This isn't for introverts its intended for people with social anxiety, they're different things. Introverts don't necessarily dislike networking they just need recharge time afterwards.
At any rate it doesn't address the core concept. Anyone with anxiety (raises hand) will tell you that the worse thing you can do is care MORE about the thing you're anxious about, yet you've prescribed a bunch of rituals for someone to perform so that they do "well".
The best way to network well is to stop giving a shit about doing it well.
Recently I was introduced to the distinction between anxiety and dread. Anxiety is, essentially, a form of fear. You fear a worst-case consequence that isn't actually that likely. If you put up with your anxiety and just go and do the thing (on average) you'll do just fine, or at least ok-ish. Over time your body learns that the anxious activity is ok and the anxiety is reduced.
Dread is different. Dread is the expectation of a bad situation. It's not a worst-case scenario, it's a typical scenario. If what you are experiencing is dread, then pushing yourself into that situation will confirm to your body that, yup, it really is as bad as you thought, and will amplify the dread rather than diminish it.
A classic example is that certain forms of neurodivergence create sensory overload in typical "social" environments. This is likely to result in dread rather than anxiety. Your body is literally telling you that this situation is problematic, and repeat exposure isn't going to improve anything.
In our modern culture the language of anxiety is widespread but the language of dread much less so, and I think that's unfortunate because a lot of advice centers around "just get over it", which works only if what you're experiencing is anxiety. Personally, learning about this gave me permission to do "social" activities on my own terms and stop worrying about what other people think "social" means; turns out the social anxiety I had was relatively minimal and what I was experiencing was mostly the dread from environments where social activities often occur.
I always joked that there’s nothing to fear about travel over plane. Nothing will fall, nothing will crash. The true horror is spending X hours without movement and a 2 day back pain afterwards.
Seems that I rarely experience anxiety but I do experience dread more often.
What you’re describing is my own self-developed strategy to deal with various stuff. Need to research dread topic more.
"Personally, learning about this gave me permission to do "social" activities on my own terms and stop worrying about what other people think "social" means;"
So much this.
To have your own terms is always OK. If you think about it, what people think "social" means is not even fixed. It certainly changes with your age and your environment but even the consensus in a society about it changes.
When I grew up it meant being in a deafening loud environment so much full smoke that you could barely breathe. Hated it, but only when I moved to the big city and started university I understood that I am not the only one. Nowadays the smoke is mostly gone and at least it has become accepted to wear hearing protection.
I think in many cases there is a negative reinforcing aspect to anxiety that needs to be addressed. For example, anxiety can trigger certain physical symptoms like sweating excessively, tension leading to e.g. reduced loudness and loss of voice, clumsiness. This can spiral down and eventually the anxiety can be almost entirely about those physical aspects.
This is just a different way of looking at it. What you do by addressing what you call dread is basically putting a halt to this feedback loop.
Thank you for passing this on. I've been circling the concept but haven't ever heard it pinned down. One often comes with the other so it's difficult to separate the two, but at the same time the strategies needed to overcome / deal with them are very distinct.
This makes some amount of sense to me, but what if you dread approaching people? how would you resolve this with still wanting to approach people/form relationships?
There's definitely a "get over it" for dread and it's called stoicism (not an expert). Sometimes you have to do things whether you like it or not just to survive and "getting over it" will prevent you from dying.
My dad owned an auto dealership through my youth. He always had a least one "natural" salesman, who could just sell, but couldn't tell you how he did it. My dad was not a natural, and made up for this by consciously & relentlessly practicing the behaviours and actions: active listening, root cause analysis, identify the decision maker, respecting time & financial factors, attentive customer service, building connection & relationships. He became very good, but in a completely different way. Where his star salesman sold easily my dad had to work harder, but he then sold to the same person every few years, sometimes decades, and did better on the trade-ins than the new sales.
Why the story? Because lots of things - including networking - sometimes come naturally to a few, but are more commonly learned. You can practice & must practice, and this can start with a short list of things like presented here. It's not about caring more about the Big Thing (tm) but focusing solely on a few small things that start you down the right path. In my experience a few easy things is a great way to displace the anxiety from big, complex, scary situations.
Another brief anecdote I think helps illustrate this. I teach mountain biking, and the two biggest desires are 1. corner better, 2. learn how to jump. I suck at cornering but have logged a fair bit of air time. A common observation is people go very rigid in the air (called a "dead sailor"). This not only undesireable, it's dangerous. The fix? Get people to do any sort of movement when they are in the air; the smallest wiggle, shimmy or tweak unlocks their body AND their mind, and moves them forward. It both focuses and distracts. The list here feels a lot like a similar approach for certain social situations, and compared to your advice (stop caring and... just do it?) actually targets the root of anxiety "OK, but how?". YOLO is often part of it, but makes a terrible strategy.
"Almost more even than the extraverted is the introverted type subject to misunderstanding ... because the style of the epoch in which he himself participates is against him. Not in relation to the extraverted type, but as against our general occidental world-philosophy, he finds himself in the minority, not of course numerically, but from the evidence of his own feeling.
In so far as he is a convinced participator in the general style, he undermines his own foundations, since the present style, with its almost exclusive acknowledgment of the visible and the tangible, is opposed to his principle. Because of its invisibility, he is obliged to depreciate the subjective factor, and to force himself to join in the extraverted overvaluation of the object.
He himself sets the subjective factor at too low a value, and his feelings of inferiority are his chastisement for this sin. Little wonder, therefore, that it is precisely our epoch, and particularly those movements which are somewhat ahead of the time, that reveal the subjective factor in every kind of exaggerated, crude and grotesque form of expression. I refer to the art of the present day.
The undervaluation of his own principle makes the introvert egotistical, and forces upon him the psychology of the oppressed. The more egotistical he becomes, the stronger his impression grows that these others, who are apparently able, without qualms, to conform with the present style, are the oppressors against whom he must guard and protect himself.
He does not usually perceive that he commits his capital mistake in not depending upon the subjective factor with that same loyalty and devotion with which the extravert follows the object By the undervaluation of his own principle, his penchant towards egoism becomes unavoidable, which, of course, richly deserves the prejudice of the extravert.
Were he only to remain true to his own principle, the judgment of ‘egoist’ would be radically false; for the justification of his attitude would be established by its general efficacy, and all misunderstandings dissipated. "
Jung -Psychological types
"You want to be understood? That’s all we needed! Understand yourself, and you will be sufficiently understood. You will have quite enough work in hand with that"
> The best way to network well is to stop giving a shit about doing it well.
As someone who has played piano for over 30 years and by any sane person's assessment I play at least "adequately", I can attest that worrying about how you play is the least constructive thing you can do and I have many times over my life crashed and burned when trying to play on the spot and in those moments people would question whether I knew how to play at all.
When I finally realised to stop caring (at least in the moment) everything got a lot better. Even if you screw up, owning it and laughing about it is better than curling up in fear and anxiety and making the moment worse and more awkward for everyone.
"stop caring" sounds like such unhelpful advice but when one finally realises you have agency over that, its like having a superpower
The hard part is not realizing that one should stop caring. It's learning how to stop caring. For most of us, caring is an automatic, reflexive response, and changing it is not a trivial matter.
“Stop caring” sounds unhelpful because it might be difficult, but it’s basically the one thing you have that’s actually in your control that you can do about it.
I think some people would rather keep searching for easier solutions than taking the difficulty one they can actually accomplish.
No, this is intended for everyone, but the purpose is wrong.
Leil Lowndes' How to talk to anyone (the source) is not explicitly about expanding your network. It's just guidelines (or rather suggestions, or even better - hacks) on how you can start and hold conversations with people. What you choose to do with them is your own purview.
It's a great quote, but I don't think it's really true. I didn't give a shit about networking, and I don't have a way to contact most of the people I've worked with in the past. I'm sure I could get some good referrals through many of those people, but since I didn't give a shit, I can't and I don't think that's really doing networking well.
This worked out fine for me, some people who are better at networking than me reached out to me when they had interesting work at a good time, but 'do whatever and hopefully someone will find a job for you' is pretty bad advice too.
You've got to give some minimal level of shit, or you end up with a potential network instead of a network. I don't think going to 'networking events' is required; those always seem fishy, if your only connection is you wanted to make a connection, it's not a strong connection ... and probably the people going to these things don't have a very strong network or they wouldn't be going, so you're not getting much from the multiple hop networking either. There's probably exceptions, but trying to catch em all is not the right game.
I don't think it's intended for people with social anxiety either. I'm not socially anxious, but I could definitely benefit from following up on conversations from parties more often.
Nah, this is not for social anxiety people either. Or however we can call folks who don't normally feel like talking to others if they can.
All the recipes there are basically for people who don't have "natural" interpersonal skills and need to emulate it as a formal conscious process instead.
That's it - nothing in the article touches any aspects of willingness to engage with others, or ways to break out of maladaptive behaviors like social evasion.
>This isn't for introverts its intended for people with social anxiety
This.
Introverts (in general) have no problems with communication\networking etc. Introverts simply do not _need_ company.
Extraverts, on the other hand, contrary to what people often think, _need_ company to do stuff, even though they may be not so hot on networking or partying.
Stop giving a shit is similar advice to "be yourself". It's confusing enough advice on a date, and it's esp. not helpful here.
Networking is a skill beyond simple vibing and should be treated as such. For those with social anxiety, having a script/plan at least allows one to be on autopilot so they don't have to in fact give a shit.
Also introverts definitely tend to not like networking or any group activity w/ a bunch of strangers (edit: I mean tend to like the 'idea' of them, but once there, can enjoy them). I think you meant that they can do it without fear.
I'm introverted and I enjoy networking and group activities and also meeting and chatting with strangers. I just can't do it all day every day, I need breaks.
Having social anxiety is different from not knowing how to talk to people and make friends. Bill Russel would get so worked up before games he would throw up. But he could also perform.
I think it depends on what you're anxious about. Being scared that people will dislike you is different from being scared of embarrassment and it's different from being scared you don't know what to do in the moment.
Of course all of those can be helped by simply exposing yourself to the situation over and over again. You learn that if you do embarrass yourself or if people dislike you, the world doesn't turn to ash.
I think a lot of people really don't get this. I relish alone time and rarely seek out contact. But I also used to do sales pitches and attend conferences and was never uncomfortable no matter how unfamiliar the crowd. I just found it really tiring.
I feel like articles like these almost always leave out the people who want these questions to be answered:
* "Why would I want to network with people?"
* "I don't feel like engaging with anyone."
* "I don't enjoy or feel fulfilled doing any of this. I'd rather be home or by myself."
* "I have never enjoyed doing this. I have to keep up a facade in front of other people at all times. It makes me angry and resentful."
They should expand upon why networking is a thing, why having a social rapport among peers and coworkers is important to healthy relationships both inside and outside of work, how you can have your connection to your social circle weakened if you don't, and spell out clearly why that's a bad thing.
Maybe an article like this should look at it from the perspective of mental health and neurodivergence, but that might be pushing it.
From the article:
"The next morning, I’d wonder if anyone even remembered I was there."
Personally speaking, this question has never popped into my mind. I suppose that's owing to the fact that it's simply not in my nature to actively seek out people or connections.
This tenfold. The premise, the setting, the checklist, the whole thing sounds like torture to me. Life isn't that monochromatic, I'd rather be doing ANYTHING else.
> I have to keep up a facade in front of other people at all times.
This comes down to the idea of whether you believe that if you “keep up a facade at all times” that the facade becomes who you really are.
You don’t need an article convincing you why networking is important. You either need to be curious enough to want to see if your life can be better by doing something that goes against what you believe is your nature or not.
Basically, this. I already spend all the energy I have available for socializing just going to work five days a week. The idea of people socializing outside of work for the sake of work is supremely depressing to me. It's like, so now I need to do something I find utterly exhausting in order to succeed better at this other thing that already completely destroyed me because... capitalism?
I can at least understand on an intellectual level that there could be personal benefits to socializing with people outside of work, but when work already sucks everything out of you then it just feels like a cruel joke to suggest an introvert get into "networking" and here's a list of weird, creepy, manipulative tricks to do it better. Surely the article must be a parody?
You sound like you have your own issues to resolve if you are this exhausted by work, which doesn't mean the article is a parody just because you are not its exact intended recipient. There are a handful of tips in there that can help engineer more comfortable situations for people who are less confident networking. That's only if someone is willing to engage with the advice and wishes to better themselves with it, instead of just blaming... capitalism?
It’s clearly not in the author’s nature, either :)
But they seem to be a serial startup founder — so the value of networking’s probably self-evident to them, but won’t match the value you and most others get out of it.
Many big tech companies have inclusion training calling this question out as inappropriate on the grounds it provides an opportunity to introduce bias.
Sure, that's advised in interviews, where you're about to make a decision on someone's livelihood, hence the importance of reducing bias. That's a completely different context than in casual conversation at a social event.
In the same lines, don't ask anything. Everything is a bias. ie, What do they do? - Also a bias as they are engineer, or product, or sales, or whatever.
In SF, people are from so many different places that there is little to no chance that you have personal experience or knowledge of the city that the person would answer your question with. The same is probably not true of someone who grew up in Greece, asking someone else who grew up in Greece
I would like to add one tip that works well for me.
First time is always very difficult. Identify recurring or comparable events. Over time you will meet some people you already know. Remembering some details from earlier encounters will build rapport. Likewise people will remember you from previous encounters. But, beware of the trap of only talking with those whom you already know. For every event, target to form at least a couple of new connections.
This is a great point on the value of recurring events! Multiple serendipitous / unplanned interactions (where both people leave feeling good) are an important pathway to building a relationship. As a child most of your friendships were a function of proximity & chance - school and community events provided opportunities for regular (but unplanned) interaction.
Recurring events make it easier to meet others, and the regular, repeated interactions help form stronger connections.
Over time it also deepens your options of people to move around room for conversation - which is a nice way to break out of being awkwardly stuck in a 1:1 conversation for too long.
"Follow me so I can introduce you to Bob" is a way kinder way to exit a 1:1 than "I'm going to get another drink/visit the bathroom" and leaving them standing alone.
I loved the last suggestion, this has happened to me so many times and mostly i end up abruptly excusing myself. "Follow me so i can introduce you to xxx" is a great advice. Can i add this advice to the blog?
This is a great point. While i was reading the book, this tip was shared too with an example of a person who would make notes on the visiting cards of that specific person so that next time if she bumps into them again, they would have a talking point.
Two conversation tools I regularly use: “What are you currently obsessed with?” and if you want to follow up on even dull things a “What surprised you most about that?” works great. I don’t like small talk this helps get right to the novel, weird, and unique so I can at least enjoy the conversation and get to the core of who I’m really talking to. These help.
Asking something like this can also be a filter. If someone reacts in mild frustration to such a minor interaction at a networking event (or at least, while actively trying to network), it's a red flag.
Long-term fixation, colloquially referred to as "obsession", is fairly common to various forms of neurodivergance, and neurodivergance is fairly common for engineering-adjacent folks. Since that forms a likely large cross section of the HN crowd, the suggested icebreaker is probably relevant to many of us, whether we are ourselves neurodivergant or otherwise frequently interact with those who are. I also dislike the "passion" question, but obsessions change frequently enough and are exciting to the person asked. It's just different enough to liven up the conversation if you're asking the right person.
> Where does the conversation go from there?
I dunno, maybe try asking a neurodivergant person sometime? I certainly would rather be asked about my obsessions than my passions, as my passions are all too often left to rot for one reason or another, which just makes me sad and want to leave.
Continual obsession is derangement (which can be useful to society overall in small amounts). I might respond with "I wouldn't say I'm obsessed with it, but I've been thinking more about FOO"
I think the article is a great way to introduce yourself into this type of situation. Lots of people do better at well defined tasks, so I'll give you one: Most people at these events are looking for something, go in looking to give. Connect with one person who you can help. This can be a very modest thing: an offer to lend a book, send a link, connect them with someone else; anything. If you offer something physical, go out of your way to get it to them. Making a connection? Make it a warm hand-off, maybe in person. The keys: follow through on your promise, make it geniune and put some effort into it.
Converting a vague, complex, often scary thing like a networking event into a well-defined mission is a great way to address fear, add value and contribute.
Confidence and genuine interest can’t be taught. Unfortunately, they also can’t be faked. Humans have evolved to be hyper-aware of what others’ mannerisms and behaviors convey, and most socially adept people can sniff out a “networker” in less than a minute. The only way forward is practice — talk to people, be awkward and fail a lot, learn to care about others’ life and work, and express it (or talk about your own interests!) in a way that adds value to their life.
Regarding sniffing out "networker"s. At one of the first "networking" events I attended, I spoke for a bit with a particular person. An hour or two later, we ended up in the same circle and he proceeded to rattle off from memory everything I had told him about myself. I think he had meant to show off how well he was listening or something... it was more than a little off-putting.
BTW one way to break the ice is to go a bit meta. Imagine saying: "Hello! My name is ${name}, nice to see you! One of my favorite ice-breaker questions is: ${some_question}. What do you think?"
It evokes smiles, it allows the other party to answer the question, share their own question, discuss the process of getting into a friendly conversation, etc, all without being formulaic.
How is this not formulaic when you literally used a formula to describe it? With variables and all. It's not bad but pretty contrived and clearly rehearsed and kinda corny. People smile when someone makes a bad pun also.
It might feel less formulaic because it's more upfront.
Following a formula without telling the other person about it can feel more robotic if you don't put your soul into it.
Whereas you can still put in the right energy and effort into the OP's approach to make it work well.
At the end of the day being human IMHO is what matters most.
> People smile when someone makes a bad pun also
Here too I think it's all about how the pun is delivered.
Readit News
At any rate it doesn't address the core concept. Anyone with anxiety (raises hand) will tell you that the worse thing you can do is care MORE about the thing you're anxious about, yet you've prescribed a bunch of rituals for someone to perform so that they do "well".
The best way to network well is to stop giving a shit about doing it well.
Dread is different. Dread is the expectation of a bad situation. It's not a worst-case scenario, it's a typical scenario. If what you are experiencing is dread, then pushing yourself into that situation will confirm to your body that, yup, it really is as bad as you thought, and will amplify the dread rather than diminish it.
A classic example is that certain forms of neurodivergence create sensory overload in typical "social" environments. This is likely to result in dread rather than anxiety. Your body is literally telling you that this situation is problematic, and repeat exposure isn't going to improve anything.
In our modern culture the language of anxiety is widespread but the language of dread much less so, and I think that's unfortunate because a lot of advice centers around "just get over it", which works only if what you're experiencing is anxiety. Personally, learning about this gave me permission to do "social" activities on my own terms and stop worrying about what other people think "social" means; turns out the social anxiety I had was relatively minimal and what I was experiencing was mostly the dread from environments where social activities often occur.
I always joked that there’s nothing to fear about travel over plane. Nothing will fall, nothing will crash. The true horror is spending X hours without movement and a 2 day back pain afterwards.
Seems that I rarely experience anxiety but I do experience dread more often.
What you’re describing is my own self-developed strategy to deal with various stuff. Need to research dread topic more.
So much this.
To have your own terms is always OK. If you think about it, what people think "social" means is not even fixed. It certainly changes with your age and your environment but even the consensus in a society about it changes.
When I grew up it meant being in a deafening loud environment so much full smoke that you could barely breathe. Hated it, but only when I moved to the big city and started university I understood that I am not the only one. Nowadays the smoke is mostly gone and at least it has become accepted to wear hearing protection.
This is just a different way of looking at it. What you do by addressing what you call dread is basically putting a halt to this feedback loop.
(disclaimer: IANAMD)
Why the story? Because lots of things - including networking - sometimes come naturally to a few, but are more commonly learned. You can practice & must practice, and this can start with a short list of things like presented here. It's not about caring more about the Big Thing (tm) but focusing solely on a few small things that start you down the right path. In my experience a few easy things is a great way to displace the anxiety from big, complex, scary situations.
Another brief anecdote I think helps illustrate this. I teach mountain biking, and the two biggest desires are 1. corner better, 2. learn how to jump. I suck at cornering but have logged a fair bit of air time. A common observation is people go very rigid in the air (called a "dead sailor"). This not only undesireable, it's dangerous. The fix? Get people to do any sort of movement when they are in the air; the smallest wiggle, shimmy or tweak unlocks their body AND their mind, and moves them forward. It both focuses and distracts. The list here feels a lot like a similar approach for certain social situations, and compared to your advice (stop caring and... just do it?) actually targets the root of anxiety "OK, but how?". YOLO is often part of it, but makes a terrible strategy.
Have a plan, finish it.
I wish someone would write a guide to what to do in the 2 weeks after the networking event when inevitably everyone forgets about each other.
In so far as he is a convinced participator in the general style, he undermines his own foundations, since the present style, with its almost exclusive acknowledgment of the visible and the tangible, is opposed to his principle. Because of its invisibility, he is obliged to depreciate the subjective factor, and to force himself to join in the extraverted overvaluation of the object.
He himself sets the subjective factor at too low a value, and his feelings of inferiority are his chastisement for this sin. Little wonder, therefore, that it is precisely our epoch, and particularly those movements which are somewhat ahead of the time, that reveal the subjective factor in every kind of exaggerated, crude and grotesque form of expression. I refer to the art of the present day.
The undervaluation of his own principle makes the introvert egotistical, and forces upon him the psychology of the oppressed. The more egotistical he becomes, the stronger his impression grows that these others, who are apparently able, without qualms, to conform with the present style, are the oppressors against whom he must guard and protect himself.
He does not usually perceive that he commits his capital mistake in not depending upon the subjective factor with that same loyalty and devotion with which the extravert follows the object By the undervaluation of his own principle, his penchant towards egoism becomes unavoidable, which, of course, richly deserves the prejudice of the extravert.
Were he only to remain true to his own principle, the judgment of ‘egoist’ would be radically false; for the justification of his attitude would be established by its general efficacy, and all misunderstandings dissipated. "
Jung -Psychological types
"You want to be understood? That’s all we needed! Understand yourself, and you will be sufficiently understood. You will have quite enough work in hand with that"
Jung - Red book
As someone who has played piano for over 30 years and by any sane person's assessment I play at least "adequately", I can attest that worrying about how you play is the least constructive thing you can do and I have many times over my life crashed and burned when trying to play on the spot and in those moments people would question whether I knew how to play at all.
When I finally realised to stop caring (at least in the moment) everything got a lot better. Even if you screw up, owning it and laughing about it is better than curling up in fear and anxiety and making the moment worse and more awkward for everyone.
"stop caring" sounds like such unhelpful advice but when one finally realises you have agency over that, its like having a superpower
I think some people would rather keep searching for easier solutions than taking the difficulty one they can actually accomplish.
Leil Lowndes' How to talk to anyone (the source) is not explicitly about expanding your network. It's just guidelines (or rather suggestions, or even better - hacks) on how you can start and hold conversations with people. What you choose to do with them is your own purview.
This worked out fine for me, some people who are better at networking than me reached out to me when they had interesting work at a good time, but 'do whatever and hopefully someone will find a job for you' is pretty bad advice too.
You've got to give some minimal level of shit, or you end up with a potential network instead of a network. I don't think going to 'networking events' is required; those always seem fishy, if your only connection is you wanted to make a connection, it's not a strong connection ... and probably the people going to these things don't have a very strong network or they wouldn't be going, so you're not getting much from the multiple hop networking either. There's probably exceptions, but trying to catch em all is not the right game.
All the recipes there are basically for people who don't have "natural" interpersonal skills and need to emulate it as a formal conscious process instead.
That's it - nothing in the article touches any aspects of willingness to engage with others, or ways to break out of maladaptive behaviors like social evasion.
This.
Introverts (in general) have no problems with communication\networking etc. Introverts simply do not _need_ company.
Extraverts, on the other hand, contrary to what people often think, _need_ company to do stuff, even though they may be not so hot on networking or partying.
Networking is a skill beyond simple vibing and should be treated as such. For those with social anxiety, having a script/plan at least allows one to be on autopilot so they don't have to in fact give a shit.
Also introverts definitely tend to not like networking or any group activity w/ a bunch of strangers (edit: I mean tend to like the 'idea' of them, but once there, can enjoy them). I think you meant that they can do it without fear.
Having social anxiety is different from not knowing how to talk to people and make friends. Bill Russel would get so worked up before games he would throw up. But he could also perform.
I think it depends on what you're anxious about. Being scared that people will dislike you is different from being scared of embarrassment and it's different from being scared you don't know what to do in the moment.
Of course all of those can be helped by simply exposing yourself to the situation over and over again. You learn that if you do embarrass yourself or if people dislike you, the world doesn't turn to ash.
* "Why would I want to network with people?"
* "I don't feel like engaging with anyone."
* "I don't enjoy or feel fulfilled doing any of this. I'd rather be home or by myself."
* "I have never enjoyed doing this. I have to keep up a facade in front of other people at all times. It makes me angry and resentful."
They should expand upon why networking is a thing, why having a social rapport among peers and coworkers is important to healthy relationships both inside and outside of work, how you can have your connection to your social circle weakened if you don't, and spell out clearly why that's a bad thing.
Maybe an article like this should look at it from the perspective of mental health and neurodivergence, but that might be pushing it.
From the article: "The next morning, I’d wonder if anyone even remembered I was there."
Personally speaking, this question has never popped into my mind. I suppose that's owing to the fact that it's simply not in my nature to actively seek out people or connections.
This comes down to the idea of whether you believe that if you “keep up a facade at all times” that the facade becomes who you really are.
You don’t need an article convincing you why networking is important. You either need to be curious enough to want to see if your life can be better by doing something that goes against what you believe is your nature or not.
I can at least understand on an intellectual level that there could be personal benefits to socializing with people outside of work, but when work already sucks everything out of you then it just feels like a cruel joke to suggest an introvert get into "networking" and here's a list of weird, creepy, manipulative tricks to do it better. Surely the article must be a parody?
But they seem to be a serial startup founder — so the value of networking’s probably self-evident to them, but won’t match the value you and most others get out of it.
This is something that feels alien in SF people. A fundamental difference for example from Greece and people living in SF is this.
- Greek opening question: "Which city are you from?" - SF opening question: "Which company do you work for?"
Many big tech companies have inclusion training calling this question out as inappropriate on the grounds it provides an opportunity to introduce bias.
In the same lines, don't ask anything. Everything is a bias. ie, What do they do? - Also a bias as they are engineer, or product, or sales, or whatever.
First time is always very difficult. Identify recurring or comparable events. Over time you will meet some people you already know. Remembering some details from earlier encounters will build rapport. Likewise people will remember you from previous encounters. But, beware of the trap of only talking with those whom you already know. For every event, target to form at least a couple of new connections.
Recurring events make it easier to meet others, and the regular, repeated interactions help form stronger connections.
Over time it also deepens your options of people to move around room for conversation - which is a nice way to break out of being awkwardly stuck in a 1:1 conversation for too long.
"Follow me so I can introduce you to Bob" is a way kinder way to exit a 1:1 than "I'm going to get another drink/visit the bathroom" and leaving them standing alone.
Well, I'm not currently obsessed with anything. Where does the conversation go from there?
> Where does the conversation go from there?
I dunno, maybe try asking a neurodivergant person sometime? I certainly would rather be asked about my obsessions than my passions, as my passions are all too often left to rot for one reason or another, which just makes me sad and want to leave.
Continual obsession is derangement (which can be useful to society overall in small amounts). I might respond with "I wouldn't say I'm obsessed with it, but I've been thinking more about FOO"
Converting a vague, complex, often scary thing like a networking event into a well-defined mission is a great way to address fear, add value and contribute.
You might not be able to convince people on your first attempt, but eventually you can build this skill if you try
It evokes smiles, it allows the other party to answer the question, share their own question, discuss the process of getting into a friendly conversation, etc, all without being formulaic.
> People smile when someone makes a bad pun also
Here too I think it's all about how the pun is delivered.