Reviewing Thomas Erikson’s Surrounded by Idiots: Understanding People Through the Four Personality Types

Surrounded by Idiots

I just finished reading Surrounded by Idiots and I’ll be honest, the title is what pulled me in. It almost feels like a reaction. Something you say after a long day of dealing with people who just don’t seem to understand you. So naturally, I was curious. I wanted to know if the author, Thomas Erikson, was actually calling people idiots or if there was something else to it.

As I started reading, I realized the book isn’t really about insulting people. It’s about communication, why it goes wrong so frequently and why people who are different from us can feel difficult to deal with.

The book breaks people down into four personality types using colours, which is simple and easy to follow. At first, I didn’t take it too seriously because people are more complex than that. But as I kept reading, I found myself thinking about people I know. The ones who are always in a hurry. The ones who talk a lot and bring energy into every conversation. The ones who just want things to be calm and orderly and the ones who pay attention to every little detail.

It didn’t suddenly make me believe everyone fits into a category, but it made me more aware. It made me pay attention to how different people respond, how they communicate and even how I come across to others.

One thing I appreciated is that the book doesn’t just focus on other people. It brings it back to you. The way you speak, the way you react, the way you expect to be understood without always trying to understand first.

It also made me think about how easily we misread people. Sometimes someone comes off as rude, but they’re just direct. Sometimes someone appears too quiet, but they’re just careful with their words. Sometimes someone talks too much and you assume they’re not serious, but they’re just expressive in a different way. When you start looking at it like that, you become less judgmental and a bit more willing to understand.

At the same time, I won’t say I agreed with everything. Life doesn’t work in clear boxes. People change depending on the situation, their mood, or what they’re going through. So I didn’t see it as a perfect explanation of human behaviour, more like a starting point.

What the book really does is give you language for things you’ve probably never really thought about. Why some conversations feel easy and others feel stressful. Why you click with some people instantly and struggle with others.

It also made me reflect on expectations. Sometimes we expect people to communicate the way we do, to understand things the way we see them, to respond how we would respond aand when they don’t, it feels like a problem.

By the time I finished reading, the title didn’t feel as sharp as it did at the beginning. It felt less like an insult and more like frustration that comes from not understanding people. Most of the time, the problem isn’t that people are difficult. It’s that we don’t always know how to meet them where they are.

It’s not a perfect book, but it makes you think differently and sometimes, that’s enough. If a book can make you a little more patient, a little more aware and a little less quick to label people, then it has done something right.

What I kept thinking about after finishing it is how much of adult life is really just communication management. Workplaces, friendships, relationships, everything comes down to people trying to understand each other while speaking from completely different internal settings. We expect people to just know.

The book doesn’t fully solve that problem, but it makes you more conscious of it.

It also made me think about patience in a different way. Not just patience with people, but patience in conversation. Letting people finish their thoughts, not rushing to correct them. Not assuming you already know what they mean halfway through their sentence.

Understanding people takes effort. Real effort, not surface-level effort, but intentional effort, because when you stop trying to decode people too quickly, you start actually hearing them.