I've been slashing the recent trend of "shyness coaching" articles on news.ycombinator, but the article is actually kinda good, as far as pop psychology goes.
20 Ways to Attack Shyness
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Re: 20 Ways to Attack Shyness
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Somehow I feel comfortable here. Not sure why. I wouldn't have posted this anywhere else.
I understand completely. I'm here every day, reading and posting all the time. I do this nowhere else. No facebook, no friendfeed, no twitter, just this and email. Then I go to a cocktail party or happy hour and stand in the corner.
Absolutely, this is the first and probably the last website where I post. No facebook, twitter, orkut and etc. Even, I've hard time speaking up in meetings because most of the time I hear "Work as designed", "We've got more important things in the plate", "Cool idea, we'll come back to this later" and etc. Also, I always find a corner in social meet-ups. Don't know what's wrong :(
Re: 20 Ways to Attack Shyness
#43Excellent article. Tips (#11,#12,#14,#16) are key. Especially #16 ("Practice being in uncomfortable situations") - the idea is that what is uncomfortable for you is very personal and very real and what you need to work on... Daily practice makes shyness diminish. As someone who has been aware of his shyness all his life, I think it really simmers down to: selfishness (they're thinking about me [no they're not]), perf…
Your tips like these are awesome. I should have thanked you earlier as well. edw519 and I followed http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=119006 in SS'08 and got great results. Thanks a lot.
You're welcome.
Re: 20 Ways to Attack Shyness
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't. I go to events (usually business related) that I've been invited to. The more geeks in the room, the more comfortable I feel. The more MBAs, the less.
The more _____ in the room, the less comfortable I feel. For me, the operative word would be suits. Suits are what make me uncomfortable. Any events that encourage wearing of clothes that require dry cleaning, formalities, pretentious things of that nature are right up there. Thus says the MBA geek: It's actually possible to have an MBA and to still be a geek. It's not a cure-all or indication of social aptness. I do…
Actually it's not the "clothes" as much as the "content" on the conversation.
One of my most interesting memories from Startup School in April...
I had 2 days where I was totally in my element talking about cool stuff with cool people the whole time. This rarely happens in my regular life. The time flew.
On the flight back, I sat next to 2 women who were reading "People" and emotionally discussing it's content. All I could think was, "Welcome back to the other 99% of the world."
Re: 20 Ways to Attack Shyness
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
I understand completely. I'm here every day, reading and posting all the time. I do this nowhere else. No facebook, no friendfeed, no twitter, just this and email. Then I go to a cocktail party or happy hour and stand in the corner.
congrats on the gmail! I had a very poignant moment when I started forwarding my Pitt email to gmail and realized it was the email address I was going to have for the rest of my life.
I was going to have for the rest of my life
I hope so. That's what I thought when I switched to yahoo mail.
But when you start missing emails because you're getting thousands of spam per day, it's time to move on.
You'd think someone smarter than me would have fixed this scourge by now.
Re: 20 Ways to Attack Shyness
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
The more _____ in the room, the less comfortable I feel. For me, the operative word would be suits. Suits are what make me uncomfortable. Any events that encourage wearing of clothes that require dry cleaning, formalities, pretentious things of that nature are right up there. Thus says the MBA geek: It's actually possible to have an MBA and to still be a geek. It's not a cure-all or indication of social aptness. I do…
Actually it's not the "clothes" as much as the "content" on the conversation. One of my most interesting memories from Startup School in April... I had 2 days where I was totally in my element talking about cool stuff with cool people the whole time. This rarely happens in my regular life. The time flew. On the flight back, I sat next to 2 women who were reading "People" and emotionally discussing it's content. All I…
Good points. I guess I just meant that some people don't tend to take seriously an MBA who doesn't dress the part, especially when business is the reason for a schoozefest.
I've actually had much better luck being taken seriously as a techie when I don't dress the part of an MBA. Probably one of the most difficult things is being taken seriously as a techie when people first get to know me for the MBA (prime example, employment interviews). It's really quite the conundrum.