A reader sent me a link to a 50-question multiple choice quiz to determine your Autism Quotient. Autism is basically what you get when you take introversion to the extreme — to the point where you can no longer function well in social situations.
I don’t put too much diagnostic faith in online quizzes, but [...]
Steve @ 7
Steve: I’m going to win the spelling contest this year.
Mom: Yeah, right. You didn’t even come close last year. You don’t stand a chance.
Steve wins first place in the second grade spelling contest and collects a month of double allowance from Mom, who was happy to bet against him.
Steve @ 21
Steve visits the [...]
Can humor skills be developed? Yes, absolutely.
I’ve had a strong sense of humor since I was a child. I would sometimes get in trouble for making witty commentary in class, causing the room to bust out laughing. In fact, I still do this today in group situations. But this always came to me as a natural skill [...]
I hear this one a lot: I want to start my own business, but my wife won’t let me because she thinks it’s too risky.
There are variations using “girlfriend” or “fiancée,” but so far I can’t recall a single instance of a woman telling me her husband/boyfriend wouldn’t let her start a business, not to mention male-male [...]
I just read a great article from Creating Passionate Users called The Worst Way to Calm Someone Down.
The three images that begin the article made me laugh because I see myself in them. When people around me are upset, it’s so hard for me to resist the temptation to say, “Relax! Calm yourself [...]
In the previous post, we identified some fears that hold people back from taking more social risks, including the fear of others forming a negative opinion of you and the fear of hurting others through social interaction with them, fears that would be eliminated if you were dealing only with computer-generated characters in a simulation [...]
If you found yourself in a Holodeck from Star Trek (i.e. a computer-generated simulation where the “people” are all just part of the simulation), how would your behavior towards the artificial characters differ from your default behavior towards real human beings?
Would you feel more or less introverted?
Why?
Rick Cecil made a post on Developing Social Interaction Skills that may be of help to you if you want to grow in this area.
I think the best advice I can give for improving social skills is simply: Practice. You can study techniques like matching and mirroring to build rapport, and you can [...]
As a child I was very introverted, often spending my time on the computer, reading, playing video games, or pursuing other solo hobbies. I’d spend time outdoors biking, exploring the nearby fields and hills (which today are filled with houses), or shooting hoops, but I’d usually favor doing these things alone or with people [...]
This is a follow-up to the recent Dealing With Difficult Relatives post. That original post sets the context for this article, so if you haven’t read the original article, you should definitely do that first. Otherwise, you won’t likely understand the context for this post. If you expect this will be an [...]
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