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Procedural Knowledge Gaps
I am beginning to suspect that it is surprisingly common for intelligent, competent adults to somehow make it through the world for a few decades while missing some ordinary skill, like mailing a physical letter, folding a fitted sheet, depositing a check, or reading a bus schedule. Since these tasks are often presented atomically - or, worse, embedded implicitly into other instructions - and it is often possible to get around the need for them, this ignorance is not self-correcting. One can Google "how to deposit a check" and similar phrases, but the sorts of instructions that crop up are often misleading, rely on entangled and potentially similarly-deficient knowledge to be understandable, or are not so much instructions as they are tips and tricks and warnings for people who already know the basic procedure. Asking other people is more effective because they can respond to requests for clarification (and physically pointing at stuff is useful too), but embarrassing, since lacking these skills as an adult is stigmatized. (They are rarely even considered skills by people who have had them for a while.)
This seems like a bad situation. And - if I am correct and gaps like these are common - then it is something of a collective action problem to handle gap-filling without undue social drama. Supposedly, we're good at collective action problems, us rationalists, right? So I propose a thread for the purpose here, with the stipulation that all replies to gap announcements are to be constructive attempts at conveying the relevant procedural knowledge. No asking "how did you manage to be X years old without knowing that?" - if the gap-haver wishes to volunteer the information, that is fine, but asking is to be considered poor form.
(And yes, I have one. It's this: how in the world do people go about the supposedly atomic action of investing in the stock market? Here I am, sitting at my computer, and suppose I want a share of Apple - there isn't a button that says "Buy Our Stock" on their website. There goes my one idea. Where do I go and what do I do there?)
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Comments (1477)
exercise:
if you just want a basic level of fitness you don't really need to do anything besides
don't spend precious motivational energy on complex stuff. wait until you've established the exercise habit to start trying new things.
pullups and dips only require one of these
Yeah, that kind of advice is not going to fill any procedural knowledge gaps, sorry.
Previously I've tried "exercise" with fitness machines, aerobic and resistance both, an hour apiece on both, and it doesn't seem to do anything at all. I currently walk a couple of hours every other day. I have no idea whether this does anything (besides exhausting me so much I don't get any work done for the rest of the day, of course). I once read that 40% of the population is "immune to exercise" and I suspect I'm one of the 0.40.
If I have enough money at some point I'll try hiring a fitness trainer, and then getting a larger apartment with an extra bedroom for exercise equipment (and maybe get Lasik so I don't have to wear glasses and use a TV and Dance Dance Revolution) but such expenses are beyond the reach of my current financial balance.
EDIT: Wow, lots of advice here from metabolically privileged folks who don't comprehend the nothing fucking works phenomenon that obtains if you're not metabolically privileged.
Exercising for 45 minutes three times a week - enough to raise your heart rate - is the standard quantity to stay in reasonable general cardiovascular health - whatever your weight or fat level, whatever your walking speed (to some extent). If just walking exhausts you, have you sought medical advice?
Try 45 minutes of walking instead of two hours.
DDR can be done with glasses on, if they won't fly across the room ;-) I'm afraid "I can't do DDR without Lasik first" comes across as a mere excuse.
It is possible you may be generalising from one example here. nazgulnarsil's post struck me as actually a pretty good start: it doesn't matter tremendously much what you do as long as you do stuff.
if you are capable of going for an hour you are doing it wrong. sets of sprinting once a week has better results than jogging an hour a day for many people. same thing with resistance. if you can do more than 10 you are going way too light.
this is why i suggest running up a hill. rather than traditional biking or treadmill aerobics.
This is confusing. It seems like somehting a good rationalist should not have any problem with. And you're supposedly the greatest rationalist around. Are you sure you've actually applied your rationality skills and done stuff like sat down for 5 minutes (each) and thought about questions like "What exactly am I trying to accomplish with exercise, and is there any other way to accomplish it", "How can I find out what kinds of exercise will give results" , "can I replicate what a fitness trainer does myself, find the information online, or find someone willing to act as one for free?", etc.
There are probably a decent number of people with medical knowledge here, who knows these things. Heck, if a few things (like living on the wrong continent) were different I could've just given you my athlete sisters number.
Edit: Also, why is everyone talking about expensive equipment? I'm pretty sure you only need equipment for advanced training if you want to compete or because it's easier/more comfortable, general fitness and health I can see no reason to do anything other than running and stretching and push-ups and such. I'm also pretty sure you can use normal stuff lieing around even for the things you need props for. I'm no expert thou.
... goodness I can't believe I just typed this. -_- Feels like heresy telling Eliezer what to do, especially in an area I consider myself to know nothing about. I'm fully prepared for this to be down-voted to oblivion.
.4 of the population unlikely to have evolved? I can't take this too seriously I suppose.
Did you try working on strength first? A lot of cardio is claimed to not be very helpful.
Also, consider a coach or a fellow rationalist with some domain knowledge to work with, it's pretty important to optimize this area (esp. if it puts you out of commission for the rest of the day).
One hack that helped me work throughout the annoyance is reading kindle on a stationary bike. Lost 20 with that trick.
For what it's worth, I bounced your situation off my therapist who's also an RN and a serious martial artist. He says you're up against something weird and he doesn't know what it might be.
And off one of my friends who is a lay person but has a lot of medical knowledge. Very tentatively, you might be up against thyroid or adrenal issues.
Theory which is at least cheap and safe to check: you might not be eating enough salt. This can cause low energy. And if this is the case, you might need more salt than most people-- one of my friends is semi-metabolically privileged (does trail running for the fun of it, is fairly fat anyway), and if he doesn't eat a good bit of salt, he falls over.
This isn't implausible. It also prompts another safe and relatively inexpensive check - get comprehensive blood testing. This is something that most people should do and definitely anyone with any niggling health issues. It is amazing what some people discover, especially when it is issues that are easily resolved!
I've read enough accounts from people with thyroid problems to gather that the usual tests don't catch all of them-- I don't remember a lot of details (will check what I've got if anyone wants), but apparently the standard test is for a surrogate measurement which might or might not be relevant. And there's argument about what the normal range for thyroid hormones are. However, if you're lucky, Synthroid is effective, safe, and cheap.
More generally, another more comprehensive blood test isn't a bad idea, but going in with more specific ideas about what you want to find out seems sensible.
Basically, this stuff is complicated enough that 5 minutes thought (and rather more time than that spent on research) is called for.
It gets better. I've got quantities of anecdata, but most of it is from women. I hope the situation is better for men, but I'm not counting on it being much better.
A lot of people have to go through several doctors before they find one who listens and thinks. My impression is that about 20% are competent for non-obvious problems.
Being fat and having a problem which affects your energy level are major risk factors for not being heard.
If you decide to go the medical route, there are websites where people rate their doctors.
Pretty sure I've had some type of allegedly-comprehensive-but-cheap blood scan done, which didn't turn up anything interesting. Is there somewhere I go for a more comprehensive blood scan?
An idea would be finding your old scan and getting your blood checked again every 6 months to a year. That way you can see if anything is slowly changing.
From personal experience I know it can take several years of patient vigilance to solve some medical problems.
Ouch, you've really explored your options! I must admit I've only really looked at places to get blood tests in Melbourne.
It sounds like you didn't keep a copy of the scan results. If I you did have the results handy it would have been worth getting the guys at imminst.org to look at it. In the collective they seem to be an effective resource when it comes to identifying atypical yet not life threatening health issues.
What interests me in your case is whether you get the other benefits of exercise, particularly the neurological ones. Not losing weight from exercise is one thing but I wonder whether you still get the boost to neurogenesis and the increased resilience to stress that exercise provides.
How do you convince yourself to have self-confidence in a given situation, even in the face of direct empirical evidence that such confidence would be misplaced in that situation?
This seems to be a thing that many successful people are very good at - shrugging and acting like they're good at whatever task is at hand, even when they're clearly not - and then getting people to "buy in" to them because of that confidence rather than because of any evidence of actual skilled performance.
How do you kickstart that process?
(EDIT: was this a bad question to ask?)
Doing a wide range of tasks I'm not familiar with, and learning them well and quickly, has done wonders for my ability to just say, 'Fuck it, I'm me and I can do whatever I'm paid to. I've done stuff I didn't know how to do before.'
It also helps to know what the complexity of the task is have little self-affirming narratives - if you know that people who you don't consider smarter than yourself have done something, and have some idea about stacked complexity, then it becomes a lot easier to say something like "This really isn't that complicated, I just don't know how to do it yet, but that guy does it and he's an idiot - and he probably didn't spend years really learning it."
If you can draw parallels with what you already know, that can help too.
Think how you would perform the role of a self-confident character when acting in a play?
I guess... I'm not sure how well I can visualize the answer to that. I can visualize self-confident characters in plays, I just can't visualize being one; as soon as I imagine me as the actor, imagining self-confidence immediately breaks suspension of disbelief. (Like imagining Danny DeVito as a leading man in a straightforward, non-subversive romcom).
Screw suspension of disbelief. You're really into theater now, you want to figure out all about how acting works, and so you want to learn out how to do all sorts of characters to develop a good range, no matter if you're actually good for casting into one or not. So now you're trying to figure how to do the confident self-affirmed character, starting from the nuts and bolts. Figure out how they use their voice, how they move themselves, what body language and stereotypical interactions they use in various stock situations and so on. You're not being in a social situation yourself here, you're figuring out the mechanics for making a theater scene come together, with yourself as one part of it.
Also maybe look into some actual books on improv theater that have been recommended here occasionally?
Hmm. My emotional reactions as I attempt to push myself towards doing this seem to indicate that I don't actually want to learn these things - or at the very least, that I anticipate that trying to learn these things will be unsuccessful and embarrassing.
Something I am baffled at is how to quote a post on this website so that a vertical line segment appears to the left of the quoted text. I have a guess, but I don't want to clunky failed HTML attempt show up.
This crosses over with the textbook thread.
May I recommend: Making Faces and Face Forward by Kevyn Aucoin. Anyone who thinks they might have cause to wear makeup and want to do it well will delight in these. I encountered them via my high-goth girlfriend of the time and later gave them as presents to my current girlfriend's teenage daughters.
It might be a little thing, but these are the books for the task.
the procedure here is how to consistently feel better after a few weeks (vs typical lazy cheap diets)
breakfast, buy:
dump together in bowl and eat. if you don't feel hungry in the morning just do a very small serving at first.
lunch: whatever, avoid sugar/white bread
dinner, buy :
boil, then simmer 20 minutes
yes, this procedure can be improved upon. the advantage of this one is low activation cost as it is about as difficult as the regular bachelor diet of instant foods. if you're trying to eat healthier but can't find the motivation this is a decent compromise.
major thing to avoid besides the obvious: fruit juice and fruit flavored anything. you're subverting your body's desire for actual fruit. fruit juice is no better for you than soda.
I'm guessing this is mostly preaching to the choir here, but if this helps one person it was worth the 5 minutes.
It certainly helps me. I'll probably add that breakfast plan to my diet. The dinner looks like it could use some chicken or beef.
alternatively you can add half a bouillon cube to increase satiety. it doesn't "need" meat in the nutrition sense.
A significant fraction of the population will IMHO feel even better by avoiding all gluten, including of course the pasta in the Rice-a-Roni.
In addition to "Learn to touch-type. Learn to type with ten fingers.":
I am often amazed and astonished that people do not know how to operate the search engine of their choice properly and thus fail to find their desired information. It is your main internet-information retrival-tool, make yourself familiar with its advanced possibilitys, also know as operators. e.g. for google, see this chart: http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators_reference.html
I found most useful (for google) the following ones:
Quotationmarks around a phrase, e.g. "less wrong" searches for the exact phrase.
the "site:address phrase" command searches for your phrase only on the specified site, e.g. site:lesswrong.com "nuclear plant"
the exclude-command "-" (minus) excludes one word from your results: rationality -rand
Nice link. I'd been thinking a-b was the same as "a b" all these years. For the record, it means ("ab" or "a-b" or "a b").
How does a heterosexual male begin a long-term romantic relationship with a heterosexual female? Be sure to cover such issues as pre-requisites and how to indicate what intentions and when.
[For balance, others can post the dual (which is not necessarily the same) question for the other categories of people.]
There are a million ways to start, but this is the most formalizable method I have used.
You have to put yourself in environments where you'll be able to interact with a lot of women. College is in a lot of ways set up perfectly for this: if you're not in college right now, consider joining a class or an activity group. Try to make it one where the gender balance will be in your favor. Book groups are one example--they're wildly tilted towards women (I suspect men just, you know, read books, and don't tend to see the value in sitting around sipping coffee and talking about reading books). But if you like girls who wear glasses, try finding a congenial book group. You'll probably be the only man.
Even better than book groups, though, are dance classes. Swing and rockabilly aren't super trendy anymore, but the scenes still exist in a quieter way, and these classes are great for single men: a) they're filled mostly with women; b) dance is an inherently flirtatious activity, and the physical leading/following dynamic is one that many women find very sexy; c) even if you don't find a date in that class, you'll have learned an attractive skill, and you'll be able to participate in events that will introduce you to more women; and d) physical exercise is good for building both confidence and sexiness. Yoga classes might work too, or if you can find a martial arts practice that attracts significant numbers of women (maybe check out your local aikido classes?).
The SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) is also a surprisingly good choice for geeks who want to hook up. Wearing princess dresses is enough of a draw for women that the gender balance, while tilted towards men, isn't too awful, and so many relationships get started in the context of SCA events that there's a joke about it. (The joke is that "SCA" actually stands for "Society for Consenting Adults.")
There are of course singles bars or activities like speed-dating that are specifically designed to let you meet single women, so you could try those too. A lot of people find those environments stressful and frustrating, which is why I'd suggest finding a social scene that is not specifically about dating.
Lastly, let all your friends know that you're interested in meeting women. Ask to be introduced to their friends who are single. This is how people used to meet each other and it is still an important avenue to keep open.
You have to ask women out on dates. This part, I know, is hard, and I'm sorry to admit that many women don't even understand how hard it is. You will be rejected and it will suck every time, but this part is a numbers game. You just have to keep doing it until you find the girl who says "yes."
The pre-reqs for asking a girl out are fewer than you might think. It's best if you have already been introduced and have interacted a bit in a friendly manner. When I say a bit, I really mean just that you've spoken a few times. It is far, far more common for geek guys to err wildly in the opposite direction. Don't do this. If you like her, ask her out, and make your intentions unambiguous. The sooner the better.
If you're following my advice and meeting girls in activity classes, you would do this by approaching her just after one of the classes, maybe as she's getting her things together or as she's heading out the door. Make eye contact and smile. Start with a compliment that references the interactions you've had--"Hey, I've really been enjoying dancing with you [or "sparring with you," or, "I really liked what you said about the book"] and I wonder if I could take you out to a movie next week."
Be really clear about the fact that you're asking her for a date. Try not to say something like "I wonder if you'd like to meet for coffee and talk " because she could interpret this as merely a friendly gesture on your part, and you don't want that. A lot of inexperienced guys think they should establish a friendship before they ask a girl out, but you really don't want to sink a lot of time and energy into a girl who is never going to see you "like that." (It is true that established friendships can make a wonderful basis for romance, but never, ever count on that happening.)
Also, propose a specific activity and a specific time. Don't just say "I wonder if you'd go out with me some time" because a) it sounds a little desperate and b) a lot of women have trouble saying "no" directly (we're socialized not to). Leave her a face-saving way to refuse. If she says "I'd love to but I've been really busy with work/school/life recently," that means no. Move on. (If, on the other hand, she says "I'm going to Guatemala next week, but I'll be back by the end of the month, maybe then?" that means yes.)
Dealing with rejection: When you are rejected, try to be gracious about it, even if she is not. Like I said above, a lot of women truly do not understand how much gumption it takes to put yourself out there by making a pass. If she seems annoyed or condescending or whatever, try to shrug it off; just smile and say "okay, no problem" or something along those lines. Do the same thing if she says "I'd rather just be friends." (But for the love of Pete, do not spend a lot of effort trying to actually cultivate a friendship. Moooooove on.)
It does get easier the more you do it. Just remind yourself that it is a numbers game. The worst thing that can happen is not that you ask ten girls out and they all say no. The worst thing is that you ask ten girls, they say no, and then you stop asking. Because whether it was Girl #11 or Girl #83 who would've fallen head over heels for you, you'll never find her now. Keep looking to meet women, and keep asking them out; these are the two steps that lead to relationships.
Troubleshooting: If you do find that you are consistently rejected, there might be something going on with your self-presentation that is offputting to women. Make sure your basic hygiene is good: that you are wearing clean clothes that fit you, that your hair is cut and that you are clean-shaven. (Facial hair is Advanced Fashion for Men: if fashion is not your ballgame, just shave, trust me.) Ask your friends if there's anything going on with your looks or demeanor that might be getting in your way.
If you are overweight, start an exercise regimen, but do not wait until you are at your ideal weight to start asking women on dates. It is perfectly possible for big dudes to find love, they do it all the time. It IS more important to make sure that you wear flattering clothing that fits you well--a baggy, threadbare tee-shirt and Hawaiian shorts may not cut it. Use Google Images to find pictures of some of the heavier celebrities (like Sean Astin, or Seth Rogan before he slimmed down). Check out what they are/were wearing, and use those pictures as a style guide.
You may also be acting in ways that indicate you don't value yourself, which can make women (and other people in general) instinctively shy away. You will probably need the help of people who actually know you to diagnose these kinds of problems and help you fix them.
In general, though, from my observations, most geek guys are able to get dates so long as they go where the women are, and ask them out. The most common mistake by far is simply failing to execute one or both of these crucial steps.
I think dates are... well... dated. Maybe they still do them in the US Heartland, but on the coasts people just hook up.
This is excellent advice, and I up-voted it. However:
I may just be reading too much into things, and I acknowledge that this comment is written primarily as a response to the question "how to get into a relationship". Nevertheless, this bit bothers me a bit, as the "for the love of, don't try to actually cultivate a friendship" part seems to imply that there's no point in being friends with women if you're not going to have a relationship with them. That strikes me as a bit offensive.
Even if we're assuming that you're purpose is solely to get women, I don't think befriending lots of them is as useless as you seem to suggest. You say yourself that one's friends may introduce one to somebody one might be interested in. People tend to have more same-sex friends than opposite-sex friends, so being friends with lots of women will increase your chances of one of them introducing you to a friend of theirs. I also suspect that women are more likely than men to do this.
I do admit that this may not be the most efficient approach if you're optimizing purely for finding a romantic relationship in minimum time. But on the other hand, it can wield you rewarding friendships that persist long after the end of your relationship with whoever it was you eventually found, so personally I'd find it worth it.
I should also mention that my experience somewhat mirrors MBlume's, and I find the notion of becoming involved with someone before being good friends with them a little off-putting. Which is not to say that it would never have happened to me, though. (Without going to details, suffice to say that I've both had relationships with women I was friends with from before, and with women where that wasn't the case.)
sark hit upon a good point here: think of meeting many women as a special case of meeting many people.
How good are you at generally meeting people? Improve that and you'll meet more of the half of them you're interested in. General social skills are good to exercise.
This is not strictly true from my experience. I've had three girlfriends thus far and in all three cases, we were basically just friends who eventually realized we wanted to date one another. Of course, all three were also housemates, so I may be an odd case.
I've tried the "ask women out on dates" approach from time to time, but keep coming back to the impression that I'm the sort of person who just slides into romantic relationships with friends, and that if I want more romantic relationships, I need to make my social circle -- not my circle of acquaintances, but my circle of folks I see on a daily basis -- more generally co-ed (kind of a problem since it's mostly folks I know from Singinst/Less Wrong these days).
Or become bisexual. If anyone posted a procedural comment on how to become bisexual, I would upvote it immediately =)
I strongly prefer heterosexuality on aesthetic grounds. I wonder how common that is.
Beware that if you manage to become bisexual somehow, this can significantly damage a man's prospects with many women. For a huge percentage of women, bisexual men are not as attractive (manly) as strictly heterosexual men.
You don't have to tell them that...
I didn't select my friends from (a conservative Christian) college for lgbt-friendliness or non-conformist dating styles or really anything at all, besides maybe an enjoyment of genre television or some connection to friends I already had. And yet it turned out that at least a third of the women in my social circle share my love of hot bi guys and m/m in general. Also, m/m fanservice for the benefit of female fans seems to be rather a common thing for hot young male celebrities to do in certain cultures, such as Japan.
I've found that just meeting more people solves this one nicely. The percentage difference is not overwhelming, and you really won't want those people anyway.
Nobody is required to signal their sexual preferences far and wide. That is personal information, to be revealed if and when you deem it appropriate or beneficial. This means that becoming bisexual merely gives you more options, without interfering with your existing options unless you choose to let it change your signalling strategy. That said, humans are notoriously bad at making decisions when burdened with extra choices!
Also, a lot depends on whether the people I am approaching for dates share a social community.
If they do, then if I want to keep control over who becomes aware of my sexual preferences, I need to expend additional effort to prevent that information from traveling through that community... that is, it stops being "private" and starts being "secret."
This is otherwise known as "being in the closet" in some communities.
Fortunately it is a closet full of beautiful women who you find highly attractive. Such a better closet to be in than the one homosexuals have had to hide themselves in at times. :)
Sure, given a choice between having to keep all of my sexual attractions secret, and only having to keep half of them secret, the latter is far better. Agreed.
Of course, even better is to not have to keep any of them secret, and to instead be able to reveal whatever information about my sexual preferences I choose to reveal without fear of negative consequences.
All of that said: perhaps I've lost track of context.
MBlume's parent comment framed bisexuality as an improvement, and lukeprog warned that there were costs to it. You countered that those costs can be averted by keeping one's bisexuality secret. But that seems to completely subvert MBlume's original point... if I'm in the closet about being bisexual, how is that an improvement over being heterosexual?
It seems the choice is, instead, between having your attraction and sexual appreciation mechanism biologically crippled so as to halve the potential partners or to give yourself the option of specialising your signalling as to optimise your chances within a specific target niche or of seeking more diverse experience.
Neutral returns as a worst case makes the point a good one. :)
Well, in my own life, the additional option of living in a social context in which honest signaling about gender-selection with respect to attraction and sexual appreciation doesn't have especially negative consequences became available, and that has worked pretty well for me.
I've lived the "specializing my signaling" lifestyle before; I don't prefer it. The returns of such signal-specialization can be worse than neutral in some cases.
But if it works for you, that's great.
You don't have to be in the closet with everyone. Just treat it as something personal that you only tell people once you know them and trust them enough, and you've gauged their reaction to casual mentions of bisexuality.
Agreed that avoiding keeping just most people from knowing about my relationship preferences isn't as difficult as keeping everyone from knowing about them.
Of course, as above, even better is to be able to reveal whatever information about my relationship preferences I choose to reveal without fear of negative consequences.
I have heard from some people that having a reputation as bisexual has increased their prospects with women. I suspect this is dependent on location, social circle, and attractiveness.
It may also be that a large percentage of women are no longer interested, but enough of the women that remain are significantly more interested- and so you go from, say, 20 women who might date you to 10 women who might date you, of whom 2 want to. Overall prospects down, but easy prospects up.
(I will comment, though, that this probably has to do way more with the masculine/feminine balance of the people in question than their sexual history or orientation.)
For the foreseeable future, I'm going to be exclusively dating poly or poly-friendly girls anyway. I don't think being bi would hurt me within that subpopulation -- does that seem wrong?
(One data point: my girlfriend has only-half-jokingly claimed that if I really want to make her happy, I ought to make out with one of my male friends and send her photos)
I actually know a girl who succeeded in getting male friends of hers to pose for that kind of picture.
I suspect it would be trivial to do so in most modern US college-type situations.
It won't hurt in any way. The pure heterosexual or pure homosexual are slightly odd in most poly scenes.
And everyone knows about straight guys kissing to get the chicks ...
Don't do it!!!!
She definitely wants to have something she can blackmail you with if the need arises!
I'm trying to picture this scenario and can't stop laughing =P.
He can only be blackmailed with such photos if he would mind having them displayed to some third party.
I do not get how making out with a male is considered a blackmail worthy offense.
Well, it would likely prevent a guy from running for political office or becoming a CEO of a major corporation, for instance. Or at least make it very difficult. There are only a few openly gay politicians, and even then they have to fit certain social ideals.
Okay, I cross that off then. How about naturism? In east Germany its a trivial part of the culture. In the US it seems to be a highly stigmatized lifestyle.
I'm already quite publicly a polyamorous sex-positive atheist, I'm not running for political office any time soon
But he might benefit from having her think she's blackmailing him.
No such luck -- I've already e-mailed her this thread.
Indeed.
...that's all I can really think of.
Within the nearby cluster in personspace: I think Robin Lee Powell has said that he chose to become bisexual, if you want to ask him to elaborate on that process. :)
(I've gotten a bit more bisexual over time, and I occasionally wonder if I actually pushed myself in that direction (since I remember wishing that I could be, as early as 14 or 15), or if that's just the direction I was drifting in anyway and I happened to be open to it in advance. But it's probably hard to tell in retrospect.)
The way to become bisexual is to regularly extend your exposure to erotic stimuli just a little further than your comfort zone extends in that direction. I'll use drawn pictorial porn as an example erotic stimulus, but adapt to whatever you prefer: start with Bridget. Everyone is gay for Bridget. Once you're comfortable with Bridget, move on to futanari-on-female erotica, male-on-futanari, then futanari-on-male, paying attention to your comfort levels. You'll run across some bizarre things while searching for this stuff; if any of it interests you, just go with it.
By now, you should be fairly comfortable with the plumbing involved, so it's just the somatically male body you need to learn to find attractive. Find art featuring bishounen types, then pairing them with other male body types, and pay attention to what feels most comfortable.
It may take a while to go through this process, but I believe it's entirely achievable for most people who don't view heterosexuality as a terminal value.
I suspect how well this works probably depends on exactly how hetero- or homosexual one was from the beginning. (I'm basing that on personal experience with regard to both bisexuality and various fetishes.)
Instead of a strict straight/bi/gay split, I prefer to think of it as a spectrum where 0 is completely straight, 5 is completely bisexual and 10 is completely gay. I'm guessing it's possible for you to shift yourself a couple of points towards the middle of the spectrum, but not an arbitrary amount. E.g. if you started off at 0 you might shift yourself to 2, or if you started off at 8 you could shift yourself to 6.
I'd also note that there's a difference between sexual attraction and emotional compatibility. I'm rather mildly bisexual and using these techniques, could probably become a bit more so. But my main issue with pursuing same-sex relationships is not the sexual attraction as such, but the fact that I find it a lot easier to relate and connect to women on an emotional level. These techniques probably wouldn't help in that.
I would be surprised if the kinds of gradual-exposure techniques khafra endorses here for making same-sex partners more erotically compatible didn't work equally well (or poorly) for making them emotionally compatible.
Of course, in that case you wouldn't want to use erotic stimuli.
I'm not exactly sure what stimuli you would use, because I'm not exactly sure what you mean by relating and connecting to people on an emotional level... but whatever it is, I suspect you could test khafra's approach by identifying specific activities that qualify, and then looking for the closest thing to that activity involving men that you find easy, and attending to that thing.
Let me stress here, though, that I'm not asserting you ought to change anything. There's nothing wrong with being heterosexual, and there's no reason you should feel like your heterosexuality diminishes you in any way.
Hah! You're trying to squish two axes into one axis. Why not just have an "attraction to males" axis and an "attraction to females" axis? After all, it is possible for both to be zero or negative.
I would say there are more than two axes which could be meaningfully considered, here. Male and female body types, personalities, and genitals can exist in a variety of combinations, and any given combination can (in principle) be considered sexy or repulsive separate from the others. For example, there are those who prefer [feminine/curvy/penis] having sex with [masculine/buff/vagina] over all other thus-far-imagined pairings.
In a similar spirit, many discussions of sexuality separate "attraction" from "identity" from "experience" onto different axes to get at the differences between a man who is occasionally attracted to men but identifies as straight, vs. a man who is equally often attracted to men but identifies as bi, or various other possible combinations.
Something related is common in the asexual community: Many asexuals identify as hetero/homo/bi/pan/a-romantic. I could certainly see someone being hetero- or homosexual and bi- or pan-romantic, or bi- or pansexual and hetero- or homo-romantic.
An excellent point.
Dimension reduction is not automatically an illegitimate move. That said, I grant that in this case it's worthwhile to keep at least two axes.
By this metric, I started at a zero (unable to find other males sexually attractive,) and ended at a zero. My attempts to influence myself to have a sexual interest in men achieved null results.
I have no problem finding other men attractive, but they're still about as sexually appealing to me as plants.
The Bisexual Conspiracy commends your insidious efforts at propagating memes advantageous to us and has sent you several HBBs of assorted gender orientations by overnight delivery.
Lots of good advice here.
One change I'd make is that, imo, a movie makes a poor first date. Do something fun and active where talking is possible, instead.
Agreed!
Can you suggest any specific good first-date activities?
Depends on your interests. Can be as simple as grabbing a cup of coffee. Could be going for a walk on the beach. Take some sandwiches and go hiking. Pick a shared interest and enjoy it - go to an art gallery, or go ice-skating. Something active is good - and/or something where you get to sit down and chat...
This can backfire if you live in a small town.
800+ comments now. I think you may have been right that lots of people have basic procedural gaps that need addressing, Alicorn... :)
I'm kind of weirded out by the fact that a three-paragraph post originally put in Discussion that took me ten minutes to write is now my most upvoted post of all time.
It's like the joke about the mechanic who fixes a car's engine by hitting it once with a hammer. He charges the owner $200 and the guy complains: "All you did was hit the engine with a hammer, I'm not paying $200 for that." So the mechanic gives him an itemized bill: Hitting the engine with a hammer, $5; Knowing where to hit it: $195.
You identified a need and acted on it. Well done. You probably do net get to choose where you make the biggest impact.
PS: my most voted comment used to be just one word
Unlike some of the more abstruse topics, this one is likely of at least some interest/value to nearly everyone reading the site...
It's more that this is just a good way to start interesting conversations, I think.
This should probably be turned into a quarterly (monthly?) thread.
There are a number of web sites that present such implicit and procedural knowledge. such as: http://www.ehow.com/ http://www.wikihow.com/Main-Page http://www.howcast.com/ http://www.howtodothings.com/
I might be useful to somehow select the most generally useful ones of these in one place.
I haven't come across any of them except eHow. eHow is awful. Useless. Bad. I have ended up there unwittingly from google searches a half dozen times or so. Not once has it answered what I wanted to know. The information on their site is optimised to be written as quickly as possible while getting the best google rank possible, with no thought as to quality of information.
Huh. I use eHow and WikiHow all the time, and always find it incredibly useful.
Regarding investment, my suggestion (if you work in the US) is to open a basic (because it doesn't periodically charge you fees) E*TRADE account here. They will provide an interface for buying and selling shares of stocks and various other things (ETFs and such; I mention stocks and ETFs because those are the only things I've tried doing anything with). They will charge you $10 for every transaction you make, so unless you're going to be (or become) active/clever enough to make it worthwhile, it makes sense not to trade too frequently.
EDIT: These guys appear to charge less, though they also deal in fewer things (e.g. no bonds).
Scottrade is another well known company that provides the same services. They only charge $7 dollars per transaction (more more for penny stocks). I've had very positive experience with them.
One thing to keep in mind is that doing stock trading will make your taxes more complicated and more expensive to fill out.
I believe there should be a subject in school (and text books to go with it) that goes through all the things that adult citizens should know. I believe this was part of what was called Civics but that is dead or changed to something else. The idea is somewhat dated but it included things like how to vote, how to read a train schedule, that different types of insurance actually were, simple first aid, how to find a book in a library and all sorts of things like that. Today it would be a slightly different list. Somewhere between 10 and 14 seems the ideal age to be interested and learn these sort of things.
Civics, at least in my area of the United States, is mainly education about government and ethics. I do believe they may discuss how to vote and other information that would be useful to the democratic process, but nothing like going onto trains. (Although in the United States, this could only ever discuss the subway, and only in certain metropolitan areas - culturally, the elegant train is dead here, which is sad, since I've had much more positive travel experiences on trains than planes.)
An incidental note: lack of these sorts of skills can also create ugh fields around the subjects or surrounding subjects.
Please, please, please, I beg you:
Learn to touch-type. Learn to type with ten fingers.
Computer programs and websites to do this abound. If you find one that's horrible to use, find another. But persist until you do.
I am appalled at how many people I know who use computers typing for hours a day, and never learned how to drive a keyboard. They insist they're just as fast as they would be touch-typing (they're not), and then complain of sore fingers from doing weird stuff to adapt to their inability to type properly.
Anyone reading this site uses computers enough they should know how to type. I would estimate (based on my geeky friends I've seen at a keyboard) less than 20% of you can touch-type properly.
Set up your desk, chair etc per the handy how-to-avoid-RSI diagrams that one can hardly get away from in any setting. Then LEARN HOW TO TYPE. And don't make an excuse for why you're a special snowflake who doesn't need to.
By the way, when I discovered IRC big time (1996), it took my speed from 60wpm to 90wpm. Complete sentences, they're your friend.
My daughter is three and a half. She is already more skilled with the computers at nursery than the staff are. (Can get from the CBeebies games to watching Octonauts on the iPlayer in the blink of an eye!) I'm going to make sure she learns to type properly as soon as possible after she learns to read, dexterity allowing.
I might be the snowflake here. Every time I tried to learn 10 finger I got bored and broke off. But I developed a reasonably high speed anyway. A few years ago I started using Neo which is just awesome, but optimized for German. (Still it has some features Colemak and Dvorak are missing, maybe someone likes to dig into this and prepare an engl. version.)
After that I basically had to relearn typing, and did so the same way. My current type speed maxes somewhere at 400CPM which is way more than I actually need.
The OP has a great point. Learn your tools! In case of the computer that includes to use keyboard shortcuts and optimize commonly done activities.
This seems like dogmatic adherence to tradition. Is there actually evidence that the traditional method of touch typing, where each finger is assigned a keyboard column and returns to the "Home Row" after striking a key, is at all faster, more efficient, or ergonomically sound than just typing intuitively?
I ask because I type intuitively with ten fingers. I know where all the keys are, and I don't see the need to return each finger to the home row after every single keystroke, which seems inefficient. If I type a common sequence like "er" or "th," I do it with a single flick of the hand, not four separate ones.
Also, I cover a much larger portion of the keyboard with my right hand than my left, because it's stronger and more natural for me than assigning each finger the exact same amount of keyboard real estate.
Then you're fine. Two-fingered typing is the curse that we must quash. (But I don't speak for David.)
<blockquote>If I type a common sequence like "er" or "th," I do it with a single flick of the hand, not four separate ones.</blockquote> Skilled touch typists certainly don't make four separate motions to type "er" or "th". Keyboards are specifically designed to accept multiple keys being pressed at the same time, because a skilled typist naturally presses the next key before they have finished the motion for the previous one. Nearly all keyboards will accept two simultaneous keypresses, with higher-quality ones accepting 3, 4, or arbitrary numbers of simultaneous keystrokes.
To be specific, typing "er" involves lifting my hand upwards, hitting "e" and "r" with my middle and pointer fingers in quick succession, and then dropping my hand back down. Typing "th" involves lifting my left hand at the same time as I shift my right hand slightly leftwards, and striking the "t" slightly before striking the "h" (though I often transpose the two actions and end up typing "hte" or "htat").
Upvoting this did not seem adequate.
I would also like to tentatively suggest an optimized keyboard layout such as Dvorak or Colemak, since the inconvenience is minimal if you're starting from scratch, and there seems to be anecdotal evidence that they improve comfort and lessen RSIs in the long run, but if fretting about what layout to use causes you to procrastinate for even one day on learning to type already then you should forget I said anything.
Getting people to learn to type will be, however :-D
HOW THE HELL DO 80% OF THE COMPUTER-MAINLINING GEEKS I KNOW NOT KNOW HOW TO TYPE. HOW DO THEY NOT KNOW HOW TO USE THEIR PRIMARY MODE OF HUMAN INTERACTION. Figuring that out will be a study in human cognitive biases, for sure.
Yeah, there's a reason i didn't mention Dvorak or whatever ;-) So as not to put another "thing to do first" in the way. I know in person nobody at all who actually uses Dvorak. I can't think of any Dvorak users amongst online friends I haven't seen typing. (Perhaps there are some and they've just never said anything.)
I've always been amused by the "magic feather" nature of my typing.
I don't touch type. I ask my brain about this, and it reports without hesitation that I don't touch type. Honest. Never have.
That said, I am perfectly capable of typing at a respectable clip without looking at the keyboard, with my fingers hovering more-or-less above the home row. I get screwy when I go after unusual punctuation keys or numbers, but when it comes to letters and commas and so forth, it works fine.
For several years, this only worked when I didn't notice it was working... that is, when I became sufficiently absorbed in what I was doing that I just typed. This became clear to me when a coworker commented "Oh, hey, I didn't know you could touch-type" and suddenly I couldn't.
It has become less fragile since then... I am typing this right now without looking at the keyboard, for example.
But my brain remains fairly certain that I don't touchtype.
(shrug)
I learned only a little while ago that I don't type, I dance. Words are regular, common movements... maybe like the finger movements of an incantation. Kinda cool.
I'm learning to touch type at the moment using some of the information on here.
Currently I am practising with the key board covered using the lessons here. Will post my results as I go on.
The thing that really worked for me was that I was writing a fanzine at the time (1990), so had plenty of stuff I had to type. So I learnt all the keys, was at 20wpm which was slightly less than the 23-25wpm I could do two-fingered, and went ahead typing actual stuff I had to type properly with ten fingers.
tl;dr Have actual stuff to type, use your new skill.
If you are reading this and want some typing practise:
http://www2.ie.popcap.com/games/free/typershark
It's a "sharks are going to eat you, type the word on the side of them to kill them, get more, faster sharks and longer words as you progress" game.
Too bad it needs Java.
Until about a year ago I couldn't touch-type either. I fixed it painlessly by removing my keyboard's keys and reinserting them in random positions.
This would only help you if you already know more-or-less where the keys are, but you're too lazy to go a bit further and type without looking at the keyboard. It works because looking at the keyboard no longer helps, and you have to keep your fingers on the home keys to keep your sense of where the keys are.
If you manage to memorize the new letter arrangement, just rerearrange.
http://www.daskeyboard.com/model-s-ultimate/
I find typing an entire sentence with my eyes closed is one of the best ways to develop good typing skills. It's really weird feeling myself correcting typos before I can svn see them. It also penalizes errors a lot more, and thus encourages a "get it right the first time" style of typing, instead of my usual "make mistakes and fix them" style.
(Typed the preceding paragraph blind. "svn" is a typo for "even", and I was only aware I screwed it up ^^)
It's also a fun "party trick" - I like to creep out co-workers by turning to listen to them and continuing to type :)
After having about 50 different housemates, I'm shocked by how few people have basic home-maintenance knowledge. Things like:
(Or replaced with our lifetime stay sharp guarantee!)
No.
Those are not called "knives", those are called "saws".
We (family) got some knives at marriage, and just sort of puttered along. Then I bought her some "good" knives, which arrived fairly sharp.
Oh. My. Sourdough bread in SLICES instead of ragged hunks.
Then we used them for a couple years, and I realized that since these were low-end "chef quality" knives (I'm not a chef. I don't much care about cooking, and I don't talk shop with real chefs, so that may not be an accurate statement, but the reviews I read indicated that these were as good as MUCH more expensive knives except in maybe the quality of the handle), that maybe we should get them sharpened, so I found a place in STL that had a knife sharpening service for local restaurants and went there.
They refused to even consider sharpening our steak knives. The guy called them "cheap junk". So we bought some of of the same brand as our other knives (basically the cheapest he had in stock). (Victorinox "Fibrox")
Oh. My. Steak is SO much easier to deal with now. Bread (on the rare occasions we have it ) cuts cleanly. Tomatoes and oranges can can be sliced as thin as you want. Limes for your gin/vodka? Clean cuts.
Knives are tools. Tools need maintenance or replacement.
Washers and dryers really need to come with more thorough instructions printed on them, for people who don't know anything about clothes. It would be nice to know what the different settings actually meant practically.
Many articles of clothing have instructions like that on their tags, along the line of "machine wash warm with like colors, tumble dry low". This doesn't help someone figure out things like 'red and blue are not 'like colors' but blue and yellow can be' or what to do with a red-and-blue striped shirt, but it's a start.
I don't know if anyone can help me with this, but how do I tell the difference between flirting and friendliness? I grew up in pretty much total social isolation from peers, so neither really ever happened, and when they happen now I can't tell which is which. Also, how do you go from talking to someone at the beginning/end of class (or other activity) to actually being the kind of friends who see each other elsewhere and do activities together?
Edit: Thank you, this is good advice. Does anyone have any advice on how to tell with women? I'm bi, and more interested in women, and they are much harder to read than men on the subject, because women's behavior with female friends is often fairly flirty to begin with.
You'll feel more uneasy when someone's flirting.
I'm very late to this party, but:
Correctly ascertaining others' internal state and responding accordingly is a NEWT-level social skill. It is (at least usually) easier to ascertain your own internal state, specifically as it relates to the particular behaviors of the maybe-flirter, and respond accordingly. Here is how this breaks down for me:
"They might be flirting and I like it":
-> And they are flirting: continue whatever I was doing, remembering that flirting is no guarantee of any particular outcome
-> And they are not: same (such should be the conviction that flirting is no guarantee of any particular outcome.)
"They might be flirting and I don't like it":
-> And they are flirting: Excuse myself from the situation; ask them to modify behavior if it recurs (or avoid them)
-> And they are not flirting: Their take on acceptable platonic interaction makes me uncomfortable, so again excuse/ask/avoid.
So, conveniently, it doesn't matter!
Of course, it's generally a fine idea to just ask, too, remembering that the given response may not be completely reliable. :)
There often is not any difference at all between flirting and friendliness. People vary very much in their ways. And yet we are supposed to easily tell the difference, with threat of imprisonment for failing.
The main effects I have seen and experienced, is that flirting typically involve more eye contact, and that a lot of people flirt while denying they do it, and refusing to to tell what they would do if they really flirted, and disparaging others for not knowing the difference.
My experience is also that ordinary people are much more direct and clear in the difference between flirting and friendship, while academic people muddle it.
LW makes frequent reference to coming to above average decisions with some kind of market.
And this market can be used to find right answers, the right calibrations between group values, something like this?
Where can I find information on this, or how does it work?
The favourite local writer on this is Robin Hanson, but the general idea has a big literature: the name to search for is "prediction market".
This should really be a recurring (or otherwise highly visible) thread.
Much-belated edit: Here
"I am beginning to suspect that it is surprisingly common for intelligent, competent adults to somehow make it through the world for a few decades while missing some ordinary skill, like mailing a physical letter, folding a fitted sheet, depositing a check, or reading a bus schedule. "
I need to learn almost all of that...and several other things.
How would someone in El Salvador legally move to Canada in no more than 3-4 years? How much money would that take and how does one find a job?
I tried looking at the newspaper for one but nearly all of it was either terrible or requires something I don't have (like X years of previous experience or being 25-30 years old. Some ads even looked for people of a certain gender for some reason.
There is a skill for folding fitted sheets? Damn. That'd be handy.
Once you know it exists, you can think of what it should be, probably.
Hint: Znxr gur pbearef tb vagb rnpu bgure.
Scrubbing and attention Scrubbing, the follow-up.
Short version: I have problems with scrubbing effectively because I miss spots and have to iterate cleaning several times. There's various advice about scrubbing, of which using hotter water and not using the curly metal scrubbie seem to be the most immediately valuable. What I think of as an attention problem may be less serious than I thought-- I need to proofread what I write, so the same may apply to cleaning.
Plausible advice I haven't tried yet-- approach cleaning in 30 minute chunks so that a feeling of accomplishment/completion is possible.
How do I clean carpet floors? (I mean regular maintenance, but tips on removing particular kinds of stains also welcome.) I don't have a vacuum cleaner.
You borrow a vacuum cleaner.
You can get some sorts of debris (long hair, mostly) and the stuff that clings to it by shuffling around barefoot, or by hand, or with a rake.
Thanks! How do I borrow a vacuum cleaner? Context: I'm living in dorms for two weeks, most people are away on holiday, those who're still here are on completely different schedules from mine, there's no place clearly marked "Hang out and meet other humans here". And I don't even have an oven to bake conversation-opening cookies.
I looked into renting a vacuum cleaner, but that doesn't seem to exist.
If your dorm is like the ones I'm familiar with, there may be a shared cleaning supply closet from which your RA or similar can fetch you a vacuum that you are free to use. Failing that, you could put a sign on your door offering five euros for the use of a vacuum and see who knocks.
A HN regular just started a website that looks like a great match for this thread: http://cluedb.com.
Random presentation of clues implements the notoriously addictive variable ratio reinforcement schedule, as used by Farmville/WoW/etc. Potentially a big timewaster here.
This is another question that may lack a simple answer, and indeed there is a good chance that this is simply a wrong question in the first place.
Background: So going by LW and indeed much of the rest of the internet it seems that speaking to arbitrary strangers in public is in fact not in general considered creepy and unacceptable (which makes this a case where I would have done better with the typical mind heuristic, as opposed to what I guess is some sort of version of Postel's Law, as I am not myself in general creeped out when others approach me).
Now much has been said on this topic here already - I can't find the thread right now but I recall reading, e.g., don't do this in enclosed spaces if you're new to this (leave the other person a (literal) line of retreat). And how isn't something I think I have a problem with either, nor am I worried that I can't tell when people want me to go away.
What I am wondering is - well, regardless of the above, there do seem to be certain spaces which, though public, people have some expectation of privacy in. (I.e. they would consider other people approaching them creepy.) So what I am wondering is how can I distinguish those spaces with this expectation from those without. I have been basically erring on the side of caution by treating all public spaces as the former when I don't have good reason otherwise.
Of course I suspect this may be a wrong question because I'm not certain the suppositions I'm putting into it are correct; in particular I'm suspecting I may get the response "you need to learn to judge people, not spaces, better". But if it is in fact a wrong question any help in righting it would be appreciated.
Related - I originally thought of it as the same question, but now I realize it may not be - is the question of, in what spaces is it OK to simply butt in if I hear a bunch of people talking about something interesting? (Again this is something I currently don't do...) On the internet and at parties are two examples where this seems to be always OK, but I'm pretty certain this doesn't apply in general. I suspect this may also be a wrong question for reasons similar to above.
I spend a fair amount of my time off work either on public transportation or in coffee shops, and have found that how receptive people are to starting conversations varies widely within these settings.
On public transportation, there are observations one can make which can aid with determining whether someone is open to conversation. If they are already engaged in conversation with another passenger and appear either happy or lost, it is more often appropriate (people who are happy tend to have farther to go on their mood spectrum to get to creeped out or annoyed, as well as sometimes, as with the people I befriended a couple weeks ago, being in the mood to share their happiness with others, and people who are lost generally appreciate direction or at least a clarification of where they are on the map). A person confined to the seat next to you is less likely to be happy about a conversation, as they will feel they have less of an exit than, say, in a section where all seats face a middle aisle, meaning the area in which the conversation takes place is felt to be larger. In my experience, few people like to start conversations on their morning commute. So the important factors which determine whether it is appropriate to speak to someone on public transportation are time of day, physical position, and mood.
Coffee shops follow similar guidelines: it is often appropriate to chime in to existing conversations (as long as the conversation is not romantic or argumentative in nature). When a person might be forced by lack of seating to share your table, it is not appropriate to start a conversation if both of you have laptops, as you can be reasonably expected to be engaged with other people or projects. If the other person does not have a laptop or other electronic device with which they are engaged, it is generally appropriate to start a conversation.
I have found coffee shops environments where it is sometimes received well to butt in to interesting conversations. This has led to a few rebuffs, but also some highly interesting conversations. When people were gathered in the coffee shop for a purpose, such as a poetry reading, there was a significantly higher proportion of interesting conversations to rebuffs.
Public transit talkiness varies a lot by city. In Boston, it's minimal. I understand in other cities, conversation is much more normal.
It's my experience as a young woman that the only people who try to talk to me on public transit are men. If you're a man, know that young women you try to talk to are probably going to assume you're sketchy because they've been approached by so many other sketchy men before.
I veto talking to anyone who is reading. A possible exception might be if you've read what they're reading and ask their opinion of it, or similar.
An anecdote: I was once reading Prattchett in a trolley-bus, and the ticket seller, a young man, exclaimed 'Oh! You read Prattchett in the original!', and I was like, shit, he's after my book and said 'Yes,' in an uninviting voice, and he went on his way... ...and I still regret not taking the time to talk to him.:)
I have the same issue, and I personally think it's stupid (as in, in what way is talking to a stranger in public weird?). Thinking it's stupid doesn't make it much easier to overcome my own inhibitions about it, but it is somewhere to start.
I think tact is the key. Interrupt as politely as you can, and gauge their reactions when you do. If it is clear they are not interested in your input, then turn around and leave them alone. No harm, no foul. If you have something to contribute, though, and the individuals weren't specifically seeking a private conversation, then they will probably be interested in what you have to contribute.
This reminds me of a recent episode of the Ricky Gervais Show (basically Ricky and his friend make fun of another friend of theirs the whole time, funny but it gets old), where one of the hosts went swimming, noticed the guy in the lane next to him had an excellent front crawl (which the host has always struggled with) and asked the guy if he could give him some tips. Ricky's response was "Oh god, you didn't! Why would you do that?!" My thought the whole time was why in the world is that wrong? If the guy isn't interested he'll say no, and that will be it. If he is willing to help out a fellow swimmer then he will, and they may become friends over it. Where is the loss for anybody there?
I have a half dozen friends now that I wouldn't have if I hadn't done something very similar a couple years ago, at a swimming pool too, no less. I simply started talking to the lifeguard before and I after I swam. Not quite as out of the blue as the Gervais Show co-host, but it was similar.
Still, some people find it rude. I don't for the life of me understand why, except for when they are clearly having (or are attempting to have) a private conversation, or talking about a personal. Otherwise, where is the harm? And really, the risk for me personally is extremely low. So some stranger thinks I'm odd, so what? Most people are odd in some way, friendliness is far from the worst odd trait you could have.
Strangers are a potential threat. So when a stranger comes up to you and initiates a conversation, there's some reason to be on your guard.
This is combined with basic etiquette. If someone makes a small request, it is considered rude to refuse. The problem here is that creepy weird dangerous strangers can take advantage of this fact by making a small request, which then makes you feel obligated to comply. So now a complete stranger, who may be dangerous, has ensnared you. You're now doing something that he asked, instead of something that you want to do. And he can keep you dancing to his tune by making more small requests. So if you follow the rules of etiquette, a complete stranger, possibly dangerous, can monopolize you for a significant length of time.
I see this happen all the time with telemarketers. The phone will ring. Somebody will answer it. Then they'll be at the phone for a long time, maybe half a minute maybe a couple of minutes. And it turns out that it was a telemarketer, and the reason the person stayed at the phone for a long time was that he just couldn't think of a polite way to end the conversation. You go ahead and try it. If you try to disengage, the telemarketer has a scripted response ready which cancels your attempt.
For my part, I'm not trapped by telemarketers. But I simply hang up. I say "no thanks", and the telemarketer goes on to the corresponding point in his script, and I simply hang up on him while he's in the middle of a sentence. That's rude. But I do it, because there are no personal repercussions for me in doing it.
Being rude to a stranger face to face is not as easy to do. If you're rude to someone, they might get angry, and one thing might lead to another. So it's easy to hang up on telemarketers (for me, but importantly, not for everyone) but not so easy to "hang up" on a stranger right in front of you. For this reason, being approached by a stranger represents a more serious potential problem, a social trap that may be more difficult to get out of.
So what do you do? There are plenty of ways to initiate a conversation. One is to be already with somebody. If you're not alone, if you already have a conversational partner, and if you're deep in conversation with them, then you are obviously less in need of company, so the possibility that you might try to trap a stranger into a conversation is correspondingly reduced. Another method is to get the other person to initiate the exchange.
The thing to do with telemarketers, I have learned, is not to immediately hang up.
You just let them get to what they want to sell you, then say, loudly but politely and without a pause for them to butt in, something like "Let me stop you there, [name], I'm afraid I'm not interested, but thank you very much for calling." If they don't back down, THEN summarily hang up.
I prefer this to simply hanging up because doing the latter always makes me feel bad for several minutes afterward for having been rude to somebody who is, after all, trying to make a living.
No, it really is to hang up.
Your emotions seem to be doing both you and the telemarketers a disservice - perhaps due to an instinctive misunderstanding of what kind of social transaction is taking place. The telemarketer is not socially vulnerable and nor are you in a position where perception will have future consequences. They also don't WANT to have an extended positive interaction that has no chance of success. Wasting five minutes on a mark that has no chance of giving a commission is strictly worse than an instant hang up. Your instincts are right that they are "after all, just trying to make a living" and you are just getting in their way.
I'm not saying it is necessarily worth retraining your emotional attachments in this case. You seem to attach pride to the act of wasting telemarketer time and guilt to the act of hanging up. This, combined with assertiveness practice you get and the cost of retraining yourself may mean that it is better to stay in the behavioral local minima.
My own attitude is that time spent talking to me is time they aren't spending making a sale, so getting off the phone is the nicest thing I can do for them under the highly constrained circumstances. So as soon as I recognize them as telemarketers, I politely say "Sorry, but I'm really not interested; have a good day" and hang up, without waiting for them to do anything in particular.
Perhaps I should further specify just what sort of spaces I'm clear and unclear on. (All "maybe"s, "probably"s refer to my own uncertainty, of course - for simplicity I'm doing writing this as if I hadn't read any of the cousin posts yet.) The examples listed here are whatever I think of, mostly relevant ones but not all - I don't think there's a zoo anywhere around here and I haven't been to one in quite some time, but the example occurred to me while I was writing this so I threw it in. I expect I'm right about the things I'm certain of but should that not be the case corrections would be appreciated!
Definitely OK to approach people: "Private public spaces" - anywhere where a person you don't know can be assumed to be a friend of a friend - small parties, common rooms in dorms or co-op houses
OK to join existing conversations, maybe not OK to approach people initially: "Purposed public spaces" - anywhere where a person you don't know can be assumed to share a common interest - a common room in a school department building, e.g. Game stores probably fit here too. Also probably competitions of any sort.
Probably OK but currently avoided by me: Outside - on the street, on the quad, in the park. Here the location doesn't let you infer much of anything. (Unless something unusual is occurring, then clearly OK as people gather around it.)
???: Fast-food places or food courts. Non-quiet spaces where people go to get work done (but which are too general to fall under #2.) Zoos, museums, other similar places. Bookstores.
Probably not OK: Libraries.
Definitely not OK: Anywhere where you shouldn't be talking in the first place. Most restaurants.
Again, thanks! The sibling posts have already clarified things some.
I can't tell if people actually don't care or if they are just oblivious, but I hate when people try to strike up a conversation while I'm using a public toilet. Bad when it's a urinal, worse when it's a stall. Maybe this falls under "spaces where people go to get work done"?
My suggestion: take a crash course in etiquette by going to another city nearby, and then spend a few days walking around asking questions, or inviting people to do stuff with you, etc. Condition yourself to get used to the occasional weird look, learn what you can get away with, and possibly make friends with people you would otherwise never meet. If all else fails, drive out of the city and pretend the entire thing never happened. Or you will get some amusing stories to share with me when you get back. How can you lose?
I am only partly joking, my social skills are so mediocre I have seriously considered doing exactly this at some point. I might throw in some speed dating as well for good measure.
I do this all the time, with fantastic results!
A current example is my temporary move to Boston/Cambridge. I've walked around asking random strangers questions such as "If you could live anywhere in Boston, where would you live?"
I've received great advice, and made a few friendships and event invites from doing so!
I endorse this advice wholeheartedly.
In the public space in question, are you more likely to find books or alcohol?
Pretty much any venue with alcohol is going to be a socially facilitating venue, whereas anywhere people take books is going to be a venue where they don't expect to be disturbed.
I recommend socializing in book stores, libraries and outside classrooms. It will not always be appropriate but you can learn what sort of people will open to talking with practice.
I'd agree with all these suggestions. A more discerning rule of thumb might be "are you more likely to find people consuming books or consuming alcohol?"
It's probably also reasonably safe to assume that the typical LWer would prefer to talk with someone over a revealed mutual interest, rather than talking to someone after deadening their selectivity with booze, so places that are about books, but not where people read them, are likely to be good haunts for talking to strangers.
Best yet, find the people consuming alcohol in the place where you find lots of books. They're bound to be up for a chat.
I have heard it suggested that the world would be a nicer place if there were bookstores in which one could simply order a beer, the same way one can today order a coffee.
(It should be noted that the 'order a coffee' thing is only a decade or two old.)
If, as it sounds, you would learn from any mistakes, and if you're somewhere populous enough that a randomly selected person's opinion of you doesn't matter, I doubt that imposing this restriction on yourself is right, or benefits others more than it costs you. You're allowed to briefly creep people out by mistake in order to learn useful things and reap the mutual benefits of non-creepy interactions.
Where do you think the "be conservative in what you do" is coming from in your case?
Hm, this sounds like good way of thinking about it. I already use this principle, but I had not thought it to apply it to such cases.
I'm not clear on how I could possibly answer that.
Agree, and with added emphasis! An excellent general social policy.
Where can I get an IQ test? I am an adult and was never tested as a child. Searching google has only given me online tests. I want a professionally done test.
I considered myself intelligent, but some of the sequences/posts on this site are quite challenging for me. It has made me curious on exactly how intelligent I am. I don’t want to be too over or under confident when it comes to intelligence. I try to learn new things and that helps me find the limits of my intelligence, but I figure my IQ will also be interesting to know as well.
Thanks.
Some private psychologists will do them. If there's a research university near you, you might be able to get one for free by participating in a study.
However, I discourage you from doing this. The usefulness of knowing your own IQ is already limited at best, and the extra accuracy compared to a good online test isn't worth the amount of time you'll need to spend on it.
Note however that IQ is not a property of individuals measurable on an individual basis like, say, height or weight is. Its utility lies in its statistical power to predict the average performance of large groups of people. When it comes to testing a specific individual, except perhaps for the greatest extremes (like diagnosing mental retardation), the fact that you achieved a certain score gives only probabilistic information about you.
Moreover, for individuals scoring in high percentiles, to which you probably belong if you find the stuff written on this blog interesting, there are strong diminishing returns to high scores even statistically. It's like e.g. wondering about your height with regards to your basketball prospects: your potentials are indeed likely to be much greater if you're, say, 6'2" rather than 5'10", but if you already know that you're more than a few inches above average, the difference between, say, 6'9" and 6'5" won't matter anywhere as much.
Strictly speaking, the weight of an individual can fluctuate even in the course of a day, due to the consumption or excretion of fluids. It can fluctuate more permanently when you lose or gain body mass in the form of fat or muscle.
I'm under the impression that, in contrast, measured I.Q. of an individual is supposed to stay more or less within the same approximate range throughout the course of that individual's life (with obvious caveats for brain damage, senility, and as you say, exceptional individuals at the extremes of the distributions).
From what I know, there are high correlations between an individual's IQ test scores at different times, especially in the short run. Depending on the study, it ends up being something like 0.95 in the short run and 0.7-0.9 between different ages (I'm just quoting rough ballpark figures from memory -- they of course differ between studies and age spans). Some impressively high correlations were found even in a study that compared test scores of a group of individuals at 11 and 77 years of age.
On the other hand, people can be coached to significantly improve their IQ test scores. At least so says Rushton, of all people.
Then of course, as with all issues where you might want to make some sense of what IQ scores exactly imply, the Flynn effect throws a wrench into any attempt to come up with a neat, plausible, and coherent theory.
But even regardless of all this, one should still not forget that the connection between IQ and any realistic measure of success is itself just probabilistic. This is especially true for high-scoring individuals: instead of worrying whether one's score is 120, 130, 140, or whatever, one would be better advised to worry about whether one is deficient in other factors important for success and accomplishment in life.
This doesn't seem to be so up to at least the 1 in 10,000 level. However, I agree that the predictive power of theses tests is still small relative to the remaining sources of variation (although it is one which we are relatively good at measuring) and they shouldn't be over-weighted.
Mensa runs IQ tests frequently, worldwide, for a small fee. That's the best choice (and the only thing they're useful for).
I grew up with a very weird opinion about my place in the world as a result of a kindergarten IQ test (they never told me a number, but I knew it was good, because, for example, I got to the point where I had to ask the proctor what it means when someone writes a fraction - of course I didn't know it was called that).
Everything I've done since then has been a let down :) You're better off not knowing. Just use whatever you've got. There are many high-IQ-tested people who have crazy views and behavior, and are unsuccessful and unhappy (I don't deny that there exists some meaningful single general intelligence number, but what does knowing it give you?)
Besides, such tests can definitely be studied for as a skill, as much as any game (waste of time warning: Cambridge Brain Sciences games). So caring about the result just means you're going to effectively waste time practicing.
Private psychologists will probably perform them, but there is also the convenient option of finding out when your local branch of Mensa is having its next round of testing. One of the cheaper options, plus access to Mensa services such as the Travel special interest group (staying for free with interesting people around the world) if you're above the requisite percentile.
Per saturn's comment, online tests can be pretty accurate, especially the ones which are imitating (copying) the matrix-style tests; I keep a list as part of the DNB FAQ.
Note the many caveats. In particular, you cannot take multiple tests! Obviously for most of them you can't take it twice because the questions don't change, but less obviously, they're all similar enough that if you take one, you can expect your score on the second to be noticeably increased just from familiarity/experience. (This is why I suggest that people doing dual n-back do before/after IQ tests with a minimum of months in between, and preferably years.)
There is a rough correlation between IQ and standardized test scores.
Something else I've had to look up: how to convincingly dress like a grownup. (By which I mean less casual than t-shirts and jeans, work-appropriate, flattering, not looking like I just stepped out of a sci-fi movie or an art school.) There are some sites for female style advice I've found interesting and helpful (and edited to remove one I used to like that has gone off the rails).
There is a decent subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/malefashionadvice/
I've found that for men, the style articles at http://artofmanliness.com/category/dress-grooming/ are an excellent resource, the authors of them often go out of the way to explain why particular choices are appropriate for particular situations.
Related to this, I have immense difficulty dressing well and casually. I'm quite adept at dressing smartly, but there's a nebulous area between "jeans & t-shirt" and "shirt, no tie" where I just can't seem to figure out how to look stylish.
The secret to that is clothes that are simple and fit well.
So well-fitted dark jeans with shirt, no tie or a nice sweater/cardigan is a good look. Even 'jeans and a t shirt' can be a really nice look if the jeans fit you well and the t shirt is something classic like plain white (this also works well with a shirt partly or wholly unbuttoned over the top). There's also chinos which can work (just don't get them in too light or bright a colour if you're not confident about pulling off that look). If you live somewhere cold, peacoats and longer, slightly fitted coats are everywhere right now and they look good.
Advanced level - pick colours that complement your complexion. This is easier to gauge in person, but generally redheads rock green and jewel tones, blonds look good in cold colours and brown-haired guys are more likely to rock warm colours (though there are few people who don't rock blue). Brown-haired and darker-skinned guys are also a lot better at wearing white without having a tan.
Oh and practically nobody looks good in orange or yellow.
I have a kind of embarrassing one, but that's kind of the point of this discussion so here goes.
For some reason I've always had an aversion to social networking websites. I remember when all my peers used xanga, then livejournal, then myspace, and now facebook, and I always refused to use them whatsoever. I realize now though, that they represent a massive utility that I desperately need.
I am worried though, about starting new. Maybe I'm being overly paranoid, but it seems that having few friends on such a website signals low status, as does getting into the game this late.
So should I just create an account and add every single person I am even tangentially acquainted with? Is there a feature on facebook where you can hide who your friends are? Is it appropriate to ask someone you just met to friend you? What other cultural and social knowledge am I missing in this area?
Quentin, I worried too about the "few friends = low status" thing when I started on Facebook. But speaking now as an old hand I'm fairly confident that the only people who make such judgments or worry about them are newbies!
And yes, you CAN hide who your friends are.on Facebook. There are many other privacy settings as well. It would be too complicated to go into it here but they have a Help Center which will tell you how. You can find the Help link on the menu that will open up when you click on "Account" (at the top right-hand of any page) or, in small letters, at the very bottom of any page on the far right.
It's OK to ask someone you just met to friend you.
Not only do some people friend every last acquaintance, it's also common to friend people for the purpose of game play (there are numerous game applications you can access through Facebook, and for one reason or another it's often advantageous to play with people who are friends, so people will friend one another for the sake of the game). Then there are people who friend friends of friends because of shared interests or whatever. Bottom line: If somebody has 1,000 friends, nobody assumes that he is best buds with all those folks in real life.
Don't worry too much about the etiquette--if you spend some time with it you'll pick it up. Most people will be happy to help you out if they can (though a lot of people don't know about all the privacy settings. They're really not hard to set but you have to look for the info.)
I quit social networking sites because they made my life significantly worse. If you really need to use them, you can, but don't worry. There is a wide variety of ways to use them, ranging from adding hundreds of people to just a few friends.
Yes, you can do this, but you don't have to. This is one reasonable way of using the site that a lot of people use, but it's also common to restrict things to people you know better.
YES. Absolutely. And it's an essential feature. If you do use Facebook please pay close attention to the privacy settings. You can make everything about yourself private, to the point where no one else, even your friends, can see anything except messages you specifically send them.
Yes, it's pretty common to do this, though you may be surprised by how many people don't like to use these sites.
When you make an account there is a high chance you will get flooded by friend requests right away. Facebook does some shady things with user data for their convenience. Also there are still enough non-Facebookees that you will not be the last to get online.
I think people have very different standards as far as social networking goes. I would recommend deciding from the offset what you want to use Facebook for, and establish friending policies on that basis. If it's for keeping in touch with your nearest and dearest, keep it to a select few. If you want a conduit for talking to everyone you've ever met, add everyone you meet.
If I see someone who only has a handful of FB friends, I assume they're towards the more private end of the spectrum rather than thinking they're somehow socially retarded. Likewise if someone has 800+ FB friends, I don't think they regularly hang out with them all.
There is such a thing as a late adopter advantage. I don't think most people make these kinds of decisions when they first enter into that kind of environment, so you actually have the benefit of deciding off the bat how you want to use it, and how to optimise your usage for that aim.
For people I actually care about, I have better means of staying in touch. My inner circle has had a private voice chat server for years now, and that's part of the reason I haven't really been forced to use a social networking website.
But I'm trying to dramatically change who I am as a person, and this is a necessary step. I have severe issues with self-consciousness and social anxiety (despite acknowledging that this is unjustified as I am affable and attractive) so I am generally looking for ways to ease myself into social normalcy.
A very good friend of mine created her Facebook account just a few weeks ago, and I still think she's cool. So getting into the game late is at least sometimes recoverable from.
Adding everyone you are even tangentially acquainted with seems to be the social convention, including people you've just met; it's common for me to receive facebook invites after meeting someone at a party, for example.
FB has some tools for bulk-link-farming... e.g., it will look at your email if you let it and contact everyone whose name appears in it who has a FB account. I did this when I created my FB account (a couple of years ago) and it worked pretty well.
As far as I know, there's no way to hide your friends.
The teenagers of my acquaintance frequently use fake names on Facebook to subvert searches. The adults frequently create multiple Facebook profiles, more or less for the same reason.
Keep a regular sleep schedule.
This is something I completely failed to learn so far. Sure, I have some issues with procrastination or a lack of certain time-management skills, but even if I create a schedule for my whole week in advance and manage to follow it through for a couple of days at some point I completely mess it up because I sleep through half a day since I stayed up until 4AM the night before. Or I end up not getting enough sleep for several days in a row and getting sick (which happens far too often). Mostly, if I wake up at a certain time I don't get tired early enough to get a sufficient amount of sleep before I wake up at the same time on the next day (and unfortunately they don't make these time-turners yet).
It seems like every failed attempt to establish a working day routine can be mainly narrowed down to this single thing. I managed to get through High School and still get good grades even though I missed a lot of school days (due to being sick or too tired to go) because it was easy. Even at university it's still possible to pass the exams when you miss half of the lectures (although your results probably will suffer). However, I'm already afraid of my first real job.
I found that having a full-time job fixed my sleep schedule - if I have to get up, I will. Then I'll usually be tired enough to go to sleep at a reasonable time too.
I had that problem but melatonin seems to have solved it.
My biggest problem for keeping a sleep schedule stable is not being able to fall asleep early if I'm stuck with a late sleep schedule. Once I get an early wakeup, early bedtime routine going, it can stay on for weeks, but it can likewise get messed up for weeks.
One nice thing for waking up is a timed light box. It gradually lights up, and is a lot less stressful to wake up to than an alarm. Combine this with a regular alarm that goes off after the light has been getting brighter for a while.
I also somehow got addicted to taking daily cold showers since they were mentioned here or in the IRC channel. A couple of Hacker News posts talked about cold showers helping people fall asleep, so I've started taking a shower an hour before bedtime. I've been doing this for three weeks now and have managed to maintain a pretty stable sleep schedule.
The key is the wake-up time. You can always force yourself to get up once the alarm goes off, no matter how little sleep you've gotten. The opposite is not true without drugs to assist you (though it sounds like the cold shower helps, makes sense).
I do this about every four weeks. My work schedule is such that I work 160 hours in two weeks, and then don't work at all for the following two weeks. This means I have to get up very early when I'm working and not at all when I'm not. The net result, since I lack discipline when I don't have a goal set for the day, is that by the time I go back to work I am regularly staying up until 3am or later and waking up around noon, while I need to be at work by 7am when I'm working.
The fix for this is to force myself to get up at 6am the very first day I'm back at work. No easing in to anything, just cold turkey - alarm goes off I've got to get up. This means for the first day or two I'll be running on 3-4 hours of sleep, but the need to sleep builds fast and by the third day I'm usually going to bed at a respectable time.
The key for me is that I must have a purpose for the day. I've tried to maintain this in my off time, but since I don't have a specific place to be "on time" each day I tend to let my wake up time drift instead of getting up on-schedule. The fix for that is apparently having a regular morning schedule during my off time, but I haven't put much effort into it.
Another important thing to remember when you are forcing yourself awake after insufficient sleep is to not dilly-dally. If you are tired when you wake up, the worst thing you can do is hit "snooze" and go back to sleep. It probably won't make you any less tired unless you sleep for another hour (at which point you are almost certainly late for whatever it is you were getting up for) and it will make it a lot harder to get up.
There's an extra problem I run with drastic sleep cycle changes. Say I'm sleeping from 3 AM to noon. Then I do the cold turkey wake up at 6 AM, so far so good. Next evening I go to bed at 21:30, then my brain apparently goes, "hey, it's a lot earlier than usual, must be an afternoon nap", and helpfully wakes me up sometimes at 1 AM. (Other people's brains might not have this feature.) This tends to lead to having to go multiple consecutive days with little sleep if I want to change the cycle, instead of just the one, which gets considerably less fun. The fix to this might be to do something on the cold turkey day that gets me sufficiently tired that I'd just sleep 9 hours straight on the next night, whatever the bedtime.
The cold shower thing is still working, so far I've had only one night when I've failed to fall asleep after taking the shower.
I've been fighting to regulate my sleep schedule for about 30 years now, and I've tried lots of things. These are the things that seem to help me, or that Studies Have Shown.
What works best is to simply "man up" and regulate your sleep schedule, to quote the international sweat-shop shoe company "Just Do it".
1 Pick a "get up time", set you alarm and GET UP. This helps to make sure you're ready to go to bed on the other side. If you stay up until 4 in the morning playing Warcrack, play another 2 hours then go for breakfast. You'll be tired all day, but that night you'll be able to reset more effectively. 1.1 Do Not Nap, this makes it more difficult to get to sleep at a reasonable hour. 1.2 OTOH some people do really well to take nap in the afternoon (every afternoon) and stay up a little later. I can't do this. YSSMV.
3 Avoid caffiene after noon to start with. If this helps you may want to let it slip to 3 or 4 in the afternoon, depending on how you metabolize it. Definately no caffine with dinner or afterwards. NONE.
4 When the sun goes down start to darken your surroundings a bit--turn off unnecessary lights, use desk/table/spot lights instead of room lights etc.
5 Set a realistic bedtime and stick to it.
6 Your sleep quarters should be used ONLY for sleeping, sex and dressing. Do not read yourself to sleep, no computers or television. 6.1 Heavy curtains and limit light as much as possible. The goal is not only to sleep, but to sleep WELL. 6.2 A fan, or some source of "grey noise" might help as well. 6.3 A regular sex partner can help you get to sleep :) Well, so can an irregular one, but the sheets may need changing more often.
The other side of this is that some people seem to have body clocks that insist on running a certain way. I've been getting up at about 10 to 6 for the last 2 months every day of hte week. F'ing HATE IT. I can do 10 minutes to 7 so much easier, but there is no flex in my work schedule.
If you're like that--if these sorts of things don't work--they you have a decision to make. There are professions that allow you to work different, or sometimes even irregular hours, but they are generally not particularly high paying or influential (except for "Author", but you have to get published first).
There are people who just live better working second shift or graves. If you're like that you're going to fight it your whole life.
Also you can try finding a sleep clinic and see if you need professional intervention.
If on a computer, software like F.lux or Nocturne can help with this.
When you are getting into the routine this one of the hard parts. So use whatever assistance required. For me that has included a bottle of energy drink and a modafinil tablet sitting on top of the alarm clock. Sure, you can turn it off but it isn't much more effort to down the stimulants at the same time. A sledge hammer approach. It more or less guarantees you will be able to get up 30 minutes later. I often deliberately allow myself another 30 minutes to sleep after I've taken the stimulants so as to cooperate more effectively with my instincts. They don't like me @#$@#$ing with them and forcing them up but they don't care at all if I give them stimulants and let them do their own thing.
(The above is not something I tend to use long term.)
At about this time you can also take a dose of melatonin (which is essentially what you are doing with the light manipulation anyway). I have found this useful from time to time.
Put your alarm clock far out of reach so you have to get out of bed to switch it off. Put everything you need for your morning routine next to the alarm clock. This will make you much less likely to go back to bed.
I use this technique from time to time. But as Cyan suggests it isn't a reliable long term solution. It still amounts to trying to bully yourself into compliance. And that just isn't the best way to deal with allies - be they internal or not. I know myself and know how I respond to attempts at dominance. I'll do it if necessary but it rapidly burns out any sense of loyalty. And I want myself on my own side.
I did this when I was a teenager. A few months later I found myself regularly jumping out of bed, taking two long running strides across my room, hitting the snooze button, running back to bed, and getting under the covers without ever properly waking up.
I solved this problem by maxing out my alarm's volume and putting it in the shower.
That is...genius. And hilarious.
Did you keep everything you need for your morning routine next to your alarm clark? I found that was the key element to stop me from jumping back into bed. It's habit forming. You get to the alarm clock and then go through your routine. Otherwise, if everything's out of reach or disorganised, it's easier to just go back to bed than deal with it.
Do you exercise?
I like the grooming questions especially.
Besides by keeping clean, how do I go about smelling nice? Who should and shouldn't wear perfume and cologne? What kind? How do you use it?
I don't wear perfume/cologne at all--I enjoy many scents, but there are so many people who are sensitive to fragrances that it seems rude (my SO can't stand perfumes, so I don't wear any anymore). I'd avoid it in crowds and offices, and recommend only wearing it if you're going to be spending time with someone that you already know enjoys it--otherwise there's absolutely nothing wrong with simply keeping clean. Most people smell pretty okay naturally unless they've gotten very sweaty/dirty or haven't washed in a long while. (Some people even prefer natural smells over perfumes.)
As for use: less than you think. Only you and someone in your "personal space" should be able to smell it. Don't spray it all over--use very small amounts on "pulse points": wrists, behind ears, throat. (This is harder to do with sprays than oils; it's easy to spray too much.) What kind: something you like. What smells good sprayed in the air in a department store may not smell as good along with your own natural scent, so you may want to test at home before wearing something in public. Ask someone at a department store or perfume shop to help you if you really have no idea what to get, and don't be embarrassed about it; if they are at all good at their job, they will be able to guide you toward scents of different types based on what you like--fruity, musky, floral, woodsy, light, heavy, what-have-you. If you don't know where to begin, think about other smells you like: fresh-cut grass, vanilla, ocean air, Irish Spring soap? If you have a significant other, ask what they like too...
(This is knowledge I have not used in a long enough time that I'd completely forgotten I had it!)
Anyone who wants to can wear perfume/cologne (it's essentially the same stuff, just a different word for a different gender of user). If you're wondering whether you should try it, then try it! Go to a large department store and try out their testers, then walk around for the day and see if you and your companions like it. The effect immediately after application is often not the effect after it airs a bit. You can even try mixing scents. The one thing I strongly recommend is to avoid the really cheap stuff. If the budget is tight, try different good high-quality scents for free for a while, so you can be sure you'll like what you get.
The way I've seen perfume applied usually sprayed on one wrist, then the wrists are rubbed together, and then the wrists are lightly touched to the neck and clothes. This avoids getting too strong a smell, and if you overspray the wrist, you can wash it off.
When I use cologne, I spray it in my armpits instead of deodorant, and maybe on my throat. That's not necessarily typical--it's sort of the old way cologne was used, and works for me because I have light BO. You can also use cologne the same way I described for perfume.
In the U.S., cologne is not usually considered an appropriate substitute for deodorant, but individual tastes run a broad gamut on that. Some people are allergic to most perfumes and colognes--they do have actual botanicals in them.
It's pretty important not to overdo perfume/cologne, as there's a lot of variation in people's sensitivity to odors (and odor preferences). One squirt or dab is usually more than enough. In addition, the person who is wearing the scent becomes habituated to it after a few minutes, so "I can't smell myself anymore" isn't a good reason to put on more.
This isn't a general smelling-nice tip, but: imitation vanilla extract? Decent bug repellent. And smells much nicer than the standard varieties.