Life Hacks

Learn about the rules of social interactions and small talk.

For someone who has to work with others or interact with them often is makes life much more understandable and easy to navigate.

In the real world people are not going to adapt to us and accept us for a long time yet so we need to be the ones adapting if we need to integrate without friction.

Learn about the rules of social interactions and small talk.

For someone who has to work with others or interact with them often is makes life much more understandable and easy to navigate.

In the real world people are not going to adapt to us and accept us for a long time yet so we need to be the ones adapting if we need to integrate without friction.

Any good sources for the social rules? It's not like most of us can figure them out by ourselves!

I enjoyed reading Peoplewatching by Desmond Morris recently. It's all about body language. It explained things like the typical (Western) pattern of eye contact during conversations. Now, when I see people talking on the telly, I'm watching to see if their eyes are doing the "right thing". Usually they are.

In case anyone's interested, people generally break eye contact while they are speaking, look up and down a bit, maybe make a little contact on and off as they continue, but then make direct eye contact again just as they are about to finish speaking to cue the listener to take their turn. Meanwhile, the listener generally holds eye contact the whole time to show they are interested and watches for that cue. Who knew?!

For example, watch Lewis Hamilton's eyes the next time he's being interviewed after an F1 race and you'll see him follow that pattern exactly.

I think one of the issues I have is when someone makes and holds strong eye contact while they are speaking. It turns into a bit of a staring contest and I find it hard to keep track of their words.