I, the closet shoegazer (Part I)

So I decided to count my blessings this morning. You know, start the week on a high by thinking about all the things I'm grateful for in my life. Because if I'm really honest, despite my weakness for a morning grumble on the side of my first cup of coffee, life is actually pretty good right now. 

One of the day's first happy thoughts was the fact that I managed to finish reading 5 non-fiction books in 6 weeks. More than that, every one of these books gave me that coveted Yes! Yes! satisfaction – surely a book reader's equivalent of an orgasm. Book #1 was Bruce Lipton's mind expanding adventure, Biology of Belief. Book #2 was Molecules of Emotion written by possibly the most important female scientist of the 20th century since Marie Curie. Her name is Candace Pert (1946-2013), and if you watched Dallas Buyer's Club you will have been acquainted with Peptide T, Pert's cure for the HIV virus. Pert's book was so powerful that it made me wrench with fury at the treatment and perception of women scientists in a male-run industry, at the same time as it made me rejoice at her outstanding work at bridging science and spirituality.

After I finished Pert's book, by some deft hand of synchronicity, a good friend of mine gave me Carl Gustav Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Book #3) for my birthday. The day I received it was the day after I started a dream diary based on Pert's advice about getting in touch with the underworld of the soul. This coincidence - which felt cosmic! - shot through the mire of muck and muddle that consumed me around the time. I was clearly in need of wisdom from great people who were/are neither mythical nor magical but who'd accomplished and experienced extraordinary things in pretty ordinary circumstances. 

(Such was my state of desperation, I interspersed Jung's story with Roman Krznaric's pithy but pointed How To Find Fulfilling Work (Book #4).)

Jung was a deeply spiritual man and possibly one of the 20th century's most eminent introverts. It was he who first articulated the various personality types by defining extroversion and introversion. 

I mention this because, in yet another strange twist of fate, just before I received Jung's autobiography, I had picked up Book #5 - a copy of Susan Cain's Sunday Times bestseller Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking. 

(Jung's hallmark theory was clearly at play in my life: the friend who gave me his autobiography was riding the same wavelength as I within the collective unconscious!)

Silence is golden, isn't it?

Quiet is an eye-opening defence - nay, celebration - of people who often find themselves overshadowed by people louder and faster-speaking than themselves or annoyingly coerced into SPEAKING UP if they wish for something other than a one-way ticket to oblivion. 

Who are these quiet people? Well, you're reading the words of one of them!

Cain - who is herself an introvert with a once-crippling fear of public speaking - does a thorough job at showing people like me that - YAY! - I am neither alone in feeling or reacting the way I do to certain situations and environments in my life, nor is there anything particularly wrong with us. Indeed, she builds a convincing case that the world needs introverts. After all, introversion survived nature's evolutionary pressures, so it must have some use. Introverts needing a bit of validation need only look to the impressive number of accomplished individuals who changed the world in their own quiet way: Mother Teresa, CG Jung, Einstein, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Eleanor Roosevelt, Mahatma Gandhi and Barack Obama. 

Over the next three posts I will summarise parts of Cain's book, interweaving it with my own experiences of being an introvert. 

But first, let's do a short test to see where you fit in on the introversion-extroversion spectrum. For each of the 20 questions below, answer True or False.

1. ____ I prefer one-on-one conversations to group activities.

2. ____ I often prefer to express myself in writing.

3. ____ I enjoy solitude.

4. ____ I seem to care less than my peers about wealth, fame, and status.

5. ____ I dislike small talk, but I enjoy talking in depth about topics that matter to me.

6. ____ People tell me that I'm a good listener.

7. ____ I'm not a big risk-taker.

8. ____ I enjoy work that allows me to “dive in” with few interruptions.

9. ____ I like to celebrate birthdays on a small scale, with only one or two close friends or family members.

10. ____ People describe me as “soft-spoken” or “mellow”.

11. ____ I prefer not to show or discuss my work with others until it's finished.

12. ____ I dislike conflict.

13. ____ I do my best work on my own.

14. ____ I tend to think before I speak.

15. ____ I feel drained after being out and about, even if I've enjoyed myself.

16. ____ I often let calls go through to voicemail.

17. ____ If I had to choose, I'd prefer a weekend with absolutely nothing to do to one with too many things scheduled.

18. ____ I don't enjoy multitasking.

19. ____ I can concentrate easily.

20. ____ In classroom situations, I prefer lectures to seminars.

(This test is Cain's formulation. Although it is not a scientifically validated test for introversion, the questions asked are based on characteristics of introversion that are widely accepted by contemporary researchers.)

I answered 17/20 questions as TRUE.   

“What? Really?” I hear you think :-)

In a world of our own

In addition to the test above, a cursory understanding of introversion is best summed up by the great introvert Jung who wrote that an introvert “is drawn to the inner world of thought and feeling” while the extrovert “is drawn to the external life of people and activities”. 

My parents became conscious of my tendency to “turn inward” even before I hit those awkward teenage years. I was the kid who preferred living inside my head, off in my own world during classroom 'mat sessions' to the consternation of at least one primary school teacher. Had ADD and ADHD been fashionable terms to label children back then ((I'm talking the early nineties), I can only imagine the horror of being so labelled, not to mention the stress on my poor parents with their 'sick' child. 

Even though I lived inside my head a lot, I was also very observant of my surroundings. I would take a sort of fascination to banal events like the sound of high heels click-clacking on linoleum, the dank sweet smell of blossoms after a good spring shower, the arrangement of pebbles and stones in the pavement that looked like a birds eye view of a megalopolis, and the different layouts of the various classrooms at school. I would then create stories in my head using these observations as content, usually as a way of staving off boredom if I didn't have crayons and paper to hand. 

Being an only child, I also had my share of imaginary friends. But I'll leave that topic aside.

Then came the ghastly adolescent and the not-quite-a-woman years that followed. As many of you reading this will have experienced, the 'real world' during this time usually reeked of Mean Girls-style hormone-fuelled gangsterism in the school yard. For better or worse, I was totally unqualified to participate in this febrile culture as I had neither the confidence nor the streetwise nous to hold my own. So I naturally retreated into my comfort zone – the familiar world inside my head. Compared to school, it was a romantic place, furnished with the sounds and images of the hippy and punk countercultures in which young people sought to change the world (and took awesome mind-expanding drugs) rather than fester in their own boredom.

Understandably, my parents wanted me to be a normal teenager who had the discipline to get good grades and the likability to have a healthy social life. Although my grades were just above mediocre because I studied only what I liked, what worried my parents more was whether I had the potential to bloom into a confident human being who could assert herself in the more unforgiving world of earning a living. Thinking back, I remember my dad – a classic introvert himself – admonishing me for always being “inward looking”, which really translated into the moral judgement of being “self-centred”. He had a point, but his admonishment bothered me for years. As I would later learn reading Cain's book, no introvert likes to be made to feel guilty, especially for something they perceive as a character flaw. 

And so what Cain calls the Extrovert Ideal was instilled in me at a young age.

The introvert's outlook

Introversion and extroversion are not absolute categories, but nodes on a spectrum that describe a range of psychological preferences and tendencies. I know that I am mostly introverted, but have certain unmistakably extroverted tendencies. M, my soon-to-be husband, on the other hand is more 'classically' introverted. You can also be an 'ambivert' if you're neither entirely introverted nor entirely extroverted.

As Jung wrote, introverts generally prefer being left alone to their thoughts, ideas and imaginations. They tend to gravitate towards intellectual and creative vocations such as writing, art, music, psychology, science, maths, IT and research. 

Introverts also prefer peacemaking to warmongering, consensus over conflict. Their power lies in their ideas and values rather than in their ability to talk the talk –  as an extrovert's might. In other words, while extroverts like to do the talking, introverts like to do the thinking. What's more they tend to be more eloquent in writing (that includes emails) than talking.

This doesn't mean that introverts can't be good leaders. To be sure, their leadership style tends to be less assuming than an extrovert's; if extroverts like to grab the spotlight, introverts are the backseat drivers. Both styles are proven effective in their own way. Cain writes about a wing commander in the US Airforce who, despite being a “classically introverted” person, is an incredibly effective and respected leader. This has come down to his ability to encourage and support his subordinates to contribute to key decision making while retaining the final authority on the matter. In contrast, an extroverted leader might want to grab the bull by the horns and impose his or her vision in the corporate boardroom. 

Introverts also tend to think before they act, while extroverts like to Just Do It. The latter also demonstrate a greater need to seek rewards, whether that's sex, money or status, and to take more risks, both good and bad. No surprise, then, that introverts are less likely than extroverts to start wars or cause a financial crash. 

Just as there is the argument that if there were more women in positions of power we would have less hawkish behaviour in both the political and corporate worlds, so there is the argument that if more naturally risk-adverse introverts on the trading floors of the world's banks are listened to, the banking industry would be less like a house of cards. 

There is therefore a place in the world for both extroverts and introverts to operate. 

The Extravert Ideal

Cain, however, laments that in America (and increasingly in Britain and parts of Western Europe) the world of work is rigged to benefit extroverts to the exclusion of introverts like herself. 

From Harvard Business School to Fortune 500 companies, people are encouraged to speak up and speak well (even if they don't have a clue what they're talking about) or else get left behind. On this note, I recently read a feature in the Observer about the speculation surrounding Chelsea Clinton's potential foray into US politics. Despite Clinton's clear intelligence and impressive resumé, which includes two Masters degrees from Oxford University as well as her current position as the vice chair of the Clinton Foundation, a lot of attention has been drawn to her personality (or lack thereof). She has been lambasted by critics for being "exceedingly, eyes-glazing-over-ly, admirably dull" and therefore not really fit for the political spotlight like her parents. The author of the article suggested as much: “One wonders if Chelsea might actually be happiest crunching numbers – as she did at her hedge fund – behind the scenes at the Clinton Foundation, rather than playing political protagonist.” 

After reading Cain's book, I in turn wonder why there still exists such speculation when there have been numerous examples of great leadership based on the kind of pragmatism (over personality) that Chelsea would likely embody. Just look at Angela Merkel. Or Hilary Clinton, for that matter.

The struggle to express oneself in a world governed by the Extravert Ideal is something that M also faces on a daily basis. He is often frustrated at work whenever he finds it difficult to get a word in. He is soft spoken and a very careful speaker. Every word that comes out of his mouth has been thought through. I remember I used to tease him for taking 5 minutes to get to the point, no matter how well crafted his speech. Alas, in a fast-paced corporate world, there just doesn't seem to be much time and patience to listen to brilliant people like him.

The Extrovert Ideal at Work

If you wish to know what the archetypal statement of The Extrovert Ideal is, look no further than the open plan office. The cultural invention rests on the assumption that bulldozing down the walls of communication, and creating more opportunities for collaborative work, will up worker productivity. But research suggests that while open communication can do wonders for intimate relationships, it leaves a lot to be desired in the workplace.

Someone finds open plan offices anathematic is Steve Wozniak. He is the party pooping other founder of Apple, the dyed-in-the-wool engineering geek to Steve Jobs' messianic extroverted spokesperson. He also happens to be a champion for working alone, behind closed doors, especially if one's goal is to get anything of value done. 

In his memoir, the brilliantly titled iWoz, he writes about why solitude-loving introverts often enjoy a creative advantage over their more sociable peers and colleagues:

“Most inventors and engineers I've met are like me – they're shy and they live in their heads. They're almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone where they can control an invention's design without a lot of other people designing it for marketing or some other committee.”

Cain cites decades of research that show that the cornerstone of teamwork – brainstorming – doesn't actually work in generating innovative ideas. In fact, most company meetings are a gross waste of time, period – “toxic” even, according to Jason Fried, cofounder of web application company 37signals. 

The one exception to the abysmal performance of brainstorming is the kind that takes place online (more on the power of internet collaboration below). 

But our entire corporate culture is built on the primacy of teamwork. It's what Cain calls the New Groupthink, referring to the well-known psychological phenomenon in which group decision making tends to lead to suboptimal outcomes because of the pressure on team members to maintain harmony or consensus within the group. 

Not only is teamwork not all that, breaking down almost every barrier within an office environment results in the needless disruption of an individual's workflow. How can an employee get to that holy state of flow and the productivity that attends it if he or she is constantly at his boss and colleagues' beck and call? I still resent being told off like an errant child by my old boss for having my headphones on. Being enclosed in my own wall of sound was the closest thing I had to solitude.

Cain concludes that, “Open-plan offices have been found to reduce productivity and impair memory. They're associated with high staff turnover. They make people sick, hostile, unmotivated, and insecure.” Amen.

Luckily certain companies have cottoned on to the fact that employees (and the bottom line) need to work in spaces that are flexible – spaces that allow for group work as well as solitary work and a flow between the two. Some companies even allow employees to work from home a couple of days a week if they so choose – which would please introverts, no doubt.

To be clear, Cain doesn't pooh-pooh all forms of creative collaboration. She recognises the irony in which arguably history's most important example of creative collaboration is the advent of the World Wide Web and open source culture by a bunch of introverts. “[T]he early Web was a medium that enabled bands of often introverted individualists... to come together to subvert and transcend the usual ways of problem-solving.” 

However, this type of collaboration has one fundamental difference to the kind championed by our corporate culture: “open-source creators didn't share office space – often they didn't even live in the same country.” Cain writes that while our office culture lionises the innovation of open source culture (which brought us the likes of Wikipedia and MoveOn.org), in reality what works well online may not work at all well offline. “We failed to realise that what makes sense for the asynchronous, relatively anonymous interactions of the Internet might not work as well inside the face-to-face, politically charge, acoustically noisy confines of an open-plan office,” she writes.

Study well, study alone

It's a pretty well-known fact that the advantage of solitary productivity also extends to study practises. Students who hit the books alone score better than students who study and learn in group settings (remember all those times you and your group went off topic?). Cain mentions Deliberate Practice as the magic formula for mastering anything but this can only be done in solitude. She uses the example of musicians who, when practising their instruments alone, are able to zone in on the parts of a piece that they find personally challenging. They are thus able to make faster improvements than musicians who do most of their practise hours with other musicians, even if the two groups practised for the same number of hours.

Needless to say, the solitary focus on a single task is the opposite to one of the most valued attributes in the workplace: multitasking. I laugh now at all the times I had to embellish my CV with that heinous word even though I know that multitasking makes my stress levels shoot up because I find it difficult to focus on any one task and so end up accomplishing less overall. Unsurprisingly, my experiences have been corroborated by numerous studies showing just how ineffective multitasking can be.

Bucking the Extrovert Ideal

Cain traces the rise of the Extrovert Ideal in America to the twin ascendance of the corporate economy and the advertising industry. The likes of Dale Carnegie – a formally shy and awkward lad who secretly envied the power of natural leaders – paraded the virtues of leadership at the same time as advertisers started 'advising' people that in order to succeed in the brave new world of corporate living you had to become a 'personality' (by buying their stuff inevitably). 

This 'cult of personality' phenomenon swiftly usurped the pre-20th century ideals of character and virtue. Once upon a time, self-help guides taught that in order to live a good life, one should work at cultivating: citizenship, duty, work, golden deeds, honour, reputation, morals, manners and integrity. These attributes were summarily bumped off by altogether less attainable but infinitely more coveted ones like: magnetic, fascinating, stunning, attractive, glowing, dominant, forceful, energetic... In other words, it's all style over substance, baby, and we haven't looked back since.

Indeed, Cain writes that, “The 1960s tranquilizer Serentil followed with an ad campaign [which was] direct in its appeal to improve social performance. “FOR THE ANXIETY THAT COMES FROM NOT FITTING IN,” it empathized”. 

All this shows that, against the Extrovert Ideal, the word 'introvert' has become rather tainted. We – including I – often view people who are reserved or shy as less likeable than people who have no qualms about making conversation. While this diminished likability is probably something that an introvert can live with, the situation becomes less benign when our society judges them morally. As implied by that 1960s tranquiliser ad above, the assumption is that something is not quite the matter with the person who prefers spending his or her leisure time playing bridge or sewing than going on a pub crawl with a bunch of mates while preening like a peacock. 

That is the power that the Extrovert Ideal - turbocharged by the advertising industry - has had on our perceptions.

Jung, the uncanny genius, recognised as much. While introverts are “educators and promoters of culture” who showed the value of “the interior life which is so painfully wanting in our civilisation”, he wrote, their “reserve and apparently groundless embarrassment naturally arouse all the current prejudices against this type”.

Reading Cain's book has made me thank my lucky stars that I didn't grow up in America, the “most extroverted country” in the world – nor live there now. When I spent a year in Los Angeles a decade ago as a student, I remember feeling bewildered by the relentless flurry of campus activity that spun around me. My classmates all seemed to be doing their best to shine under the Extravert Ideal, simultaneously engaged in extracurricular clubs, sororities and fraternities, sports, theatre... while holding down part-time jobs or internships and not failing at one of America's top universities. (Now I think I have a pretty good idea of their secret of their 'success'.)

Against this backdrop of gregarious overachievement, I chose to take only 3 subjects at a time rather than the standard 4-5, while retaining all my spare time outside of my daily need for 8-9 hours of sleep, to hang out with friends and explore LA. Yes, I did have moments of feeling inadequate among the throng of superhumanity. But I take comfort in actually remembering a lot of what I did that year because my life wasn't a mindless blur. 

***

So what exactly makes an introvert introverted? What makes introverts answer TRUE to most of the questions posed in that quick litmus test for introversion near the beginning of this post? If you're bursting to know – because you're probably an introvert –  either read Cain's book or stay tuned for Part II.