an introvert is someone who recharges their social energy by going off somewhere familiar and likely alone.
An extrovert is someone who recharges by going off to be with lots of people and commotion.
...what i like about these definitions is that neither are anti-social. both can be "the life of the party" or "the quieter ones". ...is more about where your charging cradle is.
Or give me a project I'm interested in, and you won't see me during the weekends for months. I'll be content to go out for a meet or two during the week but any large block of time will be consumed by my hobby.
No matter which extreme I'm in, I need a quiet place and a solitary activity to recharge. When I'm the life of the party, it's quiet week nights alone. When I'm on a project, it's the in the evening on the weekends after working on a project all day.
I have always found people classifications slightly weird thing, not because there is something fundamentally wrong with it, but because of how majority of the people perceives them. We tend to simplify things in our heads, and most of us start to treat these classifications as a final explanation to things (using as a labels), without remembering that when it comes to classifying people (especially their character), classification at its best is nothing more than a guideline and should be treated cautiously.
Well at least this is how I see the world and people around me.
at the extreme end, i once heard someone say "there are two kinds of people in the world : those who say there are two kinds of people and those who don't."
...and then I go clean up the kitchen, because I really, really need to get away from everyone.
At work, it can be similar: A long productive meeting, lots of good stuff accomplished (planning, design, what-have-you) and BAM! my buffers are full, I need to get away, recharge my batteries and drain those buffers. Many others want to keep going, I want to be away from the world.
For at least a few minutes.
(1) Yes, "inappropriately" is subjective, and yes, mistakes are made - but fewer mistakes are made than gatherings enlivened - and memories are always made!
No thanks. I'd rather be sitting in my hotel room in my underwear eating room service and reading my Kindle.
For example, some of my coworkers think I'm an extrovert because I can be super social/engaged/draw other people out of their shell/etc, but they don't see when I get off work I go home and disappear from the world to recharge from all that.