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Basic Social Skills Guide (2012)

improveyoursocialskills.com

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Re: Basic Social Skills Guide (2012)

#321

Post by sicariusnoctis »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #229
gherkinnn wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. That’s why I find dev.to and to be a rather uninteresting place. It’s 90% niceties and explaining .map over and over again. Similar things can be observed in many meetups and some companies. Everything is awesome. Everybody is nice. People shy away from deciding anything . Even the simple act of two people wanting to go through the same door at the same time is an impossible conundrum. No matter how important ps…

> Even the simple act of two people wanting to go through the same door at the same time is an impossible conundrum. Tangential, but I hit this issue very often with couple of friends during university years; two of us wanted to go through a door, and get stuck in a "you go", "no, you go", "I insist" loop. At some point I said, "you know what, let's do rock-paper-scissors, if you lose you go first". It immediately ca…

Haha, that reminds me of whenever one of my friends and I used to come across a door. We'd both hold it open and say "you first, I insist" and stand there. One time, I believe it went on for a solid 20 minutes.

(Other... "unusual" behaviors include standing in the pouring rain for an entire hour till the other gives up, passing the party leadership onto each other for a solid 10 minutes until one of us starts the game queue...)

Re: Basic Social Skills Guide (2012)

#322

Post by jugg1es »

geoffreyhale wrote: post #73
wisty wrote: post #43

Why are social skills always focusing on the positive? A lot of programmers often seem to be more nice guys than anything else, and need to be able to be more assertive / aggressive. Everyone tries to distinguish these two, it's mostly just in the eye of the beholder - IMO aggression is just assertion when it's judged to be inappropriate or incompetently done - a drill instructor being assertive looks different to a…

Aggression is violent and seeks to harm or at least disregards the recipient's well-being. Assertiveness is considerate and has compassion for the recipient, considers how our assertion may affect the recipient, may offer understanding and empathy for their situation, then asserts our need by taking personal ownership and using "I" language, etc.

This is a curious statement. Assertiveness does not require that you be explicitly or even implicitly empathetic nor does it require you to use "I" statements. In fact, deliberately using language where you are making a topic personal (by using "I" language) is the opposite of assertive in this context.

Re: Basic Social Skills Guide (2012)

#323

Post by orblivion »

LVB wrote: post #169
wallflower wrote: post #53

While some of you may make light of the fact that I am giving you advice, my single most important piece of advice to people who are highly analytical and/or always solving problems is to not give unsolicited advice to friends, family, acquaintances, or even strangers. People will ask for advice if they really want it. People are not “broken pieces of code” begging to be fixed. I’ve lost friends over this, until one…

One instance of this I've struggled with (mainly b/c online comms is hard) is when people publicly post that they're annoyed about a confusing thing. "OMG why does it take 10 clicks to do X". This often prompts solutions ("If you turn on Y, then it will only take 2 clicks"), but can sometimes then be followed by irritated rebuttals ("Yes yes I know it's configurable but the point is..."). On the one hand I get the de…

I can see myself being one of these irritated people. More than once, I've posted (maybe not even on Twitter; maybe on a support channel of some sort) something like "why did it take me 30 minutes to figure out how to do X?" And people, particularly the developers or people in the community, will reply with "just do Y and Z and you can do X". This irritates me because I didn't say "I can't do X!", I said "it took me 30 minutes to figure out how to do X". I.e, a usability problem, not a functionality problem. And the fact that it doesn't register to them that this is what I'm complaining about is all the more irritating ("yes I know, but the point is..." from your example), because it feeds into my bias that they have a blind spot about their own UI.

As to whether I'm just venting, I suppose I imagine that on Twitter the developers might hear my complaints. (And yes, as such I should always remind myself to keep my complaint relatively respectful for this reason).

Re: Basic Social Skills Guide (2012)

#324

Post by hydrox24 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #229
gherkinnn wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. That’s why I find dev.to and to be a rather uninteresting place. It’s 90% niceties and explaining .map over and over again. Similar things can be observed in many meetups and some companies. Everything is awesome. Everybody is nice. People shy away from deciding anything . Even the simple act of two people wanting to go through the same door at the same time is an impossible conundrum. No matter how important ps…

> Even the simple act of two people wanting to go through the same door at the same time is an impossible conundrum. Tangential, but I hit this issue very often with couple of friends during university years; two of us wanted to go through a door, and get stuck in a "you go", "no, you go", "I insist" loop. At some point I said, "you know what, let's do rock-paper-scissors, if you lose you go first". It immediately ca…

> Even the simple act of two people wanting to go through the same door at the same time is an impossible conundrum.

I believe that the optimal solution to this problem is to offer, and then if there is a counter-offer, take it. If the other person is offended then they have followed the letter of the social law but do not understand it in their hearts. In addition, it is often polite to take what is offered to you.

Re: Basic Social Skills Guide (2012)

#325

Post by hawaiianbrah »

ljm wrote: post #180
rollerboi wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been working on this since I noticed it in myself a few years back. It's really difficult because I'm the "problem-solver," but I'm also the person that people want to vent to. So I've come to realize - After a friend/coworker shares something that they're sad/angry about, my standard MO is: 1) Say something like "Wow, that must really feel terrible. I'm sorry to hear that!" (I always feel the need to add more t…

I’m a coach in training and question number 3 there is a powerful question. That’s a really great question to ask because you’re not getting involved in the topic, you’re not giving them ideas, and you’re not working through it for them. The others are too nuanced to easily explain, but “what are you going to do with that,” is a fucking fantastic question when a friend confides in you. You’re right that this requires…

What are you a coach in training for?

Re: Basic Social Skills Guide (2012)

#326

Post by [deleted] »

wallflower wrote: post #53

While some of you may make light of the fact that I am giving you advice, my single most important piece of advice to people who are highly analytical and/or always solving problems is to not give unsolicited advice to friends, family, acquaintances, or even strangers. People will ask for advice if they really want it. People are not “broken pieces of code” begging to be fixed. I’ve lost friends over this, until one…

[deleted]

Re: Basic Social Skills Guide (2012)

#327

Post by lsiebert »

Nition wrote: post #305
rollerboi wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been working on this since I noticed it in myself a few years back. It's really difficult because I'm the "problem-solver," but I'm also the person that people want to vent to. So I've come to realize - After a friend/coworker shares something that they're sad/angry about, my standard MO is: 1) Say something like "Wow, that must really feel terrible. I'm sorry to hear that!" (I always feel the need to add more t…

The trouble I have with #1 is when someone tells me their problem and they don't want help with it, now I have a new problem to worry about, and worse, I can't take action to solve it because the problem isn't mine. I guess the trick is not worrying about other people's problems. But... I dunno, I just don't like unsolved problems hanging around.

You can always set a boundary with friends not to tell you their problems. "Hey, I appreciate you wanting to share with me, but I'm probably not the right person to just talk about problems with. I'm happy to listen if there's something I can do to help or if you want advice though!"

Re: Basic Social Skills Guide (2012)

#328

Post by Ixiaus »

wallflower wrote: post #53

While some of you may make light of the fact that I am giving you advice, my single most important piece of advice to people who are highly analytical and/or always solving problems is to not give unsolicited advice to friends, family, acquaintances, or even strangers. People will ask for advice if they really want it. People are not “broken pieces of code” begging to be fixed. I’ve lost friends over this, until one…

I'm 33 and I wish I learned this a long time ago (I started realizing I did this 4 years ago and it took a while for it to sink in how much people dislike unsolicited advice).

I think, for me, it comes from a deep desire and need to be "noticed" and when I am observing someone or listening to someone and there is an opportunity for me to start "fixing" I feel this compulsive urge to do so.

I've started telling myself: just STFU. STFU, let them talk, and if after talking they open the door for feedback or thoughts or observations share them, otherwise they only want someone to acknowledge what's going on for them.

Unsolicited advice is also really vicious the more I've thought about it, you're robbing someone of the opportunity to figure things out for themselves, even if you've figured it out yourself or you have a great way of doing things, most people will and should figure things out on their own (and those that want to improve will open themselves up to feedback).

Re: Basic Social Skills Guide (2012)

#329

Post by skizm »

cwkoss wrote: post #168

I read some "pick up artist" literature in college: about two thirds of it is misogynistic garbage, but the remainder has some good tips on general platonic social interaction (and a major issue with insecure men is learning to interact with women in a casual platonic way without acting odd and creepy because they are hoping for more). - If you aren't good at speaking in a captivating way, literally write out your be…

My cube was an ice cube that melted (we're in a desert) before I got to the ladder question. Trying to figure out what that says about me...

Re: Basic Social Skills Guide (2012)

#330

Post by rgoulter »

kristofferR wrote: post #216

Socially insecure people should just watch the s*it out of this channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/charismaoncommand/videos I think visual examples can be way more impactful than what the linked dry text guide could ever hope to be.

Those thumbnails look like they're optimised for as wide an appeal as possible. The thumbnails strike me as "I really don't want to watch this".
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