Networking for introverts

Don&#x27;t want to awaken any sleeping dogs here, but what the author describes reminds me more of social anxiety and&#x2F;or self-esteem issues than introversion.<p>I&#x27;m an introvert. I can sit still and not speak to anyone for weeks and be fine. Happier even. Having no-one around recharges me like nothing else. The reverse is true as well which makes me incredibly popular at parties &#x2F;s.<p>When I was young(er), a networking event (or social event of any kind tbh) would have scared me to no end and have me act akward. I&#x27;m older now and through the grace of aging I give substantially less fucks. Suddenly these things are no longer the problem they once were. My introversion hasn&#x27;t changed, in fact I think it got worse.<p>I have somewhat of a test for this. I think about or even just approach a random person and try to strike a conversation as authentically as I&#x27;m able. If even the thought gets me nervous, that&#x27;s anxiety, not introversion. In my experience a bout of introversion-hunger will feel like &quot;I need to space out now&quot;. Like I can&#x27;t even be bothered with anxiety anymore.<p>Getting rid of anxiety has a massive ROI. Getting rid of introversion won&#x27;t work and will probably backfire. At least, that&#x27;s my experience.

I don&#x27;t see anything in here that I would call a &quot;How-To Guide.&quot; This reads mostly like an ad for LinkedIn and then they threw in a very poor ChatGPT reference at the end to hit the keywords.

I think extroversion and introversion are just orthogonal skill sets. The solution can simply be “get better at extroversion.”<p>For instance, small talk. You may style yourself as someone too intellectual to be entertained by small talk, and profess to be terrible at making small talk. This is to misunderstand the value proposition of small talk, which is to establish trust and rapport with strangers before you commit to sharing any high value information. To be fair the value of social customs are often not grokked even where they are followed and are effective. But if you need a reason for everything, figure it out.<p>Also, confidence. This is simply a function of how positively you expect others to receive your presence&#x2F;engagement. People who are quiet and taciturn in one setting will often be charismatic and open in another setting where they know the audience. Realistically appraise <i>why</i> others might react positively to you, and work on being able to deliver that value. The confidence will flow naturally from there.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20230907143540&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.economist.com&#x2F;business&#x2F;2023&#x2F;09&#x2F;07&#x2F;networking-for-introverts-a-how-to-guide" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20230907143540&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.econo...</a>

&quot;Quiet Contemplation for Extroverts: A How-To Guide to Sitting the Fuck Still For an Hour&quot;<p>I&#x27;m fine as I am as an introvert, thank you very much. Maybe we&#x27;re not the only ones who need to be more accommodating of the world?

&gt; <i>The researchers randomly changed the “People You May Know” recommendations algorithm that LinkedIn shows its users, so that the prevalence of weaker and stronger connections varied among people on the site. The experiment showed that weaker ties (where a pair of users had only one mutual friend, say) were more likely to lead to job applications and job moves than those where people had 25 mutual friends or more.</i><p>Was this research experiment with people&#x27;s careers and livelihoods done with informed consent of human subjects?

At first I was surprised the economist would talk about the networking stack, but this is about social networking. The introverts bit makes much more sense.<p>Regarding the article it says &quot;because they bring you new information, more infrequent and distant relationships (or “weak ties”) are more useful than close contacts.&quot; Mark Granovetter studied that in 1973 in The Strength of Weak Ties.

I read the article and remembered why I cancelled my sub to The Economist. This was written by an intern who had half read the research paper with 15 minutes to filing deadline. LI&#x2F;virtual and physical networking aren&#x27;t the same, and, per comments, the author had not taken the trouble to understand what an introvert is. Poor stuff.

&gt; They are the people who are actually reading the conference blurb. They look at email on their phones with greater intensity than ever happens at the office. They endlessly circulate the room, like bits of plastic in the ocean waiting to be snagged on something. They take a seat in the main hall while the sound engineers are still testing the microphones.<p>Ouch.

What is this article even about? And what does this even mean:<p>&gt;In the offline world, a tool like Chatgpt should make it easier to find useful prospects in a list of event attendees.<p>So, should you feed a list of conference attendees to chatgpt and ask who to talk to? And how?<p>I personally go to conferences quite often, I&#x27;m terrible at networking but force myself to talk to people and I do have some results but I can&#x27;t shake the feeling that cranking out some more features and better marketing would bring in more revenue...

How does me being an introvert change concepts of networking? Ah! This is the &quot;other&quot; networking.

The Bartleby column is the one thing in the Economist I skip week after week without feeling I miss out on something. I am sure the woman who writes it has a tattoo of a cubicle somewhere and a RTO T-shirt.

For me, the real problem is actually showing up. I know it would be good for me and I&#x27;d drive some benefits, could open up connections.<p>But the idea of going to an event and chatting with people feels revolting.

I&#x27;ll have you know I&#x27;ve been networking for a VERY long time.<p>Token Ring, IPX, SMB, and then most recently TCP&#x2F;IP.<p>=)<p>Seriously though, I describe myself as a gregarious introvert. I&#x27;m an only child so I also love being the center of attention. And, (no surprise) I was also the class clown.<p>I can mask really well, so none of it shows.<p>I dislike being in crowds&#x2F;groups where I haven&#x27;t known people for many years. That wouldn&#x27;t stop me from getting on stage during an open-mic comedy night though.<p>I prefer to sit quietly reading a book though.

I can only assume the fake conversation in this article is an attempt at humour, but it&#x27;s not very funny. For a better starter question at an event than &quot;Juicing up for the big keynote?&quot; try making an anecdote about the day, such as, &quot;that last talk was interesting, did you see it?&quot; or going personal, like &quot;that&#x27;s a cool sticker on your laptop, where did you get it?&quot;

Ignore this, my bias is that I am in fact an introvert....<p>1. Figure out what subjects you are passionate about. 2. Now, figure out what medium you can express that in 3. given those two choices the SM platforms to use would be Instagram LinkedIN X Youtube Medium 4. Now the money part....the value is knowledge+access That means in your chain of SM output you want to eventually pivot to something like one day of streaming on Youtube<p>*Important! Medium just changed their revenue algos...you get paid more for reads at Medium now, I will clear just under $1k this month and will be under 25k views...and yet I am busy building code for some textbooks I am writing....

I found Matthew Pollard&#x27;s &quot;The Introvert&#x27;s Edge to Networking&quot; to be an outstanding resource. (Don&#x27;t be fooled by the awful branding around it: I listened on Audible and never saw all the Over-the-Top marketing until just now.)<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;matthewpollard.com&#x2F;theintrovertsedge&#x2F;networking" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;matthewpollard.com&#x2F;theintrovertsedge&#x2F;networking</a>

That’s when you start talking to people at the party about your CCNA qualification

If only there was a small-talk LLM that could operate over a brain interface.

Introverts should never deal with Networking.

Most of the article appears to be about what does not work. Here is the relevant part from the bottom of the page-<p>&gt; The real secret is to save your energy for the people who are most likely to be interesting to you.<p>&gt; The sweet spot in networking on LinkedIn is someone with moderately weak ties to you: connecting with a person with ten mutual friends markedly increases the probability of changing jobs compared with someone with just one shared friend.<p>&gt; In other words, networking pays off if you can identify people who can bring you new information but are close enough to your world that this information is useful. In the offline world, a tool like ChatGPT should make it easier to find useful prospects in a list of event attendees. But you still need to overcome all your instincts and approach them.

How come such an article ends up with 30+ points? There&#x27;s literally no meaningful information. I&#x27;d look into what accounts upvoted this link, something seems off.