This isn't for introverts its intended for people with social anxiety, they're different things. Introverts don't necessarily dislike networking they just need recharge time afterwards.
At any rate it doesn't address the core concept. Anyone with anxiety (raises hand) will tell you that the worse thing you can do is care MORE about the thing you're anxious about, yet you've prescribed a bunch of rituals for someone to perform so that they do "well".
The best way to network well is to stop giving a shit about doing it well.
Recently I was introduced to the distinction between anxiety and dread. Anxiety is, essentially, a form of fear. You fear a worst-case consequence that isn't actually that likely. If you put up with your anxiety and just go and do the thing (on average) you'll do just fine, or at least ok-ish. Over time your body learns that the anxious activity is ok and the anxiety is reduced.
Dread is different. Dread is the expectation of a bad situation. It's not a worst-case scenario, it's a typical scenario. If what you are experiencing is dread, then pushing yourself into that situation will confirm to your body that, yup, it really is as bad as you thought, and will amplify the dread rather than diminish it.
A classic example is that certain forms of neurodivergence create sensory overload in typical "social" environments. This is likely to result in dread rather than anxiety. Your body is literally telling you that this situation is problematic, and repeat exposure isn't going to improve anything.
In our modern culture the language of anxiety is widespread but the language of dread much less so, and I think that's unfortunate because a lot of advice centers around "just get over it", which works only if what you're experiencing is anxiety. Personally, learning about this gave me permission to do "social" activities on my own terms and stop worrying about what other people think "social" means; turns out the social anxiety I had was relatively minimal and what I was experiencing was mostly the dread from environments where social activities often occur.
I always joked that there’s nothing to fear about travel over plane. Nothing will fall, nothing will crash. The true horror is spending X hours without movement and a 2 day back pain afterwards.
Seems that I rarely experience anxiety but I do experience dread more often.
What you’re describing is my own self-developed strategy to deal with various stuff. Need to research dread topic more.
"Personally, learning about this gave me permission to do "social" activities on my own terms and stop worrying about what other people think "social" means;"
So much this.
To have your own terms is always OK. If you think about it, what people think "social" means is not even fixed. It certainly changes with your age and your environment but even the consensus in a society about it changes.
When I grew up it meant being in a deafening loud environment so much full smoke that you could barely breathe. Hated it, but only when I moved to the big city and started university I understood that I am not the only one. Nowadays the smoke is mostly gone and at least it has become accepted to wear hearing protection.
I think in many cases there is a negative reinforcing aspect to anxiety that needs to be addressed. For example, anxiety can trigger certain physical symptoms like sweating excessively, tension leading to e.g. reduced loudness and loss of voice, clumsiness. This can spiral down and eventually the anxiety can be almost entirely about those physical aspects.
This is just a different way of looking at it. What you do by addressing what you call dread is basically putting a halt to this feedback loop.
I was stuttering for my entire life, still dealing with it at 42. Kids in basic school gave me all kinds of abuse due to my speech. So I obviously developed social anxiety. The nastiest part about stuttering is, the more anxious you are, the more you stutter. I was given a lot of advice to just go to kids and talk. It only reinforced the anxiety and confirmed that if I really want to say something, it's impossible to say it. The only realistic solution came much later in life, when I realized I just can't give a fuck about whether people understand me. People who are interested will ask me again. People who are not, will just go away. That attitude lessened the problem, but didn't get rid of it completely. But it also requires me to give up on many things.
Thank you for passing this on. I've been circling the concept but haven't ever heard it pinned down. One often comes with the other so it's difficult to separate the two, but at the same time the strategies needed to overcome / deal with them are very distinct.
This makes some amount of sense to me, but what if you dread approaching people? how would you resolve this with still wanting to approach people/form relationships?
I'd try to find ways to stack everything else in your favor as much as possible. If X is difficult, you try to optimize Y, Z, etc. so that at least you're not coping with multiple adverse environmental factors at the same time.
For me personally, the best-case scenario seems to be intentionally scheduled, one-on-one interactions in "clean" environments (i.e., quiet, unscented, no smoke/incense, dressed casually for maximum comfort, etc.). The next best would be some sort of group setting with structured, intentional sharing (i.e., not just doing something together but explicitly organized for the purpose of sharing). It can be a bit hit or miss to find these, so it can take some iteration to figure out what actually works.
Otherwise, "escalating" (i.e., inviting someone into a deeper/more meaningful interaction) is a skill you can practice, but if you're dealing with the rest of it at the same time, you're basically playing with a handicap. So incrementalize your goals as much as possible, practice in small, regular intervals with sufficient breaks for recovery, and don't compare yourself to anyone else, no matter how tempting that might be.
Hope that helps, and feel free to contact me on Keybase (in profile) or email (run the Perl script on my website) if you want help brainstorming.
Although I will posit that physical exhaustion is typically more manageable, so that helps. There are certainly exceptions, but by and large in our modern, sedentary world, physical exertion can easily be limited to controlled environments where one is able to stop when they reach the point of exhaustion. It is unlikely that stepping outside means that you will have to outrun a lion, unable to pause else become lunch. Chances are these days you will only ever reach exhaustion if you purposefully push yourself to (e.g. hitting the gym). But if I have reason to worry that I am going to find myself in a situation where I cannot meaningfully rest when I reach my physical breaking point, absolutely the anxiety will be running hot.
Whereas social interaction can be harder to control. For example, reaching your social limit in the middle of the workday does not usually, for all practical purposes, enable you to remove yourself from the situation. You are expected to keep going until the end of the business day, no matter how you are feeling on the inside. Us techies might have enough individual work to slink away to, perhaps, but for many jobs there is no such luxury. Or you might come up against a Chatty Cathy who will continue pushing to keep the social engagement going even after you try to back away. There aren't all that many HN-esq situations in the real world where you can just magically pop in when you want to engage and then disappear as fast as you came. And where you might find something approximate, you are apt to find it much too limiting to be an exclusive social outlet.
There's definitely a "get over it" for dread and it's called stoicism (not an expert). Sometimes you have to do things whether you like it or not just to survive and "getting over it" will prevent you from dying.
Even if this was true for neurotypicals (which it isn't) it wouldn't be true for neurodivergent folk.
Can you hold a conversation next to a lawnmower? A jackhammer? A jet engine? At some point there's literally too much noise for you to communicate verbally anymore. That point is different for different people.
> Even if this was true for neurotypicals (which it isn't) it wouldn't be true for neurodivergent folk.
Interesting take, are you neurodivergent? "Masking" is basically a "get over it" approach that the parent talks about. It is exhausting, to the point that neurodivergent people wil preemptively bail out of situations if they don't feel up for it. Tools associated with stocism can be helpful for neurodivergent people when they're used to support their needs rather than diminish them, in my experience.
Trying to just "get over it" with the neurodivergence example noticed is the kind of thing likely to result in a panic attack or other uncontrollable expression of emotion. It's not something you can change just by wanting it hard enough.
My dad owned an auto dealership through my youth. He always had a least one "natural" salesman, who could just sell, but couldn't tell you how he did it. My dad was not a natural, and made up for this by consciously & relentlessly practicing the behaviours and actions: active listening, root cause analysis, identify the decision maker, respecting time & financial factors, attentive customer service, building connection & relationships. He became very good, but in a completely different way. Where his star salesman sold easily my dad had to work harder, but he then sold to the same person every few years, sometimes decades, and did better on the trade-ins than the new sales.
Why the story? Because lots of things - including networking - sometimes come naturally to a few, but are more commonly learned. You can practice & must practice, and this can start with a short list of things like presented here. It's not about caring more about the Big Thing (tm) but focusing solely on a few small things that start you down the right path. In my experience a few easy things is a great way to displace the anxiety from big, complex, scary situations.
Another brief anecdote I think helps illustrate this. I teach mountain biking, and the two biggest desires are 1. corner better, 2. learn how to jump. I suck at cornering but have logged a fair bit of air time. A common observation is people go very rigid in the air (called a "dead sailor"). This not only undesireable, it's dangerous. The fix? Get people to do any sort of movement when they are in the air; the smallest wiggle, shimmy or tweak unlocks their body AND their mind, and moves them forward. It both focuses and distracts. The list here feels a lot like a similar approach for certain social situations, and compared to your advice (stop caring and... just do it?) actually targets the root of anxiety "OK, but how?". YOLO is often part of it, but makes a terrible strategy.
"Almost more even than the extraverted is the introverted type subject to misunderstanding ... because the style of the epoch in which he himself participates is against him. Not in relation to the extraverted type, but as against our general occidental world-philosophy, he finds himself in the minority, not of course numerically, but from the evidence of his own feeling.
In so far as he is a convinced participator in the general style, he undermines his own foundations, since the present style, with its almost exclusive acknowledgment of the visible and the tangible, is opposed to his principle. Because of its invisibility, he is obliged to depreciate the subjective factor, and to force himself to join in the extraverted overvaluation of the object.
He himself sets the subjective factor at too low a value, and his feelings of inferiority are his chastisement for this sin. Little wonder, therefore, that it is precisely our epoch, and particularly those movements which are somewhat ahead of the time, that reveal the subjective factor in every kind of exaggerated, crude and grotesque form of expression. I refer to the art of the present day.
The undervaluation of his own principle makes the introvert egotistical, and forces upon him the psychology of the oppressed. The more egotistical he becomes, the stronger his impression grows that these others, who are apparently able, without qualms, to conform with the present style, are the oppressors against whom he must guard and protect himself.
He does not usually perceive that he commits his capital mistake in not depending upon the subjective factor with that same loyalty and devotion with which the extravert follows the object By the undervaluation of his own principle, his penchant towards egoism becomes unavoidable, which, of course, richly deserves the prejudice of the extravert.
Were he only to remain true to his own principle, the judgment of ‘egoist’ would be radically false; for the justification of his attitude would be established by its general efficacy, and all misunderstandings dissipated. "
Jung -Psychological types
"You want to be understood? That’s all we needed! Understand yourself, and you will be sufficiently understood. You will have quite enough work in hand with that"
> The best way to network well is to stop giving a shit about doing it well.
As someone who has played piano for over 30 years and by any sane person's assessment I play at least "adequately", I can attest that worrying about how you play is the least constructive thing you can do and I have many times over my life crashed and burned when trying to play on the spot and in those moments people would question whether I knew how to play at all.
When I finally realised to stop caring (at least in the moment) everything got a lot better. Even if you screw up, owning it and laughing about it is better than curling up in fear and anxiety and making the moment worse and more awkward for everyone.
"stop caring" sounds like such unhelpful advice but when one finally realises you have agency over that, its like having a superpower
The hard part is not realizing that one should stop caring. It's learning how to stop caring. For most of us, caring is an automatic, reflexive response, and changing it is not a trivial matter.
The idea that finally clicked with me came from a narrated meditation session in the app “Headspace”. I think it’s probably a common metaphor, but it’s the only place I had encountered it:
Imagine your mind is a highway, and your thoughts are cars that are driving along this highway in your mind. You, or rather your conscience, is sitting along this highway, and every time a thought comes along, you might try to stop it.
Of course, this is foolish, you can’t stop those thoughts any more than you could stop a literal car on a highway. The trick comes once you realize that attempting to stop unwanted thoughts is a doomed and pointless exercise. But just because those thoughts have entered your mind, doesn’t mean you have to engage with them. You could instead simply let them pass you by.
I don’t know why, but this worked for me. In the context of meditation, it freed me of the assumption that my mind should be blanked and free of thoughts, which always seemed impossible anyway. But it armed me with a useful mnemonic for recognizing when I am standing in the middle of the proverbial road, and the confidence to admit that I cannot do anything meaningful from such a precarious and hopeless position, so should move to the side, and focus on what’s possible.
“Stop caring” sounds unhelpful because it might be difficult, but it’s basically the one thing you have that’s actually in your control that you can do about it.
I think some people would rather keep searching for easier solutions than taking the difficulty one they can actually accomplish.
It's a great quote, but I don't think it's really true. I didn't give a shit about networking, and I don't have a way to contact most of the people I've worked with in the past. I'm sure I could get some good referrals through many of those people, but since I didn't give a shit, I can't and I don't think that's really doing networking well.
This worked out fine for me, some people who are better at networking than me reached out to me when they had interesting work at a good time, but 'do whatever and hopefully someone will find a job for you' is pretty bad advice too.
You've got to give some minimal level of shit, or you end up with a potential network instead of a network. I don't think going to 'networking events' is required; those always seem fishy, if your only connection is you wanted to make a connection, it's not a strong connection ... and probably the people going to these things don't have a very strong network or they wouldn't be going, so you're not getting much from the multiple hop networking either. There's probably exceptions, but trying to catch em all is not the right game.
Nah, this is not for social anxiety people either. Or however we can call folks who don't normally feel like talking to others if they can.
All the recipes there are basically for people who don't have "natural" interpersonal skills and need to emulate it as a formal conscious process instead.
That's it - nothing in the article touches any aspects of willingness to engage with others, or ways to break out of maladaptive behaviors like social evasion.
I don't think it's intended for people with social anxiety either. I'm not socially anxious, but I could definitely benefit from following up on conversations from parties more often.
>This isn't for introverts its intended for people with social anxiety
This.
Introverts (in general) have no problems with communication\networking etc. Introverts simply do not _need_ company.
Extraverts, on the other hand, contrary to what people often think, _need_ company to do stuff, even though they may be not so hot on networking or partying.
No, this is intended for everyone, but the purpose is wrong.
Leil Lowndes' How to talk to anyone (the source) is not explicitly about expanding your network. It's just guidelines (or rather suggestions, or even better - hacks) on how you can start and hold conversations with people. What you choose to do with them is your own purview.
Stop giving a shit is similar advice to "be yourself". It's confusing enough advice on a date, and it's esp. not helpful here.
Networking is a skill beyond simple vibing and should be treated as such. For those with social anxiety, having a script/plan at least allows one to be on autopilot so they don't have to in fact give a shit.
Also introverts definitely tend to not like networking or any group activity w/ a bunch of strangers (edit: I mean tend to like the 'idea' of them, but once there, can enjoy them). I think you meant that they can do it without fear.
I'm introverted and I enjoy networking and group activities and also meeting and chatting with strangers. I just can't do it all day every day, I need breaks.
Having social anxiety is different from not knowing how to talk to people and make friends. Bill Russel would get so worked up before games he would throw up. But he could also perform.
I think it depends on what you're anxious about. Being scared that people will dislike you is different from being scared of embarrassment and it's different from being scared you don't know what to do in the moment.
Of course all of those can be helped by simply exposing yourself to the situation over and over again. You learn that if you do embarrass yourself or if people dislike you, the world doesn't turn to ash.
I’m not afraid of the world turning to ash. My rational brain isn’t afraid; it knows people didn’t care and have already forgotten.
I’m afraid of the much louder part of my brain that’s going to spend every quiet moment over the next 3 days replaying and re-living the embarrassing encounter.
I probably should draw the distinction between enjoying and looking forward to them - I never look forward to them (unless there's several friends there or it's for a fun activity), but yes, if you give it some effort, they can be enjoyable.
I think a lot of people really don't get this. I relish alone time and rarely seek out contact. But I also used to do sales pitches and attend conferences and was never uncomfortable no matter how unfamiliar the crowd. I just found it really tiring.
I feel like articles like these almost always leave out the people who want these questions to be answered:
* "Why would I want to network with people?"
* "I don't feel like engaging with anyone."
* "I don't enjoy or feel fulfilled doing any of this. I'd rather be home or by myself."
* "I have never enjoyed doing this. I have to keep up a facade in front of other people at all times. It makes me angry and resentful."
They should expand upon why networking is a thing, why having a social rapport among peers and coworkers is important to healthy relationships both inside and outside of work, how you can have your connection to your social circle weakened if you don't, and spell out clearly why that's a bad thing.
Maybe an article like this should look at it from the perspective of mental health and neurodivergence, but that might be pushing it.
From the article:
"The next morning, I’d wonder if anyone even remembered I was there."
Personally speaking, this question has never popped into my mind. I suppose that's owing to the fact that it's simply not in my nature to actively seek out people or connections.
This tenfold. The premise, the setting, the checklist, the whole thing sounds like torture to me. Life isn't that monochromatic, I'd rather be doing ANYTHING else.
It’s clearly not in the author’s nature, either :)
But they seem to be a serial startup founder — so the value of networking’s probably self-evident to them, but won’t match the value you and most others get out of it.
Basically, this. I already spend all the energy I have available for socializing just going to work five days a week. The idea of people socializing outside of work for the sake of work is supremely depressing to me. It's like, so now I need to do something I find utterly exhausting in order to succeed better at this other thing that already completely destroyed me because... capitalism?
I can at least understand on an intellectual level that there could be personal benefits to socializing with people outside of work, but when work already sucks everything out of you then it just feels like a cruel joke to suggest an introvert get into "networking" and here's a list of weird, creepy, manipulative tricks to do it better. Surely the article must be a parody?
You sound like you have your own issues to resolve if you are this exhausted by work, which doesn't mean the article is a parody just because you are not its exact intended recipient. There are a handful of tips in there that can help engineer more comfortable situations for people who are less confident networking. That's only if someone is willing to engage with the advice and wishes to better themselves with it, instead of just blaming... capitalism?
It's not the work itself that is exhausting: it's socializing at work.
This comments deeply resonates with me because that's exactly how I feel.
When I'm wfh I have to put an alarm to remember to stop working because I'm in the flow and can work for +14h without feeling tired.
Whereas, when I'm the office, I have to take a walk mid-day because I'm already exhausted by the socializing.
And to be clear, it's not that I don't enjoy socializing at work, it's just that it drains me quickly.
> I have to keep up a facade in front of other people at all times.
This comes down to the idea of whether you believe that if you “keep up a facade at all times” that the facade becomes who you really are.
You don’t need an article convincing you why networking is important. You either need to be curious enough to want to see if your life can be better by doing something that goes against what you believe is your nature or not.
In SF, people are from so many different places that there is little to no chance that you have personal experience or knowledge of the city that the person would answer your question with. The same is probably not true of someone who grew up in Greece, asking someone else who grew up in Greece
Many big tech companies have inclusion training calling this question out as inappropriate on the grounds it provides an opportunity to introduce bias.
Sure, that's advised in interviews, where you're about to make a decision on someone's livelihood, hence the importance of reducing bias. That's a completely different context than in casual conversation at a social event.
In the same lines, don't ask anything. Everything is a bias. ie, What do they do? - Also a bias as they are engineer, or product, or sales, or whatever.
I would like to add one tip that works well for me.
First time is always very difficult. Identify recurring or comparable events. Over time you will meet some people you already know. Remembering some details from earlier encounters will build rapport. Likewise people will remember you from previous encounters. But, beware of the trap of only talking with those whom you already know. For every event, target to form at least a couple of new connections.
This is a great point on the value of recurring events! Multiple serendipitous / unplanned interactions (where both people leave feeling good) are an important pathway to building a relationship. As a child most of your friendships were a function of proximity & chance - school and community events provided opportunities for regular (but unplanned) interaction.
Recurring events make it easier to meet others, and the regular, repeated interactions help form stronger connections.
Over time it also deepens your options of people to move around room for conversation - which is a nice way to break out of being awkwardly stuck in a 1:1 conversation for too long.
"Follow me so I can introduce you to Bob" is a way kinder way to exit a 1:1 than "I'm going to get another drink/visit the bathroom" and leaving them standing alone.
I loved the last suggestion, this has happened to me so many times and mostly i end up abruptly excusing myself. "Follow me so i can introduce you to xxx" is a great advice. Can i add this advice to the blog?
I learned this one during a period at work when I was the host of 10+ large events per week and I needed to move around the room. Spending more than a few minutes in any one conversation was a problem and so I landed on this as the best way to break away without creating awkwardness for the other person.
Key to the "follow me" strategy is to just start walking - 99% of time they will follow you rather than stand there alone. If you know them well enough / the context is OK then a light touch on the shoulder / elbow to point them in the right direction also helps.
The flip of this is that if YOU don't know anyone else in the room then ask them something like "do you know anyone else here?" / "have you spoken to anyone else interesting at this event?" - usually that provides a pathway to someone new and you say "Great! Can you please introduce them to me?"
This is a great point. While i was reading the book, this tip was shared too with an example of a person who would make notes on the visiting cards of that specific person so that next time if she bumps into them again, they would have a talking point.
I think the article is a great way to introduce yourself into this type of situation. Lots of people do better at well defined tasks, so I'll give you one: Most people at these events are looking for something, go in looking to give. Connect with one person who you can help. This can be a very modest thing: an offer to lend a book, send a link, connect them with someone else; anything. If you offer something physical, go out of your way to get it to them. Making a connection? Make it a warm hand-off, maybe in person. The keys: follow through on your promise, make it geniune and put some effort into it.
Converting a vague, complex, often scary thing like a networking event into a well-defined mission is a great way to address fear, add value and contribute.
Confidence and genuine interest can’t be taught. Unfortunately, they also can’t be faked. Humans have evolved to be hyper-aware of what others’ mannerisms and behaviors convey, and most socially adept people can sniff out a “networker” in less than a minute. The only way forward is practice — talk to people, be awkward and fail a lot, learn to care about others’ life and work, and express it (or talk about your own interests!) in a way that adds value to their life.
Regarding sniffing out "networker"s. At one of the first "networking" events I attended, I spoke for a bit with a particular person. An hour or two later, we ended up in the same circle and he proceeded to rattle off from memory everything I had told him about myself. I think he had meant to show off how well he was listening or something... it was more than a little off-putting.
Two conversation tools I regularly use: “What are you currently obsessed with?” and if you want to follow up on even dull things a “What surprised you most about that?” works great. I don’t like small talk this helps get right to the novel, weird, and unique so I can at least enjoy the conversation and get to the core of who I’m really talking to. These help.
Asking something like this can also be a filter. If someone reacts in mild frustration to such a minor interaction at a networking event (or at least, while actively trying to network), it's a red flag.
Long-term fixation, colloquially referred to as "obsession", is fairly common to various forms of neurodivergance, and neurodivergance is fairly common for engineering-adjacent folks. Since that forms a likely large cross section of the HN crowd, the suggested icebreaker is probably relevant to many of us, whether we are ourselves neurodivergant or otherwise frequently interact with those who are. I also dislike the "passion" question, but obsessions change frequently enough and are exciting to the person asked. It's just different enough to liven up the conversation if you're asking the right person.
> Where does the conversation go from there?
I dunno, maybe try asking a neurodivergant person sometime? I certainly would rather be asked about my obsessions than my passions, as my passions are all too often left to rot for one reason or another, which just makes me sad and want to leave.
I guess that's the best answer. Obsessiveness is a mental disorder though, and it strikes me as similar to walking up to someone and starting off with "what are your addictions" or "what are your compulsions" as an ice breaker, which would generally be inappropriate.
Even taking it most charitably it presumes that most people are obsessed with something. I'm not, I'm not really passionate about anything either, certainly not anything I do professionally.
The last time I was at a conference, if anyone asked me why I was there my honest answer would be "my boss said I should go" and if they asked what I had enjoyed the most so far my answer would be "I skipped all the sessions yesterday afternoon and went to a gym and lifted weights for two hours." If that led to a conversation about weightlifting, I wouldn't have much to say. I don't obsess about it, I don't have a coach, I don't compete, I don't know any names of professional lifters or their latest records, it's just exercise that I do.
I guess it boils down to, I'm a pretty boring person. I generally feel like I don't have much to add to a conversation and it's uncomfortable to answer questions that reveal that. So I do generally try to keep people talking about themselves, which most people seem happy to do.
It's advocating for some honestly weird behavior. Doing some of this stuff seems manipulative, like it's straight out of an interaction in American Psycho. It treats human interactions as transactional. It's gross.
Can you be a little more specific about what you consider gross? I only read the article because of your comment; I got curious. Most of it just seems like common courtesy, and a few fairly standard body language tricks.
The idea that everyone in the party is quietly evaluating you and making up a story in their head
The forced body language
The weird conversation starters
Like all this stuff is forced and artificial and the goal is you're trying to build a relationship with someone for the implicit purpose of getting something out of them. None of this is genuine social connection, it's just a performance to try and increase your own status.
BTW one way to break the ice is to go a bit meta. Imagine saying: "Hello! My name is ${name}, nice to see you! One of my favorite ice-breaker questions is: ${some_question}. What do you think?"
It evokes smiles, it allows the other party to answer the question, share their own question, discuss the process of getting into a friendly conversation, etc, all without being formulaic.
How is this not formulaic when you literally used a formula to describe it? With variables and all. It's not bad but pretty contrived and clearly rehearsed and kinda corny. People smile when someone makes a bad pun also.
It might feel less formulaic because it's more upfront.
Following a formula without telling the other person about it can feel more robotic if you don't put your soul into it.
Whereas you can still put in the right energy and effort into the OP's approach to make it work well.
At the end of the day being human IMHO is what matters most.
> People smile when someone makes a bad pun also
Here too I think it's all about how the pun is delivered.
I consider myself an introvert, and this article seems like an impossible anxiety spiral-inducing checklist.
>Don’t waste their time with “Great party.” Say something more vivid. “The lighting is perfect.”
What? I think someone needing this level of instruction would be better served by basic mindfulness and small, manageable exercises in active listening or empathetic dialog, rather than a grab bag of non-contextual tips like this.
I’m also introverted, and I also found this article overwhelming – if I tried to do it all at once, which seems so laughably unrealistic for me that I just wouldn’t try. Instead, probably the best way to read this is as something to approach gradually. Try just one thing on the list, or two if you’re feeling ambitious. Go for a delta that you can manage. And see if it’s working for you, because often the advice that works wonders for one person completely falls flat for another.
(On a slightly funny personal note, the thing that helped me most with social skills was watching the first few seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in my first year of college. The actors emoted so clearly that even I could understand what feelings they were trying to convey, and that’s how I learned to do body language and appropriate vocal tones. This took me from unapproachable to merely awkward, a huge step up in the world.)
> What? I think someone needing this level of instruction would be better served by basic mindfulness and small, manageable exercises in active listening or empathetic dialog, rather than a grab bag of non-contextual tips like this.
Look, when you say "someone needing this level of instruction," it comes across like needing detailed, step-by-step help is weird or a problem. But plenty of people with ADHD, autism, or other brain differences don't just find this helpful - they actually need it to make sense of things.
And suggesting they'd be "better off" with mindfulness or simpler stuff? That assumes they haven't already been down that road. Maybe those approaches just don't click with how their brain works.
Calling it a "grab bag of random tips" really undersells what's going on here. For people who need things spelled out clearly and directly, those specific tips might be the difference between something being useless and actually doable.
The whole thing reads like it's written from the perspective of someone who finds this stuff obvious, then judges other approaches as somehow inferior. That's the ableist part - acting like there's one "right" way to understand things and anything else is just... less good.
> when you say "someone needing this level of instruction," it comes across like needing detailed, step-by-step help is weird or a problem
That wasn't my impression at all, to give another perspective. "This level" indicates me that instructions are too specific or too detailed to be of any help.
Not at all. But you might know them or they come to you naturally.
See I asked someone at a training course on this stuff once to give me concrete things to do instead of the two days of blah blah in the course that basically boiled down to "you just gotta figure it all out yourself" - gee Thanks!
So the guy told me to use people's names when talking to or about them because most people, even if they don't realize or are outward extroverts, like hearing their own name.
Never in my life would I have come to that realization by myself because I'm the exact opposite. I hate it when other people do that with me but now I use it with others.
I was thinking the same. When a person starts repeating what I said back to me, especially if it's nothing outrageous, it feels like I'm being interrogated. My response is to deny. E.g.:
> Me: Last week I went to the beach.
> Conversational adversary: You went to the beach last week?
> Me: No.
Maybe this explains why I don't have many friends.
Social skills and and social knowledge learned over a long period of time is absolutely crucial. There are too many unspoken and implied etiquette.
But this is a good checklist. I'm a wreck if I don't eat & sleep enough prior to social activity. And the whole thing about a "social battery" is on point. No remedy for that other than a recharge.
Between the structure, the doubly-phrased headings, the machine generated picture, and regrettably the em dashes, this really reads like LLM slop. If I'm wrong, I apologize, but if that's the case, please just hand out the prompt instead next time.
The image indeed gives me a strong AI vibe, in particular the "Ghibli update." It's getting really hard to uncloak it by the day but those drab colours instantly throw me off.
(For the "real artists also can draw like that" crowd I don't think the OP is an artist and it has no credits.)
> Stand still in the doorway.Look around. Not like you're lost—like you're assessing. This pause signals confidence.
> Make eye contact before you smile. Let there be a beat. Then let the smile arrive slowly. This “delayed warmth” makes your smile feel specific, not generic. It’s subtle, but people feel the difference.
> Don’t waste their time with “Great party.” Say something more vivid. “The lighting is perfect.” “Everyone feels relaxed.” It anchors your presence with detail.
> Use an uncommon adjective: “Had a remarkable time.” “Such a thoughtful gathering.” That small twist makes you stick.
I can't really tell which sounds more horrible, the instructions for navigating such a party event or the existence of such an event in the first place.
Just go to the party and engage with people. Actually be interested in who that person is, what they think, and how they spend their time. People are fascinating, even the grouchy boring ones.
Advice like this article, and the thousands of books before it, are usually totally garbage. I'm very introverted. I've spent weeks by myself in nature, completely alone. I find parties too stimulating. But just do it. It's not like you're getting your arm cut off. You're just talking to people. Don't be mad at yourself for saying some out of pocket stuff. Don't dwell on what you could have done. Just see what's going on in the lives of other people and stop overthinking it.
Bullshit. No, I'm not interested in anyone in a party and not going to smalltalk, because some retard wrote half a dozen books about it. Just place your namecard on the table and then if I want to I'll call you. Rest is just facade. Why are we call ourselves humans when we actually act like monkeys :D.
I'm having trouble understanding your point. You think parties should just be people behind tables with name cards with numbers that you can call later? What does that have to do with the stock market?
I am introverted with significant social anxiety, and I realize these are tools I intuited without thinking too much about it, in large part from observing other people and a selective pressure relating to survival (it also helps that for over ten years of my formative adult years I had a constantly rotating set of roommates, which was essential because I didn’t make enough money to live entirely on my own). One thing I’d like to highlight is that it is better to adopt a mindset where interacting is an opportunity to learn and enrich, rather than merely waiting around for your turn to speak. People really can tell the difference, and it turns most folks off. Another thing I constantly have to remind myself is to just let it go when the conversational flow moves on… it’s really awkward when you insist on back tracking a conversation to something that came up half an hour ago. Read the room, watch body language, and if you really think a topic is that exciting or useful you can bank it for a follow-up conversation. Also, say someone’s name back to them after you learn it, and try to casually use it here and there as you converse so you (hopefully) don’t forget it.
For me I typically go with whatever fountain pen I'm carrying with me. It's also really easy to introduce it into the conversation since I can demonstrate it while jotting down a piece of info someone is sharing.
Load of crap. Just don't network. The whole fn idea is thought out by a bunch of psychotic suits. Network, brush up to people, lick their arses... blablabla. NO. Just no.
what about just owning your own lack of confidence as a strength? performative confidence seems dishonest and a bit like cheating to me. also on that matter, why is confidence == good?
Speaking from experience as an introvert who suffered social anxiety...
A lot of people (probably extroverts) don't respond well when you're expressing anxiety and/or doubt. Clients won't want to work with you. People won't want to be around you at parties. Co-workers will speak behind your back about the weird person. Etc.
SAD sucks, you have my sympathy. its not fair some of the cards people are dealt but i can recommend focusing on competence rather than confidence and being compassionate to yourself as you navigate the world (advice i should take myself!). best wishes.
That might be true generally and shallowly, but I've gotten way further both professionally and personally by being vulnerable and honest with my anxieties and insecurities.
Especially with other neurospicy folks, it's a very easy way to bond. My issues might not be the exact same, but it's close enough that they can empathize and grow closer as friends/coworkers.
But we also talk shit about the guy who exudes confidence and messes everything up. He actively makes stuff worse due to his attitude.
I'd rather own my mistakes than be a walking contradiction.
To be fair he's probably overconfident. But picking up any sense of false confidence(not a shy buddy attemping to 'fake it til you make it', more serious matters) is a massive red flag to me that I can't trust their judgement of their own knowledge or capabilities. Someone who says straight up it will be difficult gets a lot more trust from me.
The goal isn't to fake it. The goal is to build actual confidence. That doesn't mean being loud or funny, just learning how to communicate without panicking.
A lot of introverts are quite likely to be somewhere on the autism spectrum.
For example, I can't unconsciously read expressions. I scored worse than blind guessing on the "Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test". So I consciously learned to read and mimic expressions, literally using a textbook for theater performers. So now I can score at the upper range of neurotypical people.
Other introverts often have problems recognizing social cues or initiating conversations. Purely because it's not _natural_ for them, even though they might _want_ to actually speak to people.
So is it kind of performative? Yes. But think about this, extroverts are doing a lot of same tricks subconsciously. Does it mean that they're _always_ performing?
When I read posts like this, or watch introverts doing comedy skits about their introversion, such as KallMeKris saying she needs 10 days in advance just to schedule a phone call. As an extrovert, I don't want to inflict angst upon an introvert just by striking up a conversation or inviting them to lunch. I cut off two "friends" who were introverts, and I don't think they noticed. Human kind is a social animal that expects reciprocation and teamwork.
I get this. It sounds superficially like you're doing something wrong, but if you "cut someone off" by just not inviting them to stuff and then they either don't notice or don't make any attempt to reconnect with you, it means you were doing 100% of the work in the relationship. You've been putting in effort to drag them along to events they don't show any indication of enjoying, when they won't reciprocate in any way or ever make the first move, and that can be emotionally draining.
I'm not particularly extroverted and being organised doesn't come naturally to me either, so this type of thing is even more of a nuisance. I'm putting in effort to set up fun things to do using calendars and spreadsheets and research, I'm making notes about interests and mutual friends, and the other person can't even set up a two month calendar event then write "Hey, let's get coffee"?
This isn't for introverts its intended for people with social anxiety, they're different things. Introverts don't necessarily dislike networking they just need recharge time afterwards.
At any rate it doesn't address the core concept. Anyone with anxiety (raises hand) will tell you that the worse thing you can do is care MORE about the thing you're anxious about, yet you've prescribed a bunch of rituals for someone to perform so that they do "well".
The best way to network well is to stop giving a shit about doing it well.
Recently I was introduced to the distinction between anxiety and dread. Anxiety is, essentially, a form of fear. You fear a worst-case consequence that isn't actually that likely. If you put up with your anxiety and just go and do the thing (on average) you'll do just fine, or at least ok-ish. Over time your body learns that the anxious activity is ok and the anxiety is reduced.
Dread is different. Dread is the expectation of a bad situation. It's not a worst-case scenario, it's a typical scenario. If what you are experiencing is dread, then pushing yourself into that situation will confirm to your body that, yup, it really is as bad as you thought, and will amplify the dread rather than diminish it.
A classic example is that certain forms of neurodivergence create sensory overload in typical "social" environments. This is likely to result in dread rather than anxiety. Your body is literally telling you that this situation is problematic, and repeat exposure isn't going to improve anything.
In our modern culture the language of anxiety is widespread but the language of dread much less so, and I think that's unfortunate because a lot of advice centers around "just get over it", which works only if what you're experiencing is anxiety. Personally, learning about this gave me permission to do "social" activities on my own terms and stop worrying about what other people think "social" means; turns out the social anxiety I had was relatively minimal and what I was experiencing was mostly the dread from environments where social activities often occur.
TIL!
I always joked that there’s nothing to fear about travel over plane. Nothing will fall, nothing will crash. The true horror is spending X hours without movement and a 2 day back pain afterwards.
Seems that I rarely experience anxiety but I do experience dread more often.
What you’re describing is my own self-developed strategy to deal with various stuff. Need to research dread topic more.
> travel over plane. ... The true horror is
... contributing to the collapse of the Larsen C ice shelf and the Thwaites glacier.
"Personally, learning about this gave me permission to do "social" activities on my own terms and stop worrying about what other people think "social" means;"
So much this.
To have your own terms is always OK. If you think about it, what people think "social" means is not even fixed. It certainly changes with your age and your environment but even the consensus in a society about it changes.
When I grew up it meant being in a deafening loud environment so much full smoke that you could barely breathe. Hated it, but only when I moved to the big city and started university I understood that I am not the only one. Nowadays the smoke is mostly gone and at least it has become accepted to wear hearing protection.
I think in many cases there is a negative reinforcing aspect to anxiety that needs to be addressed. For example, anxiety can trigger certain physical symptoms like sweating excessively, tension leading to e.g. reduced loudness and loss of voice, clumsiness. This can spiral down and eventually the anxiety can be almost entirely about those physical aspects.
This is just a different way of looking at it. What you do by addressing what you call dread is basically putting a halt to this feedback loop.
(disclaimer: IANAMD)
I was stuttering for my entire life, still dealing with it at 42. Kids in basic school gave me all kinds of abuse due to my speech. So I obviously developed social anxiety. The nastiest part about stuttering is, the more anxious you are, the more you stutter. I was given a lot of advice to just go to kids and talk. It only reinforced the anxiety and confirmed that if I really want to say something, it's impossible to say it. The only realistic solution came much later in life, when I realized I just can't give a fuck about whether people understand me. People who are interested will ask me again. People who are not, will just go away. That attitude lessened the problem, but didn't get rid of it completely. But it also requires me to give up on many things.
Any books or research to draw this out? It sounds somewhat relevant to my experience and I’d like to learn more.
Thank you for passing this on. I've been circling the concept but haven't ever heard it pinned down. One often comes with the other so it's difficult to separate the two, but at the same time the strategies needed to overcome / deal with them are very distinct.
This makes some amount of sense to me, but what if you dread approaching people? how would you resolve this with still wanting to approach people/form relationships?
I'd try to find ways to stack everything else in your favor as much as possible. If X is difficult, you try to optimize Y, Z, etc. so that at least you're not coping with multiple adverse environmental factors at the same time.
For me personally, the best-case scenario seems to be intentionally scheduled, one-on-one interactions in "clean" environments (i.e., quiet, unscented, no smoke/incense, dressed casually for maximum comfort, etc.). The next best would be some sort of group setting with structured, intentional sharing (i.e., not just doing something together but explicitly organized for the purpose of sharing). It can be a bit hit or miss to find these, so it can take some iteration to figure out what actually works.
Otherwise, "escalating" (i.e., inviting someone into a deeper/more meaningful interaction) is a skill you can practice, but if you're dealing with the rest of it at the same time, you're basically playing with a handicap. So incrementalize your goals as much as possible, practice in small, regular intervals with sufficient breaks for recovery, and don't compare yourself to anyone else, no matter how tempting that might be.
Hope that helps, and feel free to contact me on Keybase (in profile) or email (run the Perl script on my website) if you want help brainstorming.
Disclaimer: not a therapist.
This is enlightening as someone with severe... well anxiety and dread, I suppose. Thank you sincerely.
Does the sore head dread beat the sobriety anxiety?
Introversion has nothing to do with anxiety or dread. They are orthogonal concepts.
You're not entirely wrong, but I don't think they are entirely orthogonal either.
There is almost certainly a significant overlap between introversion and social anxiety/dread, even if they aren't 1:1 related
If nothing else, many people with a lot of social anxiety will claim they are simply introverts in order to cover for their anxiety
The fear of reaching the point of social exhaustion, as introverts quickly do, is the anxiety.
Not really. Not for me at least. Do you feel anxiety over physical exhaustion?
I would be in better shape if I didn't!
Although I will posit that physical exhaustion is typically more manageable, so that helps. There are certainly exceptions, but by and large in our modern, sedentary world, physical exertion can easily be limited to controlled environments where one is able to stop when they reach the point of exhaustion. It is unlikely that stepping outside means that you will have to outrun a lion, unable to pause else become lunch. Chances are these days you will only ever reach exhaustion if you purposefully push yourself to (e.g. hitting the gym). But if I have reason to worry that I am going to find myself in a situation where I cannot meaningfully rest when I reach my physical breaking point, absolutely the anxiety will be running hot.
Whereas social interaction can be harder to control. For example, reaching your social limit in the middle of the workday does not usually, for all practical purposes, enable you to remove yourself from the situation. You are expected to keep going until the end of the business day, no matter how you are feeling on the inside. Us techies might have enough individual work to slink away to, perhaps, but for many jobs there is no such luxury. Or you might come up against a Chatty Cathy who will continue pushing to keep the social engagement going even after you try to back away. There aren't all that many HN-esq situations in the real world where you can just magically pop in when you want to engage and then disappear as fast as you came. And where you might find something approximate, you are apt to find it much too limiting to be an exclusive social outlet.
There's definitely a "get over it" for dread and it's called stoicism (not an expert). Sometimes you have to do things whether you like it or not just to survive and "getting over it" will prevent you from dying.
Even if this was true for neurotypicals (which it isn't) it wouldn't be true for neurodivergent folk.
Can you hold a conversation next to a lawnmower? A jackhammer? A jet engine? At some point there's literally too much noise for you to communicate verbally anymore. That point is different for different people.
> Even if this was true for neurotypicals (which it isn't) it wouldn't be true for neurodivergent folk.
Interesting take, are you neurodivergent? "Masking" is basically a "get over it" approach that the parent talks about. It is exhausting, to the point that neurodivergent people wil preemptively bail out of situations if they don't feel up for it. Tools associated with stocism can be helpful for neurodivergent people when they're used to support their needs rather than diminish them, in my experience.
Trying to just "get over it" with the neurodivergence example noticed is the kind of thing likely to result in a panic attack or other uncontrollable expression of emotion. It's not something you can change just by wanting it hard enough.
Thanks, I’m cured
come on man telling someone with autism to learn stoicism and just got care
My dad owned an auto dealership through my youth. He always had a least one "natural" salesman, who could just sell, but couldn't tell you how he did it. My dad was not a natural, and made up for this by consciously & relentlessly practicing the behaviours and actions: active listening, root cause analysis, identify the decision maker, respecting time & financial factors, attentive customer service, building connection & relationships. He became very good, but in a completely different way. Where his star salesman sold easily my dad had to work harder, but he then sold to the same person every few years, sometimes decades, and did better on the trade-ins than the new sales.
Why the story? Because lots of things - including networking - sometimes come naturally to a few, but are more commonly learned. You can practice & must practice, and this can start with a short list of things like presented here. It's not about caring more about the Big Thing (tm) but focusing solely on a few small things that start you down the right path. In my experience a few easy things is a great way to displace the anxiety from big, complex, scary situations.
Another brief anecdote I think helps illustrate this. I teach mountain biking, and the two biggest desires are 1. corner better, 2. learn how to jump. I suck at cornering but have logged a fair bit of air time. A common observation is people go very rigid in the air (called a "dead sailor"). This not only undesireable, it's dangerous. The fix? Get people to do any sort of movement when they are in the air; the smallest wiggle, shimmy or tweak unlocks their body AND their mind, and moves them forward. It both focuses and distracts. The list here feels a lot like a similar approach for certain social situations, and compared to your advice (stop caring and... just do it?) actually targets the root of anxiety "OK, but how?". YOLO is often part of it, but makes a terrible strategy.
Also FWIW, this is also not a guide to networking. It’s a guide to attending networking events. Those are not the same things.
I wish someone would write a guide to what to do in the 2 weeks after the networking event when inevitably everyone forgets about each other.
"Almost more even than the extraverted is the introverted type subject to misunderstanding ... because the style of the epoch in which he himself participates is against him. Not in relation to the extraverted type, but as against our general occidental world-philosophy, he finds himself in the minority, not of course numerically, but from the evidence of his own feeling.
In so far as he is a convinced participator in the general style, he undermines his own foundations, since the present style, with its almost exclusive acknowledgment of the visible and the tangible, is opposed to his principle. Because of its invisibility, he is obliged to depreciate the subjective factor, and to force himself to join in the extraverted overvaluation of the object.
He himself sets the subjective factor at too low a value, and his feelings of inferiority are his chastisement for this sin. Little wonder, therefore, that it is precisely our epoch, and particularly those movements which are somewhat ahead of the time, that reveal the subjective factor in every kind of exaggerated, crude and grotesque form of expression. I refer to the art of the present day.
The undervaluation of his own principle makes the introvert egotistical, and forces upon him the psychology of the oppressed. The more egotistical he becomes, the stronger his impression grows that these others, who are apparently able, without qualms, to conform with the present style, are the oppressors against whom he must guard and protect himself.
He does not usually perceive that he commits his capital mistake in not depending upon the subjective factor with that same loyalty and devotion with which the extravert follows the object By the undervaluation of his own principle, his penchant towards egoism becomes unavoidable, which, of course, richly deserves the prejudice of the extravert.
Were he only to remain true to his own principle, the judgment of ‘egoist’ would be radically false; for the justification of his attitude would be established by its general efficacy, and all misunderstandings dissipated. "
Jung -Psychological types
"You want to be understood? That’s all we needed! Understand yourself, and you will be sufficiently understood. You will have quite enough work in hand with that"
Jung - Red book
I really should read Jung. So much wisdom in that.
> The best way to network well is to stop giving a shit about doing it well.
As someone who has played piano for over 30 years and by any sane person's assessment I play at least "adequately", I can attest that worrying about how you play is the least constructive thing you can do and I have many times over my life crashed and burned when trying to play on the spot and in those moments people would question whether I knew how to play at all.
When I finally realised to stop caring (at least in the moment) everything got a lot better. Even if you screw up, owning it and laughing about it is better than curling up in fear and anxiety and making the moment worse and more awkward for everyone.
"stop caring" sounds like such unhelpful advice but when one finally realises you have agency over that, its like having a superpower
The hard part is not realizing that one should stop caring. It's learning how to stop caring. For most of us, caring is an automatic, reflexive response, and changing it is not a trivial matter.
The idea that finally clicked with me came from a narrated meditation session in the app “Headspace”. I think it’s probably a common metaphor, but it’s the only place I had encountered it:
Imagine your mind is a highway, and your thoughts are cars that are driving along this highway in your mind. You, or rather your conscience, is sitting along this highway, and every time a thought comes along, you might try to stop it.
Of course, this is foolish, you can’t stop those thoughts any more than you could stop a literal car on a highway. The trick comes once you realize that attempting to stop unwanted thoughts is a doomed and pointless exercise. But just because those thoughts have entered your mind, doesn’t mean you have to engage with them. You could instead simply let them pass you by.
I don’t know why, but this worked for me. In the context of meditation, it freed me of the assumption that my mind should be blanked and free of thoughts, which always seemed impossible anyway. But it armed me with a useful mnemonic for recognizing when I am standing in the middle of the proverbial road, and the confidence to admit that I cannot do anything meaningful from such a precarious and hopeless position, so should move to the side, and focus on what’s possible.
“Stop caring” sounds unhelpful because it might be difficult, but it’s basically the one thing you have that’s actually in your control that you can do about it.
I think some people would rather keep searching for easier solutions than taking the difficulty one they can actually accomplish.
“The best way to network well is to stop giving a shit about doing it well” is a quote for the ages.
It's a great quote, but I don't think it's really true. I didn't give a shit about networking, and I don't have a way to contact most of the people I've worked with in the past. I'm sure I could get some good referrals through many of those people, but since I didn't give a shit, I can't and I don't think that's really doing networking well.
This worked out fine for me, some people who are better at networking than me reached out to me when they had interesting work at a good time, but 'do whatever and hopefully someone will find a job for you' is pretty bad advice too.
You've got to give some minimal level of shit, or you end up with a potential network instead of a network. I don't think going to 'networking events' is required; those always seem fishy, if your only connection is you wanted to make a connection, it's not a strong connection ... and probably the people going to these things don't have a very strong network or they wouldn't be going, so you're not getting much from the multiple hop networking either. There's probably exceptions, but trying to catch em all is not the right game.
Agree on the recharge part... People are always in disbelief when I tell them I even have to recharge from my SO.
Nah, this is not for social anxiety people either. Or however we can call folks who don't normally feel like talking to others if they can.
All the recipes there are basically for people who don't have "natural" interpersonal skills and need to emulate it as a formal conscious process instead.
That's it - nothing in the article touches any aspects of willingness to engage with others, or ways to break out of maladaptive behaviors like social evasion.
I don't think it's intended for people with social anxiety either. I'm not socially anxious, but I could definitely benefit from following up on conversations from parties more often.
Might work most for autistic people tbh, rigid rules to follow to the letter.
>This isn't for introverts its intended for people with social anxiety
This.
Introverts (in general) have no problems with communication\networking etc. Introverts simply do not _need_ company.
Extraverts, on the other hand, contrary to what people often think, _need_ company to do stuff, even though they may be not so hot on networking or partying.
No, this is intended for everyone, but the purpose is wrong.
Leil Lowndes' How to talk to anyone (the source) is not explicitly about expanding your network. It's just guidelines (or rather suggestions, or even better - hacks) on how you can start and hold conversations with people. What you choose to do with them is your own purview.
Stop giving a shit is similar advice to "be yourself". It's confusing enough advice on a date, and it's esp. not helpful here.
Networking is a skill beyond simple vibing and should be treated as such. For those with social anxiety, having a script/plan at least allows one to be on autopilot so they don't have to in fact give a shit.
Also introverts definitely tend to not like networking or any group activity w/ a bunch of strangers (edit: I mean tend to like the 'idea' of them, but once there, can enjoy them). I think you meant that they can do it without fear.
I'm introverted and I enjoy networking and group activities and also meeting and chatting with strangers. I just can't do it all day every day, I need breaks.
Having social anxiety is different from not knowing how to talk to people and make friends. Bill Russel would get so worked up before games he would throw up. But he could also perform.
I think it depends on what you're anxious about. Being scared that people will dislike you is different from being scared of embarrassment and it's different from being scared you don't know what to do in the moment.
Of course all of those can be helped by simply exposing yourself to the situation over and over again. You learn that if you do embarrass yourself or if people dislike you, the world doesn't turn to ash.
I’m not afraid of the world turning to ash. My rational brain isn’t afraid; it knows people didn’t care and have already forgotten.
I’m afraid of the much louder part of my brain that’s going to spend every quiet moment over the next 3 days replaying and re-living the embarrassing encounter.
Yeah fair enough :)
I probably should draw the distinction between enjoying and looking forward to them - I never look forward to them (unless there's several friends there or it's for a fun activity), but yes, if you give it some effort, they can be enjoyable.
I find it really fulfilling to meet strangers but I need to be in the right headspace and it needs to be the right atmosphere.
"Every person you look at, you can see the universe in their eyes -- if you're really looking." -- George Carlin
I think a lot of people really don't get this. I relish alone time and rarely seek out contact. But I also used to do sales pitches and attend conferences and was never uncomfortable no matter how unfamiliar the crowd. I just found it really tiring.
I feel like articles like these almost always leave out the people who want these questions to be answered:
* "Why would I want to network with people?"
* "I don't feel like engaging with anyone."
* "I don't enjoy or feel fulfilled doing any of this. I'd rather be home or by myself."
* "I have never enjoyed doing this. I have to keep up a facade in front of other people at all times. It makes me angry and resentful."
They should expand upon why networking is a thing, why having a social rapport among peers and coworkers is important to healthy relationships both inside and outside of work, how you can have your connection to your social circle weakened if you don't, and spell out clearly why that's a bad thing.
Maybe an article like this should look at it from the perspective of mental health and neurodivergence, but that might be pushing it.
From the article: "The next morning, I’d wonder if anyone even remembered I was there."
Personally speaking, this question has never popped into my mind. I suppose that's owing to the fact that it's simply not in my nature to actively seek out people or connections.
This tenfold. The premise, the setting, the checklist, the whole thing sounds like torture to me. Life isn't that monochromatic, I'd rather be doing ANYTHING else.
It’s clearly not in the author’s nature, either :)
But they seem to be a serial startup founder — so the value of networking’s probably self-evident to them, but won’t match the value you and most others get out of it.
Basically, this. I already spend all the energy I have available for socializing just going to work five days a week. The idea of people socializing outside of work for the sake of work is supremely depressing to me. It's like, so now I need to do something I find utterly exhausting in order to succeed better at this other thing that already completely destroyed me because... capitalism?
I can at least understand on an intellectual level that there could be personal benefits to socializing with people outside of work, but when work already sucks everything out of you then it just feels like a cruel joke to suggest an introvert get into "networking" and here's a list of weird, creepy, manipulative tricks to do it better. Surely the article must be a parody?
You sound like you have your own issues to resolve if you are this exhausted by work, which doesn't mean the article is a parody just because you are not its exact intended recipient. There are a handful of tips in there that can help engineer more comfortable situations for people who are less confident networking. That's only if someone is willing to engage with the advice and wishes to better themselves with it, instead of just blaming... capitalism?
It's not the work itself that is exhausting: it's socializing at work.
This comments deeply resonates with me because that's exactly how I feel.
When I'm wfh I have to put an alarm to remember to stop working because I'm in the flow and can work for +14h without feeling tired. Whereas, when I'm the office, I have to take a walk mid-day because I'm already exhausted by the socializing.
And to be clear, it's not that I don't enjoy socializing at work, it's just that it drains me quickly.
> I have to keep up a facade in front of other people at all times.
This comes down to the idea of whether you believe that if you “keep up a facade at all times” that the facade becomes who you really are.
You don’t need an article convincing you why networking is important. You either need to be curious enough to want to see if your life can be better by doing something that goes against what you believe is your nature or not.
> Start with: “How do you spend most of your time?” Not “What do you do?” It opens people up beyond job titles.
This is something that feels alien in SF people. A fundamental difference for example from Greece and people living in SF is this.
- Greek opening question: "Which city are you from?" - SF opening question: "Which company do you work for?"
In SF, people are from so many different places that there is little to no chance that you have personal experience or knowledge of the city that the person would answer your question with. The same is probably not true of someone who grew up in Greece, asking someone else who grew up in Greece
> "Which city are you from?"
Many big tech companies have inclusion training calling this question out as inappropriate on the grounds it provides an opportunity to introduce bias.
Sure, that's advised in interviews, where you're about to make a decision on someone's livelihood, hence the importance of reducing bias. That's a completely different context than in casual conversation at a social event.
It's a networking event, not an interview loop.
In the same lines, don't ask anything. Everything is a bias. ie, What do they do? - Also a bias as they are engineer, or product, or sales, or whatever.
This is nonsense as there is no such thing as unbiased personal interaction.
In most parts of the world this is not true.
Even in the US it's ridiculous advice, driven by fear rather than a rational assessment of policy. Asking people where they are from is just fine.
I would like to add one tip that works well for me.
First time is always very difficult. Identify recurring or comparable events. Over time you will meet some people you already know. Remembering some details from earlier encounters will build rapport. Likewise people will remember you from previous encounters. But, beware of the trap of only talking with those whom you already know. For every event, target to form at least a couple of new connections.
This is a great point on the value of recurring events! Multiple serendipitous / unplanned interactions (where both people leave feeling good) are an important pathway to building a relationship. As a child most of your friendships were a function of proximity & chance - school and community events provided opportunities for regular (but unplanned) interaction.
Recurring events make it easier to meet others, and the regular, repeated interactions help form stronger connections.
Over time it also deepens your options of people to move around room for conversation - which is a nice way to break out of being awkwardly stuck in a 1:1 conversation for too long.
"Follow me so I can introduce you to Bob" is a way kinder way to exit a 1:1 than "I'm going to get another drink/visit the bathroom" and leaving them standing alone.
I loved the last suggestion, this has happened to me so many times and mostly i end up abruptly excusing myself. "Follow me so i can introduce you to xxx" is a great advice. Can i add this advice to the blog?
Please do!
I learned this one during a period at work when I was the host of 10+ large events per week and I needed to move around the room. Spending more than a few minutes in any one conversation was a problem and so I landed on this as the best way to break away without creating awkwardness for the other person.
Key to the "follow me" strategy is to just start walking - 99% of time they will follow you rather than stand there alone. If you know them well enough / the context is OK then a light touch on the shoulder / elbow to point them in the right direction also helps.
The flip of this is that if YOU don't know anyone else in the room then ask them something like "do you know anyone else here?" / "have you spoken to anyone else interesting at this event?" - usually that provides a pathway to someone new and you say "Great! Can you please introduce them to me?"
This is a great point. While i was reading the book, this tip was shared too with an example of a person who would make notes on the visiting cards of that specific person so that next time if she bumps into them again, they would have a talking point.
I think the article is a great way to introduce yourself into this type of situation. Lots of people do better at well defined tasks, so I'll give you one: Most people at these events are looking for something, go in looking to give. Connect with one person who you can help. This can be a very modest thing: an offer to lend a book, send a link, connect them with someone else; anything. If you offer something physical, go out of your way to get it to them. Making a connection? Make it a warm hand-off, maybe in person. The keys: follow through on your promise, make it geniune and put some effort into it.
Converting a vague, complex, often scary thing like a networking event into a well-defined mission is a great way to address fear, add value and contribute.
Confidence and genuine interest can’t be taught. Unfortunately, they also can’t be faked. Humans have evolved to be hyper-aware of what others’ mannerisms and behaviors convey, and most socially adept people can sniff out a “networker” in less than a minute. The only way forward is practice — talk to people, be awkward and fail a lot, learn to care about others’ life and work, and express it (or talk about your own interests!) in a way that adds value to their life.
It maybe cannot be faked, but it can be practiced and one of the best ways to practice something is by faking it
You might not be able to convince people on your first attempt, but eventually you can build this skill if you try
Regarding sniffing out "networker"s. At one of the first "networking" events I attended, I spoke for a bit with a particular person. An hour or two later, we ended up in the same circle and he proceeded to rattle off from memory everything I had told him about myself. I think he had meant to show off how well he was listening or something... it was more than a little off-putting.
Two conversation tools I regularly use: “What are you currently obsessed with?” and if you want to follow up on even dull things a “What surprised you most about that?” works great. I don’t like small talk this helps get right to the novel, weird, and unique so I can at least enjoy the conversation and get to the core of who I’m really talking to. These help.
I hate that question. And the similar "what are you passionate about?"
Well, I'm not currently obsessed with anything. Where does the conversation go from there?
Asking something like this can also be a filter. If someone reacts in mild frustration to such a minor interaction at a networking event (or at least, while actively trying to network), it's a red flag.
Long-term fixation, colloquially referred to as "obsession", is fairly common to various forms of neurodivergance, and neurodivergance is fairly common for engineering-adjacent folks. Since that forms a likely large cross section of the HN crowd, the suggested icebreaker is probably relevant to many of us, whether we are ourselves neurodivergant or otherwise frequently interact with those who are. I also dislike the "passion" question, but obsessions change frequently enough and are exciting to the person asked. It's just different enough to liven up the conversation if you're asking the right person.
> Where does the conversation go from there?
I dunno, maybe try asking a neurodivergant person sometime? I certainly would rather be asked about my obsessions than my passions, as my passions are all too often left to rot for one reason or another, which just makes me sad and want to leave.
If I were genuinely being receptive I would flip it around. "Looking for new interests, what's got you attention lately?"
I guess that's the best answer. Obsessiveness is a mental disorder though, and it strikes me as similar to walking up to someone and starting off with "what are your addictions" or "what are your compulsions" as an ice breaker, which would generally be inappropriate.
Even taking it most charitably it presumes that most people are obsessed with something. I'm not, I'm not really passionate about anything either, certainly not anything I do professionally.
The last time I was at a conference, if anyone asked me why I was there my honest answer would be "my boss said I should go" and if they asked what I had enjoyed the most so far my answer would be "I skipped all the sessions yesterday afternoon and went to a gym and lifted weights for two hours." If that led to a conversation about weightlifting, I wouldn't have much to say. I don't obsess about it, I don't have a coach, I don't compete, I don't know any names of professional lifters or their latest records, it's just exercise that I do.
I guess it boils down to, I'm a pretty boring person. I generally feel like I don't have much to add to a conversation and it's uncomfortable to answer questions that reveal that. So I do generally try to keep people talking about themselves, which most people seem happy to do.
Honestly, probably nowhere and a shortened conversation, then I go find someone else to chat with.
"I'm obsessed with not obsessing right now hah! On an obsession sabbatical. But I'd probably like to obsessed about..."
Hustle culture...
This post is well written, useful, and original. I'm surprised by the negative comments.
It's advocating for some honestly weird behavior. Doing some of this stuff seems manipulative, like it's straight out of an interaction in American Psycho. It treats human interactions as transactional. It's gross.
Can you be a little more specific about what you consider gross? I only read the article because of your comment; I got curious. Most of it just seems like common courtesy, and a few fairly standard body language tricks.
The AI imagery
The checklist
The idea that everyone in the party is quietly evaluating you and making up a story in their head
The forced body language
The weird conversation starters
Like all this stuff is forced and artificial and the goal is you're trying to build a relationship with someone for the implicit purpose of getting something out of them. None of this is genuine social connection, it's just a performance to try and increase your own status.
For me…the only “trick” that matters is to bring a friend.
No friend = debilitating levels of social fear. Friend = mostly fine.
BTW one way to break the ice is to go a bit meta. Imagine saying: "Hello! My name is ${name}, nice to see you! One of my favorite ice-breaker questions is: ${some_question}. What do you think?"
It evokes smiles, it allows the other party to answer the question, share their own question, discuss the process of getting into a friendly conversation, etc, all without being formulaic.
How is this not formulaic when you literally used a formula to describe it? With variables and all. It's not bad but pretty contrived and clearly rehearsed and kinda corny. People smile when someone makes a bad pun also.
It might feel less formulaic because it's more upfront. Following a formula without telling the other person about it can feel more robotic if you don't put your soul into it. Whereas you can still put in the right energy and effort into the OP's approach to make it work well. At the end of the day being human IMHO is what matters most.
> People smile when someone makes a bad pun also
Here too I think it's all about how the pun is delivered.
I consider myself an introvert, and this article seems like an impossible anxiety spiral-inducing checklist.
>Don’t waste their time with “Great party.” Say something more vivid. “The lighting is perfect.”
What? I think someone needing this level of instruction would be better served by basic mindfulness and small, manageable exercises in active listening or empathetic dialog, rather than a grab bag of non-contextual tips like this.
I’m also introverted, and I also found this article overwhelming – if I tried to do it all at once, which seems so laughably unrealistic for me that I just wouldn’t try. Instead, probably the best way to read this is as something to approach gradually. Try just one thing on the list, or two if you’re feeling ambitious. Go for a delta that you can manage. And see if it’s working for you, because often the advice that works wonders for one person completely falls flat for another.
(On a slightly funny personal note, the thing that helped me most with social skills was watching the first few seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in my first year of college. The actors emoted so clearly that even I could understand what feelings they were trying to convey, and that’s how I learned to do body language and appropriate vocal tones. This took me from unapproachable to merely awkward, a huge step up in the world.)
That's ableist. What if they have Autism or the likes???
I don't understand how that is ableist. Would you be willing to explain your rationale?
That part
> What? I think someone needing this level of instruction would be better served by basic mindfulness and small, manageable exercises in active listening or empathetic dialog, rather than a grab bag of non-contextual tips like this.
Look, when you say "someone needing this level of instruction," it comes across like needing detailed, step-by-step help is weird or a problem. But plenty of people with ADHD, autism, or other brain differences don't just find this helpful - they actually need it to make sense of things.
And suggesting they'd be "better off" with mindfulness or simpler stuff? That assumes they haven't already been down that road. Maybe those approaches just don't click with how their brain works.
Calling it a "grab bag of random tips" really undersells what's going on here. For people who need things spelled out clearly and directly, those specific tips might be the difference between something being useless and actually doable.
The whole thing reads like it's written from the perspective of someone who finds this stuff obvious, then judges other approaches as somehow inferior. That's the ableist part - acting like there's one "right" way to understand things and anything else is just... less good.
> when you say "someone needing this level of instruction," it comes across like needing detailed, step-by-step help is weird or a problem
That wasn't my impression at all, to give another perspective. "This level" indicates me that instructions are too specific or too detailed to be of any help.
Not at all. But you might know them or they come to you naturally.
See I asked someone at a training course on this stuff once to give me concrete things to do instead of the two days of blah blah in the course that basically boiled down to "you just gotta figure it all out yourself" - gee Thanks!
So the guy told me to use people's names when talking to or about them because most people, even if they don't realize or are outward extroverts, like hearing their own name.
Never in my life would I have come to that realization by myself because I'm the exact opposite. I hate it when other people do that with me but now I use it with others.
Reads to me as a coy insult towards the author (or those who would benefit from this piece), not as a serious concern.
Man I would hate to run into the person parroting my words at a party
I was thinking the same. When a person starts repeating what I said back to me, especially if it's nothing outrageous, it feels like I'm being interrogated. My response is to deny. E.g.:
> Me: Last week I went to the beach.
> Conversational adversary: You went to the beach last week?
> Me: No.
Maybe this explains why I don't have many friends.
Social skills and and social knowledge learned over a long period of time is absolutely crucial. There are too many unspoken and implied etiquette.
But this is a good checklist. I'm a wreck if I don't eat & sleep enough prior to social activity. And the whole thing about a "social battery" is on point. No remedy for that other than a recharge.
Between the structure, the doubly-phrased headings, the machine generated picture, and regrettably the em dashes, this really reads like LLM slop. If I'm wrong, I apologize, but if that's the case, please just hand out the prompt instead next time.
Some peoples writing style is just like that. As somebody who gets this regularly, I find that it is really disrespecting my efforts.
The image indeed gives me a strong AI vibe, in particular the "Ghibli update." It's getting really hard to uncloak it by the day but those drab colours instantly throw me off.
(For the "real artists also can draw like that" crowd I don't think the OP is an artist and it has no credits.)
I thought it was funny that the things that were meant to be emphasized are unreadable in dark mode.
Unrelated to the thread, but yes. Had the same issue.
> Stand still in the doorway.Look around. Not like you're lost—like you're assessing. This pause signals confidence.
> Make eye contact before you smile. Let there be a beat. Then let the smile arrive slowly. This “delayed warmth” makes your smile feel specific, not generic. It’s subtle, but people feel the difference.
> Don’t waste their time with “Great party.” Say something more vivid. “The lighting is perfect.” “Everyone feels relaxed.” It anchors your presence with detail.
> Use an uncommon adjective: “Had a remarkable time.” “Such a thoughtful gathering.” That small twist makes you stick.
Does anyone other than a salesperson do this?
It seems a bit manipulative, and not genuine.
I can't really tell which sounds more horrible, the instructions for navigating such a party event or the existence of such an event in the first place.
Just go to the party and engage with people. Actually be interested in who that person is, what they think, and how they spend their time. People are fascinating, even the grouchy boring ones.
Advice like this article, and the thousands of books before it, are usually totally garbage. I'm very introverted. I've spent weeks by myself in nature, completely alone. I find parties too stimulating. But just do it. It's not like you're getting your arm cut off. You're just talking to people. Don't be mad at yourself for saying some out of pocket stuff. Don't dwell on what you could have done. Just see what's going on in the lives of other people and stop overthinking it.
Bullshit. No, I'm not interested in anyone in a party and not going to smalltalk, because some retard wrote half a dozen books about it. Just place your namecard on the table and then if I want to I'll call you. Rest is just facade. Why are we call ourselves humans when we actually act like monkeys :D.
This is why the stock market is a godsend.
I'm having trouble understanding your point. You think parties should just be people behind tables with name cards with numbers that you can call later? What does that have to do with the stock market?
ask an llm
I am introverted with significant social anxiety, and I realize these are tools I intuited without thinking too much about it, in large part from observing other people and a selective pressure relating to survival (it also helps that for over ten years of my formative adult years I had a constantly rotating set of roommates, which was essential because I didn’t make enough money to live entirely on my own). One thing I’d like to highlight is that it is better to adopt a mindset where interacting is an opportunity to learn and enrich, rather than merely waiting around for your turn to speak. People really can tell the difference, and it turns most folks off. Another thing I constantly have to remind myself is to just let it go when the conversational flow moves on… it’s really awkward when you insist on back tracking a conversation to something that came up half an hour ago. Read the room, watch body language, and if you really think a topic is that exciting or useful you can bank it for a follow-up conversation. Also, say someone’s name back to them after you learn it, and try to casually use it here and there as you converse so you (hopefully) don’t forget it.
Practical tips - thanks!
I like the idea of baiting with a “whatzit” item
For me I typically go with whatever fountain pen I'm carrying with me. It's also really easy to introduce it into the conversation since I can demonstrate it while jotting down a piece of info someone is sharing.
> I like the idea of baiting with a “whatzit” item
Me too! I can’t believe that I never thought of it before, but it makes perfect sense.
Great you found it helpful!
This doesn't tell you "how to network as an introvert", it's more like the author's personal OCD checklist.
Is there a blog post for "how to realize a list of my own personal compulsions isn't advise for others?"
Load of crap. Just don't network. The whole fn idea is thought out by a bunch of psychotic suits. Network, brush up to people, lick their arses... blablabla. NO. Just no.
what about just owning your own lack of confidence as a strength? performative confidence seems dishonest and a bit like cheating to me. also on that matter, why is confidence == good?
> why is confidence == good?
Speaking from experience as an introvert who suffered social anxiety...
A lot of people (probably extroverts) don't respond well when you're expressing anxiety and/or doubt. Clients won't want to work with you. People won't want to be around you at parties. Co-workers will speak behind your back about the weird person. Etc.
SAD sucks, you have my sympathy. its not fair some of the cards people are dealt but i can recommend focusing on competence rather than confidence and being compassionate to yourself as you navigate the world (advice i should take myself!). best wishes.
That might be true generally and shallowly, but I've gotten way further both professionally and personally by being vulnerable and honest with my anxieties and insecurities.
Especially with other neurospicy folks, it's a very easy way to bond. My issues might not be the exact same, but it's close enough that they can empathize and grow closer as friends/coworkers.
But we also talk shit about the guy who exudes confidence and messes everything up. He actively makes stuff worse due to his attitude.
I'd rather own my mistakes than be a walking contradiction.
To be fair he's probably overconfident. But picking up any sense of false confidence(not a shy buddy attemping to 'fake it til you make it', more serious matters) is a massive red flag to me that I can't trust their judgement of their own knowledge or capabilities. Someone who says straight up it will be difficult gets a lot more trust from me.
I agree. I'm not talking about being overconfident just confident enough to be able to socialize like (I assume) most people.
Yeah I realized after I wrote it he's overconfident and I realized there's more nuance
Introversion is not lack of confidence.
And confidence is good because it's a signal of competence, or at least that things have gone well for you in the past in similar situations.
The goal isn't to fake it. The goal is to build actual confidence. That doesn't mean being loud or funny, just learning how to communicate without panicking.
A lot of introverts are quite likely to be somewhere on the autism spectrum.
For example, I can't unconsciously read expressions. I scored worse than blind guessing on the "Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test". So I consciously learned to read and mimic expressions, literally using a textbook for theater performers. So now I can score at the upper range of neurotypical people.
Other introverts often have problems recognizing social cues or initiating conversations. Purely because it's not _natural_ for them, even though they might _want_ to actually speak to people.
So is it kind of performative? Yes. But think about this, extroverts are doing a lot of same tricks subconsciously. Does it mean that they're _always_ performing?
That was the word everyone is afraid to say: Autism
All confidence is performative confidence bro
When I read posts like this, or watch introverts doing comedy skits about their introversion, such as KallMeKris saying she needs 10 days in advance just to schedule a phone call. As an extrovert, I don't want to inflict angst upon an introvert just by striking up a conversation or inviting them to lunch. I cut off two "friends" who were introverts, and I don't think they noticed. Human kind is a social animal that expects reciprocation and teamwork.
Inviting an introvert to lunch with you is likely fine and would be appreciated.
Inviting an introvert to a group lunch with six other people would likely cause angst.
And yes, the introvert probably didn't notice. They probably don't often think about you either.
I get this. It sounds superficially like you're doing something wrong, but if you "cut someone off" by just not inviting them to stuff and then they either don't notice or don't make any attempt to reconnect with you, it means you were doing 100% of the work in the relationship. You've been putting in effort to drag them along to events they don't show any indication of enjoying, when they won't reciprocate in any way or ever make the first move, and that can be emotionally draining.
I'm not particularly extroverted and being organised doesn't come naturally to me either, so this type of thing is even more of a nuisance. I'm putting in effort to set up fun things to do using calendars and spreadsheets and research, I'm making notes about interests and mutual friends, and the other person can't even set up a two month calendar event then write "Hey, let's get coffee"?
I cut these two off because I felt I was bothering them.
> As an extrovert, I don't want to inflict angst upon an introvert
> Human kind is a social animal that expects reciprocation
Sounds to me like you did it for yourself, after all.