
hopefully have an opportunity to come back to who they truly are. But
Kent (15:30)
I like how that illustrates that these changes happen and you can still map how you operate as an individual whose personality might be changing. I used to think I was an extrovert because the first time I took ⁓ the MBTI was in a work setting, and still that's a tough admission to make because people have so many false notions about what it means to be an introvert. So ⁓ yeah.
Kent (15:55)
It's that you're working with something and oftentimes it's that working with something that makes you realize, ⁓ something doesn't feel quite right. So I think in ⁓ our time working as an N ⁓ and an ⁓ S, somebody who took in big picture data.
Kent (16:19)
lived in a world of ideas and then Caanan and somebody who was very five senses oriented. ⁓ We did this ⁓ beautiful ⁓ job with that. ⁓ But it also that curiosity is also what inspired us to realize ⁓ something isn't quite right here.
Caanan (16:38)
Thanks for listening. We'd be honored if you'd subscribe, like, and share. It means the world to us.
Kent (16:46)
to reiterate basics with this S and N pairing, this is how you take in the world. Yep, how you process the world. So an S is just being very much more in the moment, what you're confronted with, what your five senses, we keep saying that, but it's such a good thing to remember. What your five senses are confronted with.
Kent (17:12)
how you then want to work with and arrange those stimuli, those senses in what you're doing, versus an N, standing for intuition, who is not as interested in that as they are interested in
Kent (17:30)
ideas and patterns and N is going to be looking for a pattern not looking to name the color. ⁓ An N is looking to ⁓ reflect, to honor where their mind goes ⁓ and not ⁓ try to do something ⁓ concrete with that graspable information that a sensor wants to work with ⁓
Kent (18:00)
more immediately. So it's interesting as you think about working on a relationship with yourself, once you know, wow, this is how I best take in information. And here's a good time to say that the best part about personality when you do this the right way, which is outside of a work setting, I think we've talked about that a lot.
Kent (18:29)
There really is rarely a surprise. For everybody, it's a coming home. Like, this makes so much sense of who I want to be. You know, we say, is this shocking to you? Do you need more information? Nope. It feels exactly right. I'm right.
Caanan (18:49)
Pocket.
Kent (18:49)
I'm gonna do more of this, this, this, this, and this. you're able to see that, work with that.
Kent (18:55)
Hopefully those around you are also getting the same information and then you know how to best work together. Yeah. I just think
Kent (19:08)
that that's a really it's a really beautiful thing because it's about validating what you already know, knew, somewhere deep down and it surfaces that
Caanan (19:20)
Yeah.
Kent (19:22)
and is rarely if ever a negative surprise or anything like that.
Caanan (19:26)
⁓ gosh, that was actually a very nice way to wrap everything up, but I have to come back to something that popped into my head here. ⁓ Cause you were talking about intuition feeling like magic ⁓ in the last segment. ⁓ And I just wanted to touch on that because ⁓ yes, ⁓ when somebody is ⁓ really in the pocket with their intuition, it can seem like magic to people
Caanan (19:52)
Around them. And that was my experience early in our relationship, Kent, because you were so in the pocket with your intuition. And I would think, How did he do that? How does he know that? Where is that coming from? I now understand that to a certain degree. But I also wanted to say that if you're really in the pocket as an S, that can also feel like magic. Because, you might have the ability to
Caanan (20:17)
execute something in a way or design something in a way or do something concrete in a way that people who are not in the pocket as an S can look at and say, How did he know that's how that should be arranged? Yeah. How did he know what color to paint that? How did he know how to create that so perfectly? I can't imagine having that ability.
Kent (20:42)
Yeah. ⁓ So here's a perfect segue to the end of this four pack and a teasing of something to come. ⁓ As we've said in the IE episode and the TF episodes in particular, we are ⁓ all ⁓ both ⁓ of these pairings. Yeah. And ⁓ we call the T and the F and the S and the N. We don't call them. Professionally they're called your core
Kent (21:10)
Cognitive functions, your core personality functions. We are all an S, an N, a T, and an F. We get into personality dynamics, which shows how these different facets, specifically S, N, T, and F, show up in you. Where you are an S, where you are an N, where you are a T, where you are an F, which is
Kent (21:37)
The most prominent in you, all the way down to the fourth one, which is the least prominent in you. But you are all of these things. ⁓ So for somebody like Caanan who had thought he was an S, ⁓
Kent (21:51)
He has a lot of strong S features because that lives within him. ⁓ I have a lot of S strong S features. ⁓ somebody who has a very balanced personality with so much time studying this and being interested in it. ⁓ I too can honor
Kent (22:08)
my strong ⁓ S capabilities while honoring more so ⁓ that my predominant ⁓ within the two ⁓ is ⁓ intuition. So this is where things get very interesting because ⁓ it is not an either / or right?
Caanan (22:28)
Right. And I just want to put a little bow on that and say when you know your personality and as you were talking about, Kent, you can really be in the pocket. You can sit in that and you get to that place where you say, ⁓ that feels right. Yes. ⁓ That is magic. That is your magic. Yeah.
Caanan (22:57)
now we're back to another mailbag I I thought maybe you were gonna sing mailbag. I have a really good question that fits perfectly with all of these episodes on breaking down personality. So, Kent, I'm gonna have you answer this, but I'm gonna read it. It says, if I'm a certain type, does it mean I'm acting out of type when I
Caanan (23:25)
act in a way that the situation calls for.
Kent (23:28)
Gosh, that's such a good question. And it's Right.
Caanan (23:31)
I wanna have dinner with this person. This is a good question.
Kent (23:33)
It could have its own four pack. It could have its own episode at least. What I want to say first is
Kent (23:43)
Okay. When you know your personality and you start getting into the minutiae of it, that learning about okay, what does it mean that I'm a ESTP or what does it mean that I'm an ENFJ? When you know that, then you go into any situation from a place of self knowledge.
Caanan (24:08)
Yeah.
Kent (24:09)
So you know
Kent (24:10)
The best of you to bring, how you're going to be the most yourself in any situation. So my first answer would be kind of a weird answer, like, well, if you know your personality, you know how you operate. So you know how you can best be in that situation. Like everybody has to be in all situations, say, you know. Right. Yeah. This allows you to just capitalize on.
Kent (24:39)
who you are authentically. But answering the question at face value.
Kent (24:48)
No, you're just operating how you think you should best operate in a situation. So I would put an arrow from that back to part A of my answer, which is if you know yourself, then you actually have knowledge about what you're doing.
Caanan (25:12)
Yeah, if if you have to show up in a specific way that isn't fully type aligned. Yeah. And you know that, then you're not really operating out of type. Yeah. You're just showing up in the way that you have to show up to and you're finding ideally ways to show up in all situations that are type aligned, but you are in the world and you have to show up in lots of different ways.
Kent (25:39)
So when we get a question like this, I immediately think of the things that people commonly bring up with us. Like I picture this person who wrote going to something very social and having to feel like they had to put on a whole big persona to be social and energized and into the crowd. And it went from seven PM until one AM and I thought I was gonna die by the end 'cause it was so much interacting. Right. Getting home and thinking, Am I just a big fake? Like Yeah. Right. I that's I have to kind of envision a person.
Kent (26:08)
person with the question. That's
Caanan (26:10)
what I think.
Kent (26:11)
my answer. So this person say they're an introvert, then they know, okay, I've got to go to this party. I want to go to this party. But
Kent (26:18)
I'm gonna have to step outside every hour and just do a loop around the block. Or I'm gonna have to be sure that I pull my friend or a couple friends to the side for a little private debrief time. Right. Then you're going in, you're doing the exact same thing from seven to one. You just know yourself and you know you're not a freak or being a fake. You just know what
Caanan (26:41)
Why
Caanan (26:41)
you're doing what you're doing and what you need to do.
Kent (26:43)
Yeah. And then when all those extroverts come to your book club and they see you sore, you can know that this works both ways. So yeah, to me it all goes back to self-knowledge. No, you're never being a fake. I mean, you are sometimes, but it's more empowered if you know who you are and why you're acting the way that you're acting.