As a general rule of thumb, make decisions that go towards extending conversation, rather than shutting it down. Whatever is going on, do the thing that leads to the most action, even if it's not in your control, or anyone's control. Embrace chaos.
For people with Aspberger's or other non-neurotypical issues (and I suspect a lot of "introverts" in our industry are actually just self-conscious Aspies), treating human behavior and motivation as a game-theory kind of exercise can be more productive than a million baffling attempts at conversation. Turning the black box into a white box with known rules helps a great deal when it comes to grasping the inputs and outputs.
Look at it this way... would you tell someone trying to learn to program to skip the books and just practice? Computers are incredibly complex, and there are decades of theory and understanding captured in classic books that can put you ahead of the game. There's a bright line between the learn-by-doing hackers and the engineers who take the time and effort to study the masters of the craft.
Humans are far more complex, subtle, and difficult than computers, and the masterpiece works of human behavior and communication are often centuries old. Study and be better!
Now I am a senior CS student and doing pretty well. I respect science in general.
BTW I am an Asian introvert. I really feel the author. I am going to go read the rest of the comments.
There is a significant difference between the two concepts. Reading a book about programming and practicing programming are two intellectual pastimes. They feed directly into each other and there isn't (usually) an extreme anxiety-inducing aversion to starting practice.
But reading books on relationships, it can be very easy to start to excuse yourself not going out and interacting with people, rationalizing that you still need to learn more, you need to read more. It enables remaining an introvert and making no actual forward progress.
The #1 most important skill is getting past fear. I don't think that can be learned from a book. It takes personal resolve.
[1] or the number of times people talk about Asperger's. It's just not that high of an occurrence of a condition. Not everyone who has social integration issues are on the autism spectrum. Most of the time they're just plain, old, inexperienced.
I'm sensitive to this issue both from a lot of friends and co-workers with Aspie social problems, and from raising an Aspie child who has a very difficult time communicating.