Banjo Rigsby’s Unsolicited Advice for Shy, Quiet, Thoughtful People

There are two types of people: those who divide people into two types and those who do not. Banjo is in the former group.

There are two types of people: those who process information internally, and those who process information externally. Banjo is in the former group. This observation has been offered and discussed by greater minds than Banjo's--Freud, Jung, Adorno, Lagrange. So Banjo is not simply making this up.

Those of us who process information internally often are described by others as: shy, quiet, thoughtful, introspective, intelligent, gifted. If anything, internal processors probably receive more credit than they deserve in some of these areas. Banjo is thinking of the well-known aphorism attributed to Mark Twain: "It is better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt." In Banjo's experience, keeping one's mouth shut has an additional benefit that provides, perhaps, a corollary to Mr. Twain's advice:

Banjo's Corollary to Mark Twain's Wisdom About Keeping Your Mouth Shut: When you keep your mouth shut, people will think your are smarter than you really are.

Many a time Banjo has been involved a conversation when his mind has drifted to topics other than those being discussed. His reverie has been broken by a question such as, "Banjo, do you agree?" To which Banjo often has no face-saving response to offer other than an ambiguous, one-word response, such as, "Often."

Banjo holds no illusions about his relative intelligence. In such circumstances, his low verbosity results in Banjo getting credit for being more intelligent than he really is. In fact, the less he talks, the smarter people think he is. Banjo often has this experience: He sits, mute, through an entire meeting which ends in action items being assigned--"A. will get input from engineering, P. will acquire the additional data needed for analysis," etc.--and rather than receive his own action items, Banjo receives accolades. "And Banjo, thank you for being so brilliant."

Banjo is not brilliant. Banjo is a quiet, easily-distracted man who consistently daydreams through interactions with people. (Strangely, he is more alert and present with animals.)

But enough about Banjo. Banjo is merely using Banjo as an example of a Shy, Quiet Person for whom Banjo is offering unsolicited advice. Here it is:

Improve your decision making by practicing processing information externally.

We all know people who process information externally. They think out loud. Often too-loudly. To us internal processors, this approach to problem solving can seem unintelligent, even moronic. (See Twain, above.) Unfortunately for Human Communication, simply speaking makes a person seem slightly less intelligent than not-speaking.

However, if you make careful study of the decision-making success of external processors versus internal processors, you will notice that external processors make dumb decisions less often or no more often than internal processors. Banjo is not proud of this observation. It makes him uncomfortable. It requires an admission that many of his internally-processed decisions were dumb ones. Capitol-D Dumb. Capitol-D, capitol-A, Dumb-A. Banjo will NOT offer examples.

Banjo also understands the difficulty in convincing other internal processors of this finding, because internally processing external processing typically results in the judgement that it is an unintelligent mode of processing--despite evidence of its success as a mode of processing.

Nevertheless, Banjo's advice is to practice processing information externally. Think out loud. Solicit the opinions of others, even if you have no intention of following their advice. (Exception: DO follow Banjo's advice.) This will feel strange, uncomfortable, even unholy. This will make you feel dumb. But no less dumb than you feel after making a Dumb-A internally-processed decision. So there will be Conservation of Dumbness within the Universe. But you will make more Good Decisions than you make now. It may never feel right. Banjo still feels uncomfortable and fake when thinking out loud with others. It is not unlike eating donuts. For decades, Banjo would see a donut and think, "I want that donut!" followed by, "But I will feel terrible and bloated half an hour after eating that donut!" and eat it anyway. With the expected result. Thirty seconds of bliss, and hours of nausea. But one magical day, Banjo passed on the donut. His rational mind over-rode his natural urges. With a better result: zero seconds of bliss, zero seconds of nausea, and several minutes of self-satified smugness. (Note that this was in internally-processed decision that turned out to be a good one. But note that the decades of bad decisions to eat the donut also were internally-processed. Not a good ratio of success for internally-processed donut-related decisions.)

When you think out loud and solicit the opinions of others, a strange thing happens that does not happen when you do your own Internet search on the topic being processed. You hear anecdotes about similar situations that others have faced, along with the results of the decisions they made. It's a semi-wondrous thing. The web site might tell you that when a mortgage broker does not return your emails you should simply wait for him to get to you whenever he can find the time--the mortgage brokering business is byzantine and easily thwarted by your constant pestering. But your coworker who has bought and sold a dozen homes tells you to leave an ambiguous telephone message for your unresponsive mortgage broker, implying (without actually saying), that you have been discussing the topic of mortgage brokering with other mortgage brokers, regulators and lawyers, and within the next fifteen minutes he will contact you and patiently answer each of your nitpicky questions.

So try it, Shy, Quiet People. Think out loud. Process externally. Solicit the opinions of others before making decisions. Enjoy the better decisions that result from doing so. Bask in the resulting smugness.