Benjamin Plumb was born and raised in Los Angeles as the only introvert in a family of five. He graduated from the Harvard Business School and was a US Army Intelligence officer in Vietnam.

THE SATISFIED INTROVERT: A MEMOIR FOR FINDING SAFETY IN AN EXTROVERTED WORLD

Like all introvert children, Ben had sought to feel safe in an extroverted world by adopting a “winning recipe.” At age ten, he decided he would be methodical in everything he did – one of the thousands of possible recipes that quiet people choose.

This formula worked in school, but it enticed him into unsatisfying careers as an entrepreneur and an executive. Those roles led ultimately to a divorce in his thirties, a bankruptcy in his forties, and two job losses in a row in his sixties. At last he saw that what all these failures had in common was the recipe. He taught himself to detach from it, openly embraced his introversion, and thereafter worked quietly as a writer and researcher. In so doing, he finally attained the success and safety that he was never able to achieve through a winning recipe.

FIRST AID FOR INTROVERTS IN AN EXTROVERTED WORKPLACE

For forty years Ben suffered first-hand from the many sources of pain that introverts feel in an extroverted job setting. Then in his sixties he realized that being an introvert was an advantage at work, not a defect. That insight helped him to lean into his introversion, and during the last ten years of his career to escape permanently from all eighteen of the pain points described in this book.

Ben and his wife Sandy of forty years live in the Tampa Bay area. They have four children and ten grandchildren.