Lone Gunman

As intro­verts are a minority—a mere twenty-five per­cent of the population—there are many per­sis­tent mis­con­cep­tions about the intro­vert per­son­al­ity among the majority. After read­ing The Intro­vert Advan­tage, Carl King decided to com­pile a list of myths about intro­verts, explain­ing why each mis­con­cep­tion is false:

1. Intro­verts don’t like to talk.
2. Intro­verts are shy.
3. Intro­verts are rude.
4. Intro­verts don’t like people.
5. Intro­verts don’t like to go out in public.
6. Intro­verts always want to be alone.
7. Intro­verts are weird.
8. Intro­verts are aloof nerds.
9. Intro­verts don’t know how to relax and have fun.
10. Intro­verts can fix them­selves and become Extroverts.

The list itself is fairly obvi­ous and pedes­trian, but it’s King’s short descrip­tions that are truly insight­ful. For exam­ple, here are the expla­na­tions for myths four, five and six:

Intro­verts intensely value the few friends they have. They can count their close friends on one hand. If you are lucky enough for an intro­vert to con­sider you a friend, you prob­a­bly have a loyal ally for life. Once you have earned their respect as being a per­son of sub­stance, you’re in.

Intro­verts just don’t like to go out in pub­lic FOR AS LONG. They also like to avoid the com­pli­ca­tions that are involved in pub­lic activ­i­ties. They take in data and expe­ri­ences very quickly, and as a result, don’t need to be there for long to “get it.” They’re ready to go home, recharge, and process it all. In fact, recharg­ing is absolutely cru­cial for Introverts.

Intro­verts are per­fectly com­fort­able with their own thoughts. They think a lot. They day­dream. They like to have prob­lems to work on, puz­zles to solve. But they can also get incred­i­bly lonely if they don’t have any­one to share their dis­cov­er­ies with. They crave an authen­tic and sin­cere con­nec­tion with ONE PERSON at a time.

via Link Banana

Say­ing No to seem­ingly unrea­son­able requests and unwanted invi­ta­tions is easy for some and a gru­elling men­tal chal­lenge for oth­ers. This dis­par­ity between responses can be explained by look­ing at the behav­ioural dif­fer­ences between Askers and Guessers:

In Ask cul­ture, peo­ple grow up believ­ing they can ask for anything–a favour, a pay rise–fully real­is­ing the answer may be no. In Guess cul­ture, by con­trast, you avoid “putting a request into words unless you’re pretty sure the answer will be yes… A key skill is putting out del­i­cate feel­ers. If you do this with enough sub­tlety, you won’t have to make the request directly; you’ll get an offer. Even then, the offer may be gen­uine or pro forma; it takes yet more skill and del­i­cacy to dis­cern whether you should accept.”

Neither’s “wrong”, but when an Asker meets a Guesser, unpleas­ant­ness results. An Asker won’t think it’s rude to request two weeks in your spare room, but a Guess cul­ture per­son will hear it as pre­sump­tu­ous and resent the agony involved in say­ing no. Your boss, ask­ing for a project to be fin­ished early, may be an overde­mand­ing boor – or just an Asker, who’s assum­ing you might decline. If you’re a Guesser, you’ll hear it as an expec­ta­tion. This is a spec­trum, not a dichotomy, and it explains cross-cultural awk­ward­nesses, too. […]

Self-help seeks to make us all Askers, train­ing us to both ask and refuse with rel­ish; the medi­a­tion expert William Ury rec­om­mends mem­o­ris­ing “anchor phrases” such as “that doesn’t work for me”. But Guessers can take solace in logic: in many social sit­u­a­tions (though per­haps not at work) the very fact that you’re receiv­ing an anxiety-inducing request is proof the per­son ask­ing is an Asker. He or she is half-expecting you’ll say no, and has no inkling of the tor­ture you’re expe­ri­enc­ing. So say no, and see what hap­pens. Noth­ing will.

This the­ory orig­i­nates from Andrea Donderi’s fan­tas­tic response to a 2007 Ask MetaFil­ter query on deal­ing with unrea­son­able requests.

From this arti­cle, David brings the fol­low­ing to our atten­tion: Sayre’s Law and Parkinson’s Law of Triv­i­al­ity.

I always put up a men­tal bar­rier when read­ing arti­cles such as this as I am of the opin­ion that it is dif­fi­cult to suc­cess­fully pro­duce gen­er­al­i­ties about a sub­set of peo­ple unless you are quite inti­mate with their idiosyncrasies.

Philip Guo over­came this bar­rier in his arti­cle look­ing at the con­ver­sa­tional behav­iours of “geeks, nerds, and other highly-smart tech­ni­cal peo­ple”. These behaviours:

• Strug­gling with turn-taking.
• Obsess­ing over cor­rect­ness and completeness.
• Pre­fer­ring exact numer­i­cal responses.
• Using tech­ni­cal terms with­out check­ing for understanding.
• Focus­ing on the how rather than the what or the why.
• Favor­ing com­plex­ity and detail over sim­plic­ity in descriptions.
• Rapidly enu­mer­at­ing long lists of items.
• Show­ing a lack of inter­est in out­ward appearances.
• Evan­ge­liz­ing their favorite technologies.

The Hacker News thread dis­cussing this arti­cle is also wor­thy of a casual look.

Start­ing with the dec­la­ra­tion that “We intro­verts have a dif­fer­ent style of travel, and I’m tired of hid­ing it”, Sophia Dem­bling looks at the dif­fer­ences in how intro­verts and extro­verts travel, and what this means.

I’m always happy enough when inter­est­ing peo­ple stum­ble into my path. It’s a lagniappe, and I’m capa­ble of con­nect­ing with peo­ple when the oppor­tu­nity arises. And when the chem­istry is right, I enjoy it.

But I don’t seek peo­ple out, I am ter­ri­ble at strik­ing up con­ver­sa­tions with strangers and I am happy explor­ing a strange city alone. I don’t seek out polit­i­cal dis­course with opin­ion­ated cab dri­vers or boozy bond­ing with locals over beers into the wee hours. […]

For some of us, meet­ing peo­ple is not the sole pur­pose of travel. I travel for the travel. […] It’s good to know that I might be a loner, but I’m not alone.

This is exactly what I needed to read: con­sid­er­ing any exten­sive travel I always feel like I’ll enjoy it less due to my mod­er­ate intro­ver­sion. This arti­cle and the cor­re­spond­ing tips make me realise that it’s OK.

Like Jason (via), this reminds me of one of my favourite essays: Car­ing for Your Intro­vert (which in turn reminds me of The Nerd Hand­book). I loved these two essays when I first read them, and think of them both often.

Rands In Repose’s Nerd Hand­book is an essay on under­stand­ing geeks; from our insa­tiable appetite for knowl­edge to our hard-to-decipher social inter­ac­tion ‘skills’. The Hand­book is at times painfully precise.

The nerd has based his career, maybe his life, on the com­puter, and as we’ll see, this inti­mate rela­tion­ship has altered his view of the world. He sees the world as a sys­tem which, given enough time and effort, is com­pletely know­able. This is a frag­ile illu­sion that your nerd has adopted, but it’s a pleas­ant one that gets your nerd through the day. When the illu­sion is bro­ken, you are going to dis­cover that…

Your nerd has con­trol issues
Your nerd has built him­self a cave
Your nerd loves toys and puz­zles
Nerds are fuck­ing funny
Your nerd has an amaz­ing appetite for infor­ma­tion
Your nerd has built an annoy­ingly effi­cient rel­e­vancy engine in his head
Your nerd might come off as not lik­ing people

I see a lot of myself here, and I’ll have to remem­ber to send this to any future prospec­tive Mrs Mor­gans. In fact, while I’m at it, maybe I should also send them The Atlantic’s arti­cle on car­ing for your intro­vert… they share a lot in com­mon with us.

Do you know some­one who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet con­ver­sa­tions about feel­ings or ideas, and can give a dyna­mite pre­sen­ta­tion to a big audi­ence, but seems awk­ward in groups and mal­adroit at small talk? Who has to be dragged to par­ties and then needs the rest of the day to recu­per­ate? Who growls or scowls or grunts or winces when accosted with pleas­antries by peo­ple who are just try­ing to be nice?

[…]

If you answered yes to these ques­tions, chances are that you have an intro­vert on your hands—and that you aren’t car­ing for him properly.

How can I let the intro­vert in my life know that I sup­port him and respect his choice?

First, rec­og­nize that it’s not a choice. It’s not a lifestyle. It’s an ori­en­ta­tion.
Sec­ond, when you see an intro­vert lost in thought, don’t say “What’s the mat­ter?” or “Are you all right?“
Third, don’t say any­thing else, either.