I hope everyone's New Year started out wonderful. Mine was. I'm not going to talk about what I did on New Year's, but rather a book that should definitely be on your list to read for the New Year. It wasn't published this year or in 2016, but it's an amazing read. The book focuses on those who identify themselves as introverts. I would identify myself as one and couldn't be any more proud of that because of this book.
The book was written by Susan Cain, a lawyer who identifies herself as an introvert. She has given a TED talk about her story and also released another book after the one I'm about to describe to you. she also started the "Quiet Revolution" which you can check the link below. The link to her TED talk is also on here.
http://www.quietrev.com/author/susan-cain/
https://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_...
Susan Cain's book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, discusses our society favoring the "extrovert" ideal and treating introverts as a second class-citizen and undervaluing them. She produces numerous research on extroverts and introverts and also describes each personality and their respective traits and what each personality has strengths and weaknesses in. Cain expresses throughout the book some solutions to integrate methods into our schools and workplaces that would allow introverts to work their own way and at the same time be able to work with extroverts.
An example of a school favoring extroverted ideals is when she mentions a school she visited that has the desks in a circle instead of all facing the teacher. She explains that this setup encourages groupwork, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it can kill creativity within an individual.
Susan Cain also mentions famous introverts like Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple), Charles Darwin, Eleanor Roosevelt and Rosa Parks to get her point across. She tells the story of how Steve Wozniak created the ideas for apple when he was alone, but would still attend meetings of the latest technology while in college. The bottom line is that Cain would suggest that teachers and schools allow for introverts to work on their own and allow extroverts to work on their own, because in the real world, you're not always going to be in groupwork.
I personally have a love/hate relationship with groupwork; it's fine with me , but if someone in the group doesn't do their job, then that's when I get annoyed and creativity does get "killed" or there is a lack thereof.
The whole point of this is that not only is this a book for everyone to read, it's also an opportunity to get to understand yourself in the new year. Firstly, I want to thank Susan Cain for writing this book. There were multiple times where I stopped to think and almost immediately put myself in those situations she mentions about what an introvert is like and does and I go, "yeah that's me".
Secondly and finally, if you're sitting around in your house while a snowstorm is outside, like I am writing this article, this book would be a great choice to read. It's a story, but not just about other people. It could be a story about yourself.
