- Welcome back to FJ News.
I'm special correspondent David Muir,
and we're talking about introverts in the pandemic.
A few weeks ago,
I brought you a special story
about how introverts are not doing as well
during the lockdown as extroverts are.
You would think it would be the opposite.
You would think introverts
would be living their best life right now,
but it is not so.
And now we're bringing you another story
along the same vein,
specifically about introverts working remotely,
in the remote workforce working from home.
They don't seem to be doing as well as extroverts,
and here are a few reasons why.
First up, you have video conferencing
rather than real meetings or whatever.
You know, when you go into work,
in the office you expect to have some meetings.
You expect to go to the conference room,
sit around a table, talk out some stuff,
and it's draining for sure.
But there is some possibility that video conferencing
could be more draining than being in person.
Getting on Zoom with a bunch of your colleagues,
the technology can make communication more difficult.
Maybe you can't understand people.
Maybe you can't read the facial expressions as much,
and there's sometimes delay, you talk over each other.
It makes communication more difficult,
it makes it much more exhausting.
Then our next thing, which is a big one,
especially if you live with other people,
if you have kids, for sure,
that being at home all the time
stuck with other people
who are forced to be home all the time is super draining.
Like, if you could go to the office
and get away for eight hours,
sure, maybe you have to talk with some coworkers,
but you might just be at your desk,
not being bothered by people.
But now you got your kids trying to do work from home.
You got perhaps your spouse who's also working from home.
You can never get away from it.
You're supposed to juggle all of these things
that used to be compartmentalized.
How's an introvert supposed to keep up with all that?
And even if you live by yourself,
I imagine when Frank James works on videos
all day alone in his apartment,
it gets to be a little bit depressing at a certain point.
When you're in the same space all the time,
let's take the pandemic out of it,
if you're just at your house working all the time,
and then that's also where you relax,
and then you look up one day
and you look at the calendar
and realize you haven't walked outside of your apartment
for the last three days,
that is not good for a person.
And going to the office
is just a good way to mentally separate places.
Oh, I'm going to the office, this is where I work.
I think even if you work for yourself anyway,
it can be good to have occasionally
somewhere else that you go
that is separate from your home
where you are able to rest and recharge.
And then lastly, sort of related to the first one,
is that introverts, we don't need
a lot of social interaction, but you do need it.
Everyone needs it,
everyone needs to have
a certain amount of socializing.
And when you went to work with people,
I'm sure that we all,
we turned down a bunch of invites to go out,
you know, people getting drinks after work,
but you take them up every once in a while, right?
Now you can't do that.
Now we have the virtual happy hour.
And the virtual happy hour,
where you meet up with your friends on Zoom,
and you drink by yourself
but you're video conferencing (laughs),
well, first of all, there's the problems
that you inherently have with video conferencing,
but then when you're on a Zoom call,
everyone is focusing on the same thing,
and if you talk, everyone is looking at you.
You can't just go off to the side
and have a one-on-one conversation with people.
Think about the differences here.
If you went out to a work happy hour
in real life after work,
you'd probably just have a conversation
with one or two people at a time.
Maybe you'd circulate a bit,
or maybe you'd stay with those people,
but you wouldn't be talking to everyone
and listening to everyone at the same time.
Big difference, much more draining.
Check out this shirt I got.
(air whooshes) You can get it down below,
infj.me/store.
This mug with my face on it
also is available if you want to look like me right now.
'Til next Sunday, have a good week.
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