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Solitude is out of fashion. Our companies, our schools and our culture are in thrall to an idea I call the New Groupthink, which holds that creativity and achievement come from an oddly gregarious place.

Susan Cain

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Susan Cain
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: March 20
Lawyer
Non-Fiction Writer
Writer
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Oddly
Call
Holds
Idea
Schools
Culture
Companies
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Solitude
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Thrall
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Gregarious

More quotes by Susan Cain

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Introversion - along with its cousins sensitivity, seriousness, and shyness - is now a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology.
Susan Cain
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...if you can think of meetings you've attended, you can probably recall a time - plenty of times - when the opinion of the most dynamic or talkative person prevailed to the detriment of all.
Susan Cain
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We know from myths and fairy tales that there are many different kinds of powers in this world. One child is given a light saber, another a wizard's education. The trick is not to amass all the different kinds of power, but to use well the kind you've been granted.
Susan Cain
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In most job interviews, people say they are looking for people skills and emotional intelligence. That's reasonable, but the question is, how do you define what that looks like?
Susan Cain
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The purpose of school should be to prepare kids for the rest of their lives, but too often what kids need to be prepared for is surviving the school day itself.
Susan Cain
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Another study, of 38,000 knowledge workers across different sectors, found that the simple act of being interrupted is one of the biggest barriers to productivity. Even multitasking, that prized feat of modern-day office warriors, turns out to be a myth.
Susan Cain
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Introverts are offered keys to private gardens full of riches. To possess such a key is to tumble like Alice down her rabbit hole. She didn't choose to go to Wonderland - but she made of it an adventure that was fresh and fantastic and very much her own.
Susan Cain
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What if you love knowledge for its own sake, not necessarily as a blueprint to action? What if you wish there were more, not fewer reflective types in the world?
Susan Cain
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But when the group is literally capable of changing our perceptions, and when to stand alone is to activate primitive, powerful, and unconscious feelings of rejection, then the health of these institutions seems far more vulnerable than we think.
Susan Cain
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Shyness is inherently uncomfortable introversion is not. The traits do overlap, though psychologists debate to what degree.
Susan Cain
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Though shyness per se was unacceptable, reserve was a mark of good breeding.
Susan Cain
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...remember the dangers of the New Groupthink. If it's creativity you're after, ask your employees to solve problems alone before sharing their ideas. If you want the wisdom of the crowd, gather it electronically, or in writing, and make sure people can't see each other's ideas until everyone has had a chance to contribute.
Susan Cain
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[Introverts,] the world needs you and it needs the things you carry. So I wish you the best of all possible journeys and the courage to speak softly.
Susan Cain
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There is no one more courageous than the person who speaks with the courage of his convictions.
Susan Cain
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The pressure to entertain, to sell ourselves, and never to be visibly anxious keeps ratcheting up.
Susan Cain
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Introverts living under the Extroversion Ideal are like women in a man's world, discounted because of a trait that goes to the core of who they are.
Susan Cain
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What looks like multitasking is really switching back and forth between multiple tasks, which reduces productivity and increases mistakes by up to 50 percent.
Susan Cain
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College students who tend to study alone learn more over time than those who work in groups.
Susan Cain
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Scores of studies have shown that venting doesn't soothe anger it fuels it.
Susan Cain
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The glory of the disposition that stops to consider stimuli rather than rushing to engage with them is its long association with intellectual and artistic achievement. Neither E=mc2 nor Paradise Lost was dashed off by a party animal.
Susan Cain