there are some activities that are not about approach or avoidance, but
about something deeper: the fulfillment that comes from absorption in
an activity outside yourself. “Psychological theories usually assume that
we are motivated either by the need to eliminate an unpleasant
condition like hunger or fear,”
Csikszentmihalyi writes, “or by the
expectation of some future reward such as money, status, or prestige.”
But in flow, “a person could work around the clock for days on end, for
no better reason than to keep on working.”
If you’re an introvert, find your flow by using your gifts. You have the
power of persistence, the tenacity to solve complex problems, and the
clear-sightedness to avoid pitfalls that trip others up. You enjoy relative
freedom from the temptations of superficial prizes like money and status.
Indeed, your biggest challenge may be to fully harness your strengths.
You may be so busy trying to appear like a zestful,
reward-sensitive
extrovert that you undervalue your own talents, or feel underestimated
by those around you. But when you’re focused on a project that you care
about, you probably find that your energy is boundless.
So stay true to your own nature. If you like to do things in a slow and
steady way, don’t let others make you feel as if you have to race. If you
enjoy depth, don’t force yourself to seek breadth. If you prefer single-
tasking to multitasking, stick to your guns. Being relatively unmoved by
rewards gives you the incalculable power to go your own way. It’s up to
you to use that independence to good effect.
Of course, that isn’t always easy. While writing this chapter, I
corresponded with Jack Welch, the former chairman of General Electric.
He had just published a
BusinessWeek
online column called “Release
Your
Inner Extrovert,” in which he called for introverts to act more
extroverted on the job. I suggested that extroverts sometimes need to act
more introverted, too, and shared with him some of the ideas you’ve just
read about how Wall Street might have benefited from having more
introverts at the helm. Welch was intrigued. But, he said, “the extroverts
would argue that they never heard from the introverts.”
Welch makes a fair point. Introverts need to trust their gut and share
their ideas as powerfully as they can. This does not mean aping
extroverts;
ideas can be shared quietly, they can be communicated in
writing, they can be packaged into highly produced lectures, they can be
advanced by allies. The trick for introverts is to honor their own styles
instead of allowing themselves to be swept up by prevailing norms. The
story of the lead-up to the Great Recession of 2008 is peppered, alas,
with careful types who took inappropriate risks,
like the former chief
executive of Citigroup, Chuck Prince, a former lawyer who made risky
loans into a falling market because, he said, “as long as the music is
playing, you’ve got to get up and dance.”
“People who are initially cautious become more aggressive,” observes
Boykin Curry of this phenomenon. “They say, ‘Hey, the more aggressive
people are getting promoted and I’m not, so I’m going to be more
aggressive too.’ ”
But stories of financial crises often contain
subplots about people who
famously (and profitably) saw them coming—and such tales tend to
feature just the kinds of people who embrace FUD, or who like to close
the blinds to their offices, insulate themselves from mass opinion and
peer
pressure, and focus in solitude. One of the few investors who
managed to flourish during the crash of 2008 was Seth Klarman,
president of a hedge fund called the Baupost Group. Klarman is known
for consistently outperforming the market while steadfastly avoiding
risk, and for keeping a significant percentage of his assets in cash. In the
two years since the crash of 2008, when
most investors were fleeing
hedge funds in droves, Klarman almost doubled Baupost’s assets under
management to $22 billion.
Klarman achieved this with an investment strategy based explicitly on
FUD. “At Baupost, we are big fans of fear, and in investing, it is clearly
better to be scared than sorry,” he once wrote in a letter to investors.
Klarman is a “world-class worrier,” observes the
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