Dr. D'Adamo writes of his own need to take carpentry breaks during work days, to enjoy using different parts of his brain so as not to get bogged down in any one activity. He says he thinks A's might particularly need to do this.

As a B, I'd say that also suits me, depending upon the type of work it is. If I'm doing scholarly work, researching and writing, I like huge, uninterrupted blocks of time: Days on end, if possible! But if I'm working with clients and the public, I prefer 3- to 5-hour sessions at most. This introvert can do professional extraversion to beat the band, but wearies of it. I come on like gangbusters and win the sales prizes; I also do sensitive therapeutic work with postpartum women. These types of performance require much quiet contemplation -- call it Carpentry -- intervening. I have enjoyed a bit of movement, as in travel, between clients and am acquainted with many B free-lancers, part-timers and home-workers: Ideal constructs for those with nomadic genes. We touch base with societies and are excellent merchants at the trade fairs, but most of the time we're watching our flocks graze or talking to ourselves on horseback.

The A camp definitely harbors its share of introverts. Perhaps their need to shift gears within the daily cycle, however, is based upon something other than the intro/extravert dialectic; and more on the need to exercise creativity, to -- as Dr. D'Adamo says -- make like Churchill and paint watercolors in wartime. (I think Churchill amidst so much horrible destruction needed not only to zone-out but to create lovely things that spoke of peace.)

O's can burn out by running on all cylinders and driving themselves mercilessly; it's a pattern they assume when young, and it can transform what should have been quiet artistic moments into pressured commissions and high-powered obligations. I know many, many creative O's who savored their creative processes in youth, but who were hard-driving producers, out of habit, by the time they were in their 30's and 40's, having forgotten the former serenity. Their careers can become all about fame and endorsements, and they can lose the Magic. O downtime should include channeled physical workouts. This keeps O on an even, calm keel for the rest of the day; he's worked up his daily sweat already: Now he can let up. Many O extraverts don't acknowledge the possibility for healthy introversion at all, finding fault with less impressive credentials and lighter cv's.

As for the AB's, when we treat of harboring opposites, we're preaching to the choir. With both A and B alleles/antigens, PLUS the O-like catecholamine responses, AB is a little of everything, and it's got to be challenging to be a young AB looking for a niche, a self-definition, an integrated personality.

I find that young people (those under 35/40 or so) struggle with self-acceptance and skills-apportionment more than oldsters, who've figured out how to strike workable balances between their many facets and proclivities. Bloodtype principles can certainly give adolescents and young adults a head-start in self-understanding within a body/mind-affirming paradigm.