The Introvert's Advantage
I think introverts have a pretty substantial advantage over all their non-introverted friends. Why is this? The reasons couldn't be any more straight-forward:
- Introverts spend a certain amount of time every day alone, all to themselves, free from the world's largest interruption — people. Introverts can be often found in quiet homes, parks and libraries. And because they have this chunk of time everyday with minimal distraction, they get a lot of work done. I sometimes refer to this advantage as the Felgett advantage.
- Introverts talk far less than most other people. I refer to this as the Jacquinot advantage. It is perfectly okay for two introverts to go for a walk and not talk all that much, just as it is perfectly okay for two introverts to be alone in a room and not talk at all. Speech is a very computationally expensive task. Thus, minimal talking frees up their mind to think about other interesting issues.
- Introverts lead a much more simpler life. This simplicity helps them concentrate on what is most important to them. This is Miguel's advantage.
- Introverts are seldom swayed by the whims of society. They can therefore run their lives the way they want without being bogged down by social conditioning. To them, staying home on a Friday evening is about as normal as brushing their teeth each morning. I call this Neil's advantage.
- Introverts don't like "hanging out". This saves them significant amount of time each day. Even if they forced themselves to do something as unintellectual as that, they would tire out quickly and would want to go back home to "recharge" themselves. Even though I am not an introvert myself (although I constantly wish I was), I refer to this as the Rajeshian advantage since I somehow magically possess this incredible advantage which saves me a ton of time every day.
- Since introverts have so much lone time, they often busy themselves by reading. And anyone who reads that much can learn much more than their fellow non-introverted peers about any topic they choose. I call this Paul's advantage.
- Introverts hate sitting idle. So if they're not reading, or arguing their point with other introverts, or running away from non-introverts, they spend their time thinking. Thinking to them is like preemptively arming themselves with ammo preparing for the next heated debate or argument. I call this Devin's advantage.
- Introverts are self-absorbed about themselves. Their egos are their fuel. Hence, they don't need to find motivation externally. If you possess this advantage, you should consider yourself enormously fortunate because most people fail to achieve their true potential solely due to a lack of motivation. This is easily Ken's advantage.
- Introverts think heavily before they speak. Their brains are always working, constantly processing, forming conclusions, and seeding other ideas. And since they seldom talk, they don't find it cumbersome to think before they speak as they have to do it so rarely. I refer to this as the Connes advantage.
- Introverts have laser-sharp focus. They have this tremendous ability to concentrate deeply and focus their attention to a single problem or issue for an extended period of time without getting distracted. If you guessed, you guessed it right, for this is none other than Mark's advantage.
- Introverts are more objective in their decision-making which allows them to run their lives more pragmatically and more intuitively. This is Jon's advantage.
- Introverts don't ask for favors and help unless they absolutely have to. This makes them really good at looking out for themselves and self-servicing themselves. This is, without doubt, Andre's advantage.
- Introverts usually don't have boyfriends or girlfriends because their fellow non-introverted competitors are always taking all the boys/girls they like. I generalize heavily here even though there are some well-noted exceptions to this advantage. Introverted guys try to find a nice, simple, and attractive girl willing to have a quiet, compassionate, and loving relationship, instead of an overly aggrandized girl who wants to go shopping all day and party all night. And this is of course, Sheldon's advantage.
- Introverts process information differently from other people. And since they are a minority, they can use this advantage to solve problems most other people can't. You problem solving skills are largely dependent on the way you process information. Let's call this Rauch's advantage.
I have given names to the above advantages not just because they are really good advantages to have in a world like ours, but also because they keep coming back again and again in my discussions and thoughts. It's easier to refer to these advantages with names rather than sentences when talking to myself in my head.
Now, let us not confuse introverts with social recluses. Introverts can be very social given the right circumstances, or simply alcohol. People often mistake the laconic nature of introverts as shyness. Some of the most effective Presidents of the United States and Prime Ministers of India have been staunch introverts. Unfortunately, I don't know enough social recluses to make a sufficiently knowledgeable comment about them.
You know if I had a kid today and I found out 5 years later he/she wasn't an introvert, I'd be kinda bummed out. I'd somehow feel like I'd been short-changed by god. But at least I'd have an interesting challenge in front of me that I could try to solve using techniques from my TPS pocket guide. The challenge would be: how do I raise a non-introverted kid and turn him/her into someone who would be able to compete on a level field with other introverts?
So what do we take away from here? If you're a fellow non-introvert, or even a confused middle-man unsure of your own introvertedness like I am, I think exercising caution is the only way out. Because one day the introverts will strike, and when they do, they will strike hard. Because I know that when it comes to solving problems that require conscious and concentrated thought, the introverts will kick my sorry non-introverted ass any time of the day. They only lie low right now because they are a minority in our population comprising of overly enthusiastic people.
To all the introverts in the world, I bow down to thee. I have tremendous and unabated respect for you.
You know who you are. Amen.
This post was influenced heavily by an article in The Atlantic called Caring for your Introvert. I apologize for any duplication of opinion.
Managing Interruptions
The month of April, I've been working very strongly on a problem that has plagued me for several years now. And yes, the title says it all: it's the problem of managing interruptions.
The last 3 weeks, I've been working very hard on a feature at work that had at least 13 components to it. And while I was working on this feature, I realized time and again how bad I was at managing the almost constant influx of interruptions entering my mind. On average, I was getting about 5-10 interruptions an hour.
These interruptions were anywhere from IM (Gtalk, MSN, AIM, Yahoo, etc.), facebook wall posts, colleague clarifying something with me, lunch, dinner, supervisor asking me to come over, team meeting, new bug being assigned to me, twitter, email from an old friend that I just have to reply to, hunger, thirst, hot, cold, request to play ping pong, and a whole bunch more I can't be bothered to list out.
And then I looked around and studied the people I considered smart. And what I saw blew my mind away. All these smart people seemed to be managing their 10-20 interruptions an hour with such flawless precision. They were pros at this. It was an art to them that they had conquered long ago. They had certainly already solved this problem and had moved on to other interesting stuff.
This got me very curious. I wanted to be like them. If they could do it so effectively, why couldn't I? What have they got that I haven't? These 4-5 guys were putting me to shame, and I couldn't allow that. I was much too egoistic to let it pass.
But what I observed next blew my mind even more. I zoomed out some more and really looked at all the people around me to see how they were managing their interruptions. And boy they sucked! Every one of them! And I thought I was bad.
This was my cue. This is the old pattern that almost every single self-help book I've read contains: When the vast majority of the population sucks at something but a select few people seem to be experts at it, then what you have in your hand is an optimization problem that is very solvable. I jumped at this golden opportunity.
I think with the explosion of ubiquitous social networks and team-oriented problem solving, interruptions are almost impossible to avoid. I spent all of Grades 11 and 12 micro-managing my interruptions by basically eliminating them one by one. But now, I don't think I can eliminate them even if I wanted to. So I was faced with the only alternative. If you can't avoid, manage.
So I sat down and solved the problem using techniques I discussed in my TPS handbook. I definitely did not want to solve the problem iteratively. I wanted to concentrate my thinking to 15 minutes and solve the problem once and for all.
First thing I did was to make an exhaustive list of every single interruption I could possibly have and looked for patterns. These were all pretty simple interruptions — nothing terribly complicated. And most interruptions did not span more than 30 minutes. And of course the bulk of the problem lied not in the interruption itself, but in recovering from the interruption and getting back to what you were doing before. This becomes especially hard when interruptions are themselves interrupted by other interruptions and so on. In my day-to-day work, this branching can be nested as much as 6-7 levels deep.
The solution came to me quite easily actually. All I needed to do was to get my brain to work like a very efficient stack. A stack is like a stack of papers. Each sheet of paper is a thought or an idea or an interruption. Each time I get interrupted, I add, or push, a sheet of paper, a stack frame, to the top of the stack of papers, the call stack. Once I'm done with the idea, thought or interruption, I pop the stack and throw away that sheet of paper — only to reveal the previous sheet of paper underneath. Hence, I can continue from where I left off almost instantly.
The obvious reference to the data structure from computer science isn't accidental at all. Computer science is armed with some of the most powerful metaphors of the human brain, well, mostly because the computer scientists designed computers after largely borrowing ideas from how they thought the brain functioned.
So about 3 weeks ago, I started with some simple exercises to help me arrange ideas on top of each other like a stack. Practice with 10 ideas. Try it right now. Try to think of 10 unrelated ideas or situations you've been in the last 10 days one after the other, and then try to process the stack backwards. Half-way through, try to add other ideas randomly, then pop randomly. Do this about 10 times a day for a week and you'll become a pro too. The key thing here is that you're remembering ideas or situations, not a list of items. And ideas and situations are always linked in some way or the other.
I think most people will see significant gains if they train their mind to behave like a simple stack. However, there is ton of room for optimization. Once again, I borrow powerful concepts from computer science.
- Translucent stack frames
- Ruby-style continuations for each stack frame
- Priority stacks analogous to priority queues
I have had varying degrees of success with each of these optimizations. If you'd like to discuss any or all of them, feel free to hit me up on IM (meetrajesh@gmail.com). And don't worry about interrupting me — I've got you covered quite well ;-)
