Who am I...

I've been introduced to a couple of interesting articles recently and I can say with certainty that Susan Cain's work on introverts definitely describes me - catch her talk here. It also made me thank God that I wasn't brought up in America and had to go to summer camps - it sounds like hell on earth and I'm amazed that the suicide rate amongst their children isn't higher.

After being one of the victims of a recent staff away-day spent 'brainstorming' I can really empathise with a comment she made in an interview with the Guardian this week:

"Brainstorming, it's always this experience where you are cooked up in a room with your colleagues and there's some very peppy facilitator who is...standing up there with a magic marker… I don't know, I always feel like they are kind of silly, you just end up with a lot of ideas taped to the wall. And no one really does anything with them. But this is not just my personal feeling, actually there is 40 years of research maybe more into brainstorming and it has found repeatedly that individuals brainstorming on their own come up with better ideas and more ideas than groups do. The British psychologist Adrian Furnham says, "Evidence from science suggests that business people must be insane to use brainstorming groups." When creativity is the highest priority people should be encouraged to work alone."

But I'm not sure that this sentiment is exclusive to introverts!

Now, I'm always alert to irony, and I know that comedians often say of their most extreme character creations that people come up to them and say, "Oh that was so funny, I know a person just like that!" rather than recognising themselves and their actions/behaviour. But I'm fairly sure that I'm not a narcissist - read Merrill Markoe's explanation of narcissistic behaviour here. Can someone who writes a blog not be a narcissist? Well, perhaps being safe in the knowledge that almost no-one actually reads this counteracts the narcissism of posting!