Tips to help introverts win at work

Anybody familiar with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator knows that there are roughly 16 personality types. I’ll let you in on a little fact about me – I’m a bona fide INTJ type, which forms just 0.8% of the population and means I’m highly introverted. Fellow introverts know that social situations such as life at the office can be extremely stressful. Here are a few tips to help you get through the day.

Take quiet breaks by yourself
This is especially helpful if you work in an open-plan office. Find a breakout room to have a moment away from your colleagues and reset your nerves. I’ve found that going for a walk around the outside of the building can help me clear my mind and prepare myself for more quality time with the team.

Find your rhythm
If you’re anything like me, you hate being told when to do things. The best cure for the monotony of work is to make a plan for the day and set your own pace. When I’ve got really important work to do, I put my headphones in and listen to music with no lyrics so I can tune out all the ambient noise of the office and get down to my to-do list. The headphones also signal to my teammates that I’m too busy for chitchat so they only interrupt with work-related questions.

Create your ideal space
Introverts perpetually live in their own heads, so it’s difficult to deal with working in a shared space. The best way for me to handle our open-plan seating arrangement is to make my desk personal to me. I’ve got everything laid out in a way that makes sense in my mind, and I spend a bit of time at the end of each week tidying it and putting everything back in its place.

Avoid gossip
Office gossip is like poison to introverts. We don’t need the distraction and we don’t like knowing a secret that others will try to extract from us. Ignore anything that starts making its way around the team.

Buddy up
It may sound like a massive contradiction, but introverts do really well with close personal friendships (the “N” in INTJ stands for “intuitive”), so it’s important to find somebody at the office that you can relate to; pay attention during conversations to learn who has similar interests – somebody on a similar intellectual wavelength.

To find out your personality type and get tips for thriving at work, visit 16personalities.com