Striving for perfection – rather than just plain excellence – can make you and everyone around you nuts. How can you advance in your career if you regularly spend hours on tasks – like writing a thank you note after an informational interview – that others seem to crank out in an instant?

“Whereas extraverts tend to broaden the sphere of their work, to present their products early (and often) to the world, to make themselves known to a wide circle, and to multiply relationships and activities, the introvert takes the opposite approach,” according to Gifts Differing by Isabel Briggs Myers. She continues in her book: “Going more deeply into their work, introverts are reluctant to call it finished and publish it.”
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Nobel Peace Prize winning theologian and physician Albert Schweitzer once said: “I wanted to be a doctor so that I might be able to work without having to talk.” Makes you wonder whether he was an introvert.

Schweitzer elaborated: “For years I had been giving of myself in words, and it was with joy that I had followed the calling of theological teacher and preacher. But this new form of activity,” he said, “would consist not in preaching the religion of love, but in practicing it. Medical knowledge would make it possible for me to carry out my intention in the best and most complete way, wherever the path of service might lead me.”
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New York was crawling with Madonnas and Madoffs, Blagos and Jackos, and no shortage of Sarah Palins this past weekend. Who were you for Halloween? And who are you on the other 364 days of the year? Would you benefit from taking an occasional holiday from your workaday persona?

If you’re an introvert, you probably avoid drawing attention to yourself (although an occasional mask and a costume can be a clever workaround if you enjoy taking on a different persona!).
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Are you more of a slow and steady achiever than a speed demon? If so, you can probably relate to the tortoise in Aesop’s fable, The Hare and the Tortoise. Remember how the tortoise beat the hare to the finishing line by putting one foot in front of the next at her own pace while the overconfident hare took a snooze and woke up too late to win the race?
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“The brains of shy or introverted individuals might actually process the world differently than their more extroverted counterparts, a new study suggests,” according to a recent article on the LiveScience Web site.

It is unclear whether the study, which was conducted by researchers at Stony Brook University in New York and Southwest University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, both in China, makes a distinction between shyness (social anxiety) and introversion (recharging your energy during your quiet time).

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The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is considering including introversion as a determining factor for diagnosing mental disorders in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—commonly known as the DSM-5. The APA’s proposed definition of introversion is: “Withdrawal from other people, ranging from intimate relationships to the world at large; restricted affective experience and expression; limited hedonic capacity.” The definition also includes “deficit in the capacity to feel pleasure or take interest in things.”
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Ready for a snarky little diversion? “Every single time I text LOL (laugh out loud), I feel like such an imposter,” says author Mary Hershey. “Honestly, it is rare that I laugh out loud, particularly when I’m texting,” she adds on her and R.L. La Fevers’s Shrinking Violet Promotions blog. “It’s more likely that I am LQ2M (laughing quietly to myself).”
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How can introverts thrive in the business world? Do you need to schmooze to get ahead? How are introverts and extroverts biologically different? Toronto magazine writer, Jasmine Budak, just interviewed me about my book, Self-Promotion for Introverts®, and a couple of Canadian businesspeople shared their insights as well. See Budak’s article, “An Introvert’s Guide to Schmoozing,” in the Canadian Business magazine.

Are you drowning in a sea of e-mails, text messages, and calls to return? If you’re an introvert, you can probably relate to the “fail whale” on Twitter, the seriously cute image that pops up whenever that popular social media site gets overloaded. The image, designed by Yiying Lu, depicts little red birds effortlessly lifting a whale in a net from the sea, and accompanies the message, “Twitter is over capacity.”

On this first of August, you may be overdue for some downtime. Of course, if you’re already on vacation, remember to get the quiet time you need to fully recharge. If you’re an extrovert, that could mean going from volleyball on the beach to a barbecue to drag car racing to cocktail parties until the wee hours. If you’re an introvert, it might be time to lift yourself out of the Sea of Too Many Inputs and curl up with your Kindle. Here’s to your inner fail whale!

Copyright © 2010 Nancy Ancowitz

Nancy Ancowitz, business communication coach and author of Self-Promotion for Introverts®, co-wrote this story with Laurie Helgoe, Ph.D., clinical psychologist and author of Introvert Power. 

 We recently celebrated the forty-first anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, when a soft spoken astronaut named Neil Armstrong made a giant leap for mankind. Isn’t it about time for other reflective, idea-oriented people to get their due? We think so. Instead, simmering under the surface of our cultural consciousness is a belief that introverts are impaired.
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