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the good life in a digital age

blogging – thinking out loud for introverts

One casual definition of extroverts is ‘someone who thinks whilst they are speaking”. Introverts, on the other hand, have to work out exactly what they think before they tell everyone else.

Introverts often fear (sometime rightly) that everyone else equates extrovertion with creativity (genius-recluse myths notwithstanding). Whilst this is mostly rubbish, it might help everyone else to realise the introvert’s general brillance if they actually told someone else what their ideas are, maybe once in a while anyway.

Pre-blogging I assumed that blogging was the clearest possible indicator of extraversion/exhibitionism/attention seeking and that the social media phenomenon is for extraverts only. But a surprising side benefit of blogging has been getting this introvert’s vague, unformed ideas out there. It takes quite a lot for me not to see this as a bad thing, given the earlier definitions of introvert.

But I can’t deny the blog has been helpful in getting ideas to completion. It creates expectations from others that you are going to do something you’ve blogged about (aka nagging), flushes out co-enthusiasts, and other people build on the idea and suggest directions. Mostly this hasn’t been with the assistance of internet users around the world but with people that I work with everyday. I recognise that it is slightly ludicrous that I need a blog to share ideas with people a few desks away but there you go.

Written by Karen

June 4th, 2008 at 8:23 am

Posted in digital,gtd