A Hikkikomori StopGap

(Old) Being exasperated with people who just don’t listen -> politically correct copy-paste version

Fake Smile or Real Smile?

Copy-Paste: Selling Communication

“Traditional” Conversations

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Copy-Paste: Life Lessons that Schools Rarely Impart

Note: This is again, another placeholder topic. (When it rains, it pours.)

This time, the reason why I am posting this is actually a combination of two things.

The first reason was that I felt bad that all I could reply in this thread (requires registration) to a person that linked to this post of mine was:

Thanks [username 1]

I just spotted this thread.

Yeah, in some ways you’re right [username 2], which is why I modified the article a bit.

Still, the main difference between an emotional manipulator is intent. It’s like the difference between manslaughter and murder.

Emotional manipulators need not only be aware but require constant malicious intent behind their choices.

This was in reply to username 1 saying: /Oh, fuck…this probably describes me perfectly.Still… this was rushed and I’m not even sure I conveyed the idea that I didn’t see anything wrong with the original article.

The comment about modifying the article was another rushed bit reply to username #2’s comment about the list applying to everyone and to be honest, I never really made clear in my blog post that my intent of modifying some parts was due to me feeling that they were wrong.

The reality was that this was just a consequence of me rushing the reply and even if there were little bits I disagree with in the article, most of them were minor, and I never considered any part of the article to be so bad as to be wrong.

It was all rush…rush…cause I had other things to worry about like figuratively bashing my head at a wall until I can be satisfied with the drafts but then I remembered something I promised myself which lead to the 2nd reason:

Everytime I write a blog post, I would bookmark an old blog post and re-organize one of my old bookmarks.

This was all intended to prepare this link to serve as a static page for this blog.

Since this was an old account though, this is where re-organizing the bookmarks come in.

I’m just not sure if there are NSFW links in there and they are all so disorganized that I don’t want to tackle it beyond one bookmark a blog post.

Still… Diigo’s list might not be a CMS but it was free and it was easier to understand plus the reason why I felt it served a better static page for me was because I can highlight some snippets in the actual article and if you click on the “More” button, you can preview the contents of the bookmark without waiting for multiple websites to load.

Anyways, what happened was that the old bookmark next in line for my organizing was this:

http://www.positivityblog.com/index.php/2008/04/02/16-things-i-wish-they-had-taught-me-in-school/

Since I had old highlights of the page, it was very easy for me to skim the contents that were relevant to me and this was one of the words that were in the blog:

“Don’t beat yourself up.” It was then that I decided that this post, despite being unrelated to the above topic, was worth while enough to copy paste. (Both as a reply to username 1 and also a topic that Hikikomoris might be interested in.)

…

On with the content:

80/20:

The 80/20 rule – also known as The Pareto Principle – basically says that 80 percent of the value you will receive will come from 20 percent of your activities.

A lot of what you do is probably not as useful or even necessary to do as you may think.

You can just drop – or vastly decrease the time you spend on – a whole bunch of things. 

And if you do that you will have more time and energy to spend on those things that really brings your value, happiness, fulfilment and so on.

Parkinson’s Law:

This law says that a task will expand in time and seeming complexity depending on the time you set aside for it. For instance, if you say to yourself that you’ll come up with a solution within a week then the problem will seem to grow more difficult and you’ll spend more and more time trying to come up with a solution.

So focus your time on finding solutions. Then just give yourself an hour (instead of the whole day) or the day (instead of the whole week) to solve the problem. This will force your mind to focus on solutions and action.

The result may not be exactly as perfect as if you had spent a week on the task, but as mentioned in the previous point, 80 percent of the value will come from 20 percent of the activities anyway. Or you may wind up with a better result because you haven’t overcomplicated or overpolished things. This will help you to get things done faster, to improve your ability to focus and give you more free time where you can totally focus on what’s in front of you instead of having some looming task creating stress in the back of your mind.

Batching:

Boring or routine tasks can create a lot of procrastination and low-level anxiety. One good way to get these things done quickly is to batch them. This means that you do them all in row. You will be able to do them quicker because there is less “start-up time” compared to if you spread them out. And when you are batching you become fully engaged in the tasks and more focused.

A batch of things to do in an hour today may look like this: Clean your desk / answer today’s emails / do the dishes / make three calls / write a grocery shopping list for tomorrow.

First, give value. Then, get value. Not the other way around.

This is a bit of a counter-intuitive thing. There is often an idea that someone should give us something or do something for us before we give back. The problem is just that a lot of people think that way. And so far less than possible is given either way.

If you want to increase the value you receive (money, love, kindness, opportunities etc.) you have to increase the value you give. Because over time you pretty much get what you give. It would perhaps be nice to get something for nothing. But that seldom happens.

Be proactive. Not reactive.

This one ties into the last point. If everyone is reactive then very little will get done. You could sit and wait and hope for someone else to do something. And that happens pretty often, but it can take a lot of time before it happens. 

A more useful and beneficial way is to be proactive, to simply be the one to take the first practical action and get the ball rolling. This not only saves you a lot of waiting, but is also more pleasurable since you feel like you have the power over your life. Instead of feeling like you are run by a bunch of random outside forces.

Mistakes and Failures are Good:

When you are young you just try things and fail until you learn. As you grow a bit older, you learn from - for example - school to not make mistakes. And you try less and less things.  

This may cause you to stop being proactive and to fall into a habit of being reactive, of waiting for someone else to do something. I mean, what if you actually tried something and failed? Perhaps people would laugh at you?  

Perhaps they would. But when you experience that you soon realize that it is seldom the end of the world. And a lot of the time people don’t care that much. They have their own challenges and lives to worry about.  

And success in life often comes from not giving up despite mistakes and failure. It comes from being persistent. 

When you first learn to ride your bike you may fall over and over. Bruise a knee and cry a bit. But you get up, brush yourself off and get on the saddle again. And eventually you learn how to ride a bike. If you can just reconnect to your 5 year old self and do things that way - instead of giving up after a try/failure or two as grown-ups often do – you would probably experience a lot more interesting things, learn valuable lessons and have quite a bit more success.

Don’t beat yourself up:

Why do people give up after just few mistakes or failures? Well, I think one big reason is because they beat themselves up way too much. But it’s a kinda pointless habit. It only creates additional and unnecessary pain inside you and wastes your precious time. It’s best to try to drop this habit as much as you can.

Assume rapport:

Meeting new people is fun. But it can also induce nervousness. We all want to make a good first impression and not get stuck in an awkward conversation.

The best way to do this that I have found so far is to assume rapport. This means that you simply pretend that you are meeting one of your best friends. Then you start the interaction in that frame of mind instead of the nervous one.

This works surprisingly well. You can read more about it in How to Have Less Awkward Conversations: Assuming Rapport.

Reticular Activating System:

I learned about the organs and the inner workings of the body in class but nobody told me about the reticular activation system. And that’s a shame, because this is one of the most powerful things you can learn about. What this focus system, this R.A.S, in your mind does is to allow you to see in your surroundings what you focus your thoughts on. It pretty much always helps you to find what you are looking for.

So you really need to focus on what you want, not on what you don’t want. And keep that focus steady.

Setting goals and reviewing them frequently is one way to keep your focus on what’s important and to help you take action that will move your closer to toward where you want to go. Another way is just to use external reminders such as pieces of paper where you can, for instance, write down a few things from this post like “Give value” or “Assume rapport”. And then you can put those pieces of paper on your fridge, bathroom mirror etc.

“Your Attitude Changes Your Realty”

We have all heard that you should keep a positive attitude or perhaps that “you need to change your attitude!”. That is a nice piece of advice I suppose, but without any more reasons to do it is very easy to just brush such suggestions off and continue using your old attitude.

But the thing that I’ve discovered the last few years is that if you change your attitude, you actually change your reality. When you for instance use a positive attitude instead of a negative one you start to see things and viewpoints that were invisible to you before. You may think to yourself “why haven’t I thought about things this way before?”.

When you change you attitude you change what you focus on. And all things in your world can now be seen in a different light.

This is of course very similar to the previous tip but I wanted to give this one some space. Because changing your attitude can create an insane change in your world. It might not look like it if you just think about it though. Pessimism might seem like realism. But that is mostly because your R.A.S is tuned into seeing all the negative things you want to see. And that makes you “right” a lot of the time. And perhaps that is what you want. On the other hand, there are more fun things than being right all the time.

Gratitude is a simple way to make yourself feel happy:

Sure, I was probably told that I should be grateful. Perhaps because it was the right thing to do or just something I should do. But if someone had said that feeling grateful about things for minute or two is a great way to turn a negative mood into a happy one I would probably have practised gratitude more. It is also a good tool for keeping your attitude up and focusing on the right things. And to make other people happy. Which tends to make you even happier, since emotions are contagious.

Write everything down:

If your memory is anything like mine then it’s like a leaking bucket. Many of your good or great ideas may be lost forever if you don’t make a habit of writing things down. This is also a good way to keep your focus on what you want. Read more about it in Why You Should Write Things Down.

Notable Site Comments: (Note that just as the above article, these aren’t necessarily the ones I agree with. They are just the notable ones I feel worth highlighting at the time I was reading this article.)

#1 - (Btw item 15 is “write everything down”.)

I work at a tech startup, and one of my coworkers has a favorite saying: “All engineering problems eventually come down to heat.”

In general, most fields will have a reasonably specific problem which is the cause of any trouble you have 90% of the time. So if you’re having a problem and you’re not sure why, think of that one first.

Also, item 15 is probably the best advice to give anyone, ever. Not because it’s the most important, but because it’s extremely important and people hardly ever mention it.

#2 - Only preach to the converted:

Fantastically comprehensive list of life lessons.

For the philosophically minded - I humbly submit the following lesson: Only preach to the converted.

When I found out about the hidden world of government malfeasance and financial cabals that are responsible for so much misery in this world, and that exist with the help of the media’s complicity, I naturally assumed a lot of people would want to know.I spent all sorts of time and emotional energy on my soapbox, to be met with bored stares or snide remarks. The only time such speech-making and arguing was productive was when I had found someone already inclined to my way of thinking who was looking for answers, as I was.

So Liberals, stop trying to convert Conservatives, and vice versa. Veggies, leave those BBQ eaters alone. If you want to change the world, start with yourself so as to provide an example, and then only preach to people who ask for a sermon!

#3 - The thing is, that what we call a “university” in the usa today is actually many trade schools pulled together onto the same campus:

Excellent suggestions. The thing is, that what we call a “university” in the usa today is actually many trade schools pulled together onto the same campus. And yes, a person in her or his early years at college is required to take classes in all the different trades.

The things that you bring up here, are not things which are specific to any trade, and thus they are never taught.

I would love to see a new kind of college education - where perhaps the philosophy department could expand to become the overall auspices of the school. This would be a school for folks who want to learn how to think critically, and reason independently. Woven into the curriculum, there would be training in all the tools a person needs in this modern world, to start her own business. Computer programming, web design, introductory economics and business courses would be important. This would be a school for both thinkers, and for entrepreneurs.

4. Put something in the “piggy bank” each pay check, even if it’s just a dollar. This may sound dumb but it really is good advise. Don’t blow your cash but save and set goals.

#5 - Polyphasic Sleep and SpeedReading

Great list of useful skills on your list! I’ll add a couple I wish I had been taught in School.

1. To read at a useful rate (not subvocalizing)

2. Maximize my quality of sleep (therefore minimize sleep time)

#6 - Sun Tzu:

Know your weaknesses and then either work to correct them or surround yourself with people who offset them.

Some weaknesses are things we care about, but we just haven’t had time to address. Others are things that we either are not capable of correcting, or really, really don’t care too. As an entrepreneur, you don’t have to know all aspects of business, technology, finance, marketing, etc, if you surround yourself with the right people.

7. These are all great lessons, but what I REALLY wish I had learned in school is: Your “permanent record” is a myth that school principals made up to scare you! Breaking the rules can be useful and occasionally necessary.
8. a slightly more practical skill not taught: personal finance. It’s amazing to me you can graduate high school and college without learning how to balance your checkbook and plan your finances. They’ll spend weeks teaching you CPR which you’ll likely never use but no time spent on how to manage your finances which will likely determine how you can provide for yourself and your family.

# 7 - Criticism

While your list has some valuable life lessons, they really don’t seems like things that would be ‘Taught’ in school.
I think our schools should teach us systems for filing and retrieving information so that we can manage the great deal of information we come across in our lives.

I think schools should spend time to teach ‘Personal Finance’ budgeting, saving, investing, credit use and maintenance. We live in a consumer society and schools do very little to prepare us.

Cooking! Everyone has to eat and many people mess up their finances by spending way to much money eating out. You can eat better and save money if you can cook.

Basic maintenance. How to fix a toilet, how to change your oil, simple troubleshooting for the day to day technical difficulties which we all encounter.

# 8 - Delegation/Parasite Single Rationale

By the way, if you want to really achieve great things in your life you should consider delegating or outsourcing as many of your routine activities as possible. These minimum wage activities are not worth your time. If you are effective in your work, you should be able to make better use of this time and pay or ask someone else, such as an employee or a child, to assist with those activites.

# 9 - Nothing is Free

It’s quite amazing when looking back (I’m 27) all the things you THOUGHT would happen after high school that didn’t. I had a horrible time with bullying in school. Although I knew it was just a school thing and as soon as I got out of there it would be “a lot better” I didn’t think of it as “100% better” as people don’t do constant barrating and name calling like what happens in schools.

Some things I wish were taught in school: I forget the percentages but something like when you are in a class, immediately you are going to forgot half of it. Within a year you’re going to forget 90% of what you learn and/or experience. Basically to focus on what you most cherish from any moment and hope that’s the 10% you still remember.

Nothing is free. Something happened to my train of thought within the past couple years that now whenever I sign up for some service or someone offers me something for free I ask myself “what are they getting from this?” With my brother, for example, always like to give me stuff he no longer uses, which was nice and all. Problem is he never let me forget that. Whenever he wants something in return that cost me money and I don’t want to give up (say copying a game) he starts pulling out “but I gave you …”. When signing up at websites I try to guess what is their motivation. Is it ad revenue? going to charge later on? Now for some people, the “fee” is just knowing so many people use your service and benefit from it. Other’s want to monetize it.

# 10 - Adults

I was lucky to come across good books with success principles and meeting some people who practiced and taught these principles when I was 23 years old. Same as you I was upset at first why such important lessons were not taught to me in school. Later on I realized it was not only the schools who are responsible for that but mainly the grown-ups you grow up with, the parents. Parents have the children around for thousands of hours before the first teachers arrive on the scene. It is too easy to lay responsibility for lack of peopleskills/success principles/positive thinking etc. on the educational system. I’m now 50 years old, have successfully used many of the key points you talk about in your post.

#11 - Trilemma

Here’s one, the trilemma or the art of trade-offs. (I never heard the word trilemma used to describe the principle but I learned it a long time ago and it’s a very useful tool to approach many (any?) projects.
The classic example is managing a project where three major variables are time, cost, quality. Out of the the three you can only really choose two variables, the third one will be ruled out by virtue of the other two being present.

Here’s a discussion of trilemmas:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilemma

#12 - Clay Shirky

A word of caution on the 80/20 rule (#1):

“This is what’s wrong with a lot of 80/20 optimizations- the belief that truncating the system at the head will optimize its effectiveness; in many cases it actually cuts off a critical piece of the overall ecosystem.”

-Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody

13. This was a great reminder of many of the things that help make us successful and happy in life. I am going to print this out and put it on my wall. To think, if they did teach us these “basic” but fundamental things in life, how many frustrations we could have avoided while learning or stumbling on them by ourselves?
#14 - Open to interpretation:

I got kind of a different interpretation from the 80/20 rule, which is that because the rule constantly applies, you can not only cut out a lot of wasted time, but you can find what makes that 20% of your time work well for you, and apply it to the rest of your efforts, continually improving your productivity.

Reddit Comments:

#1:

more like “16 things i wish my parents taught me”

schools shouldn’t be responsible for this stuff.

then why do we have a ‘Life Skills’ class?

It’s called CALM - Career and Life Management, and here in Canada (I think all of Canada) it’s a required grade 11 course, though most people take it in grade 10, it’s only a half credit course. It covers making a resume, budgeting, safe sex, setting career goals, endless tests about what you should be when you grow up, etc.

Americans have that as well, but I think it’s an elective. (And not available in Florida.)

Yeah it was pretty good! At the time everyone hated it though, but at least we’re not drinking bleach to prevent HIV

#2:

Schools shouldn’t be responsible for anything except for their intended purpose: brainwashing and babysitting/confinement.

aahaa.. Funny, yet so true it’s sad.

okay.. how about…

aahaa.. Funny, so sad it’s true.

#3

These are things that adults learn. The teenage brain, to say nothing of the school-age brain, is developmentally incapable of comprehending and applying many of these concepts. Wishing you had learned them earlier is like wishing you could change the past. You just gotta learn what you learn when you learn it. Besides, if you learned everything you needed to learn in school: What fun would adulthood be? Thankfully, life has lessons to teach you until you get old.

I agree but that doesn’t take away from it’s usefulness (I’m 21). I find the most interesting bits of knowledge are those that we felt all along but never quite knew how to express.

I think that experience you’re describing is a kind of anecdotal evidence for the development that’s happening in your brain: At some point, things move from inexpressible feelings to concrete ideas that make real sense — just because even at 21 your brain is still developing. So I’m not saying that young people shouldn’t be exposed to any of this (I routinely talk to my 4 year-old about stuff I know he can’t process, but I’m just hoping the vocabulary will sink in so that when he is ready to understand, there will have been some prior exposure).

you’re absolutely right, this is a list of experiential learnings which written or taught to teenagers have little value without the experience that validates them. My other problem is it reads like a business self-help cookbook.

#4

What a load of crap! This guy must be writing motivational books for a living…

why crap? Im just curious.

It’s all the kind of empty crap that you find in self-help books, with absolutely no scientific value. Be proactive! Organize your time! Attitude is all that matters! Bullshit, everyone has his own personality and own way of working, there is no way to help a person by giving him this sort of standard advice. The only think that matters is how motivated you are, and that’s usually a function of how much you’re payed and how well you get along with your boss and co-workers. It’s all very personality-dependent of course.

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Copy-Paste: Ways to Spot Talking Brick Walls

P.S. My drafts aren’t going so well and since it’s been a while since I posted anything, this is just another filler to occupy this blog for awhile.

Note that I’m not going to copy-paste the whole article so click the source here if you want the full article.

Futility:

“You make a statement and it will be turned around.”

Example:

“You forgot my birthday.”

(cries) “You are right. I should have put all this pain aside and focused on your birthday! …sorry.”

Tip:

Even as you are hearing the words you get the creeped out sensation that they really do NOT mean they are sorry at all - but since they’ve said the words you’re pretty much left with nothing more to say. Either that or you suddenly find yourself babysitting their angst!! Under all circumstances if you feel this angle is being played - don’t capitulate! Do not care take - do not accept an apology that feels like bullshit. If it feels like bullshit - it probably is. Rule number one - if dealing with an emotional blackmailer TRUST your gut. TRUST your senses. Once an emotional manipulator finds a successful maneuver - it’s added to their hit list and you’ll be fed a steady diet of this shit.

Note: Source example felt too long winded to be realistic so I removed some parts.

Reciprocation:

“If you ask them to do something they will almost always agree - that is IF they didn’t volunteer to do it first.”

Tip:

If an emotional manipulator said YES - make them accountable for it. Do NOT buy into the sighs and subtleties - if they don’t want to do it - make them tell you it up front - or just put on the walk-man headphones and run a bath and leave them to their theater.

Note: Anyone who has interacted with online trolls know that it’s generally a bad idea to try confronting a manipulator up front (unless you have most of the cards on your side) so I do feel that this is bad advise but it is what’s written in the article.

I’m sure some of you might point out that this isn’t directed at trolls and I don’t want to prolong this article since it is just a placeholder that doesn’t require any of my opinion to stand by itself so I’m going to stop at “I feel this is bad advise”.

Putting words in people’s mouths:

#1

”If you find yourself in a relationship where you figure you should start keeping a log of what’s been said because you are beginning to question your own sanity —You are experiencing emotional manipulation.”

#2

“They can lie so smoothly that you can sit looking at black and they’ll call it white - and argue so persuasively that you begin to doubt your very senses.”

#3

“Over a period of time this is so insidious and eroding it can literally alter your sense of reality.”

Tip:

Keep a log of the words that have been said.

Note: …but don’t turn into this

Guilt Licker:

“Most of us are pretty conditioned to do whatever is necessary to reduce our feelings of guilt.” - An emotional manipulator is a great victim.

“They inspire a profound sense of needing to support, care for and nurture. Emotional Manipulators seldom fight their own fights or do their own dirty work. The crazy thing is that when you do it for them (which they will never ask directly for), they may just turn around and say they certainly didn’t want or expect you to do anything!”

Tip:

Try to make a point of not fighting other people’s battles, or doing their dirty work for them.

It’s All My Fault. T_T Me! Me! Me! Always Me!!!:

“If you call them on this behavior they will likely become deeply wounded or very petulant and call you selfish - or claim that it is you who are always in the spotlight. The thing is that even tho you know this is not the case you are left with the impossible task of proving it. Don’t bother - TRUST your gut and walk away!”

It’s ALL YOUR Fault!:

The scam of hook-you-in-and-make-you-sorry-for-me: Initially you may perceive this type of person as very sensitive, emotionally open and maybe a little vulnerable. Believe me when I say that an emotional manipulator is about as vulnerable as a rabid pit bull, and there will always be a problem or a crisis to overcome.

The End

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Copy-Paste: Ways to Spot Talking Brick Walls

Looks like the Tumblr downtime didn’t allow for Posterous’ Autoposting to work so here’s the link.

Short Attention Spans with regards to Technology - Does it really exist?

This is just a re-blogging of the same post I made in DC.Source: http://www.donationcoder.com/Forums/bb/index.php?topic=20106.0

At first, I didn’t post this because I felt the content I wrote (especially without any answers), was insufficient and unrelated to Hikkikomoris.Still, it’s been far too long since I blogged anything. The reason for this is the post I’m trying to write is not working out well and even the alternative post is not to my satisfaction.

Anyways, when I wrote the follow-up reply, I felt; “Ok, it’s still the same but there’s at least enough content in there to worth making a blog post out of it.”Here’s what I wrote for people who don’t want to click the link: (You’ll still need to go there though because you won’t see the replies made to the topic here. I’ll try updating and adding any notable replies though but I won’t guarantee that I will remember to keep this topic updated.)

#1After reading this thread, it makes me wonder whether short attention spans really exist — to the point that you can blame it on short attention spans.

What really fuelled my doubt was the fact that if people really had short attention spans, then no one or almost everyone would be a lurker in the internet.It shouldn’t even reach these numbers.

At the same time, if people really had short attention spans, most of them won’t often bother with creating noise to disrupt the signal ratio by throwing insults or even “detailed-lite” advises at a person who writes something long. There should just be on average people who act like editors and jot down what you should change and improve with your post (specifically rather than generally saying your posts are vague and long) and then there should be people who just flat out ignores a post. Yet, for some reason, we short attentioned span beings can often even go to such points as type “Leaving/ignoring this thread. Thanks for ruining it.” while our so-called short attention spans seemingly ignores the thread.

I’m putting this in the general software section because it seems useless as a question on it’s own. Why would most people care what category we fit in? Most people type because they want to know or share something and hope someone can provide them additional data for their cause. Short attention span, long attention span. In software especially web apps, the end justify the means. Even if what it is justifying is the fact that you can read an entire set of 140 char. of different topics as opposed to 1 whole article on one topic of the same length. That last sentence got to me.

It seems that in reality, you can’t really write for short attention span people because they simply don’t exist. Instead, what we have is a consumer attention span people who ignore things that don’t benefit them and join things that do. …and then you bank on this and hope you can ride the momentum so that even if your software didn’t really start out the best, you have combined improvements plus peer pressure plus enacted a form of self-wage slavery by which “content creator activism” helps make the software the standard and continues to generate your market for you.

I don’t just mean this for Web 2.0. Isn’t MS Office used because there’s no free alternative?Then when there was a free alternative in OpenOffice, wasn’t this used because it was free and not the best?

Isn’t it kind of strange that when Wordpad is in front of you, our attention span is shorter. Yet with the same online interface for blogs, someone’s attention span gets long enough to write an entire blog for life (or at least until they failed their expectations)? Similarly from a reader’s point of view, doesn’t it seem weird that a person can read a long useful Amazon interview because it’s the one that gets voted the most even in 1 star ratings but after 1 review, we can often get short attention span syndrome and not check an even shorter review if we’re satisfied by that review?

When I think of these examples, it just makes me wonder if short attention span really exists or whether it just became a popular term because it seems to hit it close enough to an idea so that most of us don’t need to think on the issue anymore when writing an article, developing a software user interface or some other unnatural way technology makes us view things. (For example, before the clock how much value did we put in seconds and minutes. Yet if that were proof of our short attention span, we’d have been unable to take advantage and see any value in seconds and minutes and we would merely drop those concepts in favor of just hours or 30 minutes.) In the end, I want to know the answer because for people who have problems with communicating, every little correct detail counts more to the quality of my products (like say an article or a program or a media based story) compared to normal people who have less of this problem but require people like me to hold up to their standards.

#2This Amazon review provides a much shorter and direct issue as to why I’m skeptical:

Source: http://www.amazon.com/rev…pr_viewpnt#R1TY559HFLITPR

The Web demands your writing deliver “joltage”. A former chief executive of the Fairfax newspaper group liked to compare the newspaper-reading experience to a warm bath. Web reading, by comparison, is a 30-second shower - get in, get the job done, wake you up, don’t hang around. As Kilian puts it: “Computers condition us for high joltage. A ‘jolt’ is an emotional reward that follows a prescribed action … We feel deprived if we don’t get some sort of jolt at regular intervals, so we go where we hope to find more stimulation which, on the Web, means web sites.”

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Justice by Points

Justice by points essentially means they’d ignore a crazed ax wielding man walking down the street because they are buys ticketing people and trying to harass them into a half-excuse to arrest them. Then when the ax man comes back after butchering a family, they call a mini-army and take him down, then get even more “Points”. But the officer who just gives warnings and stares away bad guys before they do something bad at least doesn’t get a promotion, if not fired…

And, likewise, Prosecutors will go after girls photographing themselves nude but ignore insider traders and other high-profile crimes. More “Slam Dunk” cases, better score. Criminal who do a Lot of damage to society but can afford good lawyers, bad score.

Source: http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2009/09/25/schoolgirls-arrested-for-photographing-themselves/

Typo issues aside, this is why even as a Hikikomori, it is important to discuss the laws and policies of the world. It may seem like this is a problem for the outsiders or that we should deal with these issues with a severity of most internet forums (i.e. dogmatic and viciously against anyone with opposing opinions) but the problem is that the rest of the world are too busy tiring themselves to really listen unless there’s a special occasion like the election.

Yes, most of us aren’t politicians, political science students and internet sadists but that’s why we have one of the most ample opportunities to listen and apply that dream by the US Constitution Founding Fathers which was for law to be understood and discussed by common lay-men and not be controlled by a “ruling class” (I’m sorta combining a theme by Marx here). That said, I’m not saying many of us don’t know some politics but I think we as an online community even when talking about politics treat it like the rest of people do and I can sit here and type all kinds of adjective of what that means, but those of you who’ve participated in an online political discussion already know how, just like religious topics, they are often anxiety-inducing topics even to normal internet surfers. How we progress beyond a community that won’t crumble when bringing up those themes will be a huge test of how much our community has improved beyond normal communities. How much we value the information we get from that kind of a community may even be the X-factor in elevating us into an online community so unified the likes that may never have existed before.

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Practice rephrasing common phrases to wordings that suggest possibilities.

From: http://thinksimplenow.com/happiness/the-power-of-language/

Alot of the article’s content I find to be too long winded in defending it’s point. (The not seeing salt in front of you bit for example.)

Similarly, alot of the alternative examples can be attributed to positive “woo-woo” thinking phrases but I find the core points:

• can’t doesn’t exist
• must is always only in your head

and

• opportunity is so everywhere that you can find it if you look for it

…to be “golden rule” truths that make this post worth sharing:

Suggested Action Items:

• Come up with alternative phrasings to popular I can’t phrases. Here are some examples:
  • Instead of saying “I can’t find it”, say “I have not seen it yet, l will keep looking.” or “If I could find it, where would it be?”
  • Instead of saying “I can’t get it working”, consider saying “It is not working yet, but I will keep trying until it works.” Or “I am still working on this. If you have a sec, will you help me?”
  • Instead of saying “I can’t make it today because…”, consider skipping out the excuses and give a firm but honest answer, “I am going to pass on it now, maybe next time? Thank you for inviting me. It means a lot.”

Stop telling others they can’t do something. Alternatives to “You can’t do that” are “I prefer you not to do that” or “I don’t recommend doing that because …” or “I tried it last time and it did not work for me, maybe it will work for you.”

Suggested Action Items:

• Instead of saying “I have to do this“, say “I want to do this” or “I am doing this because (insert benefits to you)”

• If you don’t want to do something, instead of giving people excuses starting with “I’d love to but, I have to…“, just gracefully say “Thanks for the invite, but I am resting at home tonight.” Or “Thank you. I have plans tonight. Maybe next time.” (Note: a date with yourself at home count as plans.) You don’t owe anything to anybody. Be honest and do so with your head held high.

“Your beliefs don’t simply reflect your reality, they create your reality.”

As for why I hate these:

a.

b.

That said the reason why this philosophy has importance is because even as cliche as they are today, many of them can still send warnings and alert us to the self-negativity that we may be unconsciously and habitually imposing on our beliefs.

This goes beyond the value of positivity because as Orwell alluded to: left ignored, these can allow politicians to pull a fast one on you and your beliefs.

It’s the old appeal to pathos but it’s not just prevalent in politics anymore. It’s prevalent in ads, blogs, infotainment, etc. and sure you might already know this and feel this is common sense knowledge in this day and age but that’s why Orwell’s article was important when it was written.

It wasn’t because people then didn’t know of this but Orwell with that article brought it to the forefront and presented the full danger of what words can do from a political angle. In fact, it can be argued that it wasn’t enough and that it only popularized the idea of keeping words simple, understandable and direct while not hitting home the fact that we should particularly be wary of common words all around us. Wary enough to attempt a dictionary out of it. Wary enough to explain why certain words in certain sentences and certain structures are belief-changing despite neither being hypnotism nor subliminal advertising.

Instead what we ended up having on a common enough layman plate is some positivity blogs taking this concept and selling it as “feel good” articles, some positivity blogs suggesting this because they one day realize how changing one word changed their mindset and over-hyperbolize it to all other words without testing and narrowing to words that really worked for them and in between those, some pop psychology on the way the unconscious mind and habits influence our beliefs.

The worst crime to us layman is that these articles don’t even put the disclaimer on how changing your words can make you come off as weird when talking to someone else.

Yes, it’s obvious and “we should’ve already known that” but certainly enough, this fact is more elusive than “drink moderately” ads.

You wouldn’t believe how easy it is to start adapt a new word, get confident with it and suddenly you test it on a conversation one day and it just sounds bad. No matter how well it worked in your head or how valid the word is, it just sounds bad.

Just imagine yourself replying to another person with this: “I have not seen it yet, l will keep looking”

It’s THAT bad only this is the more obvious ones. Imagine actually having a decent word and trying it anyway. The whole thing not only falls apart but your positivity minded ideology immediately dips down to full anxious negativity.

Anyway, this author asks What are some alternative phrases you can suggest to and these are my suggestions (and also my reply). They’re far from decent and alot of them I got from elsewhere (and I don’t speak these out loud) but these are what I have:

• News -> Olds (News as in newspaper. I think I got this one from Steve Pavlina - I’m not really anal for sources. Anyway here’s the sentence that inspired it: Most news stories are repetitive, redundant, and say the same things twice.  Very few stories are actually fresh and new.  News should really be called “olds.”)
• Positive -> Pro-active (although this is really spelled proactive, I prefer the emphasis on the word “active”)
• Multitask -> MultiFocus (Because it is not the number of tasks we are constantly doing that reduces our efficiency but rather the number of things splitting our focus that confuses us to what we want to be doing.)
• Practice -> Grind/Grinding (This one is more negative and is obviously an rpg reference)
• Taught -> Enabled them to discover
• Polyphasic Sleep -> PolyActive Healing (My uneducated attempt at self-psycho-analyzing: The desire to replace the word sleep with the word healing to clarify to one’s consciousness the true value of sleep and hopefully lessen the misinterpretation that one is merely “resting” or wasting away their time when one is feeling drowsy but busy.)
• Nice Guy -> Annoying Pussy (I’m serious with this btw. Here’s the rationale: The phenomena by which mainstream society conformizes and verbally praises the act of annoyance and wimpiness and re-interprets these as the act of a legitimate nice male person thus subsidizing this behaviour which results in men misguidedly adapting this approach to court women.)
• Teacher -> Opportunizer (A word replacement designed to focus on the true structure of learning thus keeping people from turning these educators into authoritarians of education.)
• Difficult -> Challenging (The first word replacement that got me back to believing in this concept. Forget where the original link was though. It probably sounds fluffier without it and maybe it still would even with it but it was a strong influence to me at the time)
• H.E.L.L. (another negative one and this one doesn’t apply but it stands for History, Experience, Life, Legacy)
• Storytelling -> Storysharing (I personally prefer the words Plagiarizing but it is offensive to many and there’s a negative connotation in that word that even I couldn’t avoid in my head.)

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How to Flirt

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How to Make a Great First Impression

I feel most of the content is overstated common sense that doesn’t really work but here are some of the contents in the link that’s worth noting:

Act as if you are meeting a good friend

Ignoring the details as often people tend to stretch this advise to the point of being useless but if you’re anxious, the advise is beyond sound. It’s a fundamental of good communication. Just remember that “good” friend here is a hyperbole in case you’re also nervous around most of your friends.

Mentally rehearse before you even enter the room

Again, mostly fluff if extended beyond these words. Non-anxious people might not encounter this problem much but it’s highly possible to become addicted to mental rehearsals.

Hell, it got so bad for me that I tend to have the compulsive action of verbally talking to myself out loud. (although I don’t exactly shout the conversations out…)

On the plus side, the author did share this more useful link: http://www.positivityblog.com/index.php/2006/11/05/do-you-make-these-10-mistakes-in-a-conversation/

Finally the two other fundamental things that are understated by generic advise blogs are:

If all else fails, mimic a person’s body language.

I say if all else fails because even though some blogs advise these, you can easily go overload on this and literally copy a person and that just looks awkward.

Also how does anyone expect a guy to mimic a girl’s body language? That’s asking for expert level subtlety and mass amounts of coming off as strange.

The important clues are mainly position, cues, pitch and phrasings.

Of course, I’m often the opposite in that both online and offline, I’m often accused of being a poor if not vague speaker. No excuses here. I just recommend you try these stuff for yourself.

Position is simply a case where if a person slightly leans back, you slightly lean back when talking to them in the same direction. (This means you’re not actually on the same side when talking to each other.)

Cues are minor gestures. It’s not about going out of your way to copy these but if you can gather a short set of actions from a talk, as long as you don’t overdo it, you’re going to score a more natural feel than if you relied on your own individual gestures unless you happen to match up well with a person or are good at making an impression to begin with. Hell, underdo it if you want. The key isn’t to copy it but to lower enough new bits around each other that your receiver becomes more relaxed when talking to you.

Pitch is basically voice level. This is why it can be very easy to talk to absolutely complete and neutral strangers because often times you have the same pitch due to both of you being anxious when talking to each other. This is also why you can literally agree and say a simple “Yeah!” or “You’re right.” to a topic you’re literally interested in and the receiver will react positively to it but you try constantly doing that to an authority figure and you come off as a sycophant.

Phrasings may seem like the most important bit but it’s really the least. This is because this is so often used nowadays that really the impact is akin to saying Lol when you didn’t used to because you know your audience would not only get it but it won’t come off as stupid.

Ultimately though, the ultimate advise is to follow this bit:

Never go into panic mode even if you’re in panic mode.

The thing that is often understated by good speakers because they’re good speakers and bad speakers who learn how to be good speakers from instructions is that a bad conversation going into panic mode is far more detrimental than a good conversation going bad.

It’s not that they don’t mention this. Take this article. It advises something like “Don’t think too much” or “What you say isn’t important” that seems like great reminders in theory but are absolutely horrible and common sense in practice.

The reality from my experiences is that I have almost often gotten away with any bad or boring conversation and redeemed it with a normal one. This is because until I go into panic mode, I’m not over-stretching and prolonging the already bad incident.

Of course, anytime you try to make a stand, you’re bound to need to do this (if you want to come away with an impression”) but that’s a different issue altogether because more times than not, from an anxious speaker PoV, you’re not reaching to most people in that level. Especially not for first impressions.

So always keep in tight and ride the bad impression always and even if you don’t apply the rest of the advises — as long as you never go into panic mode — you’ll never come off overtly cocky, fake, hyper weird, strange to the nth zone, etc. especially in the long run which is where it counts the most.

Of course, like I previously stated, remember that I constantly break these rules even the last one so you can’t afford to take my word for it if you need these advises.

At the same time, the last one is also the same scenario that allows me to break all these rules. There comes a point where having lots of bad conversations is better than even a good conversation (unless you have something you really need to have done) because then you don’t really need to think so much of preventing panic mode but rather you just develop the conviction to have enough ice in your veins that you retain a bit more of who you are truly about. Pros and Cons.

In a way this is also what separates tatemae from being a mask but not exactly. (Tatemae is more of a conscious “flash” decision while learning how to communicate decently is more of a conscious then unconscious habit.)

Great post Tina!

But be careful with this one:

Say what you mean. Mean what you say.

I think it’s a bit dangerous to believe that saying precisely what we mean will help us to get rid of guilt.

Let’s imagine someone is asking for a favor and that we don’t want to do it.

We can stop there. Here’s the source of the guilt. No matter what we say or do beyond this point we will feel guilty for not wanting to help out.

Saying exactly what we mean will not help, because what we would really try to convey is that this person is not important to us. This is the real reason. It will do even more damage.

The purpose of the white lie “I’m just too busy” is actually to avoid making this person feel unimportant. IMO this is being considerate.

Your point is still important though because we mustn’t mistake our white lies for the truth. If we do that we lose the ability to deal with our guilt.

Because then we might say to ourselves that “it’s okay because I had so many important things to do.” But our brains will never accept that because it knows it’s not true. Plus it will punish us for lying to it by adding some more guilt. The bastard.

Avoidance, not answering emails and so on, is a direct consequence of not dealing with guilt.

The way to deal with it is to face it. To spell out the truth to yourself. In this case “this person wasn’t important enough for me to help, so I didn’t”, and then to practice self-forgiveness. We didn’t mean to do harm so it’s okay. Then let it go.

There’s a social angle here too. When someone asks us if we like their sweater, and we absolutely hate it, we can’t really say “No, I think it’s hideous.”

That wouldn’t be considerate, because what this person is really saying is “Please tell me you like my sweater.” Our opinions is not the point.

Even the sweater is beside the point. It’s rather “Please tell me you accept me the way I am”.

If we’re unable to say “I do accept you the way you are” (”Hey, you look great!”) then we are also unable to accept ourselves. The mind that thinks “that person looks hideous” will soon think “I look hideous”. The hand that points outwards also points inwards.

Okay, thanks for reading and thanks for sharing!

http://thinksimplenow.com/clarity/how-to-quiet-your-mind/#comment-48390

—

Tatemae and Honne can still be confusing.

I used to think it would be as simple as sharing the h2g2 article but even a guy who was on his way to getting his master thesis would misuse them:

Also, in the course of my interviews, the knowledge that I wouldn’t be using their real identities made the subjects more likely to answer with sincere honne rather than the more guarded tatemae that is prevalent in Japanese culture.

Source: http://towakudai.blogs.com/my_weblog/2004/11/the_pseudonym_g.html#tpe-action-posted-6a00d83423485f53ef0120a5ce73b7970c

P.S. My comment didn’t go through so my explanation for why I feel that usage was wrong didn’t appear.

Anyways, the reason I used that situation above (besides it being a recent occurence) is not so much to point that the person made a mistake. (After all I am neither an expert on both concepts and the post is old)

Rather, I wanted to show how when I read about the concept, it’s just one of those things that you don’t think about. It was like honesty in that once you hear about the concept once, it doesn’t matter if you can explain, prove and rationalize it — it was just something that makes sense in a universal manner. In fact in an older post elsewhere (not yet posted on this blog as of this date), I even tried to argue that honne was a superior concept to honesty.

Nevertheless, this might just come off as “hot air” because even when I could try to explain Honne/Tatemae with words, I would found that I wasn’t able to convince people enough that I really understood it.

To this, I would probably make the excuse that give me any abstract-like concept. Even honesty, and I’m probably the wrong speaker to defend and explain it’s validity towards a group of people who doesn’t believe in it.

(Coincidentally, I just saw Louis C.K. talking about a movie he is in: The Invention of Lying on Conan. Not really sure if it was a rerun or not. And no this is not a shill, I’m just pointing out the irony of me making that statement above.)

Anyways, this is why when I read this comment, I just thought: “Oh hey! I’ll just keep quoting tatemae/honne revelation like posts.” and this is why I’m posting this.

It’s a poor example because this person is talking about white lies and addressing his concepts in a more Westernly non-Hikkikomori fashion but it’s a good training at least for some of us Hikikomoris who still haven’t learned the concept of reading “beyond the words”.

In this case, it’s pretty close as the guy is talking about honesty and public presentation but look deeper and you can spot where he is adapting a more tatemae approach. (There isn’t one specific instance. It’s all interpretative.)

That said the point isn’t to say “Hey, this is what being tatemae is all about.” It’s more of an opportunity for people who don’t understand to hopefully get a glimpse of how it is and then hopefully that would be enough to fill the gaps in their mind to make the concepts dawn on them.