I got a weekend job at Lowes. It was good because it's basically the opposite of software dev. You stand, walk, move things, help people get the right stuff for their project, and talk to people.
Ask HN: How do you practice social soft skills in real life?
11–20 of 27 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you practice social soft skills in real life?
#12> I always struggle with applying those concepts
Soft skills are best practiced in forced situations, such as management and conflict resolution. Learning these concepts isn’t going to happen so long as you remain in situations where there is low friction from avoiding people or decisions.
Re: Ask HN: How do you practice social soft skills in real life?
#13Former interpersonal skills trainer here.
The comments have a lot of good suggestions. I would like to reinforce the emphasis on listening, and the idea of practicing one skill until you have it down, and then moving on to another. Also it is good to take a training course where you actually practoce the skills under the guidance of a teacher.
Also it is good to think afterwards about an interaction that went good or bad, reviewing as close to word-for-word if you can, and see what you can learn that you can use in the future. Also think of situations you have a hard time handling and see if you can think of how the skills you are learning can help, and again plan out what you might say word-for-word, and run though it a number of times, maybe even out loud, to make it more automatic.
Re: Ask HN: How do you practice social soft skills in real life?
#14I've found the first step to any self-development project is observation.
Give yourself a free pass for a few weeks or a few months. Your only job: observe yourself.
Observe yourself getting nervous. Overwhelmed. Awkward. Behaving in a way that seems unnatural.
Journal what you find. Journal how you feel when you find yourself in these different situations.
You will feel like an idiot when you do this. That it's a waste of time. This process isn't intuitive, but it is life-changing if you're willing to be honest with yourself.
If you take this seriously, you'll find that most of your fears and awkwardness and inhibitions are the result of past experiences, more specifically, your perceptions of past experiences.
If you can develop the stomach to live in reality, you will be on the cusp of real life change.
Once you've taken an inventory of where you're at, you can begin to implement the things you're learning.
Re: Ask HN: How do you practice social soft skills in real life?
#15Firstly it seems to me that I need to be true to myself. Your post has reminded me that there are others who try to evoke some particular responses in others by manipulating their own behaviour, which for me amounts to flying a false flag.
Perhaps some people are better fit to carry out deception than others. I personally have not wanted to bring myself to such methods. Yet I know that many people achieve what seems to be success in life through such tactics.
Obviously I'll never be rich.
Yet I have wonderful friends because the soft, gentle ways of kindness are not the leading edge of a greedy riposte, but genuinely lead on to... simply more of the same.
I never have to wonder what is the most appropriate reaction for a situation because I just do as I feel.
I have real riches!
Re: Ask HN: How do you practice social soft skills in real life?
#16I got a weekend job at Lowes. It was good because it's basically the opposite of software dev. You stand, walk, move things, help people get the right stuff for their project, and talk to people.
I wish I could push this post higher - I have worked a few customer service positions (tutor while in university, cashier at a little natural foods store) and I found both of those positions really flexed my social skills and have made my life much easier in myriad ways (job interviews, to pick a big one.)
Re: Ask HN: How do you practice social soft skills in real life?
#17I've found the first step to any self-development project is observation. Give yourself a free pass for a few weeks or a few months. Your only job: observe yourself. Observe yourself getting nervous. Overwhelmed. Awkward. Behaving in a way that seems unnatural. Journal what you find. Journal how you feel when you find yourself in these different situations. You will feel like an idiot when you do this. That it's a wa…
Very well written!
Re: Ask HN: How do you practice social soft skills in real life?
#18I got a weekend job at Lowes. It was good because it's basically the opposite of software dev. You stand, walk, move things, help people get the right stuff for their project, and talk to people.
I wish I could push this post higher - I have worked a few customer service positions (tutor while in university, cashier at a little natural foods store) and I found both of those positions really flexed my social skills and have made my life much easier in myriad ways (job interviews, to pick a big one.)
I actually got the job at Lowes because I went to it as a sort of practice interview. I was looking for a job as a security guard (armed guards make double what I made at Lowes), but the positions I was offered were all about the same pay (unarmed guards don't get paid much). I think part of the reason I did well in the interview is because I was relaxed from thinking of it as a practice interview. This definitely helped me in interviews that I've had since.
Even though the pay was only $10 an hour and I was working 40+ hours at my main job plus 16-20 hours at Lowes, I really enjoyed my job at Lowes. It was much nicer than my software dev job - lower stress, less politics, no pressure to move up or meet some unobtainable metric, and the managers actually understood the work. It's almost like managers who have MBAs focus more on the metrics (output) and less on outcomes and the people.
Re: Ask HN: How do you practice social soft skills in real life?
#19Be genuine and kind instead of engineering situations.
This works for people who naturally have good social skills, but as a way of obtaining practice it seems rather unactionable - rather like "Step 1: be attractive; step 2: don't be unattractive".
Re: Ask HN: How do you practice social soft skills in real life?
#20I got a weekend job at Lowes. It was good because it's basically the opposite of software dev. You stand, walk, move things, help people get the right stuff for their project, and talk to people.
My preferred job for social interaction would be a bartender or server. But, I think it'd require some training before starting especially the former one.