A Book I Wish People Who Were My Managers and Friends Read So They Would Understand Me Better

As a self described introvert, I found Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain comforting and supportive. So it's OK to be quiet, reflective and avoid back slapping and meaningless chatter with strangers. Good book, good insights and very good stories.

Listed below are some notes I took from the book that struck me as insightful..

Introverts are drawn to the inner world of thought and feeling, said Jung, extroverts to the external life of people and activities. Introverts focus on the meaning they make of the events swirling around them; extroverts plunge into the events themselves.

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Introverts often work more slowly and deliberately. They like to focus on one task at a time and can have mighty powers of concentration. They’re relatively immune to the lures of wealth and fame.

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Introverts prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues, and family. They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict. Many have a horror of small talk, but enjoy deep discussions.

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Extroverted leaders enhance group performance when employees are passive, but that introverted leaders are more effective with proactive employees.

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Extroverts, on the other hand, can be so intent on putting their own stamp on events that they risk losing others’ good ideas along the way and allowing workers to lapse into passivity.

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The simple act of being interrupted is one of the biggest barriers to productivity. Even multitasking, that prized feat of modern-day office warriors, turns out to be a myth. Scientists now know that the brain is incapable of paying attention to two things at the same time. What looks like multitasking is really switching back and forth between multiple tasks, which reduces productivity and increases mistakes by up to 50 percent.

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Introverts enjoy shutting the doors to their offices and plunging into their work, because for them this sort of quiet intellectual activity is optimally stimulating,

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Another study, of sixty-four traders at an investment bank, found that the highest-performing traders tended to be emotionally stable introverts.

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Introverts also seem to be better than extroverts at delaying gratification, a crucial life skill associated with everything from higher SAT scores and income to lower body mass index.

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Extroverts get better grades than introverts during elementary school, but introverts outperform extroverts in high school and college. At the university level, introversion predicts academic performance better than cognitive ability.

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Introverts outperform extroverts on the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal test, an assessment of critical thinking widely used by businesses for hiring and promotion. They’ve been shown to excel at something psychologists call “insightful problem solving.

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Getting "Stoned"

I just finished two Jesse Stone series books by Robert Parker, Night Passage and Sea Change. I had seen the movies based on the books and decided to read them. I also needed a change of pace from reading pages of policy, business presentations and work related documents. Jesse Stone is the Chief of a very small beach town police force. Stone is portrayed in his mid 30s in the books while Selleck is a few decades older than that.

The stories don't seem to matter to me as much as the dialogue and character development. Night Passage is the first of the Jesse Stone series and provides you an idea of Stone's demons, alcohol and his ex-wife, who never leaves his mind.

Of the three series that I have read of Parker's characters, Stone is my third favorite. I would rate the Western series (Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch) and Spencer series higher. Stone is a man of very few words, not unlike Virgil Cole. Spenser is more witty.

I have read that new authors will begin to publish the Stone and Spenser series. I'll be curious how they stack up to what Parker has done.