So I got a bachelor's degree in Aerospace Engineering , but I worked in a non engineering related field since then. I'm preparing to go back and do a Master'\s degree in engineering. Does anyone have any tips for what I can do to regain lost knowledge over the summer? I'm cracking open some old textbooks.

What do you enjoy doing? What are you good at? What if anything are you exceptionally good at? Do long hard working hours excite you or scare you (or something else)? What things are you ethically scrupulous about? Do you want a career in which you are (more or less) sure of accumulating amount of wealth, or one where you do so on average? (The latter might e.g. appeal to someone whose goal is "earning to give".)

So I was wondering what career is best in terms of being able to accumulate wealth and having a decent quality of life. I've heard finance jobs are good.

Does anyone have any good recommended reading on being social? Stuff like understanding social situations and how to respond appriopriately. Understanding personality types and how to engage with them. How to make people like you can how to keep people's attention. I'd really love to learn these skills , as I feel I am deficient at them.

Heads up to fellow autodidiacts. Amazon's kindle Unlimited allows you to get a number of select titles for a monthly fee. They have a free 30 day trial on now.

If you have to much theory in your head but bad social skills you are likely to analyse the situation in which you are intellectually. As a result your body language might give off signs that you aren't present. Reactions in your face are slightly delayed.

As far as I'm aware ideas like "conceptualize offense as a grab for status" are not strongly evidence based. Of course that doesn't mean that it has to be wrong. There probably some writing in the pickup field that slashes out ideas like that in more detail.

The Charisma Myth by Olivia Fox Cabane is a evidence-based book that summarizes advice about dealing with social situations. I'm not sure whether it helps in the reading department but it provides practical tips that improve social ability and multiple people on LW recommended the book in the past.

When it comes to reading people in my own experience reading other people has a lot to do with being able to read yourself. Developing my own bodily awareness helped me a lot with reading other people. It gave me awareness of things like when a partner of a conversation tenses up when I say something.

Paul Ekman sells an online course for detecting microexpression to detect emotional states of other people. Paul Ekman is a serious academic psychologist but it's not 100% clear whether all his claims are true in the strong form in which he makes them. If you have money to spend doing his course seem like a good investment.

Creating an Anki deck for Ekman style detection of emotions also seems like a good project from my own perspective. I think a lot of people on LW and in general would appreciate such a deck.

All that said, don't think that you will improve social skills by sitting in front of a book. Improvement comes from actually practicing and doing exercises.

Request for advice: I'm looking to improve my social ability. specifically my ability to 'read' people and social situations. In addition I would like to be able to apply these insights to be more persuasive and socially effective. I feel like I am below average in these areas. In addition I would like to improve the quality of my relationships. Someone mentioned a social psychology course online. I probably won't take the course , but I'd like a textbook recommendation if possible. What would be ideal and really helpful would be something like Lukeprog's summaries of research in cognitive science. Or something like the book "59 seconds" that summarises research in psychology of adjustment and how to apply it. Something that summarises social psychology and the aspects I need to understand to improve my relations with people . Any recommendations for books or articles? Googling brought up some books like "Emotional Intelligence 2.0" but I don't know the quality of the work.

Where to start depends highly on where you are now. Would you consider yourself socially average? Which culture are you from and what context/situation are you most immediately seeking to optimize? Is this for your occupation? Want more friends?

Are there any resources (on lesswrong or elsewhere) , I can use for improving my social effectiveness and social intelligence ? Its something I'd really like to improve on so I can understand social situations better and perhaps improve the quality of my social interactions.