Work with Your Personality Type and Maintain Your Social Skills
by Crystal Schwanke
Working from home has its definite perks. You can watch a movie while you finish those product descriptions. You can wait until 3:00 PM to start “getting ready” for the day. You choose your hours, you choose your projects, and you can wear your pajamas (even if they are flannel!). But are writers who work from home stunting their social growth?
Take an introvert—painfully shy, better with the written word than the spoken, and nervous in crowds. They tend to avoid social settings at all costs, and prefer the small, intimate settings with friends rather than parties and malls. Is writing from home a way to hide from the world instead of making us “buck up” and deal? Does it hinder our ability further to function around strangers? When I worked in retail, I spoke with people everywhere—not just at work—much more easily. Now it’s harder to strike up a conversation.
On the other hand, the extrovert (how many of those are there out there who work from home? My butterfly husband would go absolutely insane without constant human interaction!) needs other people to thrive. When an extrovert is “unleashed” in a public place after hours of solitude at a home computer, do they remind others of overeager puppies looking for their next delicious gourmet treat?
You can obviously enjoy writing whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert. You may also find yourself having to work from home for the sake of flexibility, peace of mind, or family obligations. There are ways to keep your sanity and your social skills no matter who—or what—you are.
The key to working from home and still being able to function on a “normal” level in public is balance. Here are a few suggestions:
1. Work in a public place like a coffee shop.
2. Keep hobbies—and that doesn’t mean yoga in your living room or cycling alone. Take a class. You’ll meet new people, learn new things, and probably come up with new writing material (bonus!). If you’re an extrovert, you’ll get to expend some of that energy you’ve had pent up all day.
3. If you’re doing an interview and the subject is local, meet them in person rather than opting for the convenience of the phone. It may cost you a cup of coffee or two, but it’s good for your well-being.
Writers may be known as eccentric by some who succumb to stereotypes, but striking a balance between hermit and party animal could be beneficial. For introverts, meeting new people and going new places could be just the thing for curing writer’s block and social anxiety. Going out to grab coffee instead of making their own, having a class to look forward to, or creating face-to-face interaction via interviews could be precisely what an extrovert needs to recharge—resulting in a clearer head and better copy.
How do you cope with hours spent using your fingers to “talk” and your eyes to “listen” for hours a day?
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June 28th, 2007 at 3:21 am
Your link is messed up in your sig for the Celebrity Cowboy.
June 28th, 2007 at 3:21 am
I can certainly relate to this article as I am the introvert who enjoys working at home alone. I have anxiety disorder so I really have to make myself socialize. Writer Jenna Glatzer says she started writing at home when she developed anxiety. Writer Hope Clark even wrote a book called the Shy Writer.
June 28th, 2007 at 3:22 am
It doesn’t really seem to bother me. I just treat it as a normal work day. I get up when my fiance gets up to go to work, spend the day at my computer, and then live my normal life after supper and on weekends. I don’t find it any worse than being in an office. That said, I’ve always been in introvert, so maybe that’s why I do not find in troubling.
June 28th, 2007 at 3:22 am
I agree. I am a little of both, if that’s possible. I like my quiet. I like to be alone but when I want to be out… I want to be out… RIGHT NOW. So I do get a little like that puppy. That is why I decided (in part) to return to school. I will work on my writing skills and get out of the house. Kill two birds with one EXPENSIVE stone.
June 28th, 2007 at 3:23 am
I am the extrovert writer, and I get a little stir crazy by the end of the writing day.
I have found blogging to be extremely helpful in keeping me somewhat connected to other writers.
Email helps, and so do frequent meetups with other writers.
It is certainly a lot about balance.
It’s a lifetime effort!
Great topic. Great post!
truly,
Sylvia C.
June 28th, 2007 at 3:23 am
As a client who regularly hires freelance writers, I can tell you that the opening sentence of Ms. Schwanke’s stating “you can watch a movie while you finish those product descriptions” is rather offensive to me as a potential employer of a freelance writer.
If you writers tackle your job so unprofessionally as to not give your writing your full, undivided attention, then you have no right to call yourselves professional.
If you consider your writing a career, then you must act professionally with your writing assignments, otherwise you are nothing more than someone who writes for a hobby and will be treated as such by the corporate world.
June 28th, 2007 at 3:23 am
“If you writers tackle your job so unprofessionally as to not give your writing your full, undivided attention, then you have no right to call yourselves professional.”
Anonymous Corporate Client,
I think it’s interesting that you believe that writers who may listen to a movie, music, or television while they write are not attending to their writing. In an office, there is all sorts of background noise: phones ringing, people talking, office machines, and possibly background “atmosphere” music used by the employer. Office workers do not work in a silent bubble, and I think that’s the case for many freelance writers as well. Ms. Schwanke mentioned a movie in this post, but it could have just as easily have been music or television.
Whatever the source of the noise, I know of very few people, writers or otherwise, who work in absolute silence all of the time. Freelance writers just happen to create the particular noise that works for them. For me, that particular noise is CNN. There are times when I turn it off because I do need it to be quiet to focus on a specific part of an assignment. However, the background noise of CNN is as natural a part of my day as an office worker taking a coffee break, eating lunch, or talking to a co-worker. I highly doubt that the workers in Anonymous Corporate Client’s office work eight hours straight without any sort of human interaction. If a worker wants to waste time, that can be accomplished in a public office just as it can be done in a remote location. Conversely, a person who works remotely can be just as productive as an office worker if he or she wants to be. Please don’t assume that the use of a movie as background noise for a writer makes that person unprofessional unless that writer gives you a tangible sub-par product that supports that statement.
July 1st, 2007 at 9:19 am
It would be helpful if the Anonymous Corporate Client would kindly identify her Vaunted Corporation so that we highly unprofessional slimeballs… excuse me, writers… out here may quickly accomplish two important tasks.
1. Immediately desist from any further writing work for Vaunted Corporation and Anonymous Corporate Client
2. Sell all our Vaunted Corporation stock and blow the proceeds on strippers and coke.