Interviewers vs Volunteers: What type of conversationalist are you?
Interviewer see talking about yourself as arrogant and expect the other person not to do too much. Volunteers see talking about yourself as being vulnerable and expect the other person to do their fair share.
It's insulting to apologise for boring your conversation partner
The apology unintentionally says “I assume you’re not into [topic] AND I assume you can’t get interested in topics outside your personal interests.” Not nice assumptions!
Reasons to wear fancy houseclothes (written pre-pandemic)
They can be costumes, they can be the clothes you wish you would wear outside but won’t (my most recent robe is a rainbow space galaxy with sweeping sleeves and a watercolour unicorn on the back)
11 things to do instead of scrolling social media when you have a few minutes to kill
Like your date’s gone to the bathroom, or your lunch is in the microwave. You probably don’t want to be so compulsive about your phone, but what else are you gonna do while you wait?
Talk to people with different life experiences, not just different politics
Getting out of your filter bubble doesn't mean 'talk to people who voted for the other guy'. There are a lot of other kinds of diversity.
The Deaf experience shows how impoverished hearing people's communication can be
“It’s rude to point,” my friend told me from across the elementary-school cafeteria table. I grasped her words as I read them off her lips. She stared at my index finger, which I held raised in midair, gesturing toward a mutual classmate. “My mom said so.” I was 6
The problem isn’t that we have desires, but that our desires are too small
This week I came across the exact same concept expressed by a Buddhist and a Christian thinker, which was startling enough to seem worth exploring.
“Backchannel”: A crucial element of how conversations flow and people bond
I’m going to tell you about an incredibly useful linguistic concept — one of those things where you’re like “oh there’s a word for that, that’s so useful! Now I have a way talk about it.”
The best way to get a nervous person to try something new
It’s not, “tell them it’s easy and they’ll pick it up no problem”
No FOMO: If you’d bought bitcoin 10 years ago, you wouldn't be rich today
If you’d put $100 into bitcoin back in the day, you’d have sold it when it reached $1000. Maybe $10,000. And holding on to $100,000 in the hopes it’d turn into a million? Come on.