Transcript by Sean Jackson Full transcript: Aidan: What are we going to be talking about today Damiano? Damiano: Today we address a question coming from Benny from Berlin. Hey Benny, thank you for the question. It's about introvert versus extrovert, especially in the workplace. Aidan: You make it sound like this is going to be some blockbuster movie, where it's the biggest stars introvert fighting extrovert. Damiano: A wrestling match between them, absolutely. This is the ultimate showdown, because if there are other introverts in the core, they know how it feels, they know why we have to talk about this today and I'm going to come clean first. I'm an introvert, big time introvert. Aidan, are you an introvert or an extrovert? Aidan: Oh, that's a very exciting question there. You know how I love to bring my games into this podcast. I don't want it to be a one-way conversation. Damiano: Cliffhanger. Aidan: Yeah Nah, I'm going to give the listener at home a couple of seconds to guess before I reveal later on in the episode, I'm going to leave a cliffhanger now. Today we wanted to talk a bit about some of the assumptions and stereotypes around introverts and extroverts. I won't leave you hanging for any longer, because I'm actually an introvert. People never guess that anytime I say, "Oh yeah, I was always feeling really anxious that I didn't know." "But you talk all the time. You give presentations, you do a podcast." Damiano: All the time, right? I think that the answer that I get also all the time they're like, "I can't believe you're possibly an introvert." I'm like, "I promise you, I'm an introvert." What I find incredible is that I think 99% of the people that I'm talking with, there seems to be an association with being introvert equals being shy, being extrovert equals being outgoing and always being in the spotlight. Aidan: Yeah. Confident or a great presenter. There are a lot of stereotypes attached to it. Damiano: Exactly. But that's technically not really true, isn't it? Aidan: Yeah. It's not quite that simple unfortunately. That's why we have different words for shy and introverted, that they're not just synonyms by their very definition. Damiano: The way we can think about this, at least that's how I approached it, is really thinking about how do we use or recharge our energy. I'm really thinking of a battery of sorts, when I talk about being an introvert or being an extrovert. It's a bit of a crude metaphor, but if you indulge me I think it could make sense. Aidan: Indulged, please. Damiano: Please. Aidan: That was not a sentence there, you have been indulged, please go. Damiano: I think being an introvert to me means that when I interact with people, when I'm going to this social space, I use my energy, so my energy gets depleted. When I'm on my own in my own time, doing my own things, which could be anything, reading a book, playing video games, watching a movie, my things, I recharge my energy. While extroverts are exactly the flip side of this. When they are on their own, when they're alone, actually their energy goes down and they need social interaction to recharge their batteries. I think this is maybe a simplified way, but to me resounds with how I feel. Does it resound to you Aidan? Aidan: Yeah, absolutely. Throughout the whole thing I was trying to get rid of the image of when you're playing the Sims and you've got the bars for, you need to eat food, you need to get sleep. For some people it's, "I need this social connection with others and that gives me energy for others." It's like, "This bar is going the other way around." Obviously it's never a binary thing. It's not a case of, if I talk to one person today, I'll be really tired and drained and panicky and everything, that's not the case. Our brains don't work in binary manners like that. I can still have very lovely conversations with close friends, it doesn't mean I don't enjoy having conversations. I enjoy going to parties, but it's on that higher level. At the end of the day, I am very happy to sit and play Minecraft for 20 hours straight. I will happily do so many things which don't involve people, for others they're like, "Okay, now I need to go and see a pal. I need to do this," that's okay. That's the way we are all unique. Damiano: Absolutely. I think the beauty of imagining this bar, like you were saying for the Sims, or like a battery, is that I think it changes the perspective on how we understand our energy first, so internally, and then also understanding how we interact with other people. For example, I know that being an introvert I do need to recharge if I spend too much time in meetings at work, for example. I wouldn't know that I prefer in general to have a block of work, like work time for myself in the middle of the day, because it allows me to buffer between the meetings in the morning and the meetings in the afternoon. This is something that I come to understand by simply acknowledging really that my energy level would fluctuate during the day, or the fact that if I have a long day of meetings, I do know that once I close the computer off, I need my hour walk outside by myself, not with friends, not with family, nobody, it's just me because I need to recharge that battery first. Does it happen to you as well during the day? Aidan: Yes, a hundred percent. This is where people, everyone, some of the team, they're assuming I'm extrovert. I can say that I am now okay at talking now, I didn’t used to be. Sometimes people say I'm too good at talking and talk too much. Not always quantity, it's quality. This is something I find interesting, I can happily give a presentation and I enjoy doing that. I enjoy the adrenaline, the thinking on the spot, that's all great. I was chatting to my life coach last night about this exact thing. It's something I've been working on for a while, but we were talking about goals and possible goals. My impossible goal for this year was to deliver a TED Talk, obviously impossible is in the name. But it's something to work towards little by little. If you fail that goal, you've still made progress and that's great. But I was saying that actually now I think about it, if someone gave me the choice right now between delivering a Ted Talk tomorrow or going to a networking event on my own, that kind of thing where you've been invited to a party and your friend goes, "Hey, how's it going? Oh yeah, come on in. Oh, by the way, I've got to go and do this." Damiano: And they disappear. Aidan: Yeah. And you're alone and your brain immediately goes into, "You're alone. Everyone's looking at you." I'd rather give a Ted Talk. That's how much I'm naturally afraid or resist wanting to have those open vulnerable conversations where you don't know anything. That's where I'm at in terms of introversion, how about you? Damiano: A hundred percent. I think this is a perfect example actually, of the difference between being maybe shy in a public situation versus the level of energy. Because you're on Ted Talk, it's virtually like being on stage a little bit, where you are on your own, you don't necessarily need to interact with other people, but it's also like a performance, very powerful example. Interestingly enough, I don't know if you remember when was the first time you started to really think about you as an introvert? Because I do have these memories and I think it was really when I moved from Italy to Ireland. That was after a couple of years of doing musicals in Italy, where I was performing on stage and then it started to work and a lot of people were telling me, "Oh, well, you're good at talking with people and when you present stuff." And I was like, "That doesn't sound like me at all. What are you talking about? No, I feel really weird all the time." I don't remember exactly when, but there has been a switch where I understood that energy metaphor that we were doing earlier. Did you have a switch moment as well? How did it happen? Aidan: I did. I don't know if it was an overnight thing. I grew up in a village where there weren't really many people my age. We went to primary school and it was quite a small primary school, so small that when we got to the final year of that primary school, I was the only person in my year. I was the only year 6, which is quite interesting. I did stuff with year 5s, but they were all smart so that was fine. I went from that, a school of 45, 50 people, Seventh Day Adventist Christian school. It's very lovely and chilly that I have fun friends, this is great. And I was like, "Yay. This is fine, a uniform." I went from that to a school with about a thousand boys, it was an all boys school. Damiano: Wow. Lots of fun, I guess. Aidan: Yeah. Of course I was the only person coming from my year, so I knew no one. There was no one else that I knew in the village who was going there. That was like a networking/party dialed up to the max. Damiano: Squared, yes. Aidan: Yeah. I struggled then, it got better near the end, but I wouldn't say I enjoyed that. Damiano: Was it a boarding school or did you have to commute every day? Aidan: Not boarding. No. I got a bus in every day, which is nice. Eventually, I did get chatting to the people on that, but before it was, get on bus, headphones on my with iPod classic, oh, I remember that, on the bus go there, go to school. It's my two or three friends there, rinse and repeat for about three or four years. Generally it's not a smart idea to completely segregate one half of the population from... Separating anything or segregating by gender doesn't make sense because that's not how the real world is. Damiano: Society works. Aidan: Yeah. Toxic masculinity is a thing in its own right. It's only turned up to 11 in that situation. Lots of trauma and therapy stuff to get over there, but then went to uni, studied computer science. That was around the moment I was like, "Huh, I just want to go home and play Pokemon." Damiano: Right. Did you find
