How to be Successful as an Introvert

this video is sponsored by 365 data science hey friends how's it going welcome back to another video today I would like to share with you some of the most uncomfortable in troverted situations that I have had in my life well these people here too many people on this Earth we need a new plague number one I spent an embarrassing amount of time hiding in the bathroom so I did this pretty much like whenever I felt really uncomfortable or awkward when I don't know anyone so in school a lot during lunch uh social events House parties before and after interviews number two when they were social Gatherings and especially House parties um you know the ones that you go to in college for whatever reason there were times in which I had to go to the house parties I would just be very uncomfortable the entire time and I would be like sitting there by myself we're kind of like standing in the corner it's like simultaneously wanting to be part of like the social group but at the same time wanting to leave too let's throw a party that'll cheer you up no it won't it'll cheer you up I'll Stand in the corner by myself number three I want to die at all forms of orientations like School orientations College orientations what usually happens is that there would be like small clumps of people that form right and then I would kind of like try to get into a group but then I would stand like half in half out just like super awkwardly and like thinking that probably I should say something um yeah I could go on and on let me know in the comments below um what would be the most uncomfortable introverted behavior that you have experienced and still remember to this day I spent a lot of time as a young Tina trying to learn how to be more extroverted like how to make conversation how to establish trust like body language eye contact and in work situations how to network how to get presentations how to like get promoted I feel like over time especially now I'm able to behave in a fashion that is relatively extroverted at least outwardly so I think I did these things because I kind of intuitively knew that being extroverted from society's point of view at least would make me more like to be liked to be successful to be happy whatever that means and after doing more research with this video I learned that this intuition is somewhat true to some extent at least but I also learned that depending on the context that you put yourself into being introverted can also be a huge Advantage hello Boop but before I get way ahead of myself let's actually start off by defining things so the trait of introversion to extroversion was first popularized by psychologist Carl Young and its essential dimension of most personality theories and personality models so the definition of extroversion is the act state or habit of being predominantly concerned with and obtaining gratification for what is outside the self extroverted people tend to be energized when around people and they're more prone to boredom when they're by themselves now introversion is the state of a tendency towards being holy or predominantly concerned with and interested in one's own mental life introverts are people whose energy tends to expand through reflection and window through interactions a key thing to note here is that introversion is not necessarily equal to being shy you can have quiet and shy or extroverts but they just kind of like being around people and you can also have very loud introverts I hate doing things and going anywhere oh a new experiences suck but for a pretty long time I was not really super convinced about the distinction between introversion extroversion because I think people do tend to flip-flop and it's pretty context dependent but after more research I do think there actually is some pretty solid evidence distinguishing between people who are more introverted and extroverted that goes beyond just Behavior so in this video I'm going to talk about how there actually is a physiological difference between introverts and extroverts so I know that happiness and success comes in a variety of different forms but in this video I'm going to focus mostly in a workplace setting career-wise I'll also talk about when it is that you should behave more extroverted and some tips on how to do that and be successful in networking promotions things like that

foreign why do people want to be extroverted is there actually an advantage of being extroverted extroversion is clearly correlated with monetary success research shows that childhood extroversion can predict adult success and moving from the bottom fifth of popularity in a class to the top fifth corresponded with a 10 increase in income also the higher up the latter you go the proportion of extroverts tend to increase from around 16 percent of the general population that is considered very extroverted to almost 60 percent of very extroverted people who are Executives it seems like you don't actually need to know more to be a leader if you speak more and you speak often people actually perceive you as being more of a leader and also that you're more intelligent and you're more knowledgeable even if you're not only that extrovers are also luckier because by exposing yourself to more people you have more opportunities to take advantage of there's also a strong correlation between extroversion and happiness that has been replicated many times if you're a more introverted kid um Society like your parents your teachers generally kind of like tell you to be more outgoing and things like that right and I just think like introverted people tend to be less socially accepted and humans in general do have this desire and a need to fit in and be accepted for who they are so no wonder people want to be extroverted extroverts earn more income they get promoted more often they're luckier and they're happier so it is all doom for us introverts what well that doesn't sound good okay no just kidding so if you are introverted don't worry it's not all doom this is a classic example of being deceived by averages in which we try to extrapolate information and generalize just based upon averages there's a lot of behavior studies that try to distinguish between introvers and extroverts but I actually think the most useful and interesting study is from a physiological perspective there is this researcher called Jerome Kagan and he used to be a Harvard researcher studying the biological origins of introversion and extroversion he did a longitudinal long-term study starting in 1989 which is still going on in which he got 500 four month old infants and did a laboratory exam lasting for 45 minutes and he has a hypothesis that just those 45 minutes with four month old infants he will be able to predict who will become an introvert and extrovert so what did he do for this 45 minute evaluation well he exposed these four-month-old infants to a variety of different stimuli for example he showed these infants voices that were recorded balloons popping colorful things and different smells like cotton swabs and alcohol and he found a huge variety of responses 20 of these infants cried and pumped their limbs around a lot and he called this group High reactives 40 of the infants were pretty Placid and quiet and didn't really like pump their arms and he called these infants low reactives and there was 40 of babies that were kind of just like in the middle so this is pretty interesting because he thinks that the loud babies will turn into more introverted and quiet teenagers so in order to evaluate this he got the babies that come back when they were two years old four years old seven years old and 11 years old when they were two years old he would expose them to other stimuli such as a lady in a gas mask which sounds terrifying as well as a man dressed as a clown which is also it sounds terrifying as well as radio controlled robots and when they were seven they were told to play with kids that they never met when they were 11 they were given an interview by an unfamiliar adult they touched on observations such as body language how much they smiled as well as interviewed their parents about like how they socialize how many friends they have if they were Risk Takers if they were shy or bold and his hypothesis turned out to be supported a lot of the high reactive infants did end up turning out to be introverted while the low reactive infants turned out to be extroverted physiologically Kagan also found that the high reactive infants that turned out to be more introverted had more physiological arousal which is the mechanism that triggers the fight-or-flight response so there would be an increase in heart rate changes in blood pressure pupil dilation things like that introverts tend to be more reactive to stimulation while extrovers on the other hand have a higher threshold for stimulation and this is kind of like an aha moment for me it kind of explains why in a room full of people that I don't know for example I would feel overwhelmed and then my fight or flight responses will kind of start acting up and it's just generally really exhausting and that's because I probably have a lower threshold for stimulation there obviously is a lot of other environmental factors but there really is a genetic component to how introverted or extroverted you are this was around 40 to 50 percent genetic so even if you're just like I'm gonna become extraded now Ted I'm gonna teach a teacher that's probably not gonna you know work out that well for you but that is not necessarily a bad thing there was a study done at the Newman lab in which participants would play a game in which they would earn points to trade in for money this is how the game works you have 12 numbers and then you are asked to press a button whenever a good number pops up on screen and not press the button when a bad number pops up on screen so if you press the button on a good number you would earn points and if you press a button on the bad numbers you would lose points these 12 numbers some of them were good bad and in order to determine if they're good or bad numbers you have to figure that out through trial and error from playing this game researchers found two interesting things extroverts were more impulsive and they tended to act faster in pressing that button with less accuracy and even more interesting when app servers press the button on a bad number they would actually react by going even faster in the next rounds on the other hand if an introvert presses their button on a bad number they will generally slow down the reason for this is that extroverts tend to be more reward driven so if they lose they want to like quickly regain that and start winning again while for introverts they tend to withdraw and kind of think more carefully to solve the problem along with this study it seems that in general introverts and extroverts are not different in terms of intelligence as measured by IQ tests but extroverts tend to be more reward driven and they're better at making Fast decisions but it's opposite for the introverts they are at

their best when they're thinking about complex problems where you really need to think through things and persevere so actually if you want to simplify things to one sentence extroverts go wide and introverts go deep so now we know that defining traits and what introverts and extroverts are generally good at like we can't generalize everything you can now choose your context and your situation to take advantage of these traits one of my favorite quotes is from Alan de bottom in which he says that the difference between children and adults is that adults have this ability to change their circumstances so if you're introverted you can choose a career and a job within that career that matches your physiology as well as your strengths generally these careers these jobs are more like intellectual in nature for example writers Engineers scientists things like that so Within These careers you also want to really lean into your introverted traits the strengths that you have for example a lot of top musicians as well as athletes are actually introverted even in team sports like Michael Jordan for example given that flexibility of having more time in which she can be alone he was able to really drill down and just concentrate on improving his skill sets of shooting hoops and he would do this for hours and hours kind of like painstakingly figuring out like what are the things that he can improve on and then trying to improve on those things so in addition to really taking into account your stimulation threshold and choosing the right context and environment and career that is able to allow you to control that amount of stimulation for us normal folks here are some practical ways to take advantage of your introverted traits so first off if you're in a job in a company that you just feel very uncomfortable being in because they don't value your traits just know that it's not your problem like you have to like fix these problems I'm not happy Bob not happy you can go to companies and teams out there that will value these trades of persistent ability to solve complex problems for example when I was working at meta I had a friend who was a software engineer he was on a growth team which is a team that involved a lot of talking to people it's like a very reactive role and he was just not happy there he felt like he was stressed all the time there's just too much stimulation that's going on and he wasn't able to use his advantages so he switched to a team that was more on back-end infrastructure and he is thriving in that situation because that job even though he's still a software engineer it gave him that correct context in order to use his strengths so instead of just trying to fix yourself you can change the environment around you another big tip is that with remote work being so prevalent now really take advantage of this I think remote work can be really good for introverts because it allows you to have so much more control over the stimulation around you the environment and also set like when your times are so another really interesting thing I think um is the amount of extraversion it actually depends on the culture and the country that you're from like for example the US is a very extroverted society as opposed to some like Asian cultures like Chinese culture for example in which introversion is actually a lot more priced so I'm not going to tell you to like move your country or something like that um but it could be something that you consider where if you're doing remote work it could be that you're working with a company or a team in which they are at a place where introversion is more prized the bottom line here is that instead of just trying to force yourself to fit into a job or a mold and thinking that there's a deficiency uh know that there are traits of introversion that are extremely valuable extremely prized and you need to correctly set your contacts to take advantage of your trades there are situations in which it's also really important very advantageous to behave in an extroverted fashion like with a lot of different workplaces in order to be like successful and get noticed you do need to do networking have like mentorship and like advocate for yourself things like that so these things are very important but the caveat here this is a very important caveat is that pretending to be extroverted should be something that is done sparingly like it shouldn't be part of your day-to-day job and it should only be done for something that you value a lot in the book quiet the author brings up a very interesting point she says that a lot of introverts are generally in a uncomfortable State uh when they're growing up so they're almost like accept that the world is such the case and they need to deal with this discomfort and when they're adults they just accept the job in which they don't feel comfortable and they're not really taking advantage of their own traits because they think that it just has to be that way which probably would make you feel very burnt out okay so now let's talk about which of these typically extroverted skills are important for you to develop and how you can actually adopt it to suit your Tendencies number one is presenting

information in most companies now there's a lot of ways in order to communicate and present information so as an introvert you should take advantage of this if you feel like it's harder for your voice to be heard in a meeting what you can do is that you can put together a presentation for example you can write an email of the points that you want to discuss and send it to people in that way you don't need to be the loudest in order to be recognized but if there's one thing that I highly recommend to people especially more introverted people in technical positions is that you should learn to give good presentations which is a skill that is a hundred percent that you can learn and I know this because I learned it most people in techno fields are absolutely atrocious at presentation and the best way to start is to hit start and up comes the toolbar so if you're a technical person and you can make good presentations that makes you really stand out like you don't have to be absolutely the best you just have to be better than the people around you okay let's not talk about networking the

definition of networking is the action or process of interacting with others to exchange information and develop professional or social contacts I really hate that word networking and the definition just makes me like I really don't like that as well because it kind of conjures up this image for me in which you approach someone you're like Hello nice to meet you let us now exchange information and develop a professional contact you don't actually have to network so hard and try to meet all these people individually um because say like if you just network with some people like the correct people who are very extroverted and very sociable in some ways like the people that they know also become a contact that you can know as well for example I don't really like talking to people like just new people so I became friends with Kenji Ken is a very extroverted person he has a lot of contacts friends so because I'm very good friends with Ken he can introduce me to people work smarter not harder another thing is if you just put work out there you will find that oftentimes people will come to you like when I started posting YouTube videos and I started getting more attraction on that I don't really need to reach out to people anymore they started reaching out to me because they're interested in talking to me now let's talk about mentorship and

promotion what can be even stronger than just self-advocation is someone who's higher up than you or like a mentor who is able to advocate for you don't need to have a bunch of different mentors just like one or two that really you know you have a really close tie with and will advocate for you please don't just go up to people and be like can you be my mentor like I get so many emails from people doing that and I'm just like no like I don't even know who you are people generally just talk talk that's not your strength probably so you should start doing stuff and if you actually do stuff and show that interest then they will be more interested in mentoring you especially if you can make someone look good then they will in turn want to help you as well the biggest takeaway that I hope you get from this video is that introversion versus extroversion is real like there is a difference to some extent and instead of thinking there's something wrong with you and trying to make yourself into more extroverted try to change the context around you to take advantage of the traits that you have and finally there's a lot more ways of doing things than you may initially think in a specific situation don't pit your own weaknesses against someone else's strengths whether you're introverted or extroverted data science can be a really good career for you because there's just so much diversity into what the role can look like since data science jobs can range in terms of how technical it is if you choose something that's more technical that usually allows you to have more freedom to control like the stimulation around you so if you want to learn data science today's sponsor can help you do that 365 data science is an online learning platform where you can learn about Data Business and of course data science I've partnered with them last year to develop my SQL for Tech and data science interviews course that goes through my five-step framework about how to approach an interview as well as 10 realistic mock interviews with real interview questions and interview style in addition to this course 365 data science has a catalog of different data science courses for example coding machine learning how to get a job in data science you can choose both individual courses or go down a defined career track and certificate programs that is especially helpful if you're first starting out into your career or trying to transition into data science they want you to succeed in landing a job unlike a lot of other online courses where they're just trying to sell you as many courses as possible for example with 365 data science has resume builders and once you're qualified and passed the certificates and the test they will put you into a pool of candidates if you choose so in which 365 data science will connect you with companies and they can interview you directly so if you're interested in my SQL course the link is in the description also in the description there's a link for 57 off their complete data science training which is a very good deal alright that is all I have for you today thank you guys so much for watching let me know in the comments if there's anything like surprising about this is there anything that you think you will change now that you learn more about introversion extroversion in I will see you guys in the next video we're live stream