relationships
Communicate
Avoid The Seven Deadly Sins Of Networking
5:30AM Adam Pash | Many of us consider networking a necessary evil of maintaining a healthy, robust career, but it doesn’t have to be. In reality, it’s more often than not bad networking that puts people off networking altogether. More »
Communicate
Be The Designated Photographer To Make New Friends
6:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | When trying to make new friends in a new city, Brain over at Lifehack.org has a few suggestions to get your social life on track. Among them: if you’re looking for a way to foster follow up contact after meeting people for the first time, snapping photographs at gatherings is a great way to keep in touch with the new people you meet. Despite the proliferation of camera phones and cheap digital cameras many people still aren’t avid shutterbugs, but most people love pictures. Make yourself some social calling cards with the address of your favourite photo sharing site on them or ask the person for their email to send the pictures out and you’ve got an instant in for future contact. em>Photo by Mourner. How to Make a Bunch of New Friends in Any New City [Lifehack.org] More »
Organise
1:30PM Angus Kidman | New communications technology frequently gets a pasting in the mainstream media (when was the last time you saw a story about kids accessing the Internet that wasn’t negative?), but a new survey by Relationships Australia suggests that Aussies are focusing on the positive effects. A whopping 96% of Australians aged 18-24 said that the Internet, SMS and email had a positive impact on relationships, while amonst the over-60s, 60% also agreed. (Similar results have been seen in other recent surveys.) What seems to be messing up relationships are concerns over money. When Relationships Australia last conducted this survey in 2006, 18% of people said that finance problems were a major source of relationship pressure. In 2008, that figure has gone up to 40%. The survey was conducted in August, before some of the more seismic shifts in the global economy, so I’d expect those numbers to get even higher in the future. More »
Financial Pressure Is Bad For Relationships, But Technology Is Good
1:30PM Angus Kidman | New communications technology frequently gets a pasting in the mainstream media (when was the last time you saw a story about kids accessing the Internet that wasn’t negative?), but a new survey by Relationships Australia suggests that Aussies are focusing on the positive effects. A whopping 96% of Australians aged 18-24 said that the Internet, SMS and email had a positive impact on relationships, while amonst the over-60s, 60% also agreed. (Similar results have been seen in other recent surveys.) What seems to be messing up relationships are concerns over money. When Relationships Australia last conducted this survey in 2006, 18% of people said that finance problems were a major source of relationship pressure. In 2008, that figure has gone up to 40%. The survey was conducted in August, before some of the more seismic shifts in the global economy, so I’d expect those numbers to get even higher in the future. More »
Communicate
9:00AM Angus Kidman | I was at a friend’s wedding recently, and during the after-dinner speeches it emerged that the couple had first met online. That didn’t strike me as at all remarkable, and it seems I’m not alone. A Galaxy Poll conducted on behalf of online dating service meetmyfriend.com.au found that 83% of single people aged between 25-39 favoured using an Internet service to meet for potential partners. Even allowing for the not-exactly-unbiased source, that’s a remarkably high number. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that dating someone you’d met online — whether casually through a common interest, or in a more organised way via a dating service — was frequently viewed as desperate, risky or second-best. Why have attitudes changed so fast? Does that data match your own experience? Share your take in the comments. More »
Has The Internet Dating Stigma Finally Ended?
9:00AM Angus Kidman | I was at a friend’s wedding recently, and during the after-dinner speeches it emerged that the couple had first met online. That didn’t strike me as at all remarkable, and it seems I’m not alone. A Galaxy Poll conducted on behalf of online dating service meetmyfriend.com.au found that 83% of single people aged between 25-39 favoured using an Internet service to meet for potential partners. Even allowing for the not-exactly-unbiased source, that’s a remarkably high number. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that dating someone you’d met online — whether casually through a common interest, or in a more organised way via a dating service — was frequently viewed as desperate, risky or second-best. Why have attitudes changed so fast? Does that data match your own experience? Share your take in the comments. More »
Work
Think Faster and Better on Your Feet with Tricks from Improv
8:00AM Adam Pash | CNN Living and Real Simple suggest stealing a few tricks from improv actors to help you think better and faster on your feet—and look better in real world situations. Make everyone else in your group look good. How it works: Here’s what you learn in improv: You’re nothing without somebody else. There’s nothing to improvise without someone to improvise with. The more you trust others to be your props, the more you invite them to shine, the stronger you get. Despite some heavy-handed improv 101 lessons (if you ever heard anyone “yes… and” like that, you’d think they were insane), the ideas are still useful. If you regularly apply any of these improv ideas to the real world, let’s hear about it in the comments. Photo by Arbron. How to think faster, better on your feet [CNN Living] More »Tips for improving your people skills
8:30AM Sarah Stokely | If you’re not naturally gregarious or ‘charming’, people skills can seem like things that other people have, not you. The Lifehack.org blog had an interesting article which talked about the things you can do to get better at building rapport with people.Some of them might seem quite obvious – smile at people, listen to them, use eye contact. But if you’re naturally shy or introverted, even these things might seem difficult to you. I guess the thing to remember is that people (yourself included!) are very tuned in to body language – we can spot a fraud, or a fake smile, a mile away. So if you’re trying to get over a habit like looking at your shoes instead of the person you’re talking to, by all means try some of the tactics mentioned, but remember that *a little goes a long way*. A lot of this boils down to how relaxed you are around other people. As you relax, you’ll be able to trust your own instincts more, and you won’t need to remind yourself to do things like smile or make eye contact. As a bonus, your relaxed body language will be apparent to other people and they’ll relax around you too.How to improve your rapport development [Lifehack.org] More » Apply the GTD weekly review to your home life
12:35PM Sarah Stokely | Dustin Wax over at Lifehack.org has a thought provoking article on how to apply GTD principles to having a weekly relationship review with your partner.Though I do *not* suggest treating your relationship like a work challenge (no-one wants to feel like a project on someone’s to do list!) he suggests approaching it as a regular meeting with your partner to go over plans and processes and see what need work. This can help nip problems or disagreements in the bud, and
help you be ready to respond to any unexpected challenges life throws
your way.This is a time to gather and process the household’s in box (it could be bills, shopping lists and so forth). And, importantly, it’s a time to share thoughts and come up with a game plan together. Dustin suggests the following list of topics to cover off:
What went wrong over the past week?
What did you particularly enjoy that you’d like to do more of? (meals, activities, TV shows, trips out, etc.)
How are you each handling your respective household duties?
What is coming up that you need to be prepared for?
What kind of help do you need from your partner?
What issues in the house have been occupying your thoughts lately? (problems with kids, repairs needed, messiness)
What’s going on at work, or coming up at work, that could affect your family life?
Pick a time and place which will be comfortable for both of you. And remember to keep it constructive – there’s no point whinging if you aren’t working towards fixing whatever the problem is. Got any other ideas for relationship GTD? Share in comments please.
How to improve your relationship with a weekly review [Lifehack.org] More » 
Hack Your Long-Term Relationship by Embracing the Unfamiliar
3:00PM Adam Pash | Just in time for Valentine’s Day, the New York Times examines the common “date night” tradition, highlighting studies that suggest making date night unfamiliar and exciting rather than the standard dinner-and-a-movie can do wonders for a stale relationship. For example: One group was instructed to spend 90 minutes a week doing pleasant and familiar activities, like dining out or going to a movie. Couples in another group were instructed to spend 90 minutes a week on “exciting” activities that appealed to both husband and wife. Those couples did things they didn’t typically do — attending concerts or plays, skiing, hiking and dancing. The third group was not assigned any particular activity. More »
