Slashdot Mirror
Introversion and Solitude Increase Productivity
bonch writes "Author Susan Cain argues that modern society's focus on charisma and group brainstorming has harmed creativity and productivity by removing the quiet, creative process. 'Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption. And the most spectacularly creative people in many fields are often introverted, according to studies by the psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Gregory Feist. They're extroverted enough to exchange and advance ideas, but see themselves as independent and individualistic. They're not joiners by nature.'"
Being alone doesn't mean I'm more productive -- it could mean I'm spending all day posting on Slashdot.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Reality check for all the morons who want to turn their office into a fun house.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
My home office is my 'Fortress of Solitude', safe from distraction of the outside world, incubator of ideas, and infused with the essence of coffee. Now if only I could stop checking Slashdot every fifteen minutes I might get some work done.
There has to be a balance between one's teamwork and individual creativity.
On the one hand, you can have prima donnas running the whole show, doing really great things that have absolutely nothing to do with actually getting a product out the door.
On the other hand, you can take extreme programming to the extreme, piss of your rock stars, and wind up with them quitting, and get trainwreck product.
Bottom line is that any team management approach needs to be able to milk everyone for the best they've got without stiffing creativity, or putting the wrong people at the helm for the sake alone of giving them a chance to drive.
Just some random thoughts as I sit alone blasting out my Saturday code...
Check your premises.
I recently finished a couple of years of working remotely from home instead of going into an office. I think it was some of the most productive work I've done. I collaborated with other engineers using Jabber, phone, and NetMeeting when needed but otherwise was able to work without interruption (kids are grown and moved out). Not commuting means I also worked longer hours. Yet my new job requires me to commute and be an Office Space drone. Why?
Our agile internet startup requires communication and collaboration between coworkers. You can't get that if everyone is holed up in their office. Now if you'll excuse me I have to update Pivotal Tracker and our Wiki.
AC :ac@gmale.com
--
cell: 212/555-1212
office: 212-333-4435
fax: 212/444-4747
email
skype: agile_coward
twitter: @agile_coward
facebook.com/agile_coward
jabber: ac@gtalk.com
irc: agile @ openprojects.net
blog: agilecoward.wordpress.com
Job offers invariably require applicants to "work well with others" and "enjoy team work". I don't like team work, and I work well with others if I have to, but it's not natural to me.
Well guess what: at each and every job interview I've been to, I lied and pretended I enjoyed working with others, when in reality I like being left the fuck alone to do a good job. Same thing on my resume: if you believe what I put in it, you'd think I'm a social monster. All the folks I know who are a bit of an introvert like I am similariy bullshit their way through job interviews.
Everybody knows it, head hunters know it, employers know it, so why do they carry on asking those "skills"?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I work best alone when I'm trying to solve a problem that I'm really passionate about. Sadly a lot of times that doesn't describe what I get paid for, and in those cases having a group around me helps to stay on task. if I'm alone, I'm fighting against myself the whole time to stay focused and not work on what I think is interesting.
One reasons I chose IT was to be able to avoid large groups of people. I have had the unfortunate experience of cube hell like most techies, but all in all, I have had the ability to work alone for much of my almost 15 year IT tenure. I absolutely love working alone.
One of the reasons I hate group projects is because once I know what needs to be done, I just want to get to work. Other people want to talk and swap ideas. Like a lot of people, I just have a sense of what needs doing and I do it. I want to sink or swim on my own, not sink or swim because of someone else. I don't mind sharing ideas, but I despise "groupthink", "hive mind", whatever you want to call it. God gave me a brain and I know how to use it.
in my organization, because meetings are a part of the culture, and in meetings, the loudest voice dominates. Bullys aren't just in the playground, you know. I much prefer electronic collaboration (the article notes that this works better), it provides a level playing field for the soft, introverted voice.
Well.... maybe because putting this on your resume doesn't look so good:
- Capable of refraining from telling co-workers that they're fucking inbred morons who would benefit from a course in remedial keyboarding, and that if they ever check in shit like that again that they'll discover that it is, in fact, possible to insert a 23 inch monitor into an arbitrary orifices.
Check your premises.
And other socially repulsive habits. Your problems interacting with other people will go away.
Deleted
The problem wasn't that you put that on your resume. It's that when we checked your references we found out you were demonstrably _not_ capable of so refraining.
Everybody knows it, head hunters know it, employers know it, so why do they carry on asking those "skills"?
You told two people you're a people person. Then they told two people they were people persons. And so on, and so on, and so on...
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
You forget another, more glamorous possibility: I would very much enjoy putting "capable of concentrating long and hard on any problem, able to work on my own at a problem until it's fully and properly solved" in my resume. In this day and age, where most people seem to glorify short attention spans and teamwork (which is usually just a way dividing the individual brainpower required to perform a certain task, and diluting responsibility when things go wrong), this would seem like a worthwhile skill to offer to an employer.
But no, if you don't pretend you like teamwork and you work well with others in your resume, you can be sure it'll be chucked out in the trashcan right off the bat. It's almost automatic, so much so that it's almost impossible to find a resume *without* that line.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I have an avoidant personality. Put me among people and I become occupationally frozen. Let me stay in my room for a month and I will hand off to you a masterpiece, since I will be able to put all my concentration into it. Luckily, I don't do software (except for myself), so I can afford to do this. Yes, I can very well imagine that there are people who are the exact opposite.
Ezekiel 23:20
Otherwise, a couple more years pretending to "enjoy team work" and you'll be up on a water tower with an AW50 taking pot shots at former "team" mates.
Deleted
Public schools always cater to the lowest common denominator. They are more a tool for socialization than education, readying a workforce for a life of 9 to 5 conformity. I don't recall innovative thought being rewarded in school. Memorization, maybe.
Thus, the movement for home schooling. [http://www.nationalhomeschool.com/socialization.asp]
Most teachers don't want or have time to teach each child as an individual. It's not their fault. Grading and assessment alone would overwhelm them. Finding the material to challenge each student's ability individually would be impossible with given resources and mindset.
It is a tribute to our children's tenacity that so many succeed despite the public school system.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
Social groups deter any kind of radical thought or behavior. That's the groupthink phenomenon. The larger the group, the stronger the effect. That's why creativity never thrives in large organizations, and that's the reason the most creative social construct is the single person who does not need to compromise his or her ideas for the harmony of the group.
I roll my eyes every time I hear an organization of thousands of people is proclaiming it fosters innovation (or diversity, but that's another story).
People need to understand what being Introvert actually means. Being social or easily small-talking doesn't make someone extrovert, and you can't be 'extrovert' for this and that but 'introvert' for these. It just doesn't work that way. Introversion is taking energy in mentally from being alone and being exhausted mentally by exposure to groups for a while. Extroversion is taking energy in from social interactions while being depleted when alone. You wouldn't have to be a genius then to come to Susan Cain's conclusion.
In Capitalist US, the commerce controls the Government.
Multiple studies, at least within the context of software development, seem to be in conflict:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/12/001206144705.htm
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
My job about a year ago switched from full height cubes to 1/3rd height cubes where even when sitting you can see everybody and everything. The thought was that it would increase group thinking and productivity as you would be able to communicate with more people in a "group" setting while still being at your own work station.
In reality noise went up greatly, productivity went down greatly and communication consist of mindless jabber and gossip. It's fun for about half an hour until you realise that you have deadlines and metrics to meet. No I need to put on a good pair of isolating headphone just to get the same amount of productivity as I was able to before with "trips to others cubes"
Having developed many projects, I personally can attest that I don't get anything productive done until everybody is asleep or if I decide to tune everybody out. It seems like there are too many real and "potential" distractions that my mind is chewing on instead of coming up with solutions to problems.
I have found it helpful to come together as a group once I have had plenty of time to think about what I want to do, along with the others having that same opportunity. That way we can have a discussion about ideas that have been thought through instead of just winging it.
Not to any employer. If you've found a company that actually wants (and is willing to pay for) a proper solution, then I suggest that you do everything that you can to make sure you keep your job there. Most companies want a vaguely good-enough solution right now, and if it's a money sink in two years then, well, it will be someone else's responsibility by then...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Because as Marti Olsen points out, the majority of people are extroverts, and assume anyone who is not like them is defective. So extroverts love brainstorming, group think and other social work environments, so they think everyone should enjoy it and demand it in others.
The right answer is, as other people have said on this thread, balance. Sometimes we should work together, but also sometimes we should leave each other the f--- alone.
But because extroverts tend to be disconnected from facts and experience, they instead remember when they were happiest which was brainstorming sessions or other team activities. Thus they demand it.
To be fair, that's only about 30% of the hiring managers out there. The other 70% actually want people with political skills. The ability to negotiate with people they disagree with, to get people to go along with an idea, to contribute to the group when required instead of being a lone wolf causing problems or sniping. Introverts make excellent politicians in this regard--usually the Karl Rove backroom operator or chief-of-staff. But it's somehow off-putting to state: "Don't be an obstinate asshole who has to get his way and bullies others to achieve his goals -- yes, that means not you, John Bolton." on the job posting.
So just look at "work well with others" and "enjoy team work" to mean you're not a douchebag or a dickhead. It doesn't necessarily mean you are a people person.
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
>> Everybody knows it, head hunters know it, employers know it, so why do they carry on asking those "skills"?
It's a submission ritual. By asking you a silly question and evaluating your answer, they judge how much you are willing to play by the rules, no matter how ridiculous.
So extroverts love brainstorming, group think and other social work environments, so they think everyone should enjoy it and demand it in others.
You're giving them too much credit. First principles - they enjoy listening to themselves talk, and the others are only waiting for their turn to talk. A "circle jerk," if you will.
..and my anecdotal observations over the years shows the extraverts too busy playing politics and other social games to produce quality work, even under the rare occasion when they are in fact good programmers. their social insecurities get in the way of the job. it was usually the lone wolf(ves) who don't care what happened in the football game last night, and don't care about irrelevancies like dress shirts and ties, now putting in extra hours, that saved the day. in today's age of bloated, buggy, half-assed, software, I can't help but think that this is, in part, due to management incorrectly prioritizing the attributes of programmer hires. they now select sociability with extreme bias, while actual programming skills are near the bottom of the list, then have to resort to gimmicks like 'agile programming' and hire additional employees of similar ilk to compensate.
There's a lovely article written by epistemological philosopher Susan Haack (who was teaching philosophy at the University of Miami at print time) titled "Preposterism and its Consequences." The book is "Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate." Her central argument is this: philosophy is a contemplative discipline, and as such sometimes requires years of effort to be spent pursuing a line of investigation - usually in solitude - that may turn out fruitless. But the present culture of frequent publication - that any professor seeking tenure or stature must demonstrate a frequent presence in scholarly journals, at conferences, &c. &c. - forces academics into a sort of busywork that completely disrupts any real progress they might make.
It's the same idea here: "productivity" shall be measured by the degree to which an individual exchanges information with other individuals, without anybody questioning whether that information is actually useful or productive. In contrast, look at the guy who solved Fermat's Theorem: from what I remember, he spent a couple decades hiding in his attic, everybody thinking he'd flamed out and turned into a recluse.
I'm also in a creative field (music), and the only way I can get anything useful done is to work from 23:00 to 04:00. The consequence of keeping those hours is that I'm mostly useless during business hours, so I'm a bit of a recluse in my department. I wish people like that (me), who need time away from, you know, people, would have their work ethic viewed more favorably, instead of it being an eccentric social shortcoming.
claimed that he liked working at the patent office as the quiet allowed him to think.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
a team environment can sometimes stifle creativity, but working on your own is asking for trouble. not having anyone to bounce ideas off and check your work makes a "homer simpson car" more likely (http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1033/1033363934_dc44fb5b8f_z.jpg?zz=1) than something balanced and profitable.
i find it the least bit surprising that all the introverts are on here giving each other pats on the back, because that would be about as much praise as you all get. just because you think you are the most productive and creative thinkers that come up with awesome ideas on your own doesn't mean anybody else thinks that.
teamwork is productive, but teams need strong leadership. lack of strong leadership is more often the problem in any team than the team concept itself. many people are allocated the leadership role who aren't suited to it or don't care.
people working on their own or at home pose increased risk in terms of productivity because lack of supervision can lead to distraction. with supervision there is a sense of belonging and pressure to perform. it has been my experience that while unrealistic pressure is counterproductive, people need realistic targets to aim for and measure their performance against. its possible to do this on your own; being your own boss requires this or you won't make yourself any money, but working on your own as a salary employee doesn't carry the same personal risk as someone who is self-employed, so any pressure that you impose on yourself is only superficial.
communication and teamwork are key attributes in most professional roles, so if you refuse to acknowledge their importance you are only severely limiting your own opportunities.
"Brainstorming" is just a way for managers to claim part ownership of creative ideas other people already had before going into the "Brainstorming" session.
It's one of those "nobody-left-behind" ideas where everybody gets to give input while the actual creative people have to listen to all the bullshit going on.
I've had to listen in on hour-long brainstorming sessions where everybody gets to spew their ideas without interruption, only to have some guy at the end (they always have the guy who actually knows what he's talking about at the end) explain their "solutions" weren't actually addressing the question at hand. The only things they seem to do is let everybody claim ownership in the idea the one smart guy already head before going into the room, simply because they were in the same meeting where he first announced it.
Anybody who thinks creativity can come from formal meetings has obviously never had a creative idea in their entire life.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
constantly changing priorities are also a major cause of productivity loss, but that's why teams are important. nobody is perfect on their own, so a "well formed" team can take advantage of the positive attributes of many... the doers, the thinkers, the talkers, the problem solvers, the practicals, the coffee makers, the paper shufflers, the bureaucrats, the scrooges. he will put everyone in the sort of work environment that will best achieve the goal of the team (and if solitude works best for one team member to get a specific task done then he will make it so).
solitude is good for some people, but it is usually only a small piece of a bigger puzzle. solitude on its own rarely achieves much.
a good leader will make the best use of all the personalities in his team (even those that are traditionally frowned upon like bullies and lazies). if he can't, he's not a good leader.
and there are many sayings that support teamwork: "many hands make light work", "two heads are better than one", etc.
now I can lecture others
No you can't. You wouldn't be an introvert if you did.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Management will always disapprove of solitude and independent employees because they can't take credit for the work completed and justify making higher salaries than those who actually spawn the good ideas and do great work.
This is not new, it has been discovered in 1913, by a french agricultural engineer Maximilien Ringelmann.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringelmann_effect
Various groups of people had to pull ropes, and Ringelmann discovered that people unconsciously reduced their effort when they were in a group, even when everybody except one in the group faked the rope-pulling !
The two biggest problems of collaborative work are:
1) communicating takes time, and you cannot work during this time
2) people provide less effort when they work collaboratively
Of course, there are a lot of advantages !
This is also related to social loafing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_loafing
and it has interesting challenges, like raising funds for Wikipedia.
About creativity, I think that innovation is not a solitary activity.
You need to interact to get ideas, and the more you learn about diverse subjects, the more you can be creative. This is why people like Leonardo da Vinci were able to invent so much: they had a large knowledge across a lot of domains. Nowadays, it's difficult to have such a broad knowledge, because we need to concentrate on a few domains. This is why group brainstorming is efficient: people with different views and approaches work on a common problem by sharing their knowledge.
What hurts creativity the most is not group brainstorming, it's the fact that people don't want to challenge themselves. This is called mental fixedness. Now, everybody concentrates on improving current ideas, not challenging them or creating new ones. New ideas emerge only when you are unsatisfied with the current ideas.
On a personal note, I was an introvert 3 years ago, and I was a very good coder. Since 3 years, I'm now an extrovert, and even though my social skills increased tremendously, I don't enjoy coding anymore. I still enjoy solitary activities, like writing for my blog, but I'm not interested into pure logic anymore.
I believe that logic and introversion are related. I consider myself as a creative guy, and my creativity which was used for writing code is now used on social interactions.
And I bet you whack off to Ayn Rand and think that you're some sort of John Galt for doing it, too.
Check your premises.
Ah - this is not balance.
But hey - I'm sure you'll do great hiring all the extroverted, group thinking types who copied each other's homework for your development team.
You know, the ones who were swapping media with the coding assignments on it 15 minutes before class instead of paying the dues of the late night hack sessions while in college.
I can already smell the stench of buggy, unmaintainable, inefficient, undocumented, crash prone expensive code from here.
But hey - at least you're creating jobs for us elitists. Because eventually, with an attitude like that, you're going to wind up on your knees, begging us to take your money and insane signing bonus to fix the mess you're going to create.
Check your premises.
Look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs. People who are overly gregarious are attempting to fulfill a need for friendship/belonging to a group. The highest performers are probably up at building self esteem or self-actualization. Its not that they still don't need friends. But those needs are probably largely satisfied elsewhere. And the key to self esteem and self actualization is 'self'. Hence the need to work independently.
Conversely, the worst performers are probably down at the bottom of the hierarchy. If your employees are worrying about keeping their houses or feeding their family, they aren't performing as well on the job.
Have gnu, will travel.
Most employers recognize you working-class-hero types are 90% garbage. Holding out for a proper solution would realistically mean it would never get done.
Bullshit, and probably an intentional troll that I've fallen for.
Most businesses do a cost-benefit analysis. Given the choice of doing a solution that kind-of works in two months and one that works well in two years, the first gives you 22 months of income from selling your products / services before the second is ready and costs a lot less. It's only industries like aerospace, where a product failure is very expensive that you have the luxury of doing things properly.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News