Seven simple but effective methods for improving your connection with others

March 15, 2024

Here are some of the most useful simple methods I've adopted for improving my connection with others (though I still have room for improvement): 1) When you like someone, greet them warmly, demonstrating with your face and body language that you like them. 2) Try your best to channel "interested attention" in conversations - where you give the other person your total focus while paying very close attention to what they are saying (and how they are saying it) and starting with the prem...

Eight methods to make conversations with acquaintances more interesting

December 3, 2022

If you're like me and really dislike small talk, you may find these ideas useful. (1) If you end up talking about their work, ask what they (i) most like about it and (ii) find most challenging about it. (2) If they end up asking about your work, try to explain what you do in a way you've never experimented with before. Example: if you're a programmer, maybe you'll say your job is to convert ambiguous human goals to instructions that are so precise a computer can follow them. ...

How To Be A Better Public Speaker

August 2, 2017

Becoming a great public speaker is hard! To make it easier, here is a list of tricks for giving better talks or lectures, organized by when to use each trick. CREATING YOUR CONTENT Brainstorm Before doing a ton of external research while developing your talk, first get down the parts of the talk that you can pull directly from your mind and memory to give yourself a much faster start and make it a lot clearer where the holes are and what actually needs to be researched. This preve...