Image by Mikhail Nilov from Pexels
For both introverts and extroverts who collaborate
“You can’t ask a teacher for help unless everyone in your group has the same question.”
The above is a sign that Susan Cain had noticed when walking into a 4th grade classroom. What does it mean? Pretty much that “you need to speak to others before coming to a decision”.
While you might remember learning in a classroom with other kids to be fun for making friends, it might not be the best when it comes to actually learning.
Think, when coming up with ideas for your next blog, social media post, or a task for your job, did you come up with more ideas when brainstorming with others or when alone?
In Susan Cain’s book Quiet, it turns out that there are studies showing that those brainstorming alone, “produced more ideas… than when they worked as a group.”
How’s that?
Well, when the people in the study were tasked to give ideas on what “benefits or difficulties would arise from being born with an extra thumb” and rated those ideas on a probability scale from 1–4, despite the researchers thoughts that those introverted “would profit from group work”, the quality of the ideas they came up with were just better when done either alone, or with very small groups (like 2–4 people).
Focus is key
Do you have moments when you’re locked in on a project, the world around you seems blurred, and the only thoughts you have is on whatever you’re doing?
Well, the more focused you are, the better the ideas will come. Even though this concept seems simple, teachers in classrooms, professors at Harvard, and even employers think that brainstorming with others is necessary to do your best work. In fact, it was Alex Osborne who came up with this in 1938, by saying how coming up with lots of wild ideas in a group of non-judgemental peers would accomplish much more than ideas brainstormed when working alone.
What Osborne didn’t think, though, was how the quality of ideas would suffer when focusing on coming up with as many ideas as possible when talking with peers.
As you may have heard the saying,
“Quality not quantity”.
Our focus on better ideas, not more, is actually the key.
Even extroverts can benefit
People can be naturally talkative or quiet, and there’s no shame in that!
Whether you’re good at collaborative work or not, everyone can benefit from solitude. But if you do find yourself struggling to stay silent, just think of focus as a muscle that needs to be trained.
Takeaway
While there’s plenty more to say about this topic and why it’s important to take time to be alone, I decided to keep this article short.
I highly recommend reading up on Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking by Susan Cain to see her thoroughly researched points on this topic.
I’m getting back into writing and am happy to take the time alone to focus. Tell me any thoughts and experiences you’ve had in the comments!