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Profiling Yourself

book posted by lxpk Thu, 2006-11-23 10:24
“Know thyself.”
—Enscription Outside The Oracle of Delphi,
alternate Greek translation: "Empower thyself."

Real-World Profiles

Intelligence services like CIA keep detailed profiles of key people and world leaders documenting their psychology, history, ability, resources, and other real-world characteristics (not ‘character sheets’ documenting their ‘hit points’ and ‘saving throws’, though if they were it would explain a lot). They trouble themselves with such a file because the profiles help them plan strategic moves and predict important peoples’ reactions to world events. Profiles are essential for high-level planners to predict what pawns will do on the grand chessboard. If you’re of interest to them, they know your capabilities, behavioral habits, ideological biases, options for dealing with problems, and access to power. Why not learn that much about yourself, to understand your own position in the world and your options for dealing with it?

Profiling Yourself

“Make a profile of yourself, the kind the FBI makes for murderers.”
—Bill O'reilly

Profiing yourself is very useful. Your profile is an inventory of your capabilities that helps you plan strategies and recruit allies that emphasize your strengths and offset your weaknesses.

Profiling A Future Self

You can profile a possible future version of yourself with additional skills and resources. For example, if you’re in law school, you might want to profile the full-fledged lawyer you seek to become as well as the aspiring student you are now. A future self profile helps you explore the possibilities further ahead in your career path.

Profiling Other People

“If you know not yourself nor your enemy, you will surely loose. If you know yourself but not your enemy your chances are at best even. If you know yourself and your enemy even better than he, then you will surely succeed.”
—Sun Tzu

You can profile other people to better understand them.

Profiling Fictional People

A fictional character or a fictionalized historical person may provide insights.

"Your character” has taken on a totally fictional meaning in the context of role-playing games.

Profiling Ideas

Profiling audiences, groups and ideas is covered in Ideapedia.

Multiple Profiles

Profiles can be saved for historical purposes. You can have a separate private profile separate from your public one. You may use different profiles for different audiences, such as a professional and personal profile.

Multiple profiles is not yet implemented. The Drupal implementation of all this will be tricky because it is more than a single node, it is a network of related nodes.

Example Profiles

There will be several profiles already filled out as examples.

The Profiling Process

Profiling someone can be as quick and basic or as long and detailed as you desire. A profile covers the following areas:

1. Identity

Who are you? This is ultimately the question your identity answers. As you write your profile, it takes shape and fills out with details. Having an identity in mind gives you a starting point around which all the other elements of profiling fall into place. You may prefer to skip identity to start assigning careers, abilities and skills skills right away, developing your identity to match your choices as you go along. It’s up to you.

2. Ideas

What do you think? List your ideas starting with your cultural belief systems and differentiating from there.

3. Careers

What do you do? What part do you play in the world? Choose one or more roles from among the many options that best describe your occupational focus and then decide how much you want to customize. You can use the stereotype for instant results, modify it slightly, or define your role in detail. See the Roles Chapter for more information.

4. Abilities

How mentally and physically capable are you? Rate your mental and physical abilities to reflect your natural attributes.

5. Skills

What have you learned how to do? Assign your skills to reflect your areas and degrees of expertise.

6. Advantages & Disadvantages

What makes you different? Select the features that uniquely describe you. See Advantages & Disadvantages.

7. Resources

What do you use? Identify the resources and technology you rely on.

Using Personal Profile Sheets

As you decide details about yourself, you will jot down information into the appropriate spaces on the profile. Do this in erasable pencil because you will change things as time passes and you play Empowerment. Make double-sided prints or photocopies to keep profiles compact and conserve.

Using The Profile Editor

Beginners and experts alike may prefer to use a computer to automate the process of character creation. Try the Profiler software included on the Empowerment Disc and freely downloadable online:

Empowerment Profiler

It handles all the arithmetic involved in calculating things like skills and ideas. You can print and save profiles and to make changes in the future.

Sim Profiling

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