The key ideas

Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come: One Introvert’s Year of Saying Yes

Jessica Pan, 2019

Shy journalist Jessica Pan found herself in London without a job or friends and decided to spend a whole year living like an outgoing extrovert. Questions for strangers on the Tube, friendship dates, networking, an improv course, stand-up, and a trip to a city whose name she learned at the last moment. This book is about her failures, small victories, and becoming braver around people without ceasing to be yourself.

Who it is for

For anyone who feels shy around strangers, leaves parties before everyone else, and wants more friends but does not know where to start.

I used the label “introvert” as an excuse to hide from the world.

Tears at your own party

Imagine friends jumping out of hiding on your birthday and shouting “Surprise!” while you cry. Everyone thinks they are tears of joy. This happened to Jessica Pan at twenty-two. Her university friends threw a party right in her room and sat on her bed, exactly where she usually hid from people. She was crying with horror. Eventually, she simply switched on all the lights and waited for the guests to take the hint.

Pan, an American journalist based in London, calls herself a shintrovert, combining “shy” and “introvert.” Shyness and introversion are different things, and that is the book’s first discovery. An introvert recovers energy alone, while a shy person fears strangers and other people’s attention. Some introverts are perfectly comfortable addressing an audience. Pan had both traits. She could avert her eyes so effectively that nobody approached her, a technique she called “dead robot eyes.”

Then, within one year, everything fell apart. She lost her job, close friends moved away, and one day she found herself in a sauna wearing a black tracksuit, holding a men’s magazine, and arguing tearfully with an employee. This was rock bottom. Pan realized that “introvert” had become a hiding place: “I don’t give speeches,” “I don’t throw parties.” She accepted herself as she was, and she was unhappy.

So she asked herself: what would happen if a shy introvert spent an entire year living like an outgoing extrovert? This book tells the story of that year, her failures, and what she learned. If you have ever invented a cold to avoid a party, you are in good company. Let’s begin.

The stupidest question on the Tube

One of Pan’s mentors was Stefan Hofmann, a Boston psychologist who had spent many years studying anxiety. His advice sounded cruel: to stop fearing rejection and awkwardness, deliberately put yourself in the most awkward situations. The explanation Pan was given for the fear was that an ancient part of the brain sees strangers as a threat, even though nobody in the subway car intends to attack you.

This led to an assignment Pan regretted as soon as she wrote it into her plan. She went down into the London Underground, approached strangers, and asked, “Excuse me, I’ve forgotten, does England have a queen? And if so, what’s her name?” You could hardly ask a more foolish question in London. Yet nothing terrible happened. Pan writes that by asking the stupidest of questions, she finally faced her fear of strangers.

There were simpler failures too. Once, she decided to chat with a barista and confidently said, “You must be new here.” He replied that he had worked there for three years, and a nearby customer laughed. Pan admits that something inside her died at that moment. But the world survived this too: a minute later, the awkwardness had passed.

Fear of strangers is like a car alarm that goes off whenever a truck passes. It reacts to every little thing, even when there is no real danger. There is one way to reset it: repeatedly enter the situation you fear and discover that the worst rarely happens and soon passes.

This chapter has a kind side too. Pan noticed that people almost always answer a friendly question, even a strange one. Nobody likes speaking first, but many are willing to respond.

You can start small: ask a question of a shop assistant, someone beside you in a queue, or a person at a bus stop. Not to make a new acquaintance, but to see what happens. They will probably answer, and the alarm in your head will become a little quieter.

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About the author

Jessica Pan is an American journalist living in London. She studied psychology at Brown University, worked as a television reporter in Beijing, and writes for The Guardian.

All books by this author: Jessica Pan

Terms from the book

  • Thanksgiving
  • Networking
  • Hofmann
  • Lawson
  • introvert
  • extrovert
  • Charisma
  • weak ties
  • improvisation
  • shintrovert: A word Pan coined for a shy introvert. It is a description from the book, not a scientific term.
  • barista: A coffee-shop worker who prepares coffee.
  • School of Life: The School of Life, a London educational project offering lectures and courses on emotions, relationships, and work.
  • Botton: Alain de Botton, a British writer and philosopher and one of the founders of The School of Life.
  • Bumble BFF: A mode in the Bumble app where people seek friends rather than romantic partners.
  • The Moth: An American project that holds events where people tell true stories from their lives onstage without reading from notes.
  • Union Chapel: A working church in north London that also hosts concerts and other events.
  • stand-up: A form of comedy in which a performer faces an audience alone with their own jokes.
  • Fringe: The Edinburgh Festival Fringe, one of the world’s largest theater and comedy festivals, held every August in Scotland.

All terms

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