191: 7 Strategies (and Permission) for Digital Introverts

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What's next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot Podcast and author of Pivot. The only move that matters is your next one.

For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com podcast if Change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Today we have a great listener. Q and A from Brooke on Digital Introversion.

You'll hear me riff on all of.

My guesses and strategies for staying sane. If you can relate, here's Brooke.

Hi Jenny, this is Brooke. Thank you for being a guide over the years and for serving, as you call it in the last few weeks. You literally stopped me in my tracks when you use that term digital introvert. Recently with your conversation with Michael. While I dabble in social media and have utilized FaceTime more than ever, I used to consider myself a dinosaur, but I think that it's more likely a digital introvert. I'm just curious if you have any suggestions about how I can connect with heartfelt community in this digital world and these these times that we're living in right now. Thank you Brooke.

First of all, I have to say thank you to you because just by you submitting this message, I found it equally validating and comforting. You use the term dinosaur. I often wonder if I'm just some kind of curmudgeon that what's wrong with me?

Am I the only one that feels.

This way about screen fatigue and digital introversion? So thank you. This is what Lisa Danielchuk, a therapist, I quote in Pivot. She calls it reciprocal transformation that just by me using that term digital introversion and then you submitting a question, we went full circle. And I hope that others find this episode and this conversation helpful too.

I'm excited to dive into this. So thank you again Brooke for the motivation to go deeper on this front. I now know there's at least two of us and that is all I need to do another Pivot podcast.

As I was thinking about this, my first question is are you Are digital introverts the same as IRL introverts? So people who already self identify with the phrase introversion, which there's conflicting definitions, but I particularly like Susan Cain, author of the book Quiet and the Make.

A Famous TED Talk of the same name.

She says it's really where you get your energy. I know a lot of professional keynote speakers who are happy to talk in a very large crowd of people, but they need a alone time before and after to recharge. So even careers or people that from the outside, when you're interacting with them, seem to be very charismatic and, and have a lot of personality and seem to really, truly be enjoying themselves in that moment. They're still the ones that are gonna.

Go home and crash or leaving a.

Big party or a big conference. Whereas my more extroverted friends would say this conference was so fun, or I had so much fun speaking on stage, you wanna go get drinks?

And they're the ones proactively inviting someone out to dinner.

That's a small example, but with that in mind, what is it about the times we're living in and this big shift to virtual and digital everything that might be either sending introverts farther into.

Their turtle shell or at least the reaction that some of us are experiencing?

And I don't think it's just limited to the times we're in or the pandemic. I actually think that it's just exacerbating or highlighting something that digital introverts were already experiencing. This is not scientific, but I define digital introverts as having similar qualities to those who describe IRL introversion. Again, they often need to recharge on their own or having enough quiet time. They're sensitive to noise and stimulation, they're sensitive to being around large groups of people. They like deep introspection. I would add in the digital side of things, it's a sensitivity to many notifications, whether texts, social media, emails, inboxes, a sensitivity to video calls and even phone calls. As odd as that sounds, they could get overloaded or overwhelmed with too many in a row. I would even add not just people fatigue, screen fatigue and news fatigue. So feeling overstimulated by when they consume too much of any of those things, and then even things like small group breakouts, and I'll give you an example in a moment, all the things I just mentioned, notifications, inboxes, video calls, phone calls, news fatigue, people fatigue. I think digital introverts can do all these things and even as a one off, it's not that bad. It's often very enjoyable, but they're less likely to initiate it. For example, I recently signed up for an author whose work I follow was doing a large scale virtual co working session on Zoom. And I thought that sounds really fun. I'm excited to show up and just get some work done. So I show up. There's over 100 people on this Zoom. It was super cool to see pages and pages of Brady Bunch style video thumbnails. But A, I didn't want to be on video and then B she did a starting meditation at the beginning, which was wonderful.

Yay.

And then she said, okay, great, now I'm going to put you into small group breakouts so you can talk to each other. And I signed off.

I just hung up from the call. And that's probably horrible online etiquette, but I was just like in that moment, the last thing I wanted to do was go into a breakout room and meet other people. I'm sure they were wonderful, but I was already maxed out for the day.

For the week.

I was happy to sit there working.

Alone with a hundred plus other people. But if it came to actually talking.

In small groups and going on video.

And speaking and listening, I was tapped out. I did not have the energy to do it. Now, as I mentioned earlier, I had.

A fear that I'm the only one that's like this. That it's just a flaw in my programming or maybe I need to just get over it.

Of course that's not very self compassionate.

But it's some of the self talk.

That goes through my mind.

Your question, Brooke, is really helpful, so I know. Okay, I'm not the only one. I call myself a curmudgeon. You call it a dinosaur. Okay, we're feeling our way through the dark of. What is this thing?

Digital introversion.

And then I was reading Glennon Doyle's.

New book, Untamed, and she has a chapter on Erica's.

I have to read you the first page of this chapter because finally I.

Felt like somebody understood how I feel a lot of the time. This is on page 113 for any of you who have the hardcover edition. Glennon writes, recently my friend Erica called my cell phone. I will never understand why people insist upon calling my cell phone. It's such an aggressive action to take calling someone. Each time my phone rings, I have a heart attack. Like my pocket's on fire and a tiny siren is going off. I'd also like to take this opportunity to address texting. Texting equals better than calling. Unless. Unless you are one of those people.

Who doles out texts like IOUs unless.

You believe that whenever you feel like it, you can just poke at me, ping me, jump into my day like hi.

And feel so entitled to a response.

That the next time I see you, you will arrange your face in an injured manner and say quietly, hey, you doing okay? I just never heard back. At this moment I have 183 unread texts. Texts are not the boss of me and neither is anybody who texts me. I have decided once and for all that just because someone texts me does not obligate me to respond. If I believed differently, I'd walk around all day feeling anxious and indebted, responding instead of creating. Now that we've established why I have.

No friends, so let's return to Erica.

She closes that chapter. These chapters are many essays. By saying I love myself now, self love means that I have a relationship with myself built on trust and loyalty. I trust myself to have my own back, so my allegiance is to the voice within. I'll abandon everyone else's expectations of me before I'll abandon myself. I'll disappoint everyone else before I'll disappoint myself. I'll forsake all others before I'll forsake myself. Me and myself we are till death do us part. What the world needs is more women. And I'll add people who have quit fearing themselves and started trusting themselves. What the world needs is masses of women, people who are entirely out of control. What Glennon put into perspective for me was helping highlight some of the fears that come up around the power of admitting that one is either introverted or digital introverted or whatever you want to call it. Just this self admitting of your own inner compass, how you get energy and what drains your energy. So even for me recording this podcast, I have fears that I'm going to be outed as a bad friend, ungrateful, maybe I'll even lose friends. I also have Right now a 130 unread text messages and that's just text.

Not email or other inboxes like LinkedIn.

So I worry that by me not getting energy from those things and therefore not being quick at all to respond, that I'll lose friends and then that will be a detriment in the long term. I'm worried that I'll offend people if I even say, oh, I'm a digital introvert. I get overwhelmed by too many video zoom calls in a day. I worry that I'll offend the People that have invited me to one and I certainly on a one off basis I think they're great and I actually get a lot of energy from calls I've done with my family, calls I've done with friends as a virtual mastermind group they've been awesome. But it's just this sum total of the week that sometimes it adds up or I over commit or I sign.

Up for too many things and I.

Get tired or maybe I'm just having a more sensitive feeling kind of day and so I don't want to offend anyone sending a one off invitation. If I build on that, I'll say, well if I'm too vocal about my.

Sensitivities in these areas then people will stop inviting me altogether. And then I almost get future FOMO of will I be sad? Because people will think, oh Jenny doesn't like pings or notices. I'll just stop texting or emailing or calling or inviting her places.

And I don't know.

I honestly don't know. Maybe I would be happy and I wouldn't even notice. Or maybe I would notice and I'd be sad.

You can see my own confusion around this. What it leads to is exactly what Glennon Doyle described. A lot of what I call micro guilt. Just this niggling guilt constantly and anxiety and worry. And that's my people pleaser that I'm not not being a good fill in the blank. Now we'll get to some strategies for this because Brooke, that was your question. How do we navigate this?

What are some practical things we can do?

But the first thing I think is just and it's not self identifying so that we label ourselves and we then create some kind of woundology story as.

Caroline Meis would call it.

It's not about that. I actually find it quite empowering to say these are my preferences, this is how I get energy and this is what my needs are in these areas. Especially now when people have joked, oh the introverts are so happy they're not going stir crazy at all.

Yes, I do feel it's no big deal to be home all day and not doing too many social things.

But at the same time there is, there has been such a shift in terms of how meetings are happening and everything that's online. As Susan Cain writes in Quiet. One of the things that's so important about being able to just self identify in this way is that when you make life choices that are congruent with your temperament and allow others to do the same, you unleash vast stores of energy. Conversely, when you spend too much time battling your own nature, the opposite happens. You deplete yourself. Let's rewind a little bit and talk about the definition of introvert in the first place. So the dictionary definition is complete bs.

And I can't believe it hasn't been updated yet.

It says a shy, reticent person and then a second definition a person predominantly concerned with their own thoughts and feelings rather than with external things. I think this is so silly. And Susan Cain completely debunks this, saying that a lot of negative myths about introverts come from a widespread cultural bias toward extroverts. She also founded the movement called Quiet Revolution to help dispel this bias and raise awareness. You can take her online assessment. It's super quick 10 questions and it will actually tell you whether you're an introvert, extrovert, or an ambivert based on your responses. Before I share her definitions, I the etymology of the word is quite interesting too. So in Latin, intro means to the inside and verterre means to turn. So introvertere, a term that began in the mid 17th century, means to turn one's thoughts inwards in spiritual contemplation. How epic, right? It's so good to turn one's thoughts inwards in spiritual contemplation. Ah, I feel relief just reading that Latin etymology of the term. So instead of being shy, it's that you have a rich interior world and you're actually in contemplation. And for me, I crave reading and thinking and resting and spiritual contemplation.

I like being with myself. In fact, I love being with myself. And if I don't get to to.

Spend enough time alone, I feel extremely depleted and cranky and frustrated. And then I have nothing to give, even the people that I do interact with. Let me give you the cliffsnotes of Susan Cain's definitions, just in case you haven't taken the assessment or read Quiet at all or recently. I know I read it a couple years ago. So introverts, given the choice, you'll devote your social energy to a small group of people you care most about, preferring a glass of wine with a close friend to a party full of strangers. You'll think before you speak, have a more deliberate approach to risk, and enjoy solitude. You'll feel energized when focusing deeply on a subject or activity that really interests you. When you're in overly stimulating environments, too loud, too crowded, etc. You tend to feel overwhelmed. You seek out environments of peace, sanctuary, and beauty. You have an active inner life and are at your best when you tap into its riches.

Now let's talk about extroverts. Extroverts relish social life and are energized by interacting with friends and strangers alike. They're typically assertive, go getting and able to seize the day. Extroverts are great at thinking on their feet. They're relatively comfortable with conflict. Given the choice, extroverts usually prefer more stimulating environments that give them frequent opportunities to see and speak with others. When they're in quiet environments, they're prone to feeling bored and restless. They are actively engaged in the world around them and at their best when tapping into its energy. So we can imagine this time is probably particularly challenging for extroverts. And I wonder if the people initiating that are most initiating virtual fill in the blank are more extroverted.

Again, I'm often happy to participate in.

Some of these things within limits, but I don't initiate them. It's so. It's just such an interesting thing to observe. Finally, Susan Cain talks about ambiverts. These are people who fall smack in the middle of the introvert extrovert spectrum. In many ways they have the best of both worlds, able to tap into the strengths of both introverts and extroverts as needed. Given all of that in the conversation we've had so far, here are seven strategies that I'm actively practicing and working on and I hope that they're helpful for you listeners, fellow digital introverts.

Brooke, Anyone else?

I'm so curious to know what I miss on this list. Number one, self identifying alone might be helpful. Just saying Yes, I am a digital introvert. I feel overwhelmed and overloaded right now by all the invitations I'm receiving. For example, fill in the blank of whatever self identifying allows you to to admit or to give yourself permission to feel and experience right now instead of trying to fit yourself into someone else's box or all the shoulds of what you should be doing or how you should be interacting or how you should be responding. Number two, Know your limits. As I mentioned, any one invitation is very delightful for me. Actually, if that was the one thing I did all week, I would have a blast. I could be so fulfilled, so happy I did that one thing. Whether it's a virtual coffee talk, a mastermind with friends, cocktail hour on Zoom, zooming with my family, attending a training, doing somebody's breakout rooms, any one thing can be fine. But I very quickly max out on the day and in a Given week now. Caveat. This could just be the nature of my work. I give a lot. By nature of my work, I'm thinking about others constantly. I'm podcasting, I'm interacting in momentum, I'm facilitating courses virtually and for momentum. I mean, so there's a lot that I'm doing that might already make me maxed out by the time I, quote, get off work and think about calling a friend. I usually just don't have the energy. In many cases, there are people who.

I feel I should call. I owe them a call.

It would even be really great to hear their voice.

But.

But I don't have the energy. So I end up putting on a podcast instead. And then I notice it kind of.

Happens day after day where I just.

Need time to decompress. And I could imagine if someone else's job involved very solo work, maybe programming, coding, something where you were by nature more inward during a certain day, maybe then it is really a relief to get on the phone. So take everything I'm saying with a caveat. But the point here is know your own limits. Know how many meetings you can handle in a given day and how many.

Invitations you want to accept in a.

Given day or a week. And also be able to tell when you're depleted so that you don't say yes to too many things. Number three, express your preferences and don't be shy about renegotiating the format. I recently had somebody reach out and say, hey, I would love to connect. Let's have a catch up and actually multiply that by 10. I probably have 10.

I would love to connect in my inbox right now.

And so I pace myself. I actually don't respond to them all at once. I sort of stagger my response and I renegotiate the format. Recently when people reach out to connect and they say, you want to have a zoom, I'll just write back and say I'm a little zoomed out. Can we do a phone call instead? I'd love to be able to get up and move around. I have a strong value of integrity, so I never like to lie to people. If I cancel a call because I just don't feel like it, I won't say, oh, I'm sick today. Can we reschedule? I'll just say my, I'm feeling really low energy today. Can we reschedule? So the same thing with my requests. I won't make up some excuse why.

I need to talk on the phone.

I'll just say, I'd love to be able to move around and just get up a little bit. Is it okay if we talk over the phone? And oftentimes the person will write back and say what a relief. Me too. Sounds great. Number four Know how you recharge and build in time for recharging, Quiet time and reflection. I need this every single day. I need to start the day and I need to end the day with it. If I don't get at least 30 minutes of quiet reading time in the.

Morning, I am so cranky.

Similarly, if I don't get 30 minutes to just unplug from everything and be in my own mind at the end of the day, I am also terribly.

Cranky and I have nothing to give to my family and certainly not to.

Phone calls or picking up the phone or even responding to texts. So it's really important to understand, especially now when circumstances have changed and there are fewer activities that we even can do outside of the house. Just revisit. How do you most like to recharge? What recharges your batteries the quickest and in the most meaningful way? And how can you build time for that two, three times a day? Number five I talk about this in my free mini course Free App Founder Time, but I'm a big fan of building in no meeting days if you can. I also talk about this in the recent episode On Screen Fatigue. Not all of you will have control over your work schedule, but I think leaders of companies should also give their employees and their team members permission to have no meeting days, even if it's one day a week if you can. I really like scheduling no meetings on Mondays and Fridays. That way I have four days of the week that are completely mine for deep work, for projects, for catching up on things, running errands. Days off doesn't matter. I like having four in a row and then I have Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday are when I actually have calls, podcast interviews, et cetera.

So if you can block out from.

Now, not just no meeting days like Mondays and Friday, but I even like blocking off one week a month for no meetings. I don't always hit it, but I block it off in advance just in.

Case I'm able to keep it so that I have a whole week of.

Relative recharging compared to more active weeks. Number six if you find yourself really.

Losing it and none of these strategies are working, sometimes a good backup for.

Me are email and text autoresponders. Email autoresponder says, hey, I'm going to be slow to respond. Here are other ways to get in touch Pardon the delay and just throw it up. And then at least you know that people who are contacting you, you've reset expectations of response time. I made a promise to myself. I realized that for a while, every single email I sent started with an apology. Sorry for the delay. So I actually just dropped it. If I reply even a month later, two months later, I don't even apologize anymore. Most of the time, I just pick up wherever we left off. You can also set up text autoresponders, at least on the iPhone. This was originally created for. If you're driving, you can set up this autoresponder so that the person knows you'll be slower to respond. I mean, I really can't stand the false urgency that a text conveys anyway. I cannot imagine why someone would need an autoresponder if for a text.

It's.

It's a. It's a format that kind of drives me nuts because it's just somebody chooses to text and then there's this expectation of a quick reply. But I mean, I just dropped that.

A long time ago.

So I'll respond to texts kind of in a.

In bulk once a week, honestly, unless.

It'S logistics for something I'm doing that day. Because I can't. I just cannot feel like I'm on.

A digital leash to my phone.

No matter how much I love every single person and appreciate and I'm grateful for everyone whose name I can see in my phone. I am so deeply grateful. But I just cannot be in a reactive, responsive mode like that all day. It would drive me nuts. So a text autoresponder might help convey this.

And what would it be like to actually say, feeling a little overwhelmed at the moment? Pardon my slow reply. Taking a digital vacation. We'll be back to you shortly. Or we'll be back in a few days.

Why not? I say experiment with this number seven, ask who are you trying to please, yourself or others? And is that sustainable? So you've heard me talk about my mixed emotions around all this. I'm sure you've heard it woven through this podcast. Those of you who are still here listening, who don't have people pleasing problems, are probably thinking, you get over it already. Just don't stop worrying about it, do you? I wish it were that easy.

I feel like maybe it's just because I'm very extreme in terms of my reactions to these things, but it is helpful for me to understand, am I.

Am I reacting or feeling bad or taking action based on pleasing others, or because this is genuinely Recharging for me or genuinely in my heart's desire of what I feel genuinely moved to do. Because too much of responding or shoulding or reacting is going to be a drainer. Especially if you are a digital introvert. So whatever you're doing, whatever your current strategy is, ask is it sustainable? Or do you keep hitting burnout, even mini burnouts? And if it's the latter, what could you adjust? Maybe it's just dropping the guilt and just responding when you feel like it and not worrying the rest of the time or communicating to all the people in your life near and far. This is what gives me energy and just. I will often say to people, even right when I meet them, just so you know, I'm really slow with texts, so it's never anything personal. I'll just say it up front now.

Because it's the facts of how I.

Am and I don't want them to be offended. So when you, when you understand, okay, what's sustainable, what isn't, then you can also start making some shifts and giving yourself permission to. To be who you are. That, I hope, is the takeaway from all of this. You're not alone, you're not crazy, and you have permission to do what energizes you, because that is the only way that you're going to be able to give back and serve all the people that you care about. The last little nugget of food for thought that I want to leave you with because it started sparking some ideas for me, is that Susan Cain's assessment is based on some deeper research that they did a lot of rigorous testing and analysis on. And she says that they determined introversion and extroversion can be best explained through the facets of stimulation and deliberation. Stimulation measures your preference for environments that are either calm or exciting, and deliberation measures your preference for deliberation versus action. So I'll leave you with that as inquiry or as a reflection. Maybe you can observe in your environment facets of stimulation and areas of deliberation. So for me, I don't get overwhelmed making decisions too often. I feel pretty clear on my balance of deliberation versus action. Where the digital introversion comes in is the stimulation side of the equation. So maybe these two measures, stimulation and deliberation, can also help you observe and see where you might need to recalibrate.

These are my preliminary thoughts on strategies.

For digital introverts and what the heck that might even be.

I hope it's helpful. Some of you listening may just think, I'm totally crazy by this point, but.

If not, if you resonate. If you have other strategies, I would love to hear them. Leave me a voice note@pivotmethod.com Ask and thanks again Brooke for the confirmation and inspiration to dive deeper into this topic. Sending you all light and love. Stay safe and sane out there everybody.

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