Quiet by Susan Cain
I first thought about the powers and challenges of introversion some 26 years ago, when I began my freshman year at Princeton University.
From the minute I set foot on campus, I saw that college could be an extraordinary place for introverts and extroverts alike. A place where you were expected to spend your time reading and writing. A place where it was cool to talk about ideas. A place where there were so many people, each doing his or her own thing, that you could create your own brand of social life. If you were an introvert, you could find friends with common interests and enjoy their company one-on-one or in small groups; if you were an extrovert, the social possibilities were endless, just the way extroverts like them.
I was an introvert, and I thrived.
Not that it was always easy. At Princeton, as on many campuses, many social and academic structures seemed designed for extroverts. I wondered why the cafeteria was arranged so that the large circular tables, where the most gregarious students sat, were located near the sunny windows, while the booths for quieter chats were off in the shadowy margins of the room. I wondered whether any of my classmates longed to munch on a tuna sandwich behind a newspaper as I did, instead of being expected to participate in a social free-for-all three times a day. I learned to praise Princeton’s excellent seminars, and to participate in them, but privately I preferred lectures where you could soak up knowledge and think your own thoughts instead of having to perform them out loud.
Most of all, I wondered whether I was the only one who felt this way.
Today, after interviewing hundreds of current and former college students, I know the answer: I wasn’t the only one. Not by a long shot.
Did you know that one third to one half of the population is introverted? That’s one out of every two or three students on campus. But most schools, workplaces, and religious institutions are organized with extroverts in mind—even though many of the achievements that have propelled society, from the theory of evolution to the invention of the PC, from van Gogh’s sunflowers to The Cat in the Hat, came from people who were quiet, cerebral, and sensitive. Even in less obviously introverted occupations, like finance, politics, and activism, some of the greatest leaps forward were made by introverts: Eleanor Roosevelt. Al Gore. Warren Buffett. Gandhi.
This is no coincidence. There are specific physiological and psychological advantages to being an introvert and I’ll share them with your students through the lens of my book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. I’ll tell your students how we can all learn from the introverts among us, including how to be more creative, think more carefully, love more gently, and organize our schools and workplaces more productively. Quiet also challenges contemporary myths of human nature, including the belief that creativity is fundamentally collaborative, and our preference for charismatic leaders.
But Quiet offers insights and advice for extroverts too, and it gives all students the license to talk about a social dynamic they’ve been living and breathing but never given voice to. Introversion/extroversion is as fundamental a difference between people as gender, yet until now we’ve lacked the vocabulary—and the cultural permission—to talk about it.
I’ve never presented the ideas in Quiet without getting people buzzing about whether they and their friends are introverts or extroverts, and what that means for their relationships, career choices, and life paths. Quiet is sure to spark animated discussions across campus, from the psychology and social-science classroom to the dorm room and dining hall.
I’ll be conducting an international speaking tour this year, and I look forward to continuing these discussions at high schools and colleges nationwide. I invite you to contact me through my blog, ThePowerOfIntroverts.com, to discuss opportunities.
Quiet will prepare your students for careers working alongside introverted and extroverted colleagues, bosses, and employees. And it will help them to understand the people they care about most: their classmates, their family, their partners, their children—and themselves.
Susan Cain
www.ThePowerOfIntroverts.com
April 12, 2012 at 12:25 am
Hi Susan,
Thank you so much for that very enlightening book. Like yourself, I too have been a proud introvert, but until I read ‘Quiet’ I never connected that aspect of myself with some recent difficulties I’ve been having at my office job with
Ontario Power Generation. You’ve provided me with some very significant
pieces to the puzzle. I’ll attempt to include here a copy of a letter I’ve sent to my union rep in anticipation of an upcoming meeting to resolve my ongoing noise distraction/blood pressure problems in the cubicle work space. It’s quite long, so if all of it doesn’t make it, please send me another email address and I’ll try again.
thanks again.
Garry White, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada
g.white2010@hotmail.com
In 2006, following my second knee operation in as many years, I was moved from the ‘plant’ to an office position with the Procedures Group in order to give my knees time to rehabilitate. The Procedures Group writes step by step maintenance and troubleshooting operations for the mechanical/electrical technicians at Ontario Power Generation (OPG). It is challenging work much of the time and requires a quiet atmosphere in which writers can focus on their work.
The building I was moved to was called ‘the blue box’ and our group had most of the upper floor to ourselves. We were spaced apart around the perimeter walls while a half dozen or so clerks and document processors resided in the middle cubicles. The clerks and doc processors were generally respectful of our need for quiet and , in fact, it was a very quiet atmosphere in which to think, research and write. We were not mixed in with any other group – we were all writers. I had no problems with noise for the approximately year and a half I was there.
After that year and a half, we were moved to nearby Building B, due to renovations being done to the blue box. In Building B we were given cubicles side by side roughly in the middle of the building. The cubicles all around us were occupied by various trades and departments – Nuclear Waste, Cost Analysis, SCR people, general contractors and so on. Their jobs generally required numerous phone calls, the use of speaker phones for conference calling and group meetings. This was a very different atmosphere than what we’d been used to. It was somewhat annoying and not just for us. There were ‘quiet’ signs pinned to the fabric walls in many places, especially near the photocopy and printer areas where people would often gather to chat or use their cell phones.
Initially, our blue box clerk, Lyn, had made the move to Bldg. B with us. Lyn worked across an aisle from me had always been very quiet. Her replacement, Rose, wasn’t. Rose had a very loud voice and conducted not only business matters in her cubicle but many personal matters as well, either on the phone or with other clerks in other departments. In short, she talked almost non-stop from morning until quitting time. For me, sitting right across from her as I was, this nearly constant racket made concentrating on my work next to impossible. All of us, in fact, were bothered by it to some extent, even those people sitting furthest away from her, and she was often a topic of conversation at our weekly safety meetings. I finally had to ask my manager (FLM), Bob, to enlighten Rose on our need for quiet. Bob spoke to her and for a few days she was much better. But as time wore on her apparently natural tendency to be noisy gradually returned. She was asked a second time and a third time to be quiet with the same results coming a few days later. At that point I asked Bob if I could move my office as I was becoming very frustrated. Bob agreed but there were no other spaces available at that time, although one was coming available, in about a month.
About this time I began to have quite severe lower back pains and after some x-rays and tests I was diagnosed with Ankylosing Spondylitis (A.S.), a chronic and progressive disease.
Some time later, after a particularly hard day with Rose, I found myself frustrated to the point of ‘losing it’ and informed Bob I was going to the nurse’s office. I explained my problem to the nurse and she had me lay down for a few minutes after taking my blood pressure. I believe it was in the mid 160′s systolic but I didn’t really pay too much attention to it at that time because I had never had any blood pressure problems before. I never imagined then that it would become an ongoing, steadily increasing problem.
I guess you would have to call it just plain bad luck that when I was finally moved it was to a cubicle next to a guy who turned out to be the male version of Rose. Wayne was a writer but in the ‘B’ Side group, a different group than ours. Wayne was the only member of his group who people complained about – the rest were fine. At this time I began using noise cancelling earphones, ear plugs, radio earphones, woollen headbands, and various combinations (earplugs under earphones, scrunched up toilet paper plugs under headbands, etc). Nothing worked. To make a long story shorter, the Wayne experience eventually sent me again to the nurse’s office. This time my blood pressure was 172 (over something). Once again, after several weeks of waiting and enduring, I was moved to a different location.
My new office cubicle was located next to one of our coffee areas, where people would come to make a coffee or tea and use the microwave. There were often conversations going on there, as well as cell phone conversations near the outside doors, which were also next to me. However, these sounds didn’t bother me. They came and went and I can’t recall anyone being overly loud – Wayne and Rose used a different coffee area. So, at least compared to what I’d been through in the recent past, this area seemed somewhat ‘normal’ and I was fine there for about six months, at which time we were moved again to yet another building due to mould.
My third noisemaker was Jaime, who admitted he was loud but somehow couldn’t help himself. In many ways Jaime was the worst of the three, because as an organizer of outside contractors he was constantly either on the phone, cell phone, speaker phone or holding meetings with construction crews in his office. My eventual visit to the nurse this time showed 177/90.
After my next move, this time to a separate building(the ESB) from my group’s building, I now found myself almost anticipating the next noise disturbance, and this newfound anxiety in itself had become something of a distraction, even without the noise. However, after about seven months, I once again had problems with a newly moved-in neighbor. The eventual resulting visit to the nurse (at my FLM’s direction) produced yet higher blood pressure readings; 192/92. After that reading, and about an hour of ‘lay-down’ time, the nurse sent me home, advising me to see my doctor on the way.
I should point out that all of these high blood pressure ‘events’ over the years were not just one-day occurrences. The different situations with each problematic person usually lasted many weeks and sometimes months. I only went to the nurses’ offices during moments of most extreme frustration, or when I was directed to. I asked for an OPG poster campaign, similar to one they had undertaken to prevent ‘unwanted odors’ in the cubicles, but was refused on the grounds that not enough people had problems with noise distractions. I pointed out that most office areas had ‘Quiet’ or ‘No Cell Phone’ signs, particularly near the printer areas, but this did not seem to be enough. I asked for a sign to hang over my office saying ‘Quiet Area Due to Health Concerns’, but was also refused.
That was in March of 2011. I have undergone countless medical tests and examinations since and there has been no apparent medical cause, physically or mentally, for these high blood pressure spikes, which gradually subside after a day or two of just being away from the source of the problem people. There is agreement among all my testers and examiners, including those at OPG, that the pain from my back condition and occasionally from my knees, combined with osteoarthritis, is probably increasing my ‘base’ blood pressure levels, so that these spikes from noise frustrations may , at least theoretically, become lower if I could bring my ‘base’ pressure down. I’ve been taking an infusion drug called Remicade since about a year after I was diagnosed with A.S. Initially, this drug effectively removed my pain completely although over time my system became somewhat immune to it and I ‘ve been experiencing a fairly constant pain level of 1-3, on a scale of 1-10. In an attempt to regain that initial zero pain level, and to try to bring my base blood pressure down, my Remicade treatments were bumped up to every six weeks from the previous every eight weeks. However, a year later there is no noticeable change and I am still at the 1-3 (and occasionally higher) level on a pretty constant basis.
I have been exercising. I’ve reduced my pipe smoking habit by one-third (so far), I’ve given up salt, sugar, coffee, wine and red meat (except on occasional dinners out). My blood pressure still fluctuates between 122 and 140, as it always has, but is generally around the 130/80 mark.
My doctor (Fred Leung, Ajax Ont.) has been a part of this since day one. On those times when I’ve been off work due to these blood pressure spikes or to back/knee pain, he has asked for various back to work restrictions, which have included a low noise environment. This was also one of the restrictions recommended by OPG’s own doctor, Dr. Hall.
Following the last incident, Dr. Leung, by now as fed up as I was at OPG’s handling of the situation, increased the quiet restriction by asking that I be provided an enclosed work space (i.e. either an actual office with walls and a door, or a vacant room, even if that room is an old broom closet, which I would be fine with).
OPG has been unable to comply with that request although I still don’t know why as I know there are both offices and small rooms available. It’s possible they’re reserved for future use, but as I said, no one has told me anything yet. My manager was directed to tell me that the office disturbances I’ve been experiencing are the ‘normal office environment’. Apparently they weren’t before, when they were moving me from place to place to escape that environment.
In the course of trying to solve this impasse ,my sick leave ran out and I was forced to apply for Long Term Disability (LTD) benefits from our company insurer, Great West Life (GWL). Because of my back and knee conditions, I would not be able to work full-time at any kind of physical work – at this point I could probably do a couple of days a week at the most. As well, if OPG and GWL are asserting that the distractions and frustrations I am experiencing in our cubicle-style workplace is a ‘normal office environment’, as they seem to be, then obviously I am not suited for an office position either, for any number of days per week. Because of these two things combined, I believe I had an acceptable case for long term disability benefits. If these cannot be provided, then I believe OPG should be required, due to serious health concerns, to either comply with my doctor’s request for a quiet, private workspace, or provide some other acceptable solution that will not cause me undue financial hardship, which at the moment is one of my greatest concerns. The other is my health.
I just would like to point out that during my time at the ‘blue box’, I felt that I had landed the job of my dreams. I brought forty years of electrical knowledge, schooling and experience to the position, along with a journalism diploma and daily news writing experience. The Procedure Writer’s job was challenging but rewarding, and often an eight-hour day seemed to pass by in minutes. I likened it to playing chess. Now, after all this, I dread going to the office. And I’m genuinely nervous about the possibility of having a stroke, or worse. This past year has given me time to reflect on that part of it all. I’m really not sure I can go back at all now without some very convincing reassurance that any new office environment is not going to result in further health problems. Debts or not, I have three kids, and I’d like to be around for them awhile longer.
Garry White
705-930-9677