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Professor Richard Howard gave introverts and extroverts a complicated series of printed mazes, and found not only that the introverts tended to solve more mazes correctly, but also that they spent a much greater percentage of their allotted time inspecting the maze before entering it.
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Susan Cain |
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b62d38b
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First, think back to what you loved to do when you were a child. How did you answer the question of what you wanted to be when you grew up? The specific answer you gave may have been off the mark, but the underlying impulse was not.
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Susan Cain |
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But even if you're stretching yourself in the service of a core personal project, you don't want to act out of character too much, or for too long. Remember those trips Professor Little made to the restroom in between speeches? Those hideout sessions tell us that, paradoxically, the best way to act out of character is to stay as true to yourself as you possibly can--starting by creating as many "restorative niches" as possible in your daily..
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Susan Cain |
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Americans revered action and were suspicious of intellect, associating the life of the mind with the languid, ineffectual European aristocracy they had left behind.
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Susan Cain |
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extroverts are sociable because their brains are good at handling competing demands on their attention--which is just what dinner-party conversation involves. In contrast, introverts often feel repelled by social events that force them to attend to many people at once.
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Susan Cain |
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e9b61d8
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First, when he looked closely at the existing studies on personality and leadership, he found that the correlation between extroversion and leadership was modest. Second, these studies were often based on people's perceptions of who made a good leader, as opposed to actual results. And personal opinions are often a simple reflection of cultural bias.
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Susan Cain |
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7d20f1a
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It turned out that the introverts who were especially good at acting like extroverts tended to score high for a trait that psychologists call "self-monitoring." Self-monitors are highly skilled at modifying their behavior to the social demands of a situation. They look for cues to tell them how to act. When in Rome, they do as the Romans do, according to the psychologist Mark Snyder, author of Public Appearances, Private Realities, and crea..
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Susan Cain |
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6a8d58c
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And anger is not just damaging in the moment; for days afterward, venters have repair work to do with their partners. Despite the popular fantasy of fabulous sex after fighting, many couples say that it takes time to feel loving again. What can Greg do to calm down when he feels his fury mounting? He can take a deep breath. He can take a ten-minute break. And he can ask himself whether the thing that's making him so angry is really that imp..
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Susan Cain |
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8a538a6
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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. I don't believe anything really revolutionary has been invented by committee.
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Susan Cain |
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Jste-li vedouci pracovnici, nezapominejte, ze jedna tretina az jedna polovina vasich pracovnich sil jsou pravdepodobne introverti, at uz se vam tak jevi, nebo ne.
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Susan Cain |
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1d7a50d
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Introverts, in contrast, are constitutionally programmed to downplay reward--to kill their buzz, you might say--and scan for problems. "As soon they get excited," says Newman, "they'll put the brakes on and think about peripheral issues that may be more important. Introverts seem to be specifically wired or trained so when they catch themselves getting excited and focused on a goal, their vigilance increases."
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Susan Cain |
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1a19591
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conformists showed less brain activity in the frontal, decision-making regions and more in the areas of the brain associated with perception. Peer pressure, in other words, is not only unpleasant, but can actually change your view of a problem.
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Susan Cain |
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037d45c
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assumes that it's good to accentuate positive emotions, but that isn't correct," the psychology professor Richard Howard told me, pointing to the example of soccer victories that end in violence and property damage. "A lot of antisocial and self-defeating behavior results from people who amplify positive emotions."
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Susan Cain |
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bdd1137
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Since then, some forty years of research has reached the same startling conclusion. Studies have shown that performance gets worse as group size increases: groups of nine generate fewer and poorer ideas compared to groups of six, which do worse than groups of four.
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Susan Cain |
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e19e92f
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the key to exceptional achievement. When you practice deliberately, you identify the tasks or knowledge that are just out of your reach, strive to upgrade your performance, monitor your progress, and revise accordingly. Practice sessions that fall short of this standard are not only less useful--they're counterproductive. They reinforce existing cognitive mechanisms instead of improving them.
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Susan Cain |
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272409e
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Deliberate Practice is best conducted alone for several reasons. It takes intense concentration, and other people can be distracting. It requires deep motivation, often self-generated. But most important, it involves working on the task that's most challenging to you personally.
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Susan Cain |
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f7e8f8e
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Charlie Ledley and Jamie Mai, whose entire investment strategy was based on FUD: they placed bets that had limited downside, but would pay off handsomely if dramatic but unexpected changes occurred in the market.
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Susan Cain |
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3b1d5b6
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It's also vital to recognize that many people--especially introverts like Steve Wozniak--need extra quiet and privacy in order to do their best work.
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Susan Cain |
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The way forward, I'm suggesting, is not to stop collaborating face-to-face, but to refine the way we do it. For one thing, we should actively seek out symbiotic introvert-extrovert relationships, in which leadership and other tasks are divided according to people's natural strengths and temperaments. The most effective teams are composed of a healthy mix of introverts and extroverts, studies show, and so are many leadership structures.
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Susan Cain |
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92a08c3
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Our schools should teach children the skills to work with others--cooperative learning can be effective when practiced well and in moderation--but also the time and training they need to deliberately practice on their own.
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Susan Cain |
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If you're that rare engineer who's an inventor and also an artist, I'm going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone. You're going to be best able to design revolutionary products and features if you're working on your own. Not on a committee. Not on a team.
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Susan Cain |
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4b76f43
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The amount of space per employee shrank from 500 square feet in the 1970s to 200 square feet in 2010, according to Peter Miscovich, a managing director at the real estate brokerage firm Jones Lang LaSalle.
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Susan Cain |
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If your child prefers to work autonomously and socialize one-on-one, there's nothing wrong with her; she just happens not to fit the prevailing model. The purpose of school should be to prepare kids for the rest of their lives, but too often what kids need to be prepared for is surviving the school day itself.
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Susan Cain |
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If you send an introvert into a reception or an event with a hundred other people he will emerge with less energy than he had going in,
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Susan Cain |
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In the United States, he feels, conversation is about how effective you are at turning your experiences into stories, whereas a Chinese person might be concerned with taking up too much of the other person's time with inconsequential information.
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Susan Cain |
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All of which raises the question, how did we go from Character to Personality without realizing that we had sacrificed something meaningful along the way?
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Susan Cain |
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we organize many of our most important institutions--our schools and our workplaces--tells a very different story. It's the story of a contemporary phenomenon that I call the New Groupthink--a phenomenon that has the potential to stifle productivity at work and to deprive schoolchildren of the skills they'll need to achieve excellence in an increasingly competitive world.
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Susan Cain |
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Introverts, in contrast, may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while wish they were home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues, and family. They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict. Many have a horror of small talk..
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Susan Cain |
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By the time I was old enough to figure out that I was simply introverted, it was a part of my being, the assumption that there is something inherently wrong with me.
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Susan Cain |
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Many introverts are also "highly sensitive," which sounds poetic, but is actually a technical term in psychology. If you are a sensitive sort, then you're more apt than the average person to feel pleasantly overwhelmed by Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" or a well-turned phrase or an act of extraordinary kindness. You may be quicker than others to feel sickened by violence and ugliness, and you likely have a very strong conscience. When you w..
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Susan Cain |
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But without Emily, Greg would feel--paradoxically for such a social creature--alone. Before they met, most of Greg's girlfriends were extroverts. He says he enjoyed those relationships, but never got to know his girlfriends well, because they were always "plotting how to be with groups of people." He speaks of Emily with a kind of awe, as if she has access to a deeper state of being. He also describes her as "the anchor" around which his wo..
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Susan Cain |
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Introversion - along with its cousins sensitivity, seriousness, and shyness - is now a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology.
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Susan Cain |
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The highly sensitive tend to be philosophical or spiritual in their orientation, rather than materialistic or hedonistic. They dislike small talk. They
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Susan Cain |
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sometimes they're highly empathic. It's as if they have thinner boundaries separating them from other people's emotions and from the tragedies and cruelties of the world. They tend to have unusually strong consciences. They avoid violent movies and TV shows; they're acutely aware of the consequences of a lapse in their own behavior. In
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Susan Cain |
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To advance our careers, we're expected to promote ourselves unabashedly.
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Susan Cain |
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We live with a value system that I call the Extrovert Ideal--the omnipresent belief that the ideal self is gregarious, alpha, and comfortable in the spotlight. The archetypal extrovert prefers action to contemplation, risk-taking to heed-taking, certainty to doubt. He favors quick decisions, even at the risk of being wrong. She works well in teams and socializes in groups. We like to think that we value individuality, but all too often we a..
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Susan Cain |
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They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict. Many have a horror of small talk, but enjoy deep discussions.
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Susan Cain |
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Without introverts, the world would be devoid of: the theory of gravity the theory of relativity W. B. Yeats's "The Second Coming" Chopin's nocturnes Proust's In Search of Lost Time Peter Pan Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm The Cat in the Hat Charlie Brown Schindler's List, E.T., and Close Encounters of the Third Kind Google Harry Potter *"
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Susan Cain |
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Hans Eysenck once observed, introversion "concentrates the mind on the tasks in hand, and prevents the dissipation of energy on social and sexual matters unrelated to work." In other words, if you're in the backyard sitting under a tree while everyone else is clinking glasses on the patio, you're more likely to have an apple fall on your head."
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Susan Cain |
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Now that you're an adult, you might still feel a pang of guilt when you decline a dinner invitation in favor of a good book. Or maybe you like to eat alone in restaurants and could do without the pitying looks from fellow diners. Or you're told that you're "in your head too much," a phrase that's often deployed against the quiet and cerebral. Of course, there's another word for such people: thinkers. I"
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Susan Cain |
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Introversion--along with its cousins sensitivity, seriousness, and shyness--is now a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology. Introverts living under the Extrovert Ideal
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Susan Cain |
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some people wish to fit harmoniously into the group, and others to be independent of it. Often the most highly creative people are in the latter category.
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Susan Cain |
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Outstanding introverted leaders, such as Charles Darwin, Marie Curie, Patrick White and Arthur Boyd, who have created either new fields of thought or rearranged existing knowledge, have spent long periods of their lives in solitude.
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Susan Cain |
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There comes a time that people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression,
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Susan Cain |