The Theorist

You take things apart to see how they work and you do not particularly care whether anyone is watching. You are precise about language because you are precise about thought, you will happily abandon a position you argued for an hour ago if the argument stops holding, and you are genuinely uninterested in winning as distinct from being correct. Given a problem with real structure in it you are formidable, and given a problem with no structure you are miserable.

The cost is that understanding a thing feels like completing it. You reach the point where the interesting question is answered and the remaining work is execution, and execution is where your attention leaves. That is why your history has more brilliant unfinished things in it than finished ones. The second habit is smaller but does more damage: you correct people reflexively, on details that do not matter to the point being made, and it reads as contempt even when it is nothing more than a reflex for accuracy.