I’m an introvert and I like going to work to do my job and go home. I don’t understand people who use a job as a substitute for friendship or marriage. It’s a means to an end.
The sooner I do my duties, the longer my downtime is going to be, and I love having my downtime.
Many of my colleagues see me and immediately start asking questions I don’t want to answer, but neither do I want to hurt their feelings, I mostly want to be left alone. In the past this has been deconstructed as arrogance and people with fragile egos feel insulted by my indifference to them and that I prefer to work than to talk to them.
The world is made by extroverts. I have observed that people are eager to help you if you give them attention. I don’t get it, but neither I’m not going to change how extroverts think or feel.
If I give them the attention they need for as long as they need it I’m going to end up with daily headaches and neither my job nor theirs is going to be done.
I want to appear approachable, but keeping the info I feed them to a minimum. How do I do that?
What do you talk about to your coworkers?
What do you say to stop conversation organically? (meaning they don’t get offended).
Answer their question with questions. If they ask about your weekend all about their’s then followup on a detail. They will talk for a couple minutes then end with some version of “hey great chat but I need to get a couple things done”. If you want to remain approachable you need to give people the chance to talk but also don’t really need to share much of yourself. Keep tabs on the easy things(kids, spouse, etc) and you have a lot of variations of very basic questions for a short conversation. How’s kid liking school? Did you and spouse have a nice weekend? Then one or two follow up questions to them and you can end the conversation without the other person feeling like you blew them off.
holy crap, this is some kind of next level Yoda tricks I don’t believe I’m capable enough to play
It’s not it’s just a little effort in remembering the couple major details of people you see frequently instead of feeling exhausted from the anxiety of being stuck in a conversation.
You probably don’t even need to remember much. Just asking how the kids are is enough, anything more specific than that is just a bonus.