The Psychology of Engineers: a talk on Introversion/Extroversion and Flow

Dan, thank you for making this. You did a good job of summarizing and relating the three concepts.

I think there were two things that got left out, but the 20 minute time was perfect anyway. First, an emphasis on just how minor a distraction can be to interrupt flow or annoy (some) introverts -- a leaf blower, a ringing phone, staring off into space and having someone else look at you and then try to figure out what you're looking at -- and second, that introverts are more likely to have some understanding of introversion v. extroversion and their needs, while many extroverts are oblivious to the differences.

I've been living in a sort of introvert's hell for a few years now, it's really starting to get to me. I live and work in the same house, along with my girlfriend and another person. I don't have a space that's distinctly mine, and the other person and I run a business together.

I supervise his work on and off throughout the day, juggle email and the occasional phone call and a variety of other distractions, but I also need to be doing work that requires focus -- coding on big projects, or, to use yesterday's example, redesigning our business cards. While trying to do that, a visitor dropped by and discussed Airsoft at length two feet from my right shoulder, another person came and went, we were expecting another visitor (who didn't show until hours later), and my girlfriend needed right at that moment to take pictures of the cat and send them to her friend.

I gave up, ran a few errands, went to bed at 7, got up at midnight, just after everyone else had gone to bed, and got the card design knocked out and a few other things taken care of.

My sleep schedule is all over the place. Half the time I'm getting up late and staying up late -- and tolerating the occasional comment about sleeping in so late -- and the other half I'm going to bed early and getting up early and struggling to get through the day. If I try to code when I'm up late, I'm often already exhausted, and focusing for very long is extremely difficult.

It's rough on my personal life, too; my girlfriend is frustrated that I don't want to go out and do things with her and her friends very often, but the thing is, without any downtime of my own, I'm already in a constant state of social exhaustion. The very last thing I want to do after juggling distractions all day is go out and be social. For her, it would be like having to be cooped up inside, by herself, for a few days, with no outside contact, and then having me come in and suggest a nice quiet evening at home.

So, lately this has turned into this overwhelming desire to just leave and go somewhere -- anywhere -- alone, for a week or more, just so I can get some work done.

All of which is to say that, left untreated, introversion can lead to insanity. :-)

The format of this vid is interesting to me. We've played different media formats for our engineering talks at g33ktalk (audio, video, slides and sometimes screencaps/demos) and it's been somewhat challenging to find the best format. Of course, ultimately it depends heavily on an individual user's prefs. meaning there's no perfect answer.

I find this format compelling since it's relatively short (19 mins) has high quality audio, and the only visuals are the main points represented as motion graphics.

I really like the fact that they mention "ambiverts". So many people think you're one or the other extreme.

Great talk, very interesting. I feel even more introverted now than before I heard this.