Susan Cain is the author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, and Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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EPISODE LINKS:
Susan's Twitter: https://twitter.com/susancain
Susan's Instagram: https://instagram.com/susancainauthor
Susan's Website: https://susancain.net
Bittersweet (book): https://amzn.to/3xE0LWt
Quiet (book): https://amzn.to/3QvpOmb

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Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8
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Full episodes playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4
Clips playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOeciFP3CBCIEElOJeitOr41

OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
0:51 - Introverts
18:51 - Small talk
23:45 - Artistic expression
36:12 - Sad music
43:50 - Leonard Cohen
54:43 - Public speaking
1:01:59 - Podcasts
1:09:34 - Famous Blue Raincoat by Leonard Cohen
1:24:55 - Creativity and sadness
1:33:12 - Dark moments
1:41:14 - Parenting
1:50:08 - Advice for young people
1:53:18 - Meaning of life

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People whose favorite songs are their happy songs play it on their playlist about 175 times.

The people who love sad music play them about 800 times.

And they say that they feel connected to the sublime when they're listening to that music.

The longing for what you lack is the very thing that gives you what you're longing for.

The following is a conversation with Susan Cain, author of Quiet, the power of introverts in the world that can't stop talking, and her most recent book, "'Bittersweet' How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole." This is the Lex Riedman Podcast.

To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.

And now, dear friends, here's Susan Cain.

You've written on your website that, quote, I prefer listening to talking, reading to socializing, and cozy chats to group settings.

So I think this conversation on the podcast is gonna be fun.

What's a good definition of an introvert?

Is something like those 3 things a good start?

It is a good start in terms of how introverts experience day-to-day life.

I think a good definition is 1 that some of your listeners will have heard many times before.

You know, the idea of where do you get your energy?

And for some people, they get their energy more from quieter settings, and for other people, they get it more from being out there.

So a good rule of thumb is to ask, to imagine that you're at a party that you're really enjoying, and you've been there for about 2 hours or so, and it's with people you really like, and it's in your favorite place, so it's all good.

An extrovert in a setting like that is gonna feel charged up and they're gonna be looking for the after party.

And an introvert, no matter how good a time they're having and how socially skilled they are, there's this moment where you just like wish that you could teleport and be back at home.

Yeah, and that the time before the start of the party to the time when that moment happens is different for different people.

So like the shorter that is, the more of an inch where you are.

The shorter the moment until you get to the place where you've got to teleport home.

Yeah, and then for extroverts, it's the opposite, right?

Like they're gonna feel, you know, maybe they're working on, I don't know, like focused on producing a memo that's really intensely interesting to them.

But if they're in that state of like solitary, the solitary mode of really focusing, they might get stir crazy a lot faster than an introvert would.

And so it doesn't have so much to do with what you're good at as how you get your energy.

And so for an introvert, the source of energy is what?

Silence, solitude, and for an extrovert, it's interaction with other people.

What I'd really say is that, and this is neurobiological as well, is that it has to do with how your nervous system reacts to stimulation.

So for an introvert, you're feeling in a great state of equilibrium when there are fewer inputs coming at you.

So they could be social inputs, but that's why an introvert in general would rather hang out with 1 close friend at a time as opposed to big party full of strangers because that's just too many inputs for the nervous system.

And for an extrovert, the nervous system needs more stimulants.

So if they're not getting enough, they get that listless and sluggish feeling.

So if you're just walking through the world, like people listening to this, but in general, how do you know if you're an introvert?

Like, how do you empirically start to determine if you are, in large part, an introvert?

Well, I would start by just asking that question of what happens to you, you know, at around the 2 hour mark where you're

But I also find, I'm curious if you have a different experience from this, but from all the years that I've been out there talking about this topic, I found that most people really seem to know once they're being honest with themselves.

And maybe that's the question to ask is like, if you imagine that you have a Saturday or a whole weekend where you can spend your time exactly the way you want to with no professional obligations, no social obligations, who would you spend it with, how many people, what would you be doing, and what does that picture that you're painting start to look like?

Yeah, So there's nuance to this though, because I'm sure for extroverts to get energized by stimulation, whether that's stimulation with other people, it depends what that stimulation is.

Maybe you're not surrounded by the kind of people that you enjoy being around.

So maybe that has to do less with whether some characteristics of your personality, more has to do with the fact what your environment is like.

Do you wanna be alone because everybody around you is an asshole, or do you wanna be alone because you get energized from being?

Well, I would hold the variables constant, I guess.

And then there's the other thing you kind of observed that there's a lot of people that will say they get energized from being alone.

Like people are exhausting to them or something like that.

But at the same time, when you see them at a party, they seem like the life of the party.

I know, and I hear from those people all the time.

Is it ultimately as the source of energy?

Or like how the heck are they the life of the party?

You know, so first of all, just to say like a big caveat to all of this is humans are just amazingly complex.

So you can't like explain every individual human through these parameters, even though I think the parameters are really valuable.

But that person at the party, it could be that they're more of an ambivert, so they kind of

That's, it basically means someone who's not extremely introverted or extremely extroverted, they're kind of in the middle.

So maybe at a party, their more extroverted side comes out.

Or it could be an introvert who's gotten really good at the skills of acting more like a pseudo extrovert, and they pull that up at the moments that they need it.

Yeah, oh, there's a lot of people like that.

And I know this because I think out of all the people on this planet you could be talking to, I've heard from the most number of those people.

Like they all come and tell me about their experience out in the world presenting a face that's different from what they feel.

So 1 of the things you talk about is, at least in the West, we've constructed a picture of success, and that picture is usually 1 of an extrovert.

Like when you imagine somebody who's a leader, who's a successful person, that person has some of the qualities you would associate with an extrovert.

And so there's a lot of incentive for faking it.

If you wanna be successful, you gotta be able to fake it, to sort of hang with the rest of the team, you have to be able to be outgoing and all those kinds of things and not be drained by the interaction.

Yeah, but I mean, there are also a lot of introverts who figure out ways to draw on their own strengths and they're incredibly connecting and successful and they're great leaders and they're not actually faking it.

They're more just figuring out ways to do it their own way.

Is there advice, is there lessons you can draw from that, from just observing how you can be an introvert and be in a leadership position?

Yeah, it's kind of like a mantra, figuring out what your own strengths are and how to draw on them.

I think of a guy I know, Doug Conant, who had been the CEO of Campbell Soup for many years.

He's quite shy also by his own description.

And so when he started at Campbell, the employee engagement ratings of the company were all the way at the bottom of the Fortune 500.

And by the time he stepped down, 10 years later, they were all the way at the top.

And it wasn't that he was going out there and schmoozing people, but he really did care.

So he would find out who were the people who had really been contributing, and he would write to them personal letters of thanks.

And these letters meant so much to people.

And during his time, the 10 years there, he wrote 30,000 of those letters.

That was his way of drawing on his own strengths.

Like He did that together with, of course, you sometimes have to go outside your comfort zone, no matter who you are.

Yeah, the writing process and focusing on the one-on-one interaction, I can definitely relate.

There's something deeply draining, which concerns me about like Zoom meetings, because it's some weird brain manipulation.

Well, because you're not really engaged, but it wears on you the same way that it does a party.

It feels like you're emptying that bucket for the introverts, even though they're not participating at all in the meeting.

I mean, I suppose that's true for physical meetings too, but with Zoom meetings, remote meetings, it's so much easier to invite a larger number of people into the meeting.

So you're draining more and more of the introvert energy.

And I'm probably extrovert too, but the introvert definitely.

I would love to understand that more because there's more and more push towards remote work without, I think, a deep understanding of why these meetings are so draining on people.

But maybe that's because the managers, the people who arrange the meetings, are just not sufficiently yet aware of the draining nature of them, so that they pull in too many people, they schedule them too regularly, so they need to adjust, that kind of thing probably.

I think people are starting to realize, but I would say 1 reason that Zoom is so draining is because you can see your own self-presentation the whole time if you choose to.

And when you go into in-person, you can't.

So you're kind of freed of thinking about that.

So it's like an extra cognitive load that you're bearing the whole time.

And like you might want to, you know, turn off the camera so you can't see yourself, but then you feel like, well, I have the ability to, so I probably should be doing it.

And then that alone is a decision that you're making.

Yeah, there's probably studies on this now happening, either have happened or are happening, the effect of seeing your own face on camera.

Because it's reminding you that you're supposed to be acting a certain way.

And that is especially a stressful thing.

Yeah, you can't be in the moment as much.

But I mean, for you, you make the decision to do all your podcast interviews in person, right?

If there's any kind of chemistry that contributes at all to the conversation, which I think most conversations have come to, even the boring work meetings.

Because yes, you're trying to solve a particular problem at this particular time, but underneath it, there's a team building that's happening.

And honestly, people also have told me about this, why they enjoy the Zoom meetings during the pandemic, is like they're lonely.

Like they, you know, it's annoying to have to sit and listen to folks talk about nothing and so on, but they tune in anyway because it's kind of lonely to sit there by yourself.

And that, I mean, there's a deep connection there when you're with other people, and that is especially true when they're in person, which is a huge concern for me for more and more offices from a capitalist perspective, realizing, hey, why do we have these large office spaces?

But then you also talk about that once we do, we wanna protect the introverts.

Like you don't want the open space, office space, which was a big fad for a while.

I don't know where people stand on that at this point.

Yeah, I think people are figuring it out in a post-pandemic context, but I mean, I know what you mean.

So before I became a writer, I was a corporate lawyer for like 7 years, and literally the only thing I miss from those years is hanging out with people at the office.

Like, I don't know, just some of the funniest moments I've had in my life came from being at the office until midnight with the other people I was working with.

So I know exactly what you're talking about.

Though I will say the offices there at that firm and at most firms in those days, everybody had their own office.

So it was like a dorm room, or it was like a long hallway with everybody in their own little dorm room.

So you had tons of privacy, but you would also come out and hang out

You can just kind of roam whenever you want.

And whenever you roam, that means you're kind of open.

And the extent to which you would keep your door open, you know, was it wide open or was it half a jar or just a little bit?

So is there, because you said re-energize, is there, do you like to think, and again the human mind is complicated, but do you like to think of it as like a bucket that gets refilled for introverts in terms of energy, of social interaction that they're able to handle.

Do you think of it like that, as a bucket that gets emptied and needs to be refilled?

I think of it, yeah, more or less, because I use the metaphor of a battery

It's basically the same thing, different metaphor.

But yeah, but just to add on that, that there is a layer of complexity to that because you could be somebody who doesn't want the kind of social life, let's say, where you have to be on and presenting and interacting with tons of people all the time, but you'd get really lonely if you were just by yourself.

So what you want is to maybe be in the company of a couple people you know really well.

Like For me, the pandemic was not actually that hard for me personally.

I mean, I lost family, but I mean, from the point of view of what we're talking about, it wasn't that hard because I live with my husband and my kids.

So I knew it was hard on the kids and I felt badly for them.

I have a lot of social life right here in the house.

That's the cool thing about the pandemic.

I think it helped people figure out how much they love their family.

And a lot of you give you a chance to really reconnect with kids, with your kids, like really spend time with them.

Like people actually, it did strengthen the family unit in an often beautiful way, which just sucks to have to leave behind at this point.

Yeah, and I think that's part of what people are not gonna wanna go back to, that we need to solve for, to the extent that work becomes non-remote again.

think people have just realized how precious those aspects of their lives are.

And, you know, for somebody who's in a sort of conventional office job where you're going home and seeing your kids for an hour before bedtime, and that's your interaction with them, that's kind of a ridiculous way to set things up.

It's cool that you can get, I think a lot of places give you the option now, which is interesting.

You get to optimize that element of your life.

You take the commute and the office work and then the social interaction there.

It's also lonely at home, but then you get to see your kids, if you have kids.

That's part of the optimization is like, I have some options now and I'm gonna try to optimize solitude, loneliness, happiness, productivity, seeing family, seeing coworkers, the chemistry with the team building with the coworkers versus just the raw exchange of information with the coworkers.

It's fascinating to see how that kind of evolves.

Yeah, And then there's the third space idea of the spaces where you're in a co-working space or a cafe or something like that.

You've got other people around you, but you're not exactly interacting with them, but they're very much there.

I don't think we think about that enough.

I lived in Manhattan for 17 years before we had kids.

Like I loved it, the feeling of all that energy all around you, but you could be anonymous within it.

Like I worked this morning for a few hours, programmed for a few hours at a Starbucks.

And first of all, Like wearing suits, like Manhattan is the 1 place you can kind of fit into that, because everyone's wearing suits.

Well, these days, unfortunately, because I get recognized, I wear usually not suits when I just, on my own life.

But yeah, I love it, I love the way it feels.

And the way I think about the world when I wear a suit, I take it seriously as if my life is gonna end today.

Not for physical appearance, but just for some reason It makes me feel like focused.

So even if you're not gonna see anyone, you would still put the suit on when you're doing your

So it like tells you seriousness of purpose, something like that?

I don't know what I imagine exactly, but it's some kind of platonic form of like a mixture of James Bond and like, I don't know who else, Richard Feynman.

Can I think about when I think about a suit?

You know, I think of Leonard Cohen, but he was always wearing suits too, but you know.

Leonard Cohen is definitely 1 of my, is a tragic human, is a beautiful human being.

Through his words, through his own private life.

Yes, I definitely would think about Leonard Cohen.

Is that part of the equation of introvert versus extrovert?

I kind of went into this whole thing thinking that it was, but from what I've seen, most people have studied, is that most people don't like small talk.

I think that's why people like your podcasts, because you're like, forget the small talk, I'm going deep into it from the very beginning.

Yeah, so it's actually, the picture you're painting is like the way you started, like with your, with the book Quiet, and the way you are today is you realize the picture may be more complicated.

I will say with the small talk thing that I'm curious if you have this experience, but I find it fantastic to have a career where I'm known for anti-small talk kinds of topics because it means that anywhere I go, like if I show up at a conference or something like that, no 1 does small talk with me.

They're like telling me about the deep truth of their lives from the first hello.

And in normal life, you have to wade through a lot before you know if people are ready to go there.

No, definitely, definitely, with people that know me for sure.

But you forget how many people feel like they know you because of your podcast.

Because I'm a huge fan of podcasts and I feel it, like, before I ever became friends with Joe Rogan, I felt like I was friends with him because I was a fan of his podcast.

So like, it was, I don't, I feel like it's a friendship.

I know it's a one-way friendship with all the people I listen to in podcasts, and even people who are no longer with us, like writers.

I feel like I have a relationship with them.

That's the whole reason I became a writer.

No, but I think that's the whole reason for writing or making music or whatever people do.

It's to be able to have those kinds of connections that don't require having to be in a room together, because there's only so many people

The hard thing is, unfortunately, because I value human connection so much.

And I only have, just like you mentioned, sort of a small circle of people I'm really close with.

By design, it always hurts me a lot to say goodbye to people.

you meet people and you can tell they're beautiful people, they're amazing, there's something so fascinating about them.

They've had a complicated life, like you could see in their eyes and the way they tell their story in just a few sentences.

They've gone through some shit, but they also found some elements of beauty and then you get to realize, okay, well, there's a fascinating human here and all you get to say is a few words here and there, like a funny little joke, maybe a dark joke here and there, and then you just say goodbye, maybe hug it out, and you go on your way.

So, like, that's a hello and a goodbye, and your paths will never cross again.

But I guess I wouldn't have it any other way, I suppose, is the reality is.

In your book, you talk about that sorrow, that sadness not being such a bad thing.

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Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness | Lex Fridman Podcast #298