As someone who spends a good deal of time alone because I enjoy solitary pursuits, I disagree with the article when it claims that alone time is a form of "liberation", "freedom", and gaining "control". It's been my experience that people who use terms like these to describe their solitude don't actually really enjoy it much at all and tend to only seek this alone time as a manifestation of an avoidant personality. In other words, they don't feel happy during this time by themselves, but they seek it as a way to demonstrate autonomy within their life. They like the idea of being alone, but not the alone time itself.
On the other hand, people who describe their alone time as "relaxing", "exciting", or "interesting" truly seem to enjoy that period without social interaction.
That's pretty insightful. What I hear you saying, and I agree with what I hear, is that some look at alone time as a means of accomplishing a goal (freedom, et. al.) rather than pursing the solitary activity. Contrast that with myself (and I gather you as well) where I pursue a solitary activity for the sake of the activity, and the solitude is a side effect.
When I'm riding a motorcycle to a far away destination or running a trail on some mountain, I'm doing it to ride a motorcycle or to go for a run. I don't mind being alone, most likely even enjoy it, but that's not what I'm out there for. The exception could be sitting on a meditation cushion, but to me aloneness (EDIT: in the case of meditation) is more of a requirement than a goal.
With all that said, I do have a teensy nit to pick with the title: alone != lonely. Sometimes the two intersect, but not as a rule.
As a raging introvert who is also a bit of an extrovert at times - yes and no.
Sometimes I take up a solitary activity that I don't enjoy quite that much just for the sake of being alone. Going for a run in the morning somehow feels less weird than just sitting in my room staring at the wall. It also gets me away from the internet.
Now I could just be alone and away from the internet. But the mind is hyperactive and it craves distraction. That's when you have to trick it into accepting aloneness and nointernetness by giving it something better to do. Or simply forcing it to accept its fate.
> Going for a run in the morning somehow feels less weird than just sitting in my room staring at the wall.
It's all about branding. In most settings, yeah, it'd be labelled as weird. But if we call "sitting and staring at the wall" something like "meditation" it becomes all cool and esoteric. :-) (I say this as one who spends at least 30 minutes a day sitting and staring at a wall.)
Point taken, though. I guess I have enough solitary activities that I regularly partake in that I never gave thought to those that might need to actively seek out such activities.
> I guess I have enough solitary activities that I regularly partake in that I never gave thought to those that might need to actively seek out such activities.
I actually have to remind myself to partake in activities that involve other people (unless I'm currently working for a client on site). The bigger issue is true aloneness without that pesky internet. It's a powerful addiction.
Honestly, I feel more alone when I'm in the gym actively boxing with people than I do sitting at home where I can't help but check my messages ever couple of minutes.
In some circles, meditation is still viewed as weird.
But your comparison is curious.
Indeed, to a external observer, a person looking at the wall and another doing meditation may look very alike, but what they are doing is the exact opposite of one another.
Dude I absolutely love being alone and "liberation", "freedom", and gaining "control" all resonate with me. No idea what "manifestation of an avoidant personality" means. "Relaxing", "exciting", and "interesting also apply. I do know that I'm terrible in a team and prefer working alone.
>Your preference for working alone is because you avoid being in a team
That's quite an assumption to make. We could easily turn it on its head: My avoidance of being in a team is because of my preference for working alone.
I might indeed be terrible in a team, and sadly go off alone.
I might be terrible in a team, and yet happily go off alone.
I might be terrible in a team, because I enjoy being alone so much more, and so I rarely get any experience with being in a team. (And when I do, I might barely put in any effort because I find it so tedious and unpleasant compared to my preferred manner of working).
If I know I'm happy doing A, and there is a disjoint activity B, then naturally my tendency to A will reduce my time spent doing B. There may or may not be correlation.
The "and" leaves that sentence somewhat ambiguous with respect to any cause and effect ("and so" or "because I" might have swung it either way). But in the further context of:
>Dude I absolutely love being alone
>"Relaxing", "exciting", and "interesting also apply
I feel it becomes elevated to "quite" an assumption.
My team considers me a great team worker. Some say stuff like motivating, leadership and mentor in my reviews. That's the extrinsic perspective. Intrinsically I love the sense of accomplishment I get from my own contributions. In comparison to the senseless bickering the team does I see my code, documentation and conversation as pithy and efficient. I know enough to keep these kinds of thoughts to myself. Some in the team don't. It tends to make them look arrogant and haughty.
How in the world do you know he avoids working in a team? Nothing he wrote implies that at all. "Preferring" to work alone doesn't even remotely mean he avoids teams. He could be working in a team all the time. That's completely consistent with also seeking out alone time during other moments in your life.
By your logic, someone who prefers leisure over work must apparently avoid work.
Exactly. A bad team just destroys productivity for the most part. You generally won't get any answers you seek in a reasonable fashion if the team is bad enough. In that instance you might as well work alone.
Not good and not bad. I wouldn't compare the two as it's a false dichotomy. Just as some tasks are better done in pairs, others are better done alone. You can work as part of a team, but also individually.
It may be situational, too. I have a family, and when I get the house to myself for a day, it definitely improves my mood and sense of calm. It's very restorative for me.
I can be in my office away from the family, but it's a completely different feeling than being actually alone in the house. Doesn't matter what I'm doing, either. Working, reading, playing, watching TV, etc. It's a very different feeling.
This seems unnecessarily presumptive. While it may be true that using terms like "liberation" and "freedom" implies at least a somewhat avoidant personality, I think you're really venturing too far to extrapolate from that that such people don't actually enjoy being alone.
Case in point: I would probably use those terms sometimes to describe alone time, and yet I enjoy the hell out of it. I don't seek alone time to "demonstrate autonomy" -- I seek it because I enjoy it, period. Part of the reason I enjoy it is because of the autonomy it involves, but I've never once isolated myself just to prove to myself that I have some sort of autonomy.
Interesting side note on the history of the US Forest Service and its interest in the study of loneliness:
In the 1930s and 1940s (and probably later, too) the US Forest Service employed something like fire-watchers, men who would hike out on their own with little equipment into the forests to their station, which was a single fire lookout tower in the wilderness [1].
There they would sit on their own and scan the horizon for fires until their replacement arrived, usually after a few months. If they would see smoke, they had to walk (again, on their own) to the smoke and try to put out the fire with the little equipment they had.
If they couldn't put out the fire they had to go get help - quite an undertaking since the towers often were not connected to any telephone network.
Norman Borlaug, the father of the green revolution, did exactly that to support his BSc in forestry from 1935 to 1938, always sitting alone in the forest, usually not seeing anyone for months at a time.
Source: Vietmeyer's 'Our Daily Bread, The Essential Norman Borlaug'
In _The Dharma Bums_, Jack Kerouac actually describes one such time when he was in a fire lookout tower. It's a lovely part of the book, evocative of solitude and natural beauty but also informative of the pleasant things you give up being there. Loved it.
I don't know about everyone else, but I do my best work alone.
Of course, there does need to be a balance, and reference to others, and having others show up to confirm or criticize the work helps.
Personally I think there is way to much "social" stuff going on in our society and this is detrimental to real work and innovation taking place. But then again, the choice between bad company and no company is often real the dilemma, and the logical pick is a no-brainer in my opinion.
>and having others show up to confirm or criticize the work helps.
I actually had a rather interesting experience last night where an "outsider's perspective" ended up being the exact insight I needed.
My roommate stepped outside to socialize with me while I was repairing my Mustang: which has been having intermittent ignition problems since we replaced the ignition control module 6 months ago.
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To set the stage: this module bolts to a plate on the intake manifold. One of the bolts is used as an electrical ground. Unfortunately we had broken this bolt in removing the original module.
Furthermore the back of the unit uses the manifold as a sort of heatsink. So that missing bolt was preventing good thermal conductivity as well!
We had come up with temporary measures to restore the ground -- but clearly these measures were inadequate.
The factory mount is in a very inaccessible spot: there's simply not enough room to drill out the remains of an automotive grade bolt and re-tap the hole.
A friend and I had fabricated a "mounting adapter" and were toying with the idea of remote mounting the module. However we couldn't find a suitable spot on the car that would provide a clean electrical ground. (Without stressing the factory wiring harness.)
My roommate, a machinist and most certainly not a car guy, points to a flat surface and asks if it's "solid enough" to bolt the adapter plate to.
What he had pointed to was the power steering pump. Which for obvious reasons we could not drill into.
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However that suggestion ended up being the catalyst I needed to solve the problem. It was as if the whole engine bay became a puzzle.
You see: power steering pumps are made to be removed far more frequently than an intake manifold.
Initially I had thought the only way to repair the factory mount was to remove the intake manifold, which is an arduous task that involves removing many delicate assemblies for emissions and fueling.
Removing the power steering pump, though, was a considerably easier task! This would open up plenty of room in the engine bay; we could even use a typical cordless drill.
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Inspiration sometimes comes from the oddest places.
How to act on the proper solution (repairing the factory mounting plate) had eluded me for six months.
An absolutely bonkers suggestion ended up leading me down a much simpler path to success.
I'm surprised how effective this sort of 'debugging' can be. I'd love to know more about the mechanisms which make this sort of "verbal problem solving" tick.
I wonder if it's as simple as mapping the problem onto parts of your brain which aren't often tasked with this type of critical thinking.
Anecdotally, most people I know do better with a mix of social and alone time. Given that it's now possible to almost never be conscious and effectively alone, it will be interesting to see the long term mental health impact.
It's an interesting article but I feel like the study draws the completely wrong conclusion. I would draw the conclusion that humans when offered an experiment they have control of that offers a new or interesting experience will participate even if it causes them pain. If I participated in the experiment I would definitely shock myself since I've rarely been shocked in the situation, then I might spend the rest of the time analyzing my behavior and trying to see the influence of evolutionary drives as a motivator and enjoy that even more. It's basically the same thing as putting ANY button in a room with the warning "Do not press this button".
It wasn't new by the time they sat in the room: they had already been shocked and all had said they were willing to pay money to avoid being shocked again.
Just a side note, as someone that works at home a lot, physically by myself. Others can treat you with suspicion.
A few neighbours have colluded and perceive me to be a monster. I am male, and my partner (female) travels to work. I think they just don't get self-employment / working from home, and what looks like a role reversal.
I'm quite a friendly guy but their hostility (they have been quite mean) is starting to make me feel isolated and quite unwelcome in my own house and garden. When I'm actually quite happy to be on my own (providing I have enough external stimulous).
I think we should define 'being lonely' better. At age of internet, computer games and social network it is very relative. Perhaps better term is 'distraction free environment'.
To me it seems that the balance of social and alone should be to result in inner peace. This is to ultimately increase productivity in doing what you find satisfying in life.
I write code a lot at work and we plan it out in a group then move our own ways to write it with occasional instant messaging about this or that. But sometimes when I am writing I can't focus or have trouble getting myself into the problem. And from there I find that reading or talking to someone at the office can help put me at peace and ultimately help me focus on the work I have to do.
Like right now I am at work and writing this - I have a task to do to document some things but I hardly remember them and I need to do something that is going to interest me. Am I alone while doing this? Well, sure, I am available for other people to approach but I am not trying to talk to anyone.
I think the term alone is relative to our sense of privacy. If I was in a room with the door closed would I feel more alone than if I am sitting in an open office? Probably. But if I can get to a peaceful state it will probably produce similar results in my work ethic/productivity.
One interesting thing about Pinterest users is that they feel "alone" and unwatched, even though actions are public. In Teresa Amabile's concept of creativity, anticipating an evaluation can be detrimental to creativity.
I wonder if the same may hold true for other public networks like Twitter, Instagram etc., although [unlike Pinterest] they have a higher abandonment rate.
I think when people emphasize their ability to spend an inordinate amount of time alone, they are looking at it as a unique "quality," something that sets them apart from others.
We all need our alone time, and a few aspects of personality development occur when we are reflecting on the social interactions, encounters and relationships we've had. But too much time alone, I think, eventually leads to feelings of despair and helplessness. Either that, or a numbness to the reality of the state of isolation.
A suprising number of people have real difficulty of being alone with their thoughts. There being alone I mean not being only physicall alone, bet being also free from other forms of disctraction and communication.
Which is probably the reason why when faced with a (say) 10 minute wait, people feel the need to be distracted. Facebook, Twitter, Hacker News, Reddit... ANYTHING to DO. Even bringing a book or iPod on a train. Some people feel extremely uncomfortable just sitting doing nothing. Being "bored" so to speak.
However boredom is GOOD for you, for adults and especially for children. It fosters creative thought as well as has other positive aspects. Introspective thought and sometimes problem solving comes from boredom. Think about it - where do your best ideas come to you? In the shower.
That's why I get so depressed with how I see kids behaving these days. They have a zillion toys, DVDs, computers, iPods, tablets because (GOD FORBID) they don't have anything to do for a second.
They bring their toys outside of the house. I never once in my life brought a toy with me outside of the house. If I had to wait someone I just (gasp!) waited. They are watching movies in the car (!!!) and this is considered a positive to keep them occupied (and presumably just quiet). I was at a (somewhat snoody) restaurant and I saw two kids who were like 8-10 years old who brought several coloring books and crayons with them and they were all splayed out on the table like it was a child's play place. The concept seemed to be HORRIBLE for them to not have something to do in the time frame between ordering and eating! A full 10-15 minutes!
Well in my opinion it is setting the children up for failure. They aren't interacting with their environment, engaging in conversation, asking questions, or even just learning at some point you have to learn to sit down with nothing to do. Or even learning to find something to do when they are "bored." Kids used to be good at that. Games like "I spy," hand clapping games, pretend and make believe, doing each other's hair, inventing games, singing, trying to find license plates from every state, creating dance routines, cops and robbers (and the politically incorrect version - cowboys and Indians), etc, etc. My friends and I even wrote, memorized, and performed an entire play when were were children.
I remember going to a really boring after school program for poor kids. There was basically nothing to do for hours other than a small playground that I was way way too old for. So I created a whole world in my head. I was out in the woods. I had to collect firewood and build a fire. I collected sticks, dug a small hole, arranged the sticks as I would if building a fire and arranged rocks around it. Bundled more sticks to make a torch, etc.
I have preteen cousins. When they visit family they don't interact with the family at all. They are on their phones the ENTIRE time at Christmas. I don't even know them at all except for what their parents tell me. I didn't hear a single word from either of them.
Nowadays distractions aren't even enough, people seem to be distracted from their distractions.
Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) wrote a really good article about it.
I bring a book with my traveling sometimes but usually I don't even take it out, I just sit there with my thoughts and I feel no anxiety about it. I feel really sorry for those who seem to have anxiety about sitting around with nothing to do.
> I think when people emphasize their ability to spend an inordinate amount of time alone, they are looking at it as a unique "quality," something that sets them apart from others.
And? I'm sure that a lot of people that crave social interaction a lot view it as a positive quality. Being a sociable person is almost always viewed as a positive trait (not that people that want to be alone a lot can't be sociable, too). But when some people emphasize their preference for being alone a lot, we immediately tend to first assume that there is something wrong with them.
It's really hard for me to stay motivated without other people around. But I am always more productive alone. A mix of with and without people is best for me.
In those critical years I learned how to be alone. [But even] this
formulation doesn’t really capture my meaning. I didn’t, in any
literal sense, learn to be alone, for the simple reason that this
knowledge had never been unlearned during my childhood. It is a basic
capacity in all of us from the day of our birth. However these three
years of work in isolation [1945-1948], when I was thrown onto my own
resources, following guidelines which I myself had spontaneously
invented, instilled in me a strong degree of confidence, unassuming
yet enduring in my ability to do mathematics, which owes nothing to
any consensus or to the fashions which pass as law. By this I mean
to say: to reach out in my own way to the things I wished to learn,
rather than relying on the notions of the consensus, overt or tacit,
coming from a more or less extended clan of which I found myself a
member, or which for any other reason laid claim to be taken as an
authority. This silent consensus had informed me both at the lycee
and at the university, that one shouldn’t bother worrying about
what was really meant when using a term like “volume” which
was “obviously self-evident”, “generally known,” “in
problematic” etc... it is in this gesture of ”going beyond to be
in oneself rather than the pawn of a consensus, the refusal to stay
within a rigid circle that others have drawn around one -- it is in
this solitary act that one finds true creativity. All others things
follow as a matter of course.
Since then I’ve had the chance in the world of mathematics that
bid me welcome, to meet quite a number of people, both among my
“elders” and among young people in my general age group who were
more brilliant, much more ‘gifted’ than I was. I admired the
facility with which they picked up, as if at play, new ideas, juggling
them as if familiar with them from the cradle -- while for myself I
felt clumsy, even oafish, wandering painfully up an arduous track,
like a dumb ox faced with an amorphous mountain of things I had to
learn (so I was assured) things I felt incapable of understanding
the essentials or following through to the end. Indeed, there was
little about me that identified the kind of bright student who wins
at prestigious competitions or assimilates almost by sleight of hand,
the most forbidding subjects.
In fact, most of these comrades who I gauged to be more brilliant
than I have gone on to become distinguished mathematicians. Still
from the perspective of thirty or thirty five years, I can state
that their imprint upon the mathematics of our time has not been
very profound. They’ve done all things, often beautiful things in
a context that was already set out before them, which they had no
inclination to disturb. Without being aware of it, they’ve remained
prisoners of those invisible and despotic circles which delimit the
universe of a certain milieu in a given era. To have broken these
bounds they would have to rediscover in themselves that capability
which was their birthright, as it was mine: The capacity to be alone.
Successful people often insist that their success was not random, and attribute it to some specific quality (persistence, courage, the capacity to be alone, etc.) even though there are tons of other people who had the same quality and still failed to be successful. It's fundamentally difficult for us to accept the fact that even Shakespeare wouldn't be able to teach us how to "unleash our inner Shakespeare", and that most people who want to be special will never get what they want.
There's an interesting parallel with Tarkovsky's advice:
"What would you like to tell people?
I don’t know… I think I’d like to say only that they should learn to be alone and try to spend as much time as possible by themselves. I think one of the faults of young people today is that they try to come together around events that are noisy, almost aggressive at times. This desire to be together in order to not feel alone is an unfortunate symptom, in my opinion. Every person needs to learn from childhood how to be spend time with oneself. That doesn’t mean he should be lonely, but that he shouldn’t grow bored with himself because people who grow bored in their own company seem to me in danger, from a self-esteem point of view."
I have a lot of friends but really enjoy being alone. Unfortunately people can't accept that as a reason for not joining them on an activity so I constantly have to come up with excuses. I do like hanging out with people as well but being alone is just as fun and rewarding, and is never tiresome.
On the other hand, people who describe their alone time as "relaxing", "exciting", or "interesting" truly seem to enjoy that period without social interaction.