I used to be your textbook awkward nerd, and now I’m decently socially skilled (for a nerd, at least 😛).

Here’s how I got better at understanding and interacting with my fellow humans.

The idea is pretty simple, actually. It’s just the implementation that’s tricky.

The idea is making predictions, building models, and learning from the real world.

Basically once I became motivated to improve my social skills (I didn’t want to keep accidentally hurting people’s feelings! And I wanted more friends), I applied my nerd analysis to people.

Before I went to a hangout, I’d pick a topic and a person. I’d think about what I’d say about the topic and, very importantly, I’d make a prediction of how the person would react. 

I would do this based on a model I had of the person (informal model. No spreadsheets. Just general things like “Bob is primarily motivated by intellectual curiosity, truth, and humor. He finds drama and politics boring. It’s late and he’s a morning person, so he’ll probably be a bit grouchier tonight” etc.)

I’d then go out into the world, test the hypothesis, and then on the way back, I’d update my models based on the data. (“Oh interesting. I thought he’d be grouchy cause it’s late, but he wasn’t. Maybe alcohol reduces the grouchiness for him? And he actually was pretty interested in talking about the elections. Maybe he’s just not interested in European politics?”).

It was especially helpful when I was able to do this with a friend who was really interested in psychology and good at it, which sped up the process substantially. But the process works regardless. The main teacher is reality.

It also helps to pair this with “book” learning, so you don’t have to re-invent the wheel. Most books about “social skills” are incredibly remedial. Read those if that’s where you’re at. If you’re looking for something more advanced than “make eye contact” and “smile”, I recommend reading books about psychology, storytelling, persuasion, sales, management, conflict resolution, etc. They’re all indirectly about social skills and much more advanced.

I recommend:

• Difficult Conversations
• The Righteous Mind
• Made to Stick
• Crucial Conversations
• The Coddling of the American Mind
• Influence by Cialdini
• Charisma on Command, the Youtube channel
• The Charisma Myth

So there you go. Just apply your nerd powers to people. Go forth and make predictions and friends!

1. Have a social life.

Humans are social monkeys. Have fun with friends and family socially at least once a day.

If you are socially deprived, you will have emotional issues, guaranteed.

The 80/20 of having a social life is making it the default.

Set 👏 up 👏regular 👏 repeating 👏calls/hangouts 👏with👏loved👏ones.

Go ahead. Do it now.

You probably already have friends and family who you know would love to have a regular hangout with you who also have unmet social needs.

If you don’t already have a regular call or dinner with your family, set one up.

Set up a family group chat too while you’re at it. It’s a great way to maintain a soft sense of connection throughout the week.

Do the same with old friends who you love. Remember, you can have calls with them if you’re not in the same town. Regular voice calls and video calls can be a lifesaver nowadays when everybody’s so inclined to move.

2. Get your blood tested for common deficiencies (iron, b12, vitamin D, etc).

Deficiencies usually affect mood and they’re super common.

And so easy to fix!

If you turn out to be deficient, it’s literally a pill that costs pennies a day and you’re fixed. And in most countries, it’s free or incredibly cheap to get your blood tested.

Why wait?

3. Actually do the things you know you should be doing. Get a coach to help you if you can't do it yourself.

Fix your sleep if it’s broken.

Exercise enough (30 minutes of moderate exercise per day).

Eat healthy (find healthy food you actually like and will actually eat. Consider eating the Actually Complete Breakfast (link below)).

If you can't fix these things on your own, get a coach to help. Coaches basically specialize in getting you to do the things you want to be doing but can't for whatever reason.

4. Stop watching the news

If you want to be informed, read books. 

They're much better quality information and they're not solely focused on making you stressed out or angry. 

Consistently consuming information literally designed to make you scared and/or angry is a recipe for poor mental health. 

In conclusion, you're an adult. Actually do the basics. 

If you're reading this, you're probably sad and/or anxious, so I don't want to be mean. But I think part of the reason so many people are sad is because people are not pushing people to do the basics.

If you are sleeping poorly, not exercising, eating shit, deficient, endlessly doomscrolling, and/or have no social life, of course you're gonna be emotionally messed up. 

Fix it. 

You can. You are not helpless. You can do things to make your life better and you should, and somebody telling you it's alright to suck at any of those things is not helping you. They're keeping you where you're at, and you don't like where you're at! 

It's not OK to be bad at those things. You're suffering the consequences of those things and you know it's not OK.

Use that discomfort as fuel. 

People only change when the discomfort of change is smaller than the discomfort of staying the same.

Pathological forgiveness is a key component of many abusive relationships.

Obviously all of the moral blame should fall on the abusers. 

But much of the causal explanation for ongoing abusive relationships is the abused saying stuff like: 

• "I just want to give them one more chance"
• "They didn't mean it! They're not like that"
• "They just had a bad childhood."
• "We've been through too much for me to leave them now"

​
And so many other mechanisms of forgiving somebody too much.

Of course, the Law of Equal and Opposite Advice applies. Many people in society (most, I dare say) should increase their forgiveness levels. 

But some people, and disproportionately people who stay in abusive relationships, need to forgive less. They need to see that their forgiveness is leading to ongoing suffering and that you should turn the other cheek once, but if they keep kicking you in the teeth, you need to get out of there. 

It reminds of a time I was in a really bad situation but I felt a lot of compassion to the person hurting me because I knew they'd had a really troubled upbringing. 

I described it as being in a room with an aggressive dog who was biting me. I knew the dog was only aggressive because they'd been abused as a puppy. 

I knew I could fight back and stop the dog, but I didn't want to hurt it. I wanted to help the dog. 

But I was being hurt. A lot.

It took talking to external people about the problem to realize that I just had to get out of the room. 

I didn't have to fight the dog. I would hurt the dog, and I still didn't want to do that. But I didn't have to stay around the dog. 

And while I do want to prevent suffering in the world, there's a lot of suffering. I don't have to help whoever is closest by and most emotionally salient. I can convert my desire to help that particular person into a desire to help others where the situation is more tractable and causes me less extreme damage. 

Which is all to say - forgiveness is a virtue, but as with all virtues, it comes with a ton of caveats and nuance. 

Don't hold onto anger, because that just hurts you. 

Convert that anger into the action of setting up systems to avoid being continuously hurt by others. 

And sometimes, that just means leaving.

Compassion feels terrible. 

Compassion doesn't feel warm and soft to me.

It feels like a need.

How would you feel if a loved one was drowning in front of you?

A sibling. A romantic partner. A child. A pet.

About to die.

Do you feel warm and soft?

No. You feel a need to help.

It’s not pleasant.

It’s desperate.

You might feel a rush of relief when you see there’s a lifesaver nearby, and you quickly throw it to them.

But how do you feel when you see that the loved can’t reach the lifesaver?

Do you dive into the waters to try to save them? Or will that just mean the both of you will perish?

And wait, what the fuck? It’s not just one loved one in the raging river. There’s another one!

And another one!

. . . and another one?!

Where the fuck are they coming from? Why are all of your loved ones drowning?

Should you go upstream to figure out where they’re coming from and what’s happening to prevent more? But then all of the loved ones you can see will die right away.

This is awful.

You decide to go upstream - and discover that other loved ones are pushing more loved ones into the stream.

“What the fuck are you doing?” you politely say to the loved ones.

“What do you mean,” they say. “We aren’t doing anything” says this woman while she throws your cat into the river.

How do you feel when they’re drowning and you don’t know what to do to help?

That's what compassion feels like to me. 

It kinda sucks, to be honest. 

And yet, if somebody figured out a "cure" to compassion and tried to give me a pill to "fix" it, I'd fight them tooth and nail. 

Because not all good things in the world feel good. 

Compassion is like so many other sources of meaning. If you care about something, it means it can make you suffer. 

And I choose to care.

​I wish it was socially acceptable to cancel work meetings, not because you're sick or there's a family emergency, but because you're in a total fucking mood and want to emotionally quarantine yourself.

Like, not even from a selfish perspective. 

It's for the greater good. 

Just like you shouldn't bring a contagious disease to work, you shouldn't bring a mood that will cause damage wherever you go.

You all know about sapiosexuality (being attracted to intelligence), but did you know about consciosexuals?

It's people who are attracted to conscientiousness. 

Do you ever salivate at a really well done spreadsheet? 

Or purr with desire when you see a well organized cupboard? 

Do you ever want to pounce on your partner when they carry a backup something in their bag and it gets you out of a jam?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you might be a consciosexual.

Nowadays many people move frequently, either for work or living a nomadic lifestyle. While this can lead to a much richer life (both financially and experientially), it can leave a gaping hole when it comes to long term friendships. I feel like I have learned how to maintain long distance friendships far more than most people I know, largely thanks to it being a necessity with my constant moving, so I thought I’d share some lessons I’ve learned. 

1. Set up regular Skypes
Whatever you do, don’t just say, “Let’s talk again sometime” and leave it at that. Set up weekly, biweekly, or monthly Skypes. Whatever is the default happens; that’s why it’s so easy to maintain relationships in school and university. The default is seeing your friends every day. This is true for local friendships too, but especially for remote ones because you won’t have the triggers of seeing them at unrelated events to remind you that you should hangout. Set up a few regulars so that you can maintain a level of friendship that is a lot more satisfying than receiving a congratulations on your wedding that happened a year ago. 

2. IM or text a lot
Skypes are good, but to really maintain your relationship, it helps to IM. The benefits of IM compared to other mediums of communication is that it’s considered OK to just spontaneously talk to somebody instead of arranging an hour two weeks out and it’s not set to a certain time period. You could just send two messages back and forth or chat for hours. This allows you to get and give emotional support if something just happened, to share those random shower thoughts you have, and just generally keep the relationship alive. 

3. Encourage spontaneous calls
If there was one gripe I have about modern culture that’s not actually all that serious, it would be that people are against spontaneous calls. They want you to book something weeks out. Calling without texting first is considered rude. This leads to much less close relationships because neither of you can reach out when you need it, and people think they have a lot less spare time than they actually have. They might make you book two weeks out when actually they’re feeling lonely that evening binge-watching Netflix. Being able to call just to chat is a huge boon to a friendship, local or remote. Of course first if they’re OK with it because some people are quite opposed, and let them know that you’re open to it. Just be OK with people saying that they’re busy and you’ll have access to a whole new realm of social connection. 

4. Have friends on different time zones
This applies less if you don’t move internationally very frequently, but if you do, this is essential. Otherwise you might move to a new place and find that all of your friends are asleep until 10:00 PM your time. I try to have friends in North America, Europe, and Australasia to make it so that if I feel like chatting in the morning or the evening, there’s always somebody awake and not working. 

In conclusion, loneliness is endemic in our modern age where people are less location dependent, so being able to maintain a long distance friendship is extremely good for people’s mental health. I hope these pointers will help you and others be able to do so so we can live in a flexible but connected world.