Quote: Booo @ July 21 2012, 9:27 AM BSTThere's nothing wrong with being an introvert.
In 2003, when the American author Jonathan Rauch published in the Atlantic magazine an essay entitled Caring For Your Introvert, the response was "astonishing". Years later, it was still the magazine's most popular piece online. "I have shrunken and laminated 100 copies and carry a few in my shirt pocket," wrote one reader. "Now, when someone perplexed by 15 seconds of silence asks, 'What are you thinking about?' I simply hand him or her a copy and retire to the basement." I predict a similar fate for Susan Cain's forthcoming book Quiet: The Power Of Introverts In A World That Can't Stop Talking, which rails against the "New Groupthink" of a culture fixated on teamwork, open-plan offices and the wisdom of crowds. Introverts will flock to bookshops to buy it, I suspect. Except not in flocks. Maybe they'll just download it to their e-readers in private.
Rauch's essential point was that introversion doesn't mean being shy or misanthropic; what defines an introvert is finding social interaction tiring and solitude revitalising, while for extroverts it's the reverse. Cain insists, meanwhile, that solitude is crucial to creativity. For every charismatic Steve Jobs, there's a retiring Steve Wozniak; idea-sharing works best when we also protect the interior quiet in which, for many, inspiration first arrives. http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/03/this-column-change-your-life-introverts