Introversion and Solitude Increase Productivity 214
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.'"
Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
On Reason I chose IT (Score:3, 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.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Public education (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Groupthink (Score:5, Interesting)
Social groups deter any kind of radical thought or behavior. That's the groupthink [wikipedia.org] 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 [utwente.nl]).
Re:"Work well with others" is the lie of the centu (Score:4, Interesting)
It's worse in Academia (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Public education (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't have kids
So why do you even care about what the schools teach?
The same reason I do... Because well over half my local taxes, which is a HUGE percentage of my annual income, is taken from me to pay for teaching kids I don't know and aren't my responsibility.
Re:Not sure about this one. (Score:5, Interesting)
At this point, I realize I am just digging in deeper and deeper, and making a mess.
By this time, I have fleshed out what has to be done, but the implementation I have so far really stinks.
That's when I do something else for a while. "Socialization", aka "Bullschitt Session".
I never married because I was always so addicted to my horsing around with my toys. ( No, I never played much with them, I ended up taking them apart to find out how they worked, and if I learned enough to reassemble it into something else, well that was good.).
I could never get anything "done" at the office. It was almost like trying to do ALU operations at the I/O port.
The office is where I do I/O. I find it very hard to be creative at the office. Its difficult to keep a chain of thought intact. I figure out how to do it somewhere else.
Lately, its been the local pizza parlor. I know the owner, He makes me a special pizza, and I will often sit all afternoon there, enjoying pizza, refining my designs in spiral-bound notebooks ( 10 cents each from Wal-Mart during their back-to-school special ). There is usually no-one there in the middle of the afternoon.
At home, I have all my computers with everything I need to try out any DSP algorithms, and its easy for me to quickie-prototype some code on an arduino, netburner, or propeller ( Andre LaMothe's "Chameleon", )
I can't do that kind of stuff at the office. Especially in management-laden businesses. I do this at home, where I have peace and quiet, and no-one cares if I "make a clutter". If I were married, the wife would certainly make me trash it.
I've been psychologically tested for social skills. I am INTP. Asperger too. So, I am apparently incapable of knowing what I am missing ( wifery, sports, concerts, etc. ). I highly enjoy technical discussions, but it is hard for me to find others who would rather discuss thermodynamics than football.
You can see where I work best in a small company who is struggling to survive, rather than large companies sailing on inertia. I have little to offer companies who have hundreds of thousands of dollars to hire managers who evaluate me by how well I conform to office politics... as I perform quite poorly at the desk. I run like WIN95 on 4 Meg of ram in an office environment.