I am a strong introvert. I realize that is both a real problem (see: “Big Island Love”) and a powerful asset. I have a study at home where I often retreat to read, write, and think. Sometimes I just lay down on a day bed to nap and ponder the world and what the heck I am going to do next.
In a wired world of social media and collaboration all that seems both really male and very out of sync. Yet, to me it’s been the secret sauce. When the world goes right I tend to go left. In investing that’s called being a contrarian. You don’t make money by following the herds off a cliff. You make money by taking the risk of standing alone. It turns out that perhaps that is true of great art and great science and pretty much any field where creativity requires originality.
At least that is the premise of new research reported this week in the New York Times article, “The Rise of the New Groupthink” by Susan Cain:
SOLITUDE is out of fashion. Our companies, our schools and our culture are in thrall to an idea I call the New Groupthink, which holds that creativity and achievement come from an oddly gregarious place. Most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all. Lone geniuses are out. Collaboration is in.
But there’s a problem with this view. 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.
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Definitely worth reading and thinking about.
Fantastic question…One I hope to explore more. Sometimes I wonder if the hyper-connected nature of modern communications is actually leading mankind towards some dystopian hive of unanimous consciousness. It’s a grim thought but we are only going to become more connected as technology evolves. How much more connected? More than we can imagine…Believe it. Being in constant, instantaneous contact with every person you’ve ever met at all times will only be the tip of the iceberg.
Oh by the way, Tom thank you for this article.
Finally there’s people recognizing and highlighting how some of us creative geniuses are being marginalized. And there’s now a term for what’s happening – “the new groupthink.” Some employers treat introversion as though it’s an illness or something – not acceptable. Some jobs do require a lot of thinking, focus, ideas, independent work and come with a lot of strict deadlines and stress…sometimes there is NO time to “socialize” with team members, to make oneself look the perfect happy, friendly employee to the people who EXPECT it the most.
Thanks Michelle. One of the hardest parts of my life has been trying to “fit in” the rest of the world as an introvert and at the same time trying to figure out whether fitting in would be a good or harmful thing to my soul and abilities.
I remember working at this job where I was stationed in a cubicle which had a lot of traffic around it and was right beside the noisy lunchroom — I could not concentrate on my creative work! I could hear every conversation people were having! One (newer) staff member pitied me. Management said that they heard of this complaint before from previous employees working in my cubicle; so management decided to move me into a spare office – all by myself with nice large windows, it was open and bright – perfect for me; but this was in the opposite… Read more »
So true. You have to feed the creative work with a lot of time that I call “off leash” time for my brain. I don’t task myself with something to think about, but nonetheless, work is happening.