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Instead of How to win Friends and Influence People, I would recommend Robert Cialdini's Influence: Science and Practice. Instead of just having advice and heuri

by Jach 12y ago

Instead of How to win Friends and Influence People, I would recommend Robert Cialdini's Influence: Science and Practice. Instead of just having advice and heuristics most nerds really interested in the problem can often figure out themselves, it describes a lot of experiments and builds a general model for why certain actions work. I think a lot of tricks can be discovered on one's own (sometimes through chance), after all sales people have had a bag of tricks they know to improve sales by x% long before enough experiments were performed to suggest an underlying theory. Having a theory though helps one discover new tricks and predict their effects. You'll also learn some defensive techniques.

moron4hire 12y ago
Instead of reading anything, I would recommend doing. There are enough people in most places to stand making a few mistakes in trying to make friends. As a general rule of thumb, make decisions that go towards extending conversation, rather than shutting it down. Whatever is going on, do the thing that leads to the most action, even if it's not in your control, or anyone's control. Embrace chaos.
- beat 12y ago
  Speaking as an extrovert who is very comfortable talking to just about anyone about anything, I recommend reading classic books on good conversation as well (starting with How to Win Friends and Influence People). Even naturally talented communicators can benefit from studying time-proven analysis of why and how our communication techniques work. For people with Aspberger's or other non-neurotypical issues (and I suspect a lot of "introverts" in our industry are actually just self-conscious Aspies), treating human behavior and motivation as a game-theory kind of exercise can be more productive than a million baffling attempts at conversation. Turning the black box into a white box with known rules helps a great deal when it comes to grasping the inputs and outputs. Look at it this way... would you tell someone trying to learn to program to skip the books and just practice? Computers are incredibly complex, and there are decades of theory and understanding captured in classic books that can put you ahead of the game. There's a bright line between the learn-by-doing hackers and the engineers who take the time and effort to study the masters of the craft. Humans are far more complex, subtle, and difficult than computers, and the masterpiece works of human behavior and communication are often centuries old. Study and be better!
  - ucacian 12y ago
    This is a very good advise. Thank you. I agree that lots of practice without theory does not get you very far. I know this because I made exactly the same mistake. I used to want to be a musician. I have copied countless of pieces and done many improvised jam session. And yet, I still had no idea how complex music actually works. In retrospect, although I studied basic music theory, it was not enough to crack the secrets of music. Now I am a senior CS student and doing pretty well. I respect science in general. BTW I am an Asian introvert. I really feel the author. I am going to go read the rest of the comments.
  - moron4hire 12y ago
    I don't think "people with Asperger's" can account for the number of times this subject comes up [1]. The OP didn't mention anything about being diagnosed as having Asperger's, and barring real diagnosis, I'm erring on the side of it just being garden variety shyness like I used to have. There is a significant difference between the two concepts. Reading a book about programming and practicing programming are two intellectual pastimes. They feed directly into each other and there isn't (usually) an extreme anxiety-inducing aversion to starting practice. But reading books on relationships, it can be very easy to start to excuse yourself not going out and interacting with people, rationalizing that you still need to learn more, you need to read more. It enables remaining an introvert and making no actual forward progress. The #1 most important skill is getting past fear. I don't think that can be learned from a book. It takes personal resolve. [1] or the number of times people talk about Asperger's. It's just not that high of an occurrence of a condition. Not everyone who has social integration issues are on the autism spectrum. Most of the time they're just plain, old, inexperienced.
    - beat 12y ago
      I don't think it's the case for the OP. I do, however, think it's quite common in the IT industry - moreso than the general population. For many Aspies, computers have the benefit of predictability - if the computer isn't doing what you want it to do, you know who's at fault. They might find human interactions baffling, but computers make sense. Additionally, Aspies often have above average to very high intelligence, and IT is kind of limited to smart people. I don't have stats offhand, but I would expect the Aspie percentage in IT to be much higher than the general population, enough to impact behavior within our industry. I'm sensitive to this issue both from a lot of friends and co-workers with Aspie social problems, and from raising an Aspie child who has a very difficult time communicating.

by Jach 12y ago

moron4hire 12y ago

Instead of reading anything, I would recommend doing. There are enough people in most places to stand making a few mistakes in trying to make friends. As a general rule of thumb, make decisions that go towards extending conversation, rather than shutting it down. Whatever is going on, do the thing that leads to the most action, even if it's not in your control, or anyone's control. Embrace chaos.

beat 12y ago
Speaking as an extrovert who is very comfortable talking to just about anyone about anything, I recommend reading classic books on good conversation as well (starting with How to Win Friends and Influence People). Even naturally talented communicators can benefit from studying time-proven analysis of why and how our communication techniques work. For people with Aspberger's or other non-neurotypical issues (and I suspect a lot of "introverts" in our industry are actually just self-conscious Aspies), treating human behavior and motivation as a game-theory kind of exercise can be more productive than a million baffling attempts at conversation. Turning the black box into a white box with known rules helps a great deal when it comes to grasping the inputs and outputs. Look at it this way... would you tell someone trying to learn to program to skip the books and just practice? Computers are incredibly complex, and there are decades of theory and understanding captured in classic books that can put you ahead of the game. There's a bright line between the learn-by-doing hackers and the engineers who take the time and effort to study the masters of the craft. Humans are far more complex, subtle, and difficult than computers, and the masterpiece works of human behavior and communication are often centuries old. Study and be better!
- ucacian 12y ago
  This is a very good advise. Thank you. I agree that lots of practice without theory does not get you very far. I know this because I made exactly the same mistake. I used to want to be a musician. I have copied countless of pieces and done many improvised jam session. And yet, I still had no idea how complex music actually works. In retrospect, although I studied basic music theory, it was not enough to crack the secrets of music. Now I am a senior CS student and doing pretty well. I respect science in general. BTW I am an Asian introvert. I really feel the author. I am going to go read the rest of the comments.
- moron4hire 12y ago
  I don't think "people with Asperger's" can account for the number of times this subject comes up [1]. The OP didn't mention anything about being diagnosed as having Asperger's, and barring real diagnosis, I'm erring on the side of it just being garden variety shyness like I used to have. There is a significant difference between the two concepts. Reading a book about programming and practicing programming are two intellectual pastimes. They feed directly into each other and there isn't (usually) an extreme anxiety-inducing aversion to starting practice. But reading books on relationships, it can be very easy to start to excuse yourself not going out and interacting with people, rationalizing that you still need to learn more, you need to read more. It enables remaining an introvert and making no actual forward progress. The #1 most important skill is getting past fear. I don't think that can be learned from a book. It takes personal resolve. [1] or the number of times people talk about Asperger's. It's just not that high of an occurrence of a condition. Not everyone who has social integration issues are on the autism spectrum. Most of the time they're just plain, old, inexperienced.
  - beat 12y ago
    I don't think it's the case for the OP. I do, however, think it's quite common in the IT industry - moreso than the general population. For many Aspies, computers have the benefit of predictability - if the computer isn't doing what you want it to do, you know who's at fault. They might find human interactions baffling, but computers make sense. Additionally, Aspies often have above average to very high intelligence, and IT is kind of limited to smart people. I don't have stats offhand, but I would expect the Aspie percentage in IT to be much higher than the general population, enough to impact behavior within our industry. I'm sensitive to this issue both from a lot of friends and co-workers with Aspie social problems, and from raising an Aspie child who has a very difficult time communicating.