Exploring the Connection: Key Questions Answered About Introversion and Hearing Loss
Welcome to 4 Questions & 4 Insights #15, where we explore four questions about hearing loss, introversion, and everyday communication.
- How Can Introverts Reduce Distractions in a Noisy or Busy Work Environment to Stay Focused?
- How Can People With Hearing Loss Balance Work Demands With the Need for Rest and Recovery From Sensory Fatigue?
- How Can Introverts Enhance Their Focus and Efficiency by Managing Energy Levels and Minimising Distractions?
- How Can People With Hearing Loss Improve Their Focus and Efficiency by Using Assistive Devices or Adapting Their Workspaces?
1. How Can Introverts Reduce Distractions in a Noisy or Busy Work Environment to Stay Focused?
A University of California Irvine study found that it takes on average 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to a task after an interruption. Not only do you lose momentum, but it can be hard to refocus.
But how do various distractions affect your concentration and performance?
- Notifications from your phone and computer makes your brain reset when you pause, process the input, and try to continue your previous task.
- Background noise doesn’t only make it hard to concentrate, but it also causes stress and fatigue. Your brain stays in defense mode, constantly scanning the environment. This ongoing strain makes it hard to concentrate and solve problems.
- Although many people swear by multitasking it doesn’t work. Your brain is just switching quickly between tasks. Because your focus is always split, it causes unnecessary mistakes, and leads to fatigue. Eventually, it wears down your ability to organize, make decisions, or think deeply. Your mental bandwidth decreases, and even though you are always busy, you are not productive.
While working, the introverted brain relies on the front lobes for selection, planning, and decision-making. Simultaneously, it accesses the left hippocampus to store and retrieve long-term memories. These functions need clear thinking and focus, explaining why introverts are affected even more by interruptions.
Introverts thrive on deep, focused work. But the work environment poses many distractions, making it hard for introverts to get into the flow.
How can introverts deal with these challenges and reach optimal productivity?
1.1 Safeguard Your Time Blocks
Introverts should work with their energy and schedule time blocks for focused work. For some it will be early morning, others may work best in the afternoons. If you have an office, adopt a closed door policy. Close your door and put a note up that it is your focused work time, and you shouldn’t be disturbed. Your colleagues will soon learn when your closed door times are, and learn not to disturb you.
1.2 Reclaim Your Physical Space
If you work in an open plan office, ask your manager if you can work in a conference room, for your focused time blocks. Hopefully, when he sees how productive you are, he may allocate you an office.
1.3 Create an Acoustic Barrier
If the above is not an option, use noise-cancelling headphones. It will filter out those distracting noises, and act as a barrier, preventing people from approaching.
1.4 Batch Communication and Silence Alerts
Dedicate specific times to check and respond to email and messages. An hour each early morning and after lunch should be enough time to cover important communications. This checking schedule enables you to turn off distracting notifications. Remember to also turn off notifications on your phone. The do not disturb function allows you to schedule these on a timer, so you don’t have to worry about turning them back on.
1.5 Explore Remote or Hybrid Options
During the Covid-19 pandemic, working from home became the new normal. Now that the pandemic is over, workplaces have mixed views. Some businesses still want workers onsite, while others have a hybrid model, with some days onsite and others working remotely. Discuss working remotely with your manager, even if it is only a few days a week.
Sandra walks into her home office. The light blue curtain flutters in the breeze, while the sunlight filters through the lace curtains. Her eyes drift to her desk that contains only the necessary items. Her laptop, screen, pen and a small notebook. Everything else is packed away in the drawers where it is in easy reach. On the corner of her desk is a sturdy little succulent, bringing nature indoors. With a contented sigh she sits on the comfortable chair. She is ready for her first day working from home.
Accommodating introverts’ need for a distraction-free environment is essential for optimal productivity. When business accommodates these valuable employees, they will be more motivated, productive, and loyal.
2. How Can People With Hearing Loss Balance Work Demands With the Need for Rest and Recovery From Sensory Fatigue?
The foundation of managing work demands is effective communication. It means you must be open about your hearing loss. People will only understand your specific needs through ongoing education and advocacy. As you build deeper connections, they will appreciate your value in the team, and be more willing to accommodate you. It is also wise to leverage tools and technology to assist in effective communication.
Let’s explore how these different aspects can help you to meet demands at work.
2.1 Managing Work Demands
a) Practice Open Communication
Communication is challenging with hearing loss. It is an ongoing struggle to catch missing words, interpret visual cues, and guess context. If you get it wrong or don’t respond fast enough, people may think that you don’t care or are a bit slow. People can’t support you if they don’t know what you need.
Disclosing your hearing loss allows you to teach people about hearing loss and your specific needs. The only way to overcome stigma is through education. When people engage with you and get to know your capabilities (despite your hearing loss), they will realise you are a person like anybody else. They will realise that irrelevant responses or slow feedback are not because of inattentiveness, but because of the extra time you need to process and interpret what you’ve heard.
You can never predict when you will need to reveal your hearing loss. It is good practice to prepare and practice how you will tell someone about your hearing loss. Since hearing loss is part of who you are, disclosing it should come naturally to you. It can be as simple as introducing yourself as: “Hi, I am Susan van der Walt, and I have hearing loss.” This simple introduction opens the door to questions about your hearing loss and the opportunity to explain how they can support your listening needs.
b) Embrace Smart Technology
- There are many apps and devices that can help you improve your interactions.
- Bluetooth-enabled hearing aids let you connect to your mobile to stream calls and music directly to your hearing aids.
- TV-boxes let you adjust volume independently, so that the sound is not too loud for others.
- Transcription apps provide a visual aid in small groups and quiet environments. Appropriate assistive devices boost your confidence in the workplace and make you feel like a valuable team member.
The Covid-19 pandemic introduced remote work and video calls across various platforms. One positive from this period is that captions were made available for free for people with hearing loss. Years later, video calls are still common practice for remote workers, and captions are their lifeline.
c) Cultivate Workplace Allies
Finding supportive colleagues is a delicate dance. As you interact with your colleagues, look for those small signs of kindness and accommodation. It can be people who are open to written communication, or those making an effort to get your attention and face you when speaking.
- These are the people you build deeper connections with.
- It happens through one-on-one conversations.
- It becomes a two-way system where both share their challenges and help each other out.
- They become your hearing buddies in fast-paced meetings.
- They share their notes and fill you in after meetings.
Your hearing buddy eases the strain off listening and lessens fatigue.
You strengthen relationships through effective communication. Teaching people about hearing loss and advocating for your needs creates a better understanding. Even creating strong relationships with a few key colleagues can make a difference in your daily work life.
2.2 Rest, Recovery, and Mindful Boundaries
Scheduling regular times for rest is crucial for recovery from sensory overwhelm and noise fatigue.
You should include regular breaks in your schedule. There are many ways you can replenish your energy during these breaks.
- Find joy and practice gratitude when you are mindful during any activity.
- Reading gives you a way to escape for a while from the harsh realities of life.
- Writing gives you a creative outlet when you invent fictional characters and environments.
- Journaling brings a new perspective when you get your thoughts and emotions out on paper.
- Faith keeps you grounded and helps you to cope with your challenges.
- Boundaries are crucial to protect your energy. A good example is when you schedule time blocks for focused work when you are at your best. Alternatively, you can do mundane work before a challenging event, and schedule short breaks after.
You won’t get it right all the time. It is crucial that you are kind to yourself. Instead of feeling like you failed, be patient with yourself and see it as a learning experience. Ask yourself: “How can I do better next time?”
Even in your failure, you will still find some progression. Embrace and celebrate these small wins.
Develop a positive mindset. It will help you to embrace who you are with all your flaws and strengths.
Practicing kindness and self-compassion will help you to be resilient on this path of growth.
Never underestimate the power of faith to carry you through the challenging times and keep you going.
3. How Can Introverts Enhance Their Focus and Efficiency by Managing Energy Levels and Minimising Distractions?
Introverts enhance their focus by protecting their environment, working with their energy, and mastering their schedules and boundaries. They manage their social interactions and prioritise restorative activities.
Let’s explore how you can balance these between your work and personal life.
3.1 Protect Your Physical & Mental Environment
- Minimising distractions is vital to protect your energy and improve your mental health. Distractions cause stress that you feel physically in your body and waste cognitive resources you need to be productive.
- Disconnect from the world by turning off the news, notifications, and external demands. Find quiet spaces to work in, or schedule time blocks for focused work.
- Adopt a closed-door policy and train your colleagues not to disturb you when your doors are closed for focused work. If you work in an open-plan office, use headphones as a barrier to stop colleagues from approaching you. Choose noise-cancelling headphones to block out distracting noise, or play calming music that helps you focus.
Sometimes distractions are unavoidable. Make notes of instructions or tasks as a reminder so that you can return to your focused work immediately. It also helps to write down distracting thoughts and feelings in your journal. It gets them out of your body and helps you to focus on the task at hand.
3.2 Honor Your Energy Profile
Society is geared toward extroverts. This bias makes it easy for introverts to compare themselves to extroverts. This comparison serves no purpose and just makes you feel inadequate. Embrace your introverted nature and work with your energy to use your natural strengths.
Use your natural self-awareness to analyse your energy flow and tailor your work around it. Schedule focused deep work during your peak energy times, and fit administrative and low-focus tasks around it.
3.3 Master Your Schedule & Boundaries
Setting boundaries is vital for managing your energy. It means saying no to meetings and social work events where attendance is voluntary. When events are obligatory, schedule regular quiet breaks, like a quick walk outside or even retreating to the bathroom for a while if there is no other alternative. After a challenging event, take the time to mindfully savour a cup of coffee for a quick recharge. It gives you a moment of joy and gratitude during a busy day.
Preserving your energy also means balancing work and personal demands. When you have a lot of commitments at work, scale down on personal commitments to ensure enough quiet time. You can spend a quiet evening at home and have an early night. Over the weekend, exercise helps to ease muscle strain and clear your mind. Creative activities bring joy and reduce stress.
To prevent isolation, alternate quiet and social weekends. Spend time with close friends or family, but leave Sunday open for a final recharge so that you will be ready for the workweek ahead.
3.4 Focus on Rejuvenation
We all have unique talents and interests. Take time to explore them and find out what really restores you. Make engaging in them a regular habit.
- Write stories by using your imagination to create fictional characters and places.
- Use your sewing skills to make your own clothes.
- Knit blankets to donate to the needy. Shape your garden into a quiet haven.
Sometimes restoration doesn’t mean action. Reading is my restorative power. It lets me escape from the realities of life, and having my dogs around me simultaneously ~ pure bliss!
You are one person with different roles. It means that your work and personal life can’t be separated. A vital part of managing your energy, includes what you do in your free time.
Scheduling breaks and selectively attending work events only goes so far to manage your energy. It is the balance between your work and personal life that helps you to effectively manage your energy and enables you to work productively.
4. How Can People With Hearing Loss Improve Their Focus and Efficiency by Using Assistive Devices or Adapting Their Workspaces?
People with hearing loss have many tools and accessibility options available to help them work efficiently in the workplace. Many of them are free or easily affordable, but some more costly ones should be covered by the employer according to accessibility laws.
This article is written from a general perspective, so you should check the laws in your country. I will discuss these tools and accommodations based on specific work-related challenges.
Many of these options are not available to people in all countries, and cost may put it out of reach for some. This answer only aims to give you information about possible options.
Let’s begin.
4.1 Group Communication (Meetings, Training & Networking)
a) What You Can Control & Fund Yourself
- During remote video meetings, you can request the host to enable the free built-in captions in MS Teams, Zoom, and Google Meet.
- If you attend physical meetings, you can request the agenda beforehand, enabling you to familiarise yourself with the meeting topics and prepare.
- Mobile transcription apps, like Otter.ai and Google Live Transcribe can be handy for smaller or one-on-one meetings.
b) What to Request From Your Employer
- Employers should arrange for Live CART (Communication Access Realtime Translation) services or human note-takers for official training or meetings.
- Fixed multi-microphone table arrays or loop systems can be installed in the conference room. The telecoil in the hearing aid connects to the loop system, streaming sound directly to the user’s ear.
4.2 Direct Communication (Phones & Remote Work)
a) What You Can Control & Fund Yourself
Hearing aids remain the responsibility of the person with hearing loss. Some countries may provide subsidies, and medical aids can cover part of them, but for many, optimal hearing technology is still out of reach due to cost.
I never realised wireless hearing aids don’t necessarily include streaming. The entry-level hearing aids only enable you to connect to your phone to change settings with the app. The ones with wireless call and music streaming, are more expensive and often unaffordable.
My audiologist did create a profile for phone calls, but it is only adds more amplification. It doesn’t help for background noise and also amplifies distortions on the line.
You can use standard cellphone settings like flashing alerts and vibration settings to alert you to calls and notifications.
Usually phones use stereo input, where it splits sounds into separate tracks for the left and right ear. When you select mono audio on your phone, it integrates these tracks into one and sends the same track to both ears. It means less missing information because 100% of the audio reaches your strongest ear. During calls, you’ll hear speech in both ears.
Switching to asynchronous communication, such as text channels, email, messaging apps and productivity apps, has many benefits for people with hearing loss. It reduces fatigue by reducing listening efforts. Written records create a paper trail, and reduce misunderstandings or missed information. It gives everyone a chance to process and assimilate information, before responding. Writing clarifies your thoughts and leads to more effective communication.
b) What to Request From Your Employer
Specialised amplified office desk phones can be used to complement hearing aids. Although earlier models only amplified speech, the newer models have better sound processing.
It enables them to cut out amplified noise like static or electrical interference. They also use acoustic echo cancellation to reduce feedback echo. With intelligent amplification these phones can now distinguish between voices and indirect sounds.
Captioned phones display written captions of what the other party is saying in real-time. The user reads along while listening, which helps with comprehension and gives full access to the conversation.
They are designed for fixed place use which makes it ideal for a worker with hearing loss.
Identifying your needs and knowing the benefits and shortfalls of the various types of captioned phones, will help you to choose the best device.
Your employer can pay for a subscription for speech-to-text apps that provide real-time captioning for audio and video content. They are useful for live conversations, online meetings, phone calls, and event notifications.
Their features and functionality vary and they can’t translate languages while a call is in progress on the device.
Just like captioned phones, research the benefits and shortfalls of each to ensure it will fit your needs. Popular apps are Live Transcribe, Otter.ai, and RogerVoice.
The Hear With Us Design Options article is a great resource for captioning tools with descriptions and links.
Hearing aid compatible headsets are a great option for calls with desk and mobile phones, and calls on computers. It uses telecoil technology to deliver crisp and clear audio.
The magnetic induction loop in the headset sends sound directly to the hearing aid and minimises interference when connected to the telecoil.
These headsets can also be used as regular headsets.
They are available as wired or wireless, and single or double ear wearing style.
If you wear behind-the-ear (BTE) hearing aids, look for a set that you wear behind your hearing aids to get sounds directly into your receivers.
4.3 Physical Workspace & Environmental Adjustments (Open-Plan, Noise & Distance)
a) What You Can Control & Fund Yourself
It is better to have your own office, but if you work in an open-plan office ask for a corner desk facing the door. It eliminates visual surprises and reduces background noise.
- Active noise-cancelling creates inverse sound waves that cancel out external sound.
- Passive noise cancelling physically blocks external sound with an earplug or something that seals around your ear.
- Noise-cancelling headphones work better on steady background noise, but can’t filter variable noises, like people talking.
- Remember that these headphones can’t protect you from loud sounds like construction noise, and you shouldn’t use them too loud to preserve your residual hearing.
b) What to Request From Your Employer
- Employers can replace harsh ceiling lights with diffused, indirect lighting to prevent deep shadows on faces, and help with lip-reading.
- Anti-glare window blinds or frosted dividers prevent backlighting from turning colleagues into dark figures.
- Sound baffles can be installed on the walls or ceiling to absorb reverberations, sounds, and echoes. Employers can also create quiet pods where employees can take a break when struggling with noise sensitivity and listening fatigue.
- Although emergency alarms are loud, their pitches are often out of the hearing range of people with hearing loss. An employee may also be in an isolated area (like the bathroom or kitchen) where the alarm volume may drop. Visual alarms mounted in open areas, hallways, and isolated areas ensure employees with hearing loss are not left behind.
- Visual doorbell indicators placed in offices and reception areas warn when someone is approaching. It is a basic environmental accommodation that prevents startling from someone walking up from behind, and maintains independence for receptionists and solo office workers.
4.4 Navigating Workplace Dynamics & The Legal Gap
a) What You Can Control & Fund Yourself
The foundation for improving focus and efficiency is disclosing your hearing loss and advocating for your needs. It starts with educating colleagues about using best communication practices and setting boundaries around regular breaks and accommodation needs.
Using written communication (email, messaging apps) and productivity platforms (Slack, Clickup) prevents misunderstanding while keeping everyone on the same page.
It creates a paper trail, and ensures everybody has access to all relevant information.
For the person with hearing loss it reduces noise fatigue and gives them the opportunity to reach out for missing information or clarification.
b) What to Request From Your Employer
The employer should adjust their policies to include accommodation options, like quiet zone enforcement and hybrid working options. It is mandatory for employers by legislation in various countries, to fund reasonable workplace accommodations. The employee must submit a formal request to the relevant person or department in the organisation. A specialist assesses the employee’s role, setup, and functional barriers and reports back to the employer. The employer must cover the cost of the required accommodations without forcing any costs onto the employee.
Balancing work and personal life demands is challenging for many people, but even more so for introverts with hearing loss.
In this article, we’ve explored how you can incorporate regular breaks to ensure complete focus at work. We looked at how you can minimize distraction and how education and advocacy pave the way for better communication with colleagues. Then we investigated assistive listening devices that can help in various listening situations. Finally, we determined which measures you can incorporate yourself, and which your employer is responsible for as reasonable workplace accommodations.
Article 5 brings us to the end of our 4 Questions & 4 Insights: Navigating Life as an Introvert with Hearing Loss series.
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