Hacker News Reader

Comment by jonp888 | Hacker News Reader

Everybody seems to be celebrating the opportunity spend more time at home, but I have the opposite view.

I live alone(it seemed like a good idea at the time[pre-corona]). My family lives hundreds of miles away on a different land mass. At the weekends I can meet up with people and do activities, but everything I used to do midweek(e.g. swim training) is now shutdown indefinitely due to Coronavirus.

I am utterly miserable in Home Office. It means from weekend to weekend I have no human contact with anyone except my reflection in the mirror.

I have no idea what to do. If I demand to work from the office just so they I get the chance to occasionally chat to someone, it takes away valuable capacity from people that actually need it.

View on HN

I feel you. I'm going through the same thing. I'm an introvert who recently became extrovert and I can't do 90% of the activities that made me an extrovert.

Here's how I'm coping:

1. Reactivated my introvert side with

   a) Reading more books

   b) Learning to play music

   c) Online singing lessons

   d) Exercising at home: i) Strength ii) Following through Supple Leopard (book)

2. Going outside once a day for a walk. No exceptions.

3. Chill at the emptiest park on the weekend.

4. Going on a hike during on some weekends.

5. Small talk and saying Hi to random people on the street.

6. Cleaning the house

(same profile & problems here)

I started two weeks ago with #2 (a ~10 minutes walk in the morning) and it does seem to have a positive impact (more relaxed while working, less feeling of being "stuck at home").

Concerning #1a I started reading again some books that I already read in the past, but in a different language.

Additionally: cooking. I previouly used to cook just some veeery basic stuff but now I tend to experiment more and raise a little bit the difficulty level (e.g. Tom Kha Gai soup, fish cooked in the owen, etc...) => interesting, and it changes a bit your usual day, and it provides something about which you can talk to other people => nice (but dangerous - always have a plan B available, hehe)

How can someone change from introvert to extrovert. As per my current understanding this kind of thing is a very fundamental personality trait. Not saying it's impossible to change, but curios how to do so.

I never view it as a binary situation. I personally see myself moving along the scale between the two based on situation and my mood. I view myself as mostly introverted but occasionally surprise not only myself but also wife with my extroversion when the conditions are right.

Perhaps the original poster just found the right conditions for their extroversion to blossom.

For me it was mostly a matter of managing my anxiety, once I had a better handle on it I had way more bandwidth for being social and was able to enjoy it and be energized by it.

It's all mindset...I leaned introvert in high school and was locked inside for 1-2 years coding after college, went hard INTJ. 18 months later, after a lot of small changes (moved, added a friend group, got an apartment in the hip part of town, pitched investors, more employees), I was a hard ESFP

It really makes me hurt to be stuck by myself for this long again. There's some net benefits to introversion (more time, mostly), but theyre minimal and don't increase much

Myers-Briggs is a state measurement, not a trait measurement.

Filed under yet another reason why Myers-Briggs sucks.

From my experience introversion is relative to your environment, so if you move or get some new friends maybe that might help.

You can change almost anything about your personality.

As others said, I don't think of it being introvert/extrovert as black-and-white. I think the most effective ways to add qualities of an extrovert were:

1. Ask yourself why do you have to be an extrovert. Several advantages come to mind: More connections, more confidence, better relationships, no stage fear, better small-talk, better dating life etc.

2. Understanding why you don't like being social/going outside. Write about it. Start from the first moment. Is it because of your parents? Did your siblings make fun of you for expressing your emotions/feelings? Is it your classmates in kindergarten/primary/secondary.. etc.

3. Now that you understand the cause, have hobbies that make you an extrovert. Covid examples: Online group lessons, hiking, walking in the park. Post/Pre-covid examples: Social dancing lessons, Meetup.com (weird crowd sometimes but hang in there), group lesson in any topic you're interested in, toastmasters, team sports. Think of something you always wanted to do.

I think another option would be to accept being an introvert and not see it as bad thing that has to be changed.

I don't think it's a bad thing. Although, being an extrovert gives you some privileges you don't normally have when you're an introvert. Same thing applies if you're exclusively extroverted

Thanks for sharing this list, those sound like healthy activities.

Could you share how you're doing those online signing lessons? Is there a specific website, or did you find a personal teacher and get lessons via zoom/Skype? I'd be very interested in hearing about that.

Yes, I started 1-1 lessons with a local teacher about year ago. Now, we're doing it over Skype. Since we already know each other it works well. I feel that real-time feedback is essential for beginners like me.

Thanks for getting back to me on this, I appreciate it.

Do you use a service for online singing lessons? Or just Youtube videos?

I started taking lessons with a local teacher about a year ago. It's the same now but over Skype, even though we live about a mile away from each other lol

I've had to come to work every day during the stay at home order. Everyone tells me how lucky I am that I can "escape" being at home, and in some ways, they are right. My commute and finding parking are a lot easier than they used to be. Still, spending the whole day in an empty building is hard. On a good day, I'll exchange a sentence or two with one other person. The emptiness and silence of this place is difficult to deal with. I don't think it's any easier than working at home in our current situation.

To me it (the sudden acceptance of WFH, not covid-19 obviously) has been the Best Thing Ever. I loathed commuting 60+ minutes to my desk job and wearing noise cancelling headphones so I didn't need to have impromptu 'chats' with lonely people. I loathed that 600 sqft apts in Berkeley were $3000/month. I loathed that remote positions are few and far between, and, now that I'm an employer, the number of workers who are used to working 100% remote were few and far between. I loathed seeing my wife only ~4 waking hours per day. This sudden shift to everybody-wfh has been the greatest vindication of my work- and life-style.

Pools are one of the few things I'll miss, as they are truly communal. Even billionaires generally don't have private 25m+ pools (from what I've gather from those $50M real estate listing videos on youtube).

I wonder if people will start to make co-working collectives? Imagine a number of people in an area such as a small town or an apartment building rent a work space where they work together remotely. They don't work for the same companies but they do the things like in Office Space.. birthday candy, water cooler, bowling league...

To the OP, I feel you! One thing I would say is that you can bet a lot of people are in your boat and people will invent new creative ways to connect.

I'm in a similar situation, while all my family is in Europe I live alone in Bogotá, Colombia which has been in varying degrees of lockdown for 18 weeks and will be for at least another month. So both my usual midweek as well as weekend activities have been impossible for the most part.

What I started doing, is to go for 1-2 hour walks every day. At first just to get some physical activity and change of what I'm looking at all day, but later friends joined for a chat and I had a bunch of dates and work related meetings this way. Although it feels a bit silly in the beginning, it definitely helped a lot with loneliness.

As many already said - get outside as much as possible/safe. Fresh air and exercise do magic.

On the human contact side, getting into massive multiplayer games might be interesting - there are a lot of interactions and cooperative play. Team sense of accomplishment and belonging do develop, which might help a bit with the sense of isolation.

Last but not least, we do video conferencing happy hours and drinks/game time with my team, which also takes the edge off.

Ultimately, this isolation has nothing to do with WFH, but rather with the pandemic.

I think if there’s a positive to be taken from COVID-19 it’s that we have time now for reflection. I think many of us have neglected human connection in our lives and COVID is exposing just how lonely we are. I am sure it’s difficult being alone but it’s also a chance to think about what you value most. A serious question: should we rely on work for a social outlet? Should we instead try to become more a part of the communities where we live rather than where we work?

In my case I had a strong community outside of work: local theatre. Unfortunately that's now dead and likely to be amongst the very last things to return. I've seen a lot of friends since lockdown lifted but it's not the same as the regular rehearsals and annual shows and socials to look forward to.

Could you work at home where your family is? I'm in a similar spot and seriously considering it.

Considering the way you explained your situation, it doesn't sound like you'd be taking away anything from anyone more deserving. You sound like you need that valuable capacity as well.

This isn't really a function of remote work though... it's a function of everything being closed b/c of COVID.

I agree with you. I have friends/family close but we're all honoring quarantine pretty well. I have a lake place I can go to on the weekends but generally speaking I find myself "losing routine" during the week.

I rather enjoyed working from the office, it helped me timebox work and provided a break in between parts of the day.

I have been hitting up friends/co-workers/family members and doing Zoom/Google Meet/Microsoft Teams/Discord hang out sessions. Basically anything I would do with those friends in person we just try to get in online. The game Jackbox party can work over Discord if your people have 2 devices. I also have joined a local online baking club, once a month we cook bread/cakes/treats for each other and take slices and drop them off at people mailboxes the day or two before the online meetup, and then the day of the online meetup we all eat our bread/cakes/treats and just shoot the breeze and compare baked goods.

Its definitely much harder to socialize while under physical distancing conditions, but it is possible, it just takes considerably more effort and imagination to come up with fun things to do.

> If I demand to work from the office just so they I get the chance to occasionally chat to someone, it takes away valuable capacity from people that actually need it.

Isn't that a premature optimization? How do you know that's going to happen?

Same situation for me so I acted quickly and moved across Germany closer to my family and old friends. Idk how the situation is in the US regarding moving and getting a new location going but I think it's still so early that moving makes sense.

Definitely such a big mental improvement, it's crazy

I feel for you, and it shows the current transition is too abrupt.

But I personally don't mind moving forward in society where your default friends or not defacto your colleagues.

Hey man, if you want a friend to talk to, happy to do that!

If you can work from home why not move in with your family? Obviously there are many considerations to take into account... But just a thought.

Make lunch dates with coworkers or friends.

A stationary bike or row machine or an aerobics video is a good home exercise (and can be done on video chat)

Maybe consider a pet :) My dog is awesome and walking him gets me out

I've been wanting to do this but the shelters are all closed indefinitely and I've had bad experiences with Craigslist.

I've settled for meeting my neighbor's pets.

Don't you think you need it? If not you, then who?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com