Yeah, I'll get right on being more extroverted just as soon as I'm done being taller and more handsome. Oh, and I've been thinking about changing my sexual orientation too—might try that first.
Seriously, do you think it's not obvious to introverts that extroversion is very beneficial? It's *extremely* obvious. I can and do "turn on" the extroversion sometimes because I know how useful it is. But I'll always be drained by it. Always. Everyone in my family is this way. We are just not wired to be extroverted. Rather, we do our best in a society that expects it anyway.
I hear where you’re coming from, but empirically, people have told me that this post has encouraged them to socialize more and make an effort to communicate in public more; I think there are genuinely lots of people who could nudge themselves in an outgoing direction and benefit—as I said at the end of the post, this includes me! Not ruling out variance in disposition, just suggesting there is a range of possibilities.
I'm with Sasha on this - I'm naturally vey introverted but posts like this inspire me to put in the effort - saying yes to invites more, going out alone more so I 'have' to talk to people I don't know, and making sure I schedule in downtime so I'm not too drained by it all. If you can nudge yourself even a degree or two towards a more extroverted approach now and then, and you're not a complete bore, it can lead to some really fun things.
I tend to agree with Tom. It seems that the author here is more reminding himself of his own strengths, rather than expressing himself in a way that would be helpful to people for whom being extraverted is counterintuitive. (Maybe this is the intention.)
This claim is a bit ridiculous, trying to compare extroversion to being taller or physical qualities is not at all the same. Of course you can't just become taller, it's physically impossible. But with soft skills like extroversion you can make improvements if you want to.
Telling yourself "I'm not extroverted" is a limiting belief. When you label yourself you limit yourself. Sure some people are more naturally extroverted than others but it is still a skill that you can practice and get better at if you put in the effort.
Nobody "expects" anything of you, I believe Sasha was simply sharing his positive experiences to try and encourage/inspire others around the benefits of being extroverted.
The capability of being social is THE shit (whether or not pure intro/extroversion is a thing).
I was shy as a kid, then got bullied in school and completely clammed up for a good ten years before a quarter-life crisis nudged me in a more extroverted direction. And even then it still took another good part of a decade before it became a part of me, where it's what I am, and not what I'm trying to be.
And boy would I love to take the me of today and redo the whole school and 20-something part. Looking back at my actions from 5-10-15 years ago I'm painfully aware of how much opportunities I wasted back then because of my inability to socialize AND my inability to even comprehend this fact.
With every person you meet, there's a 1% chance that something serendipitous will happen from that meeting. It's an effect with compound interest too: usually one of the good serendipitous things is being introduced to someone else, further increasing the chance of good things happening.
I would also say that the farther down the serendipity-network chain you go, e.g. being introduced to someone by someone who you were introduced to by [...] at a dinner 3 years ago, the higher the odds are that you'll find a good opportunity.
If you think about the whole 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon thing, it only takes 6 levels of networking/serendipitous introductions to match you to your dream team, dream person, etc! To get you to where you need to be.
I know this post is over two years old now, but I found it really interesting.
I've never been chatty or outgoing, but I do recognise the benefits of it. My problem is that by default I find most people... Boring. I know, logically, that they probably aren't - they've had a hundred and one unique experiences that I haven't, they've had ups and downs, they've had interesting successes and failures. I suspect several of the people who are now close friends are people who I considered boring when I first met them, but the subsequent warmth I've felt in their company has blurred the truth of the past (I have poor episodic memory, so I don't remember first meeting any of my close friends anyway).
But moving from stranger to friend, or even stranger to one-off contact who changes my life/behaviour in some way, requires me to push through that initial tedium I find in their prescence. Sometimes I ask questions that I don't actually care about the answer to (before or after), or try to keep a conversation going because I know it's what I'm "supposed" to do (I often imagine I'm a sim and my social bar is turning green!). And I hate doing that. I hate feeling inauthentic (even though I know "authenticity" is a whole problem in and of itself, I'm still fixated on it).
I think I am slowly improving. I push myself a little more to engage in conversation in group situations, even if I feel I'm a little fake, and I can find pleasure in conversations with strangers even when I never see them again. But 90% of the time I struggle to engage. My problems with engaging aren't exclusive to social situations (I'm not a very functional person), but your post just highlighted this issue for me.
I've recently discovered that I'm an introvert thanks to the book "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking" by Susan Cain (highly recommend!). It can be challenging to accept especially in a society that venerates the "extrovert ideal." But introverts have their special gifts to share!
As a previous introvert with some "extroverted" tendencies I've definitely found being a low-key alcoholic (within reason...) a great way to provide some amount of exposure therapy to conquer the less pleasant parts of being introverted.
I would guess you are somewhat similar to me in that we come down less extreme on the introvert-extrovert axis which is why the idea of hacking our personalities one way or another seems both plausible and useful.
As someone who is highly extroverted, I think this is a very poor characterisation of what it's like to be extroverted.
> The advantage of extroverts is that they can navigate a large party without being overwhelmed (because their senses are dull)
I would disagree strongly with this. The senses are not dulled in a blanket sense. My more introverted friends struggle to suppress distractions and often find themselves retreating to comfortable sensory environments at parties, which usually involves pulling out a phone. On the other hand, I find it relatively easy to maintain a clear focus on social cues and conversation in front of me. I can remember specific details from most conversations and parties I attend precisely because of this focus, not because I am bouncing around the room nervously trying to make people like me.
> The problem with trying to be an extrovert is that you end up adopting their styles, which is not suited for you.
I think talking to anyone in person involves a certain level of mirroring. I often notice the idea you're expressing here from people who dislike parties or social gatherings - they don't like having to change themselves to go through the experience. But we don't have a singular fixed personality that we *are*, which is then changed by others. Attempting to hold onto that idea is detrimental to you and others. Do you really interact with everyone you know in the same way? No, because that would be insane. Different information is given and withheld for different people, because what's trivial to one person is anguish for another. (Incidentally, remember when Zuckerberg said this: “Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.” It's still untrue.)
You can see that in some of Sasha's other writing, where he talks about the sense of self being the first thing to go under psilocybin. Your brain creates a series of ideas about yourself because these are beneficial for functionality - such as the idea that your self stays the same over time (it doesn't, evidently), or that you are in control of most of your actions (not to get into a free will thing, just that many decisions are attended to in the light of complex brain processes that happen before you are conscious of them, so your perception of them is not 'pure').
> Typically, this leads to even more people who are annoyed by you because people can sense that you are trying to be extroverted with your nervous energy, like fake laughter.
Just to offer a defense of fake laughter. People often lack confidence in social situations. Confidence is also often proportional to the quality of jokes that get told. People laughing at your jokes often bolsters confidence. So a *good* fake laugh can be considered a form of public service to the room. You help others feel better about themselves which generally improves the quality of dialogue. Obviously a *bad* fake laugh is nauseating, but I think most people I know who laugh in this way aren't strictly faking it. Instead, they're using the laugh as a tool of encouragement instead of as a device to rate other people's contributions.
I think the actual trade-off between intraversion and extraversion is not one of picking out the 'best people' (notice the personal utility calculation inherent in this idea - some people are worth meeting, others aren't), but of time constraints. Extraverts usually know more people and so they know those people at a less deep emotional level, because they don't have the time to engage with everyone they know to the same depth as an introvert. But introverts know far fewer people. The way you perceive this trade-off is down to your personal interests.
Yeah, I'll get right on being more extroverted just as soon as I'm done being taller and more handsome. Oh, and I've been thinking about changing my sexual orientation too—might try that first.
Seriously, do you think it's not obvious to introverts that extroversion is very beneficial? It's *extremely* obvious. I can and do "turn on" the extroversion sometimes because I know how useful it is. But I'll always be drained by it. Always. Everyone in my family is this way. We are just not wired to be extroverted. Rather, we do our best in a society that expects it anyway.
I hear where you’re coming from, but empirically, people have told me that this post has encouraged them to socialize more and make an effort to communicate in public more; I think there are genuinely lots of people who could nudge themselves in an outgoing direction and benefit—as I said at the end of the post, this includes me! Not ruling out variance in disposition, just suggesting there is a range of possibilities.
I'm with Sasha on this - I'm naturally vey introverted but posts like this inspire me to put in the effort - saying yes to invites more, going out alone more so I 'have' to talk to people I don't know, and making sure I schedule in downtime so I'm not too drained by it all. If you can nudge yourself even a degree or two towards a more extroverted approach now and then, and you're not a complete bore, it can lead to some really fun things.
I tend to agree with Tom. It seems that the author here is more reminding himself of his own strengths, rather than expressing himself in a way that would be helpful to people for whom being extraverted is counterintuitive. (Maybe this is the intention.)
This claim is a bit ridiculous, trying to compare extroversion to being taller or physical qualities is not at all the same. Of course you can't just become taller, it's physically impossible. But with soft skills like extroversion you can make improvements if you want to.
Telling yourself "I'm not extroverted" is a limiting belief. When you label yourself you limit yourself. Sure some people are more naturally extroverted than others but it is still a skill that you can practice and get better at if you put in the effort.
Nobody "expects" anything of you, I believe Sasha was simply sharing his positive experiences to try and encourage/inspire others around the benefits of being extroverted.
The capability of being social is THE shit (whether or not pure intro/extroversion is a thing).
I was shy as a kid, then got bullied in school and completely clammed up for a good ten years before a quarter-life crisis nudged me in a more extroverted direction. And even then it still took another good part of a decade before it became a part of me, where it's what I am, and not what I'm trying to be.
And boy would I love to take the me of today and redo the whole school and 20-something part. Looking back at my actions from 5-10-15 years ago I'm painfully aware of how much opportunities I wasted back then because of my inability to socialize AND my inability to even comprehend this fact.
I was just talking to a friend about this:
With every person you meet, there's a 1% chance that something serendipitous will happen from that meeting. It's an effect with compound interest too: usually one of the good serendipitous things is being introduced to someone else, further increasing the chance of good things happening.
I would also say that the farther down the serendipity-network chain you go, e.g. being introduced to someone by someone who you were introduced to by [...] at a dinner 3 years ago, the higher the odds are that you'll find a good opportunity.
If you think about the whole 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon thing, it only takes 6 levels of networking/serendipitous introductions to match you to your dream team, dream person, etc! To get you to where you need to be.
I know this post is over two years old now, but I found it really interesting.
I've never been chatty or outgoing, but I do recognise the benefits of it. My problem is that by default I find most people... Boring. I know, logically, that they probably aren't - they've had a hundred and one unique experiences that I haven't, they've had ups and downs, they've had interesting successes and failures. I suspect several of the people who are now close friends are people who I considered boring when I first met them, but the subsequent warmth I've felt in their company has blurred the truth of the past (I have poor episodic memory, so I don't remember first meeting any of my close friends anyway).
But moving from stranger to friend, or even stranger to one-off contact who changes my life/behaviour in some way, requires me to push through that initial tedium I find in their prescence. Sometimes I ask questions that I don't actually care about the answer to (before or after), or try to keep a conversation going because I know it's what I'm "supposed" to do (I often imagine I'm a sim and my social bar is turning green!). And I hate doing that. I hate feeling inauthentic (even though I know "authenticity" is a whole problem in and of itself, I'm still fixated on it).
I think I am slowly improving. I push myself a little more to engage in conversation in group situations, even if I feel I'm a little fake, and I can find pleasure in conversations with strangers even when I never see them again. But 90% of the time I struggle to engage. My problems with engaging aren't exclusive to social situations (I'm not a very functional person), but your post just highlighted this issue for me.
I've recently discovered that I'm an introvert thanks to the book "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking" by Susan Cain (highly recommend!). It can be challenging to accept especially in a society that venerates the "extrovert ideal." But introverts have their special gifts to share!
Sasha's law - people would benefit from being more extroverted, even when you take into account Sasha's law :)
As a previous introvert with some "extroverted" tendencies I've definitely found being a low-key alcoholic (within reason...) a great way to provide some amount of exposure therapy to conquer the less pleasant parts of being introverted.
I would guess you are somewhat similar to me in that we come down less extreme on the introvert-extrovert axis which is why the idea of hacking our personalities one way or another seems both plausible and useful.
Agreed, but how? How is the hard part
one conversation at a time!
As someone who is highly extroverted, I think this is a very poor characterisation of what it's like to be extroverted.
> The advantage of extroverts is that they can navigate a large party without being overwhelmed (because their senses are dull)
I would disagree strongly with this. The senses are not dulled in a blanket sense. My more introverted friends struggle to suppress distractions and often find themselves retreating to comfortable sensory environments at parties, which usually involves pulling out a phone. On the other hand, I find it relatively easy to maintain a clear focus on social cues and conversation in front of me. I can remember specific details from most conversations and parties I attend precisely because of this focus, not because I am bouncing around the room nervously trying to make people like me.
> The problem with trying to be an extrovert is that you end up adopting their styles, which is not suited for you.
I think talking to anyone in person involves a certain level of mirroring. I often notice the idea you're expressing here from people who dislike parties or social gatherings - they don't like having to change themselves to go through the experience. But we don't have a singular fixed personality that we *are*, which is then changed by others. Attempting to hold onto that idea is detrimental to you and others. Do you really interact with everyone you know in the same way? No, because that would be insane. Different information is given and withheld for different people, because what's trivial to one person is anguish for another. (Incidentally, remember when Zuckerberg said this: “Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.” It's still untrue.)
You can see that in some of Sasha's other writing, where he talks about the sense of self being the first thing to go under psilocybin. Your brain creates a series of ideas about yourself because these are beneficial for functionality - such as the idea that your self stays the same over time (it doesn't, evidently), or that you are in control of most of your actions (not to get into a free will thing, just that many decisions are attended to in the light of complex brain processes that happen before you are conscious of them, so your perception of them is not 'pure').
> Typically, this leads to even more people who are annoyed by you because people can sense that you are trying to be extroverted with your nervous energy, like fake laughter.
Just to offer a defense of fake laughter. People often lack confidence in social situations. Confidence is also often proportional to the quality of jokes that get told. People laughing at your jokes often bolsters confidence. So a *good* fake laugh can be considered a form of public service to the room. You help others feel better about themselves which generally improves the quality of dialogue. Obviously a *bad* fake laugh is nauseating, but I think most people I know who laugh in this way aren't strictly faking it. Instead, they're using the laugh as a tool of encouragement instead of as a device to rate other people's contributions.
I think the actual trade-off between intraversion and extraversion is not one of picking out the 'best people' (notice the personal utility calculation inherent in this idea - some people are worth meeting, others aren't), but of time constraints. Extraverts usually know more people and so they know those people at a less deep emotional level, because they don't have the time to engage with everyone they know to the same depth as an introvert. But introverts know far fewer people. The way you perceive this trade-off is down to your personal interests.