Most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all. Lone geniuses are out. Collaboration is in.
But there’s a problem with this view. Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption. And the most spectacularly creative people in many fields are often introverted, according to studies by the psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Gregory Feist. They’re extroverted enough to exchange and advance ideas, but see themselves as independent and individualistic. They’re not joiners by nature.
My hatred of meetings has support! Leave me alone and let me do something, then when I’m done you can look at it and see if anything needs to be changed, thank you very much.
This also explains why I cannot stand having a task interrupted, especially reading. Often I completely ignore people speaking to me, aware that I am being adressed but unable to shift my attention.
