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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."
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.
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.
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.
And other socially repulsive habits. Your problems interacting with other people will go away.
Deleted
I've tried working from home, but I'm much more productive when I'm in office. I live alone, but when I'm not in office I just can't force myself to work as efficiently as in office where I know I have to work or someone will see that I'm procrastinating. Everyone is different, don't assume everyone likes what you like. ;) ).
Also if you don't like your job, change it. I'm changing it tomorrow (setting and working conditions will be similiar, but programming will be closer to hardware, better pay will be nice too
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
Yet my new job requires me to commute and be an Office Space drone. Why?
Manager Insecurity.
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.
Because the perception of value is also important. Most managers have very little idea of how much effort is involved in programming. If you are in a cubicle, then they can see how much of your time is spent doing something that looks like working. If you are at home, then they can only judge you by your results and they are not good at judging the value of your results. One solution is to ensure that junior management is capable of doing your job, so that they know how much time it should take. Another is for the company to simply stop caring about how hard it is and work out how much your output is worth to them and pay you appropriately. This works for me as a freelancer: I often work for people on other continents, so they have no way of checking how long things actually take me. If they pay me for a day's worth of work, then they're happy if the results they get are worth (to them) at least the amount that they paid me. If I actually did the work in 10 minutes in between Slashdot posts then they wouldn't actually care, unless someone else was willing and able to do the same work for them for less.
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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.