Introversion and Creativity

Introversion- The Stairway to the Horizon of Creativity

In the essay “The Rise of the New Groupthink” (Published on January 13, 2012), Susan Cain raises the awareness that the rise of group working is gradually replacing independent working even though it is very important in everyone’s life. By which, lead us to a world where group brainstorming sessions are now the new trend and private thinking is old-fashioned. Susan Cain is an American writer, a lecturer, a best selling author of a book about introversion in 2012 who has difficulties speaking in public and through those difficulties, developed an interest in writing about introversion. Her essay “The Rise of the New Groupthink” has opened up a whole new perspective about how important introversion is, and how underappreciated it has been over the years. Through my experiences, I support Cain’s idea that solitude and introversion are important to everyone’s life and there should be a balance between solitude and group thinking, not just give all the favor to group thinking and completely left out introversion.

After researching various studies of psychologists, Cain stands on the side of introversion, stating that it is an important factor for creativity and thoughts. And according to another one of her article “The Rise of the New Groupthink and the Power of Working Alone” she uses a typical day in the life of Mr. Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, as a valuable example. Most of Wozniak’s work came from all the time and hard work of inside his cubicle at Hewlett-Packard. He’d arrive alone around 6:30 am, early in the morning, read building magazines, and examine chip manuals, making plans, setting up designs in his mind. After work, he’d go home, make a speedy spaghetti or Microwavable meal, then drive back to the workplace and work even until it passes midnight. He describes this period of quiet midnights and solitary early morning as “the biggest high ever.” Steve Wozniak is one of the biggest names there is when it comes to introverted geniuses. As seeing Steve Wozniak as a valuable example, Cain acknowledges the importance of introversion and how it can be a tremendous help in people’s work and creativity. Also, she states two main reasons that help strengthen her acknowledgements and make it even more solid. Those two main reasons are the long-time bond between introversion with creativity and people’s productivity.

First of all, solitude has long been related with creativity. Through “Rise of the New Groupthink” Cain solidify her idea by examining the research of two psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Gregory Feist, from which states that most creative people from many different fields are usually introverts. This is probably because that introverted people are happy with working alone, and just by being alone can they increase their creativity and innovativeness. This idea of Cain speaks to me pretty well because when I was young, I actually experiences just how important solitude is for an introverted person. My uncle is a game programmer, not a big shot in the business, but he has been working in a pretty steady job in a company named Ubisoft. He loves introversion more than anything else when he’s working. He got tons of projects to work on all the time, but he never works with anyone, he said that he can’t work or generates any ideas when he has to work in a group. And I actually witness it when he took me to work one day. When brainstorming with a group, he cannot concentrates due to a lot of different ideas, opinions from the co-worker. But after that is over, and he’s back to his cubicle, his creativity just like come back and his assigned task was done with great rating from every co-worker for the new ideas and creativity of the game. Through my uncle experience, introversion has proven to be an essential factor and a crucial ingredient for creativity.

At the same time, introversion and solitude are strongly relate with the need of privacy. Surprisingly, privacy plays a huge part in increasingly productivity. By having privacy, one can feels the comfortable and freedom from distraction that raise their focus, and, therefore increase their productivity. From a rather interesting study known as the Coding War Games, from the work of more than 600 computer programmers at 92 companies, consultants Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister compared among them and they found that from the same companies, the workers performed at roughly the same level with each other. However, between organization, there a huge gap! And just what made that huge gap? It was the privacy, personal workspace and freedom from interruption their company provides (Sixty-two percent of the best performers said their work space was sufficiently private). Through the research on the study, Cain shows us just how essential privacy is to ours creativity and productivity. It’s without a doubt that privacy has a lot of influences on one’s performance. Just like the programmers, our minds need their private time to think, to be more creative. By having the privacy and the comfortable space as needed, one’s productivity will increase dramatically.

But, despite having such important factors, introversion still fall short in the race with group brainstorming of being the thinking trend of the society. Susan Cain also states this situation in “Rise of the New Groupthink”: “Solitude is out of fashion. Most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all. Lone geniuses are out. Collaboration is in.” The question is why? Why group brainstorming got so much credit but introversion won’t? The reasons are that society now sees group working as a good way for people to learn how to work with others, make them feel more comfortable when working with other people, and furthermore, make better decision than the decision that an individual makes. However, various studies actually go against this statement. Studies show that offices with no private work space for workers actually make them uncomfortable, distracted and insecure. They’re also easier to suffer from stress and exhaustion due to people watching everything they do. The studies also show that people who works in easy distracted environment make 50 percent more mistakes and take twice as long to finish it. For those reasons, introversion shows its superior sides over group working. But, for the society to realizes and give more credits for introversion, might take quite a long time.

Through the course of a society that keeps advancing and developing, introversion plays a big role in making all of it comes true. But now, as group working increases, introversion is gradually being left out. If one day introversion is completely gone, there will not only limited the rate of creativeness within the society, but also our youth might never know how helpful introversion is to their creativity. And without the young generation’s creativity, the future ahead will not be bright.

         Work Cited

Cain, Susan. “The Rise of the New Groupthink.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 14 Jan. 2012. Web. 16 Feb. 2017. <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/opinion/sunday/the-rise-of-the-new-groupthink.html?module=ArrowsNav&contentCollection=Opinion&action=keypress®ion=FixedLeft&pgtype=article>.

Maryellen, Weimer, Phd . “Five Things Students Can Learn through Group Work.” Faculty Focus | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning. N.p., 24 Aug. 2016. Web. 16 Feb. 2017. <http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-professor-blog/five-things-students-can-learn-through-group-work/>.

Cook, Gareth. “The Power of Introverts: A Manifesto for Quiet Brilliance.” Scientific American. N.p., 24 Jan. 2012. Web. 16 Feb. 2017. <https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-power-of-introverts/>.

Susan, Cain. “The Rise of the New Groupthink and the Power of Working Alone.” The Rise of the New Groupthink and the Power of Working Alone. Susan Cain, 3 June 2015. Web. 16 Feb. 2017. <https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/rise-new-groupthink-power-working-alone-susan-cain>.