
Caring for your introvert - tamersalama
http://m.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/03/caring-for-your-introvert/2696/
======
mtigas
The follow-up interviews and bits are worth reading, too, if you've never seen
them:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/02/introver...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/02/introverts-
of-the-world-unite/4646/)
[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/02/jonathan...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/02/jonathan-
rauch-comments-on-some-of-the-feedback-hes-received-for-caring-for-your-
introvert/4647/) [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/04/the-
intr...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/04/the-introversy-
continues/4845/)

~~~
noidi
Thanks for the links! It's nice to see shyness and intro/extroversion
addressed as separate things. I've always had a really hard time identifying
with descriptions of both introverts and extroverts. I'd really like to read
about shy extroverts, if that's not an oxymoron, since I suspect that that
description might fit me.

------
wccrawford
"Are introverts arrogant? Hardly. I suppose this common misconception has to
do with our being more intelligent, more reflective, more independent, more
level-headed, more refined, and more sensitive than extroverts."

... That's the very definition of arrogant.

I'm an introvert and happy with it. The people who are still my friends know
this and don't try to change me. I don't try to frame my introversion in terms
of being better than others, though. I simply am who I am.

~~~
rue
"Do introverts have trouble picking up on irony?"

~~~
jseliger
I teach English comp to freshmen at the University of Arizona and assign this
piece every semester. About a quarter to a third of them don't realize that
Rauch is joking. Usually I go through the Google section ("I performed
exhaustive research on this question, in the form of a quick Google search.
The answer: About 25 percent. Or: Just under half. Or—my favorite—"a minority
in the regular population but a majority in the gifted population."") to make
this obvious.

I've also noticed a weird gender breakdown: a fair number of guys say things
like, "this describes me perfectly!" and a fair number of girls say things
like, "this describes my boyfriend perfectly!" It's rare to get responses the
other way around. Anything that increases understanding is, in my view, a net
good thing.

A poorly written book called "The Introvert Advantage" elaborates on the idea
that introverts aren't necessarily shy -- they just need time alone to
recharge, while extroverts actually find themselves energized by others and
bored alone. Despite the low quality of the writing, I sometimes recommend it
to people who have that "ah ha!" moment.

~~~
daimyoyo
My favorite part of "The Introvert Advantage" is the lovely blue ink used in
printing it. As if introverts are so delicate, black ink would somehow damage
our little psyche's.

------
codeslush
I appreciate the post as I haven't read it before. I am confident I'm an
introvert I definitely NEED my quiet time - plenty of it. I absolutely suck at
small talk. In fact, it's one of the things that causes me the most anxiety
about business meetings. I'm cool with the meeting/presentations/etc..., but
if we have to go to lunch or dinner, I'm petrified!

Below are a couple of things that help me, and I'm curious if other introverts
have adopted any tools to help them:

1\. Alcohol! Of course, this isn't always appropriate, but it does seem to
work. Hah.

2\. Adopt a passion in a subject that is applicable to a large audience that
falls outside your primary expertise. For example - Fitness. As the article
states, introverts are perfectly capable of engaging in conversations that
interest them without the exhaustion that comes with normal small talk. Most
people are interested in fitness. Therefore, if the introvert is highly
interested in fitness, it stands to reason that he can steer a conversation in
that direction and engage with a wide array of personalities. Food/Nutrition,
Travel, history are other examples that might work.

How about you?

~~~
andymism
As an introvert myself, I follow a short list of rules/steps before big
events/social gatherings that starts a few days before the event itself.
Although I'm usually physically exhausted the day after the event, I'm often
complimented and mentioned as 'quite the social butterfly' by friends and
acquantances during such events. These things don't take much time, but do
take effort. The payoff is worth it though (firends, fun, and fame ;-) ).
YMMV.

1\. Ditch the alcohol. Or, at least, know your limit (that gives you a buzz)
and have 50% less. You want to be able to remember faces and names of the
people you meet and some details about your conversation. So make sure your
mental faculties are reasonably sharp.

2\. Spend most of your time listening. Pretend that you're interviewing the
person and ask them open ended questions about their job and hobbies. You will
almost certainly find out something interesting about them that you can
discuss further. Who knows, maybe they're a programmer just like you!

3\. Get up to speed on current events. I personally try not to read much news,
but for about 3 days heading up to an event, I'll skim headlines and first
paragraphs news articles on a broad range of topics (takes less than an hour
each day). The goal here is to create little hooks that you can hang
conversations on, it is not to become an expert on a random topic. You'll most
certainly run into someone who'll know more than you and will gladly tell you
all about it.

4\. Keep it light. You and the other guests are there to have fun. Downers are
for drug addicts. Politics and religion is for reddit.

5\. Work the room by having short conversations with lots of people and asking
for introductions. Introductions are as simple as asking, "So who else do you
know here tonight?".

6\. Prepare yourself mentally for being at the event. Clear out to do's and
other distractions. I kind of psych myself up for chatting with lots of people
in the same way others might psych themselves up for sports contests
(metaphorically, of course).

All of the above can be summed up as:

1\. It's not about you. It's about everyone else who you'll meet, the friends
you'll make, and making sure your significant other has a good time
(especially if he/she is an extrovert).

2\. Prepare. "A hard drill makes an easy battle".

I've learned to turn down small talk heavy events that I can't adequately
prepare for. I've also learned that you can have a 15 minute conversation with
someone by just asking what they do for a living and how they got to doing it.
I've learned that stock phrases (aka, pick up lines) really work. My favorites
are:

"Hi, I'm Andrew."

"What do you do (for a living)?"

And, if I find out the person has an MBA: "So what the hell is future-
discounted value?"

~~~
wallflower
#5 is gold. You're not there to do business or woo people - it's all about
establishing contact so that you can follow-up with a few and do business and
go on a coffee date.

What you may find is the simple act of repeated short interactions is the most
effective warmup for introversion. The thing is it may take more than one
interaction to be warmed up. Five more likely. Any number is better than one.

A social experiment I highly recommend: Walk down a not too busy city street
and just start smiling and saying hi to people. You'll find most people will
ignore you, maybe even give you a negative look. Don't mind them. If you can
get to a certain magic number for the environment, you'll find the balance
shifting - you'll start to feel energized, fearless, alive and - it is usually
at this point that some people respond back in kind. And when that happens, I
can schmooze with the best. In a way only introverts can. This might be 50 HIs
and smiles later though. Good luck! Even on a smaller scale (walking into a
room and deliberately greeting everyone you first encounter), this really
helps!

------
BRadmin
Great article, but repost from over a year and a half ago (and article is from
2003):

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=561311>

~~~
levesque
I will play the role of the guy who has never got the chance to read the
article, although it is very old, and I will thank the poster!

~~~
necubi
Me too. This so perfectly describes how I feel in social situations, and it's
nice to hear somebody say "It's Ok! It's society that's screwed up, not you."

------
blr_hack
Some thoughts:

1) Am I the only one thinking, that some of the terms used to describe
introverts: "guarded," "loner," "reserved," "taciturn," "self-contained,"
"private", have since long been stopped to be considered as negatives?

2) Think, Introverts easily command more respect, on an average, than
extroverts (no data to back this up. Just my perception). Even extroverts,
based on my anecdotal experiences, regard introverts with a lot of respect, as
high achievers often tend to be introverted.

3) I like the definition though: "introverts are people who find other people
tiring"

4) Think, >=70% ppl on HN are introverts. [ A poll could confirm this ... or
break this :) ]

~~~
_delirium
I think #1 and #2 are true, but mainly for introverts who are _also_ seen as
being somehow "serious" and accomplished, which is what earns the respect, and
then the introversion adds an air of mysteriousness to it. There's a pretty
old and fairly positive stereotype of the reserved intellectual, and similarly
for the quiet, private artist or novelist (the counterpart of the cafe-
frequenting extraverted artist).

But I think among people who don't have a particularly serious/accomplished
air going for them, extraverts get seen more positively by default. Even if
both are seen as sort of time-wasting, somehow "wastes his time drinking and
telling stories in bars" gets ranked higher than "wastes his time at home
playing videogames".

------
m_myers
Related: _The Nerd Handbook_ by Rands In Repose.

[http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2007/11/11/the_nerd_ha...](http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2007/11/11/the_nerd_handbook.html)

I fit only about half of the things he describes, but that half is so spot-on
it sounds like he's been stalking me.

------
hessenwolf
Please don't take this dodgy, pop-psychology to heart and act on it. Dividing
people into black-and-white introverts versus extroverts is too simple.

------
S_A_P
I can relate to much of what he said. I find that _most_ people are socially
tiring, though I have a small network of friends I dont mind hanging out with
long term. The metaphor of gasping for air in a fog of contentless
conversation is a great way to put it. I was at dinner last night and remember
counting the empty sentences of one of the people at my table.

I am also usually pretty quiet in meetings where people are hashing ideas out.
I usually like to think things through before speaking from a place of
authority on them, which for me means doing a proof of concept and assessing
the problems at that point. I personally hate being wrong on a "guess".

------
hardik988
I can relate to this on a deep level, because apart from being an introvert, I
also happen to have a stutter (though they're mutually exclusive. I would've
been an introvert even if I didn't have a stutter). So, I try to avoid talking
to anyone new, because that triggers the stuttering. Being a startup guy makes
this much harder as I have to meet new people now and then. I love meeting new
people, but the talking becomes unbearable, and I usually find a way out of
the conversation to avoid awkwardness. A lot of my feelings can be summed up
by the movie, _Rocket Science_.

~~~
blr_hack
Some of my good friends, have suffered, from the problem of stutter. To the
best I know (we never discussed this), they overcame it, by simply stop
getting embarrassed about it. Its hard to acquire that feeling in one go. It
needs to be cultivated.

And BTW, Do you know, Hrithik Roshan (Indian Movie Star) has been struggling
through an acute stuttering problem, since he was a child. In an interview of
his I saw, he was saying he practices on his vocals for about an hour or two
daily. Also he occasionally did stuff like: Once he had to do a stage show in
Dubai, he shut himself in a cabinet, and screamed at top of his voice. The
reason he did it was, so as to not alarm the other people in the hotel.

------
disruptivetech
I'm a big fan of Myers Briggs - the 4 letter assignation that is given to
people for rating their personality. Most people lie on a spectrum between E
and I (Extrovert and Introvert). We all have quiet time and noisy times and
whilst you could consider yourself an Introvert since this is what you prefer,
it could be very context sensitive. I expect if you profiled many tech
entrepreneurs they would tend to be some sort of hybrid between E and I.

~~~
Luyt
You might be interested in <http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4221>

_Today we're going to delve into the murky depths of Jungian psychology, and
examine one of its most popular surviving manifestations. The Myers-Briggs
test is used all over the world, and is the single most popular psychometric
system, with the full formal version of the test given more than 2,000,000
times a year. But is it a valid psychological tool, is it just another pop
gimmick like astrology, or is the truth somewhere in between? ..._

~~~
disruptivetech
I think it useful for helping gauge what makes people tick, remember that
people lie on a spectrum. Everyone [I know] who has been through has commented
that it has provided some insight into how they work. It doesn't pigeon-hole
people: after all its not a psychiatric label and simply attempts to
crystallize a few key traits into a manageable form. Life is spectrum and MB
gets some of these key axes right.

Wasn't it Jung that defined the extrovert and the introvert?

------
blahblahblah
I would challenge the assertion that introversion/extraversion are some sort
of immutable orientation. These traits can and do change over time. In high
school, I tested as an INTJ on the Myers-Briggs. As an undergrad, I tested as
ENFP. As an adult, I'm back to being an introvert. Ask me again in five, ten,
twenty years from now and you'll likely get a variety of different answers.

------
natmaster
So where do I learn how to deal with extroverts....

------
kang
It is amazing how he performed "exhaustive, quick google search" to find the
number of introverts??!!

------
nlawalker
The problem with this article, as with Rands' "Nerd Handbook", is that it's
impossible to get the extroverts in your life to read it. They're too busy
socializing and Facebooking :)

------
thingie
Now, the question is what to do if I just don't have any time that I can spend
alone. There should be some substitute.

------
angrycoder
I can't be the only one sitting here saying, "Holy shit, so that's my
problem".

