Our habits are not solely determined by our personalities, but there is no doubt that our genes nudge us in a certain direction. Our deeply rooted preferences make certain behaviors easier for some people than for others. You don’t have to apologize for these differences or feel guilty about them, but you do have to work with them. You should build habits that work for your personality. If you want to take a personality test, you can find links to the most reliable tests below.

• The Big Five inventory contains 44 items and will tell you how you score on the Big Five personality dimensions but will not include the 30 more specific facets of personality that will be included in the 120- and 300-item inventories listed above. You can find this short inventory here.


• The HEXACO-PI-R contains 100 questions and takes about 15 minutes to complete. You can find it here.


• The original IPIP-NEO (International Personality Item Pool Representation of the NEO PI-R™) contains 300 items and takes 30-40 minutes to complete. You can find the inventory here, here, and here.


• The new, short version of the IPIP-NEO was designed to measure the same traits as the original IPIP-NEO, but it only contains 120 items and takes 10-20 minutes to complete. You can find it here and here.