Lots of vague assertions about introversion and the need for human interaction here, but oddly, the author seems to have never asked the interviewees to list out all their interactions. Online is also just barely glossed over with no mention of what any of the interviewees do online.
Anyway, my own experience with this kind of schedule is that minor social encounters can mean a bit more. If you go to the shop at 5:30pm after work, you may be in a lineup with 10 other people and feel completely ignored. At 3am, things move at a more leisurely pace. People might actually notice that you exist.
Then there's online life, which can fill in a lot. But again, the author just... skipped over it, along with anything substantive about other cultures. I'd love to see a real dive into what the lifestyle is like for other people (although I'm currently a morning person and feeling significantly healthier this way!).
It does feel a little like the author's searched really hard to find people that fit a theory that nocturnal lifestyles and introversion are linked and struggled to find many good examples. Hardcore introverts, of course, might not be the people most likely to volunteer to answer personal questions. But also, there are a lot of ways to minimise social interactions that don't involve unusual sleeping schedules (and a lot of nocturnal jobs that are intensely social, or people working antisocial night shifts because it's the best job they can get rather than because theyre averse to social interaction)
i only care about deep meaningful connections while superficial interactions make me uncomfortable or feel like a waste of time. time that i could use to do something meaningful.
Had exactly this discussion in a circle of people where most identify as clear introverts (jftr, I don't) - and they unequivocally said that chat doesn't really count for the social exhaustion. I think most of it that you can just step away, often even mid-conversation - and the simple fact that it's not voice or even personal interaction. I guess it's really multi-faceted and people my age (late 30s) who grew up with chat and being online and having a lot of friends you only meet once per year (or only every few years) then interaction can be different and you're maybe even interacting more, just not in person. So does that even fit the classic definition of introvert?
I live like this, although not to the extreme as discussed in the article. I have my alarm set to go off at 3AM, also called the 'Witching Hour'[0]. It's when I'm most creative, and all the sages used this special time to write, paint, etc. I've come to gradually learn this is the optimal time for coding & writing. My physiology is wired a certain way, and it's great the way there's no interruptions by family members, friends, or traffic. It's the time to Get Sh*t Done.
I live in a dense city where it's very hard to find peace and quiet. I like to wake up before 5 AM and go on long solo bike rides, since it's the only time of day when the roads are empty and the city sleeps. Around 6 AM, buses and grumpy commuters appear, and by 7 AM the sun is rising and the roads are packed again.
Introverts of the world unite! Seriously, night time is great because having large chunks of unstructured time is good for creativity. There's no one to interrupt you or be offended by your (unpredictable) results.
My waking hours are typically 12pm-3am. Can confirm that eating during the early morning (i.e. when normally asleep) puts a noticeable strain on the system. Which must be connected to the scientific fact that night shifts are bad for health. I presume partly because night shift people don't do night shifts all the time and thus have to continually reset their circadian clocks, which will include eating at the 'wrong' times.
that matches my experience: in the period i worked third shift all my co-workers struggled because they tried to switch back to days for weekend time with friends/family, then back to nights for the new workweek. i just kept a steady schedule and was fine.
> Can confirm that eating during the early morning (i.e. when normally asleep) puts a noticeable strain on the system.
Me too, when I was carb loading for breakfast. That stopped when I got into the habit of eating (only) beef for breakfast. For me it's just less work to digest, and keeps the hunger away for much longer.
When doing my PhD in a research lab open 24/7 I used to work between 13:00 and 5:00.
This was a quiet time and there was nobody but it had is downsides: the team meetings were in the morning so they never saw me there, my breakfast was lunch and obviously I had no social life (I was there alone so that was the last of my worries. Science FTW!)
If we take the nocturnals at their word—that they simply like living this way—they complicate one of our core assumptions about human psychology: that all people have the same fundamental needs.
This basic problem, assuming some base commonality that turns out to have a much larger variability within a "normal" population, seems to plague a lot of the results coming out of the social sciences. It's one of the primary reasons I don't put a lot of weight into the research in these fields. I often find my lived experience very different to what they find. Maybe it is a necessary step on the road to a fuller understanding (we've got to start somewhere), but I think we end up over-simplifying the complexities of what it can mean to be human.
One explanation I've heard for this shortcoming is that psychology is almost fully focused on pathology, i.e. studying disease. So it's rarely going to give a good accounting of what happens in healthy populations.
Difficult to see this changing, as happy, healthy people aren't going to pay for therapy, institutionalization or medication... well, unless you convince them that they're actually unhealthy.
The study of "positive psychology" was conceived to address this shortcoming. However, I'm not sure how much it has influenced/improved the field of psychology as a whole.
> Positive psychology began as a new domain of psychology in 1998 when Martin Seligman chose it as the theme for his term as president of the American Psychological Association.
> It is a reaction against past practices, which have tended to focus on mental illness and emphasized maladaptive behavior and negative thinking.
"one size fits all" means it fits poorly if it works at all. seems to be one of the basic elements of being human, as is pretending the phenomenon doesn't exist.
all of "those people" are identical enough to be called "those people" and [hated | revered] because of it. some people were helped by $X treatment, therefore all people should receive it, and they must be lying if they claim it didn't work. ... and so on.
That is the dumbest thing I've read in a long time. I've been a super-bat person or whatever since I was a little kid. I feel the most alive at night. I am also happily married. I have IRL best friends. I talk to my mom every day. She literally has never not been surprised when I text her earlier than 11am.
Yes, I feel normal when I'm the only human awake for miles around. I also like when my friends stay up to join me! I also like pretending like I'm that one caveman who stays up at night at the opening of the communal gorge. I say that half-jokingly but I really have no idea why humans would be awake at night otherwise.
>> I could understand why people might wonder, though, whether a near-total retreat from daytime society would be motivated by more than just introversion. When does a desire for solitude cross into something unhealthy?
Vampirism?
I have a job where I often need to be at work before dawn. During the winter months I also leave work long after sunset. And, for security reasons, my office doesn't have windows. Mid-December I had to walk between buildings. I hadn't thought much about it but as soon as I stepped outside the sunlight was very powerful. The reflection off the snow made it doubly so. I then realized I hadn't seen sunlight in weeks. I half expected to catch fire like a Hollywood vampire.
Funny. And those atmospheric effects are really underrated compared to indoors.
This one time, for some months, I had these really terrible things called corneal erosions. I'd wake up, open my eyes, and in doing so my eyelids would pull off bits of eye tissue. No warning. Absolute literal screaming pain.
Darkness was really needed for a while, for recuperation. Among other things, I learned that the difference between indoor and outdoor light levels is really quite something. I had previously underestimated the difference.
Like, I thought that sitting in a vehicle with tinted windows in the daytime might be similar, in terms of light levels, to being in a room inside a house during the daytime. So I'd sit in the back of the family van for a while, during a vacation trip for example. But it was not even close, for practical purposes.
I do have to wonder if some people are more naturally aware, at some level, of the difference, and they calibrate to it, either consciously or unconsciously. Others may think the result unhealthy. But that may also be a subjective perception worth questioning in order to get at important details...
Lovely, a hit piece on anyone who's likely to have thrived during the past 2 years. Just another article that talks extensively about introversion and never actually explains what it means, other than to equate it with shyness which is mostly wrong. And just for good measure, it's suggested that introversion might be added to the DSM! Despite composing nearly half of any given population, you're a freak and you should feel bad for it, shun the non-believer. How dare you do well while the extroverts were left deeply affected from lockdowns.
I feel like you either didn't read the article, or you didn't read it for comprehension. This wasn't a hit piece so much as an examination of whether human interaction is actually necessary for some people.
The fact someone can write so many words about introversion and never actually explain what it is just helps perpetuate misunderstandings. It takes energy for an introvert to be around other people, extroverts gain energy around others. There are omniverts as well of course. All behaviors are derived from there. See how hard that was to write?
It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with whether someone "has a need for human connection", that is completely unrelated to introversion. But now we have pieces like this try to make the case that introverts have no need for human connection, and then helpfully investigates if this is a condition that needs treatment. Totally harmless.
yes, I might have this although I'm not entirely sure. I'm in the midst of a 1 week holiday (at home) and where I usually had to wake up at 8:30 am now after just 5 days I'm already at 1 pm wake-up time, just naturally. I always enjoyed the evening hours and the silence it brings with it (not just audio but also visually), these are the hours I feel most at peace. Why cut them short by going to sleep at midnight? ... well because I have to wakeup at 8:30..... all in all maybe I should be a night watch and live my life like my rhythm dictates. (I'm an introvert, too, but not sure why this connection should really matter)
> “So people who live their life alone without others, they may not be unhappy. But they also may not experience the full spectrum of pleasure.” And they might not even realize it.
Who cares about the "full spectrum of pleasure"? Should we judge people who have never had sex? Should we judge people who have never used heroin? Life isn't all about pleasure. As long as they're happy and not hurting anyone, just let them live.
Because accepting that would mean psychology professors would have to reframe their frameworks regarding mental disorders. Those quotes are from researchers protecting their years of work, not giving an honest evaluation of this phenomenon.
For a period of time, I had a schedule where I would wake up around 1-3PM, and then only leave the house to go out (gym, groceries, etc) after about 11PM.
I lived in a small-ish suburb at the time, and it was surreally peaceful. I went months where the only person I ran into was the cashier at the grocery checkout an occasional other person in the aisles of the store, I could exercise in peace, there were almost no cars on the road.
When I was younger, I had a brief job working for a carpet company doing work in commercial buildings. One of the jobs I was on was recarpeting a number of floors in an office building in the downtown area where the business was. Because nighttime was the only time the building was unoccupied, that's when we had to do all the work.
I was a lowly assistant, but I really enjoyed the work. There was something very serene and calming about it all, the crew being mostly alone in this huge building, the nighttime city lights visible out the windows.
To this day it remains one of my favorite jobs I ever had, despite the fact that I now have a desk job career and make much better money.
I'm pretty much such person. I never require face to face or even voice contact with anyone. However I text a lot, but favor people I don't know or I don't know that well. I don't chat all that much with established friends. And all my chatting is nearly solely responsive. I rarely initiate and do it usually by sending something funny, thoughtful or concerning I just seen on the internet. I deal with negative emotions by myself although I see that honest chat with someone sometimes improves the situation as well.
My sleeping schedule is fluid. I keep my own cycle regardless of visibility of closes star. I can extend my day and thus move the cycle forward. However I pretty much can't shorten the day, or the night. If I don't sleep enough, I just doze off during the day. For some time (few weeks maybe?) I was even fitting two sleep/awake cycles in each 24h.
> They do this because of the isolation, not in spite of it.
Yeah pretty much. This is also my schedule, I've always preferred to be alone 99% of the time, and for the past 20 years I've had a romantic partner and zero interest in developing any other strong social relationships.
The real downside is that you have very limited sunlight hours, so I have to be sure to take a nice long walk outside while the sun is still up to keep my brain happy.
I used to regularly wake up at night and get up and work and do other stuff because I enjoyed it, but while I'm an introvert I'm not as introvert as described in this article. For me it was occasional relief. I don't do it now because it's hard to combine with having a girlfriend and with caring for my son, but I miss it. Even when working from home in solitude it feels different to do it at night. And it feels different to do my walks in the very early morning than during the day.
another underappreciated benefit of 'graveyard' hours is that you get to become very acquainted with all the neighborhood cats and have a lot more opportunities to see your local wildlife... or the scroungers at the very least.
you will also get to know your local law enforcement because keeping odd hours means you are assumed to be inherently criminal.
With a flexible work schedule, no office, and a SO who works nights, I’ve definitely slipped into this and for me it has turned into a struggle, so I can appreciate the article.
It’s just very difficult to make progress on other goals when everything is closed, and nobody responds to emails outside of normal working hours. I’m talking about people who you want to do work for you (doctors, home maintenance, financial-related services, and so on, which are numerous).
I’ve also become much more easily irritated when interrupted, and have more difficulty multitasking. As I type, I’m trying to flip back to normal people hours, but that’s harder as I age, so far I’m waking up earlier but practically not sleeping.
Perhaps unrelated and anecdoctal, but it seems post-covid, nobody gets anything done. It requires endless harassment to move things along, people don’t respond, or just don’t show up. You have to call at the precise right time.
>> The night gives you freedom—from expectations, from obligations, and from distractions. It allows you to just be. “The daytime forces all these identity possibilities on you,” Rufus told me. “The nighttime, with its silence and its darkness and its solitude, helps you settle more into who you really are.”
Very relatable. Seems like a common theme in these "ultra-introverts" is the desire to escape in some way. From that perspective, I can see where the concerns of it being an "unhealthy" behavior stem from.
I'm kind of curious why the behavior is skewed more towards night than early morning as I've had similar, peaceful, calm-before-the-storm, experiences from waking up very early (3am-6am).
>According to most psychologists, humans are inherently social creatures; contact with others isn’t just a want—it’s a need.
People infer "social" to meaning talking, making friends, going to parties, etc, but there are more useful definitions here. The greater social need we have is to be judged and make judgements of others. This behavior evolved into us long before language did.
The modern hermit need not talk to anyone. They simple need to have a presence in some internet community to fill their social cup.
44 comments
[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 96.4 ms ] threadAnyway, my own experience with this kind of schedule is that minor social encounters can mean a bit more. If you go to the shop at 5:30pm after work, you may be in a lineup with 10 other people and feel completely ignored. At 3am, things move at a more leisurely pace. People might actually notice that you exist.
Then there's online life, which can fill in a lot. But again, the author just... skipped over it, along with anything substantive about other cultures. I'd love to see a real dive into what the lifestyle is like for other people (although I'm currently a morning person and feeling significantly healthier this way!).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witching_hour
My waking hours are typically 12pm-3am. Can confirm that eating during the early morning (i.e. when normally asleep) puts a noticeable strain on the system. Which must be connected to the scientific fact that night shifts are bad for health. I presume partly because night shift people don't do night shifts all the time and thus have to continually reset their circadian clocks, which will include eating at the 'wrong' times.
Me too, when I was carb loading for breakfast. That stopped when I got into the habit of eating (only) beef for breakfast. For me it's just less work to digest, and keeps the hunger away for much longer.
This was a quiet time and there was nobody but it had is downsides: the team meetings were in the morning so they never saw me there, my breakfast was lunch and obviously I had no social life (I was there alone so that was the last of my worries. Science FTW!)
This basic problem, assuming some base commonality that turns out to have a much larger variability within a "normal" population, seems to plague a lot of the results coming out of the social sciences. It's one of the primary reasons I don't put a lot of weight into the research in these fields. I often find my lived experience very different to what they find. Maybe it is a necessary step on the road to a fuller understanding (we've got to start somewhere), but I think we end up over-simplifying the complexities of what it can mean to be human.
Difficult to see this changing, as happy, healthy people aren't going to pay for therapy, institutionalization or medication... well, unless you convince them that they're actually unhealthy.
The study of "positive psychology" was conceived to address this shortcoming. However, I'm not sure how much it has influenced/improved the field of psychology as a whole.
> Positive psychology began as a new domain of psychology in 1998 when Martin Seligman chose it as the theme for his term as president of the American Psychological Association.
> It is a reaction against past practices, which have tended to focus on mental illness and emphasized maladaptive behavior and negative thinking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_psychology
all of "those people" are identical enough to be called "those people" and [hated | revered] because of it. some people were helped by $X treatment, therefore all people should receive it, and they must be lying if they claim it didn't work. ... and so on.
Yes, I feel normal when I'm the only human awake for miles around. I also like when my friends stay up to join me! I also like pretending like I'm that one caveman who stays up at night at the opening of the communal gorge. I say that half-jokingly but I really have no idea why humans would be awake at night otherwise.
Anyways, I'll keep a look out, gang. Sleep tight.
The article makes no mention of autism or ADHD, which probably are partially responsible for a sizable chunk of "ultra-introverts".
Vampirism?
I have a job where I often need to be at work before dawn. During the winter months I also leave work long after sunset. And, for security reasons, my office doesn't have windows. Mid-December I had to walk between buildings. I hadn't thought much about it but as soon as I stepped outside the sunlight was very powerful. The reflection off the snow made it doubly so. I then realized I hadn't seen sunlight in weeks. I half expected to catch fire like a Hollywood vampire.
This one time, for some months, I had these really terrible things called corneal erosions. I'd wake up, open my eyes, and in doing so my eyelids would pull off bits of eye tissue. No warning. Absolute literal screaming pain.
Darkness was really needed for a while, for recuperation. Among other things, I learned that the difference between indoor and outdoor light levels is really quite something. I had previously underestimated the difference.
Like, I thought that sitting in a vehicle with tinted windows in the daytime might be similar, in terms of light levels, to being in a room inside a house during the daytime. So I'd sit in the back of the family van for a while, during a vacation trip for example. But it was not even close, for practical purposes.
I do have to wonder if some people are more naturally aware, at some level, of the difference, and they calibrate to it, either consciously or unconsciously. Others may think the result unhealthy. But that may also be a subjective perception worth questioning in order to get at important details...
"Sure I can paint a horse, I've heard them described many times" http://cdn.cavemancircus.com//wp-content/uploads/images/2019...
The fact someone can write so many words about introversion and never actually explain what it is just helps perpetuate misunderstandings. It takes energy for an introvert to be around other people, extroverts gain energy around others. There are omniverts as well of course. All behaviors are derived from there. See how hard that was to write?
It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with whether someone "has a need for human connection", that is completely unrelated to introversion. But now we have pieces like this try to make the case that introverts have no need for human connection, and then helpfully investigates if this is a condition that needs treatment. Totally harmless.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_disorder
Comorbidities include ADHD, depression and OCD.
Who cares about the "full spectrum of pleasure"? Should we judge people who have never had sex? Should we judge people who have never used heroin? Life isn't all about pleasure. As long as they're happy and not hurting anyone, just let them live.
Some people who have gone through clinical death describe the experience as intensively joyous. Again, I am not doing that deliberately.
So what? Live and let live.
I lived in a small-ish suburb at the time, and it was surreally peaceful. I went months where the only person I ran into was the cashier at the grocery checkout an occasional other person in the aisles of the store, I could exercise in peace, there were almost no cars on the road.
It was very nice.
I was a lowly assistant, but I really enjoyed the work. There was something very serene and calming about it all, the crew being mostly alone in this huge building, the nighttime city lights visible out the windows.
To this day it remains one of my favorite jobs I ever had, despite the fact that I now have a desk job career and make much better money.
I would take my hour lunch break and wander around Tokyo at 2 am.
It was fun for a while but it started to really get to me after a while.
My sleeping schedule is fluid. I keep my own cycle regardless of visibility of closes star. I can extend my day and thus move the cycle forward. However I pretty much can't shorten the day, or the night. If I don't sleep enough, I just doze off during the day. For some time (few weeks maybe?) I was even fitting two sleep/awake cycles in each 24h.
Yeah pretty much. This is also my schedule, I've always preferred to be alone 99% of the time, and for the past 20 years I've had a romantic partner and zero interest in developing any other strong social relationships.
The real downside is that you have very limited sunlight hours, so I have to be sure to take a nice long walk outside while the sun is still up to keep my brain happy.
you will also get to know your local law enforcement because keeping odd hours means you are assumed to be inherently criminal.
It’s just very difficult to make progress on other goals when everything is closed, and nobody responds to emails outside of normal working hours. I’m talking about people who you want to do work for you (doctors, home maintenance, financial-related services, and so on, which are numerous).
I’ve also become much more easily irritated when interrupted, and have more difficulty multitasking. As I type, I’m trying to flip back to normal people hours, but that’s harder as I age, so far I’m waking up earlier but practically not sleeping.
Perhaps unrelated and anecdoctal, but it seems post-covid, nobody gets anything done. It requires endless harassment to move things along, people don’t respond, or just don’t show up. You have to call at the precise right time.
Hire a day-secretary, or start a business model renting a per-task personal assistant where you can delegate the phone-tag.
Very relatable. Seems like a common theme in these "ultra-introverts" is the desire to escape in some way. From that perspective, I can see where the concerns of it being an "unhealthy" behavior stem from.
I'm kind of curious why the behavior is skewed more towards night than early morning as I've had similar, peaceful, calm-before-the-storm, experiences from waking up very early (3am-6am).
People infer "social" to meaning talking, making friends, going to parties, etc, but there are more useful definitions here. The greater social need we have is to be judged and make judgements of others. This behavior evolved into us long before language did.
The modern hermit need not talk to anyone. They simple need to have a presence in some internet community to fill their social cup.