One of the analogies I heard best when hearing of introversion and extraversion is the analogy of the battery.
If you imagine your energy as that of a battery, do you ‘charge’ during social interaction (eg: a team dinner)? or discharge?
In principle. extraverts get ‘charged’ up during social interactions while introverts don’t. And, by extraverts/introverts, I mean those whose dominant tendencies are so. No one is a 100% extravert or introvert. A bit of detail here.
This matters a fair bit because our treatment of our battery plays a big role in our energy the next day/week. Examples –
An introvert would not find it fun at all to go for a team dinner during an intense week as it would take up vital re-charging time at home.
An introvert would be far less energized on Monday morning if her weekend is spent on long ultra-social interactions after a very social/intense week at work.
Conversely, an extravert would be very dull on Monday morning if his weekend was spent all alone after a week spent in a room doing desk research.
Our social interactions play a big role in determining our ‘charge’. We all have our unique thresholds for people interactions in our life. And I see few things as important as making sure we are close to this threshold or sweet spot since there’s almost nothing more important that we bring to work than our energy/a fully charged battery.
A Learning a Day 