Archives – July, 2007
Put a semi-new post up today. I took down the old article Geeky And Nerdy Traits That Can Hinder Your Social Success. I’m splitting it into a pair of more detailed articles, because the original covered two broad ideas, which I now want to expand on. Also, the new articles lose the terms ‘Geeky’ and ‘Nerdy’, which are unnecessarily vague, loaded, emotionally charged terms.
Here’s the first article:
Some Interpersonal Pitfalls More Intellectual Types Can Fall Into
The second half will be up before long.
July 29, 2007
There aren’t a ton of articles on my main site on making conversation. One reason for this is that I think you can do a lot to improve your conversational skills indirectly, and not by focusing too much on the little details. The larger reason though is that the topic has already been written about quite a bit. I like to give more attention to what I feel are less explored ideas.
But that’s just me. If you’re interested, here are some links to articles on conversation. My main criteria was to look for articles that cover new ideas besides the usual listen, smile, be interested, follow current events, offer compliments, ask open-ended questions, repeat what they said back at them-type advice. Not that that stuff is bad, just that you’ve probably heard it already.
My three conversations articles to start things off, in case you haven’t seen them:
Some ‘bigger picture’ thoughts on making conversation
Examples: Starting conversations, inviting people out, and more
How to do better in loud, crazy group conversations
By Scott H. Young – this guy mostly writes about productivity and changing your habits and stuff, but the handful of articles he’s written on social topics are pretty insightful:
Better conversations: Collecting life stories
Improve your conversations with stories
Mastering Conversation
Two recent ones from lifehack.org:
How to initiate conversation
How to exit a conversation
Positivity Blog – another one of those eclectic personal development blogs that occasionally discusses socializing:
Do you make these 10 mistakes in a conversation?
5 conversational mistakes that can make you look dumb
Five awesome and five awful conversation topics
Best Tool For The Job – found this one pretty randomly:
How to have better conversations
And that’s it. It’s weird. I had some of these articles in mind going in, but the rest I pretty much found through Google. I intended to link to anything good that I found, but the only stuff I really liked was on blogs. All the non-blog stuff I found was either too short, basic/unoriginal, or obviously a teaser for some commercial program. Go figure.
July 25, 2007
My fiftieth article is up on the main site. It’s the most general one I’ve probably written:
The Importance Of Simplicity And The Basics In Social Interactions
July 21, 2007
As you can see, I’ve turned the News & Updates section into a blog. The section naturally lends itself to this kind of thing and I’m not sure why I didn’t think to do it earlier. Anyways, for the most part this will still be for letting you know when I’ve put up a new article. But there are some other benefits as well:
- You can subscribe to the blog’s RSS feed to get notified of any updates. Yeah, the articles themselves won’t be in the feed, just the notifications, but this site at least has some sort of RSS component to it now.*
- I can do more blog-type things like making quickie posts, posting links to relevant articles, or putting up links to other blogs (the main site’s Resource Links doesn’t have any blogs in it).
Again, this is mostly still just the old News & Updates section. I don’t want to promise that I’m going to start posting tons of new stuff every day. It’ll be more when I feel like it or if something good comes along. The main show is still at www.succeedsocially.com
Let me know what you think. If you notice any technical issues, please let me know too.
*If you’re not familiar with RSS, I suggest you give it a try. Don’t even worry about the term ‘RSS’. Basically the way it works is say you like 20 different pages that are updated regularly, but unpredictably. Instead of having to check each one manually, you can subscribe to their RSS feed then view all the feeds from a central hub via a feed reader. Whenever a site/blog adds new content, you’ll know and can read it right then and there in the reader. It’s kind of like an Inbox for the web, but instead of receiving new emails, you’re viewing new posts and articles from the sites you subscribe to.
I’d heard about RSS for a while but put off using it. One day I just decided to give it a go and signed up with Google Reader. Like I said, now instead of checking twenty different sites every morning, I log into Google Reader and can see which sites have added new stuff all in one page. Sign up and add a blog you follow or two, you won’t go back.
July 16, 2007
News & Updates are here now. Just because, here’s a record of the site’s previous updates:
July 12th, 2007: Attitudes And Dispositions Towards Socializing That Are Easier Said Than Done
July 5th, 2007: Mental Health Issues That Can Impact Your Social Success
June 21st, 2007: How I (Gradually) Became Less Obsessive About Playing Video Games
June 15th, 2007: Activties People Do When They Hang Around Each Other, I added a search box to the site as well. It works pretty well for the most part, though sometimes the odd non-article page will get thrown into results.
June 7th, 2007: How To Do Better In Loud, Crazy Group Conversations
May 31st, 2007: Regular Logical Mode vs. Fun Partying Mode In Social Interactions
May 23rd, 2007: I moved all this site’s articles on dating and women over to a new offshoot web page, www.datinggroundwork.com. The odd time I have something to say on that topic, it will appear there. My main interest is still people skills though.
May 14th, 2007: Having A Realistic Idea Of The Effects Of Improving Your Social Skills
May 5th, 2007: Overcoming Laziness, Inertia, And Fear As You Improve Your People Skills
April 27th, 2007: How To Be More Friendly And Social
April 20th, 2007: What To Do If You Can’t Relate To All The Shallow People Out There
April 13th, 2007: If You’ve Read Everything On This Site Then Start Applying The Advice
April 7th, 2007: Overall Attitudes That Will Aid The Development Of Your People Skills
March 29th, 2007: Learning To Make More Eye Contact With People
March 26th, 2007: I significantly rewrote the article My Views On Changing And Being True To Yourself. It’s now The Tricky Issue Of Making Changes To Yourself In Order To Fit In
March 23rd, 2007: Stages You Can Go Through As You Improve Your People Skills
March 15th, 2007: Inside The Mind Of Guys Who Are Shy And Inexperienced With Women
March 11th, 2007: Changed the site’s name from www.howtobecooler.com (no longer works) to www.succeedsocially.com, because, well, the older name was kind of dumb.
All the old www.howtobecooler.com updates:
03/09/2007: Places And Ways To Meet New People
03/01/2007: My Experience With Confidence
02/23/2007: Losing Your Naivety And Getting More Of An Edge
02/15/2007: How To Talk To Shyer and/or More Introverted People
02/09/2007: A Quick Note About What Relationships Are Like (now at www.datinggroundwork.com)
02/08/2007: Thoughts On How To Be More Interesting
02/02/2007: Thoughts On ‘Connecting’ With People
01/28/2007: My Take On Social Skills And How To Improve Them
01/25/2007: Read This If This Site Makes You Feel Discouraged
01/24/2007: My Views On Changing And Being True To Yourself
January 21st and 22nd, 2007 : I took down the article Skills and Interests I Often See In ‘Cooler’ Guys. I didn’t do a proper job of getting my views across and some people were taking it the wrong way. Instead I put up two new articles that I hope will illustrate my ideas better: Knowledge And Skills That Are Socially Practical To Have and Legitimately Improve Yourself As A Person
01/15/2007: Little Social Annoyances That Will Never Go Away
01/12/2007: Reflections on Being Defensive and Secretive
12/28/2006: Getting Along With New Groups
12/11/2006: Being Honest With Yourself About Your Problems
12/07/2006: For Guy Virgins: Basic Things No One Told Me About Sex (now at www.datinggroundwork.com)
11/30/2006: What To Do If Your Friends Suck
11/17/2006: Thoughts on Seeming Less Weird
11/10/2006: How to be More Fun / How to be Less Boring
11/04/2006: Why You Should Read A Lot More
11/02/2006: Lifestyle Factors That Can Affect Your Social Success
10/30/2006: Thoughts on Being Funny
10/24/2006: Examples: Starting Conversations, Inviting People Out, and More
10/20/2006: Traits That Help You Hang Out With Other People
10/12/2006: Advice for Guys Who are Inexperienced with Women (now at www.datinggroundwork.com in a broken up, modified form)
10/10/2006: Why You Should Go Backpacking Around Australia, Europe, or SE Asia
10/05/2006: Coping with Nervousness
10/29/2006: My Advice for Any Shy, Geeky Guys Still in High-School
10/22/2006: Some “Bigger Picture” Thoughts on Making Conversation
September 18th, 2006
www.howtobecooler.com first appears with its ten original articles.
July 16, 2007
