fourworlds

“Committees don’t make art. They make artists kill themselves.” Jessica Hagy at VizThink Conference

Face-to-face collaboration in a group setting is one of the must painful aspects of my job. Although processes created by people like Dave Gray and Nancy Duarte have improved the experience, I still put such meetings in the “painful necessity” category of dental exams and 5:00 am flights. I would much rather collaborate by locking myself in my office and passing documents back and forth electronically. That’s usually what I get to do.

Nevertheless, sometimes a business requirement demands that I get together with people of various thinking styles, backgrounds (and maybe even agendas) and meet in the flesh to collaborate on a project. And although we almost always end up with something good, getting there sometimes feels like chewing on tin foil.

My difficulty with real-time in-person collaboration is that I’m an introvert. Not in the shy, retiring meaning of the term, but rather in the INTP sense of usually being “so deeply into thought as to seem detached, and often actually oblivious to the world around me.” The experience of having my attention pulled from its inner haven is kind of like the scene in The 40 Year Old Virgin when Steve Carrel gets his chest waxed.

So to my fellow INTP comrades I offer solidarity, and to all the rest of you, I beg gentle tolerance.