The quiet introvert revolution

Susan Cain, author of the excellent Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, has launched Quiet Revolution, a resource “to unlock the power of introverts for the benefit of us all”. There’s already quite a bit there…you can take a test to see if you’re an introvert, five ways to deal with an open office plan, learn how to connect with extroverts, and 15 ways you can be a better parent to your introverted kid.

Understand that your child’s temperament is due to biology. Think your child can just “get over” hating raucous birthday parties? Think again. Introverts’ and extroverts’ brains are “wired” differently, according to Dr. Marti Olsen Laney, author of The Hidden Gifts of the Introverted Child. She writes that children’s temperaments are innate (although parents play an important role in nurturing that temperament).

Introverts’ and extroverts’ brains use different neurotransmitter pathways, and introverts and extroverts use different “sides” of their nervous systems (introverts prefer the parasympathetic side, which is the “rest and digest” system as opposed to the sympathetic, which triggers the “fight, flight, or freeze” response). Furthermore, a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience found that introverts have larger, thicker gray matter in their prefrontal cortices, which is the area of the brain associated with abstract thought and decision-making. If your child tends to be more cautious and reserved than her extroverted peers, rest assured that there’s a biological reason for it.

• books
• introversion
• Quiet
• Susan Cain

Working in solitude on the decline

Susan Cain argues that the lack of privacy and freedom from interruption in modern offices might not be the best way for those office employees to be creative…particularly for introverts.

The New Groupthink has overtaken our workplaces, our schools and our religious institutions. Anyone who has ever needed noise-canceling headphones in her own office or marked an online calendar with a fake meeting in order to escape yet another real one knows what I’m talking about. Virtually all American workers now spend time on teams and some 70 percent inhabit open plan offices, in which no one has “a room of one’s own.” During the last decades, the average amount of space allotted to each employee shrank 300 square feet, from 500 square feet in the 1970s to 200 square feet in 2010.

The new offices of Foursquare and Buzzfeed (where I work from) are a perfect example of the New Groupthink Cain refers to….rows and rows of people sitting next to each other in open spaces. Much of this is because of NYC’s insane rental market, but Fog Creek’s offices are a nice counterexample:

Every developer, tester, and program manager is in a private office; all except two have direct windows to the outside (the two that don’t get plenty of daylight through two glass walls).

• business
• Buzzfeed
• Foursquare
• NYC
• Susan Cain
• working