Category Archives: Lifehacks

Lifehacks

Improving my Social Interactions

I wouldn’t say I’m anti-social. Once upon a time I was surely rather awkward, and I’ve always been a little edgy in crowds.

Nonetheless, aging a bit and making an effort to improve have resulted in a more happy, outgoing Brock. That’s only the beginning, really. I don’t want to be simply not-obnoxious. I want to function well in social settings. To that end, based partially on Never Eat Alone, I have come up with the following general procedure when meeting new people. I brainstormed it some time ago, and had a to-do (or NA for you GTDers) to clean it up and memorize it.

I figured I might as well post it as long as I’m cleaning it up. And here it is:

  • Introduce yourself with your full name early on. Preferably immediately.

  • Use the other person’s name whenever you address them. Eye contact or “uh, hey” don’t count.

  • If you forget their name (are you trying to get their eye contact instead? Hmm?) just ask. Then write it down. Apologize for being bad with names if you get a strange look.

  • When you write their name down, take some notes on their general appearance or something that will help you remember them.

  • Get their photo. If it’s someone you already know, and you have a phone with a camera, ask to add their picture to your address book. This doesn’t work well in dark restaurants and bars.

  • Follow up by phone (at a time when you’re likely to get voicemail), email, or in writing within a week of meeting them, if you care to build any kind of relationship.

  • Figure out whether you have any mutual acquaintances

  • Pay attention to what people are looking for. Do they need to hire someone for something? Are they looking to add another player to their weekly poker game? Do you know anyone that could help them?

  • Always be honest if you have to go. Don’t make excuses. In particular, if the conversation dies and you’ve exhausted all that you both have to discuss, excuse yourself in a polite and straightforward way.

This is a long and difficult list to habitualize. However, I’ve added some of these things to my habits over time and have seen benefits even from one. It’s not necessary to do them all at once. They should eventually become a natural part of your personality.

Search Brainstorming

This seems so obvious in retrospect that I’m sure someone else has already thought of it. I just don’t know what they call it.

I call it “search brainstorming”.

This is when I’m trying to put something together, like a project plan, a proposal, or a talk. Whatever it is heavily involves an internet search. What I’ll typically do is punch in a google search in Firefox, and then scroll through the results. As I see something I think is useful, I open it in a new tab, and keep going with the search results. Once I’ve exhausted the search results, I turn to my newly-opened tabs.

I read through each tab. As I find things that interest me, I add them to my Google Notebook. I close each tab as I finish with it, as the notebook saves the URL with each clip. Then, I go through and prune the notebook.

I call it “brainstorming” because to me, it seems so analogous to normal brainstorming. I let google generate a rush of ideas. Some of them are clearly not what I’m looking for, so I ignore them. The rest, however, may or may not be of use to me. I can’t tell until later. Therefore, I investigate all of them, adding what might be useful information to a list (notebook), trying not to really evaluate the content. The key ideas are generation and collection. I don’t want evaluation to hamper them — it comes later.

Is there another name for this?

Backing Up Google Docs and Spreadsheets

If you use Google Docs as a wiki (as I suggested the other day), or even for documents that you don’t care to lose, you should probably back them up. Google ought to provide a way to just download a zipped package, but in the mean time there are some Firefox extensions and GreaseMonkey scripts that can help you out.

Directions are here. I tried it this morning, and it worked great. The hardest part is that you have to manually check all of the boxes.

I also just figured out, when making that link, that you can paste in the address of a tabbed site just by dragging and dropping the tab. It’s not necessary to go to the tab, copy the URL, and paste it. That will make my life a lot easier!

Do Not Disturb (my stuff)

You probably know the feeling: you slide your card key in the door, it beeps, you walk in to your hotel room.

Your things aren’t where you left them. The bed is made. It looks like you never used the bathroom — the used towels are gone and the rack is full of fresh ones.

Some people might love this. How nice to have someone clean up after you! It bothers me. I don’t really want some stranger in my hotel room. I don’t think I need fresh towels every day, or to have someone else make my bed. I’m not really all that keen on having people do everything for me.

Just about every hotel room I’ve been in comes with an easy solution: the “Do Not Disturb” door hanger. I’ve now made it my default practice to hang it on the door when I first enter the room, and to take it off only as I’m on my way to check out. This saves me the weirdness of having people in my room going through my stuff (genuine espionage excepted, probably), it saves the housekeeping people time, and it saves water, detergent, electricity and more.

Surely other people must do this. Do you?