Type A

What this archetype looks like

Your answers cluster on Type A: driven, time-urgent and most alive when something is at stake. You measure a day by what got finished, you would rather act than wait, and slow queues, slow meetings and slow people all cost you the same thing — patience. In the popular typology this is the achiever profile: competitive, quick-talking, several things running at once. The upside is real. Type A patterns start things and finish them, and people trust you with the hard part. The cost is that the urgency does not switch off when the laptop does. Friedman and Rosenman first described this pattern while studying stress and heart health in the 1950s; the strong version of that claim has not held up well, but the everyday version has — constant hurry is tiring, and the people around you usually notice before you do. Rest has to be scheduled like everything else, or it does not happen.

Strengths

• Momentum
• Decisiveness
• Follow-through under pressure

Watch-outs

• Impatience with slower people
• Rest only happens when it is scheduled

What to do with this

• Try the DISC style test
• Try the Stress Response test
• Put recovery in the calendar, not in the gaps