Quiet

This book was equal parts frustrating and insightful. I think really it is just showing its age a bit.

There's a very americentric (really, I mean corporate American) focus in both the content and the writing style. It felt a bit of an affirmation to encourage introverts, rather than heavily science or evidence based.

It's a bit sad in a way that schools focus on preparing people to be "successful" in modern work, with its open plan offices, brainstorming sessions, and tolerant communication styles. Some kids don't flourish in group learning environments, and while I didn't mind the odd group activity I think I would have struggled if group learning was the default at school.

There's so much to psychology and personality of which your position on the introvert-extravert spectrum is just one part. Like all words-which-conceal-complexity such as autistic, adhd, depressed, anxious, etc the concepts are misused and ill-defined these days in my view.

Credit to the book it does go to significant lengths to distinguish introversion from shyness and anxiety. I was hoping the book would give more detailed insight as to why certain relationships tend to recharge rather than drain.

Worth a read maybe, as an introduction to the matter, and to help us understand each other a little bit more. For example, it does a decent job of covering why extraverts thrive so differently, and provides some anecdotes of family members that adapt to each other, and how you might cope if your child happens to be very different to you.

Un excellent livre, très bien sourcé et documenté, sur l’introversion.

Susan Cain y explique comment l’idéal extraverti a été mis en valeur depuis le début du XXe siècle, au moins dans le monde occidental, et comment cette valorisation d’un idéal qui ne leur ressemble pas impacte la vie et la santé mentale des introvertis.

L’autrice mêle habilement des éléments tirés de recherches plus ou moins récentes en psychologie et des histoires de vie d’introverties qu’elle a rencontrés dans le cadre de ses recherches sur le sujet.

Susan Cain ne se contente pas de dresser un constat et de décrire les traits de personnalité et le fonctionnement des introvertis, elle propose également des clefs pour mieux vivre son introversion. Elle le fait avec des exemples concrets, ce qui est appréciable.

J’ai beaucoup aimé ce livre, parce que je me suis évidemment reconnu dans ce portrait de l’introverti minoritaire dans une société qui valorise l’idéal extraverti. J’aurais sans doute aimé le lire il y a bien longtemps, pour m’aider à accepter ce trait de caractère et mieux vivre avec. Ce livre me semble en tout cas un bon moyen de déculpabiliser celles et ceux qui ne se reconnaissent pas dans l’idéal extraverti mis en avant dans notre société occidentale.

It's as is extroverts are seeing "what is" while their introverted peers are asking "what if".

I know I'm an introvert. I understand how I handle situations and how I prefer to spend my free time. Still, Quiet proved incredibly insightful and allowed me to appreciate the nuances that come with introversion.

Must we learn to stage-manage our voices, gestures, and body language until we can tell - sell - any story we want?

The book is not a self help but more of a self reflection. There were techniques or theories mentioned in the book that I practiced only through trial and error. If I had this powerful insight to how I operated in my 20's I would have been better for it. Awkward encounters or stressful situations could have been mitigated once I knew why I felt that way.

I had similar experiences that Susan Cain described for those shy and quiet kids. Having my personality, behavior and motivations explained so thoroughly felt a little like a personal attack. "How dare you Susan? You don't know me!" but she does and you could say she knows me better than I do.

He prefers to contribute only when he believes he has something insightful to add, or honest-to-God disagrees with someone.

There it is. This one sentence defines who I am. I have spent the majority of my life reconciling why I prefer to be quiet and pick opportunities to speak but Susan Cain cut straight to my core and has laid my soul to bare. While the book operated as a checklist for who I am it would be balanced with ways of managing those traits in a professional or personal situation.

How did we go from Character to Personality without realizing that we had sacrifices something meaningful along the way?

Even though I was enjoying the book I considered abandoning it multiple times. The material was, at times, borderline dry but also fascinating. The amount of effort Susan Cain put in to research was impressive.

The theme of each chapter was precise, the case studies, history and interviewees helped provide immense support. With each chapter offering a deep dive on a particular figure, event or significant movement and explores how introverts triggered that action, reacted to it or were influenced by it. This did lead to some topics being more engaging than others, but they all helped drive Cain's point about the power of introverts.

I tend to think there are many misconceptions around introverts; we live in a world that seems to praise extroverts. Susan Cain tries to help people understand the importance of introverts and why we need a balance between the two personality traits. Susan is an introvert herself and found her job as a lawyer expected an extroverted personality. However embracing her introversion, she was able to prove herself a valuable employer and lawyer; so much so that she went on to become a negotiations consultant.

Quiet is a book that seeks out to explain the need for introverts, while also looking at the history between these two personality types. I myself am extremely introverted and my Myers–Briggs Type Indicator is INTJ (this can change over time but I will not go into that at the moment). I found it useful to understand the history in how society deals with introverts; some of which still feels very relevant today. I remember reading sections focusing on the 1950s and 60s, thinking this happened to me and is still happening in today’s society. This leaves me to think that people do not have an understanding on the personalities and how to manage introverts.

Susan Cain goes into a lot of detail with suggestions on how to fit into such an extroverted world, from developing a pseudo-extroverted personality to finding a quiet place to work. Obviously it does depend on your different situations but I think there were some interesting ideas to implement. She also goes into the problems with open offices and productivity levels as well as the extroverted nature of church. I was surprised by just how much this book covered.

I really enjoyed Quiet and feel like I learnt a lot, however it just makes me want to learn more, especially about the history (it is a vicious cycle). I want to give this book to my parents because I think they might actually benefit in learning about the topic. In fact I want to give this book to everyone, I feel like it is an important topic and we need to know that people are different and need to be treated differently. This is another book to fulfil my passion for learning about psychology and I would happily take some recommendations based on this book.

This book originally appeared on my blog; www.knowledgelost.org/book-reviews/genre/non-fiction/quiet-by-susan-cain/