How Quiet People Survive [Where Atmosphere Takes Shape, Part 6]

A continuation of the previous article.

This series began as a set of research notes prompted by a question: Why does the atmosphere vary so much from one store to another—mainly supermarkets, other retailers, and restaurants?

Last time, I looked at ways to keep some distance from an environment that does not suit us—not by cutting ties with it completely, but by adjusting the time we spend there, the role we take on, the way we communicate, and so on.

By now, I have made a full circuit through places, structures, society, and the individual. I felt I had come to understand at least part of the “why” behind my original question about why stores have such different atmospheres, so I thought I would end the series here. But I have unexpectedly wandered into some strange territory, so I may as well go a little further.

Even if we grow tired of reading the atmosphere and distance ourselves from society, life goes on.

Reducing contact with other people may mean less wear and tear. But it may also reduce our opportunities for work and our income. Working for yourself may remove you from the atmosphere of an organization, but it also creates more situations in which you must make decisions and take responsibility on your own.

Keeping your distance does not automatically lead to happily ever after. To survive, we still need money, plain and simple. Life is harsh that way.

So how can people continue working when they are not the type to push themselves to the front—when they pick up on the atmosphere around them, hold back their immediate reactions to think, and somehow end up thinking mostly about everyone else (or at least feel that they do)?

This may not speak broadly to everyone who identifies as introverted, highly sensitive, or simply quiet. “Survival” is an overstatement. What I really mean is: How can we keep going—keep living—without coming to hate it?

I can step forward when necessary, and there are times when I talk a lot. But a way of working that requires me to keep putting myself forward all the time wears me down. I want to think about my own future with that contradiction in mind.

Research Note 1: Sometimes We Learn How to Use a Strength Only Later

I pay too much attention to how people around me react. I notice small things that feel off. I think through too many possibilities before making a decision. Until quite recently, I saw these traits mostly as obstacles that slowed me down.

If I had been mentally tougher, perhaps things would have turned out differently. If I had found something that suited me sooner, perhaps I would have lived a different life. Sometimes I catch myself wishing I could return to the past with everything I know now and start a “New Game+” with all my accumulated abilities intact.

Some of the knowledge and experience I now have came from failing or spending too long in places that did not suit me. When I look back and think, “I could handle that better now,” or “Why couldn't I do that then?” I tell myself that this may be evidence that I have grown at least a little.

The more past situations we have to compare, the more possible actions we can choose after something triggers a reaction.

Perhaps growth does not mean erasing the parts of ourselves we consider weaknesses. Perhaps it means gaining more ways to work with them. One approach to pursuing life goals describes three kinds of action: selection (narrowing the goals we invest our energy in), optimization (improving the means available to us), and compensation (making up for what is missing in other ways). A study that followed early-career professionals for three years found that these behaviors—particularly compensation, or finding additional means needed to achieve a goal—were associated with job satisfaction and emotional well-being three years later.^[1]

The tendency to notice small things that feel off may simply increase anxiety, or it may prove useful in our work. Gaining experience may be less about adding entirely new abilities and more about gradually learning where to use the traits we already have, and where to compensate by using another method.

There is no guarantee that something we considered an obstacle when we were young will eventually become useful. Even as we grow older, there are still mountains of things we cannot do or do not understand. But was the younger self who declared those traits useless really better equipped to judge them than the person we are now?

There is a Japanese saying that even a fool and a pair of scissors can be useful in the right hands... That is not quite what I mean. Still, when the place or time changes, some things may reveal a use we could not see before.

Research Note 2: Staying out of the Spotlight Is Not the Same as Being Invisible

When you try to create work on your own, you hear advice such as, “Start by sharing what you do,” “Show people what makes you distinctive,” and “Make sure they remember your face and name.”

That is true enough. No matter how many things we make, they will not lead to work or sales unless people first know they exist.

But when I imagine becoming an extrovert, broadcasting my thoughts almost every day, and continually absorbing people's reactions, it feels as though creating “the version of me who appears in public” would become the main job rather than making anything.

In a meta-analysis of personality traits and job performance, extraversion was related to performance in management and sales roles involving substantial interpersonal interaction. Conscientiousness, by contrast, was related to a broader range of occupations and performance criteria.^[2]

Seen this way, extraversion is only one factor. The broad relevance of conscientiousness also suggests that the stock image of the ideal businessperson—relentlessly energetic, mentally unbreakable, and obsessed with commitment—is not a prerequisite for producing results at work.

Even if extraversion is not everything, staying out of the spotlight is not the same as being invisible to everyone.

The better behind-the-scenes work is done, the easier it is to forget that it exists. It is like the point I made in Part 4: when someone quietly corrects a tilt in the situation, the tilt itself becomes invisible. Perhaps the same applies to work directed outward.

Even if we rarely step forward, and even if we do not know whether it will lead to paid work, we can maintain a place where people can find us. We can give our work a name, keep records of what we did and what we noticed or thought, and leave them visible from the outside.

A way of working that does not place us constantly in front of an audience is less like standing forever at center stage and more like leaving a light on somewhere we can be found when we are needed.

Research Note 3: Not Hiding the Person, but Not Keeping Them Front and Center

In work that involves other people, it is impossible to remove “me as a person” entirely.

Writing and design both reveal what someone chose and what they left out. Keeping promises, explaining decisions, and considering the other person's circumstances are also things no finished product can accomplish by itself.

Is this text easy to read? Does the intention behind this design come through? Does this spreadsheet fulfill the purpose for which it was requested? Will I meet the deadline I promised?

Consideration and care for others are essential to keeping relationships running smoothly. Even so, we do not have to turn our feelings, private lives, or pleasant manner into part of the product.

At work, people sometimes have to display an emotion expected in that setting regardless of what they actually feel—appearing cheerful while serving a customer, for example, or speaking calmly even when something is unpleasant. This is “emotional labor.” I have enormous respect for people in customer service.

A meta-analysis covering thirty years of research found that “surface acting”—adjusting only one's expression and behavior without changing the feeling underneath, creating a gap between what one feels and what one is expected to display—was associated with strain on both mental and physical well-being.^[3]

Everyone adjusts how they express themselves depending on the situation. The problem comes when that adjustment becomes the center of the job and the gap between the inside and the outside must be maintained all day long.

Perhaps work judged mainly by its output is appealing not because it lets us keep the person out of view, but because it seems to let us place something other than the person at the center of evaluation.

Then again, when we work for ourselves, the boundary between what we make and who we are becomes thinner. We may receive a response to the work as though it were a response to our character. In that respect, being at the front or remaining in the background may not make much difference. It is complicated.

Research Note 4: Small, Long-Lasting, and Not Something You Come to Hate

When you start working for yourself, stories about people who achieved enormous growth in a short time are hard to avoid.

Revenue, user numbers, follower counts. Growth in these numbers matters if a business is to continue. Without profit, something cannot become a viable business no matter how well it suits us.

But growing for a while and continuing for years are different problems.

Research on sustainable careers treats the ability to keep working not simply as a matter of individual capability, but as something shaped by the interaction of the person, their context, and time. It also considers sustainability across several dimensions, including health, happiness, and productivity.^[4]

If the person is healthy but the work is not viable, it cannot continue. Even with strong sales, a job will not last long if every day is unbearable. A method that suits us now may stop suiting us as our life, health, or technology changes.

To continue, we need not only time spent working, but time away from work.

A meta-analysis of recovery after work found particularly strong relationships between psychological detachment from work and lower fatigue, and between having control over how to spend one's leisure time and greater vigor.^[5]

Rest is not something we are forced to take. It is part of the process that makes the next period of work possible. In a company, quitting time and days off are at least nominally imposed from outside. When we work for ourselves, the boundaries easily become blurred. If we reduce contact with society to lower our stress only to keep our minds open for business twenty-four hours a day, we have defeated the purpose.

For now, I use three measures:

• Can I do this again tomorrow?
• Can I do it without damaging my health?
• Can I continue without coming to hate it?

“Not coming to hate it” is extremely vague. Even so, if I do not want to turn work I chose for myself into something I never want to see again, it seems worth tracking as a measure without a number, separate from revenue.

I cannot simply swallow the pretty idea that if we keep doing something, however small, it will eventually pay off. Still, I want to believe there is meaning in continuing. Or rather, since I am not especially robust, continuing within reasonable limits is really my only option.

Research Note 5: Here, in This Particular Moment

Design, systems development, back-office work, marketing, accepting bookings, receiving payments, automating information and instructions—tasks that once required specialists or outside companies can now be assembled, for better or worse, by one person combining existing tools.

Image-editing applications, web services, payment services, online sales platforms, generative AI, and other technologies are advancing faster than ever, expanding the range of work one person can complete independently.

For some limited kinds of work, we now have real-world data on the effects of generative AI. In a study of 5,172 customer support agents, access to AI-generated suggestions increased the average number of issues resolved per hour by 15 percent. The effects were not uniform, however. They were larger for less experienced and less skilled agents, while for highly skilled agents they were smaller and may even have led to a slight decline in the quality of conversations.^[6]

The finding that less experienced and less skilled workers received greater assistance is useful evidence for quiet people seeking to expand the kinds of work they can complete on their own. From my own experience, too, the range of tasks one person can handle seems to be growing day by day.

This series itself began when I asked an AI, “Why do stores seem to have such different atmospheres?” As the familiar warning that “AI can make mistakes” suggests, it sometimes produces strange answers. Even so, it certainly gives us more starting points than trying to move forward from nothing.

Technological progress, however, always comes with a negative side. The ease with which online work opportunities can now be created has produced problems as well. An OECD report based on interviews with self-employed workers on digital labor platforms identified challenges including a lack of transparency and certainty in contracts, weak bargaining power with clients, and difficulty building relationships with clients outside the platform.^[7]

We may leave the atmosphere of a company only to find ourselves monitoring the atmosphere of a platform—its ratings, search rankings, and rule changes—or trying to stay on the good side of some opaque algorithm.

Technology can be a tool that lets us choose how we connect with other people, but it can also become a system that binds us to new points of contact. Still, the increase in our options is enormously important. Had I been born in an era without today's technology, someone like me would probably have been eliminated from the competition in no time.

What I Have Learned So Far

The way quiet people survive lies less in a particular occupation than in the way they work. There may be jobs in which people can do well while remaining quiet. But every kind of work involves some combination of interaction, evaluation, and things that refuse to go as planned. Working for yourself brings different complications, while convenient technologies create different dependencies.

We can reduce how often we step forward, focus on what we do well, protect time away from work, and use tools to compensate for what we struggle with. Rather than forcing ourselves into a single way of working defined by society, we can design a life around a form of work we are able to sustain.

This design is not something we complete once and for all. Just as the atmosphere of a store is recreated each day by its people and circumstances, the way we work must be continually adjusted to our health, our lives, changes in technology, and our relationships with those around us.

Perhaps the freedom we find after creating some distance is the freedom to make those adjustments ourselves.

In Closing

I found it interesting, as the person doing the research, that a discussion of store atmospheres led into society and the individual and finally connected with my own present situation. But the series has also become rather unfocused.

Still, I thought there might be other people who feel something similar, so I decided to turn these notes into articles. If reading them helps even a faint discomfort take shape in words, I will be glad.

At the risk of undermining the entire series, an atmosphere is not something we can see or clearly define in the first place. Even in the same location, every person experiences it differently.

It may sound like a cheap ending, but I have arrived at this conclusion: the place where atmosphere takes shape is not a particular store, street, or physical space. In the end, it is inside the mind of the person who receives it.

Trying to control atmosphere completely is impossible, and there is probably no such thing as the “correct” atmosphere. Atmosphere is ambiguous, varies from person to person, and is difficult to handle.

But perhaps that is exactly why we can shrug and say, “Well, I suppose that's how it is,” then choose again where we can exist without pushing ourselves too far. Or rather, anyone who is struggling now should do something before the damage becomes irreversible. Seriously.

One small consolation is that we have at least some choice about where we place ourselves. We can keep our distance from places that do not suit us and make a calmer place our base. That alone can greatly change how everything else feels.

Perhaps my question—“Why does the atmosphere vary so much from one store to another?”—arose because those stores felt as though they were forcing something.

Very little good comes from forcing things. I hope to keep working quietly, steadily, and without overdoing it, until one day I can spend my life working when the weather is fair, reading when it rains, and taking naps as well.

In This Series

#01 | Where Does a Store's Atmosphere Come From?

#02 | Why Locations of the Same Chain Can Feel So Different

#02.5 | Why Do Stores with Too Many Warning Signs Feel So Disorderly?

#03 | How Much of a Store's Atmosphere Can Be Designed?

#04 | Society Assumes People Can “Read the Room”

#05 | Choosing to Keep Your Distance

#06 | How Quiet People Survive ← You are here

Notes