job interviews

A job interview can be a stressful time for anyone, but introverts may have a tougher time than extroverts. This infographic, The Introvert's Guide to Job Interviews, has some good tips and pointers on how to be a fakestrovert.

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I feel like someone new, yes I do

XTC's Andy Partridge puts it like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ffvpw0IPNo

(Lyrics here.)

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You can't make people happy by law

You can't make people happy by law. If you said to a bunch of average people two hundred years ago "Would you be happy in a world where medical care is widely available, houses are clean, the world's music and sights and foods can be brought into your home at small cost, travelling even 100 miles is easy, childbirth is generally not fatal to mother or child, you don't have to die of dental abcesses and you don't have to do what the squire tells you" they'd think you were talking about the New Jerusalem and say 'yes'. 

 Terry Pratchett, on alt.fan.pratchett

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Tips for extroverts

Things you should know about introverts, by Stephanie at playfullytacky, offers 11 behaviours and realities that define introverts.

She refers to the ability of introverts to create and maintain an "extroverted illusion" but that it's impossible to keep up all day.  Fakestrovert!

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Can an introvert be bossy?

Can an introvert be bossy? The article "Not All Good Leaders Are Bossy: Let's not forget the quiet power of introverts in our quest to boost female leaders" by Olga Khazan discusses the suggestion that girls (and I would add, women) might be dissuaded from "leaning in" for fear of being judged as being bossy.

But Khazan correctly notes that many of the characteristics of introverts -- and specifically, introverted girls -- are the opposite of what would be defined as bossy, and this shouldn't preclude them from leadership roles.

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Finding the optimal rhythm

In his article "Who's More Productive, Introverts or Extroverts?" (at FastCompany) Drake Baer writes:

collaboration--that is, the idea-blooming, strategy-begetting kind--springs from a rhythm of individual and solo work.

This resonates. My best days are a combination of focused attention and free-form meandering thinking on the introvert side, coupled with extroverted discussions, which seems to run in two directions: information sharing and collaborative problem-solving.

And the optimal rhythm or mixture seems to vary from day to day. Today's proportions might be exactly the same as yesterday's but how I feel at the end of the day can be quite different. And my colleagues are at different places on the spectrum, and they too can vary their mode from day to day.

Fitting my own variation to those of my colleagues, and to the needs of the work at hand, is an on-going challenge.

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Introverts, explained in pictures

Grant Snider's Incidental Comics:  "We Are The Introverts".

(Click to embiggen and jump to Incidental Comics.)

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