realsocialskills:

Presenters often open by asking “Can everybody hear me?” or “Can everyone hear me without the microphone?”

This isn’t a very effective way to find out if everyone can hear you. It feels like asking, but it isn’t really — because it doesn’t usually give people the opportunity to say no.

If you want to know if everyone can hear you, this way of asking works better:

• First, ask if everyone can hear you. This will get the attention of the people who can.
  
• Next, ask everyone “Can the person next to you hear me?”
  
• Wait 7 seconds for people to ask each other
  
• Next, say, “Raise your hand if you or someone near you needs me to talk louder or use the microphone.”
  
• Wait at least 7 seconds before moving on. 
  
• (7 seconds feels really long as a presenter. It helps to literally count silently to yourself).
  

Asking this way solves two problems:

It makes it easier for people to hear the question:

• If someone can’t hear you well, they may not hear “Can everybody hear me?”
  
• This can give you the misleading impression that everyone can hear you.
  
• When you ask, “Can everybody hear me?” the people who can, tend to respond “yes” immediately
  
• The people who *can’t* hear you well, often don’t hear the question.
  
• Or they may not understand what you’ve said until you’ve already moved on.
  
• But they probably *can* hear people who are close to them talking to them directly.
  
• Asking “can the person next to you hear me?” makes it more likely that people who can’t hear you will understand the question.
  

It makes it easier for people to respond to the question:

• Saying “Can everybody hear me?” or “Can everyone hear me without the microphone?” *feels* like asking, but often it really isn’t. 
  
• The problem is that asking that way doesn’t give people an obvious socially acceptable way to respond.
  
• So in order for people to say “I can’t hear you” or “I need you to use the microphone”, they have to interrupt you.
  
• Which feels like a conflict, and most people don’t want to go into a presentation and immediately have a conflict with the presenter.
  
• It also makes them have to identify themselves as having an inconvenient impairment in front of the whole group.
  
• That’s uncomfortable on a number of levels, and may be actively frightening. 
  
• Not everyone is going to be willing or able to interrupt you or take risks. 
• Even when people are willing, it’s still anxiety provoking in a way that’s likely to make your presentation less comfortable and effective
• Giving people a clear way to respond gets you better information, and helps you to build a better rapport with your audience 
  
• (And doing it in the specific way I suggest makes it possible for people to let you know they can’t hear you without having to interrupt you, identify themselves to you, or identify themselves to the whole group.)

Tl;dr If you’re giving a presentation, asking “Can everyone hear me?” probably won’t result in people who can’t hear you telling you so. Scroll up for more detailed information about a more effective approach and why it works better.

nyctophiliaccarly:

·       Get out of bed. Do that now.

·       Go into the bathroom and remove all of your clothing. I have fat that gathers into massive love handles, stretch marks on every bit of skin that isn’t flat. But when my clothes are all off, with no fabric to bother me, no illusion of what my body looks like and all I can see is myself, I feel better. I feel more wholesome. Maybe you will, too.

·       Run your hands over it, turn around. Have no illusion of what your body looks like. It’s not as bad as you think. Get a good picture in your mind of anything you want to attend to. Make a list if you need to, only about your body.

·       Brush your hair through, if you have it.

·       Put your hair up and out of the way, if it’s long.

·       Floss and brush your teeth very well. Take your time on this. Do it twice if you need to. Your breath won’t feel as thick, you won’t feel as heavy.

·       Put on lots of chapstick or balm right afterwards

·       Wash any parts of your body that you need to.

·       Blow your nose until there’s nothing left, get it all out. You’re probably clogged up.

·       Clip your nails, take off any old polish. Push your cuticles back.

·       Wash your hair, if you want to.

·       If you (like to)shave, shave everything. You’ll feel weightless. Only fill up the bath a little bit and do it over the edge. You’ll just feel dirty if you sit in hair.

·       Drink a full glass of water. Don’t sip, don’t chug. Just don’t set it down until it’s gone.

·       Dress yourself in whatever way you feel ready for the day. Yoga pants, sweatpants, t-shirts, dresses, shorts. Whatever way that makes things easier.

·       Eat. Eat something. Don’t pull random bits of food from random boxes. Prepare it at once and sit down. Take this time to rest.

·       Get a drink of your choice, as long as it isn’t alcohol. As a matter of fact, if there’s alcohol on the counter, put it away. Don’t look at it. It will only give you a headache. Make yourself chocolate milk, water, a smoothie, a soda, whatever sounds nice.

·       Sit on the floor and forget about everything you need to think about. Set a timer for exactly one minute. Close your eyes, and during that one minute, pay attention to how your body feels. Ask yourself these questions. Am I sore anywhere? Stretch this bit out, put more pressure on it. Focus on your muscles. Keep your back completely straight. Did I eat enough? Think about your stomach. Focus on your breathing. Listen to the air. Can you hear the sound of your lights? A ceiling fan? Your joints? Don’t open your eyes until the time is up. This minute will pass very quickly.

·       Get a good old fashioned piece of notebook paper and a pencil. If you don’t have that use your phone or computer. Make a list of every little thing you need to do. Everything matters. Every errand, homework assignment, thing that needs cleaned, health issue… all of it.

·       Do it now. Check things off as you go. As you see things disappear, your head will be more clear.

·       Don’t forget to take your pills.

·       If you’ve been putting off your homework, fix yourself a snack and a tall drink of something warm. Get all of the supplies you need. Sit down and plow through it. If you need help with homework, message a friend, a family member, even message me. I’ll try and help you. It won’t take as long as you think, your mind is just cluttered. Repeat to yourself “this is what I am working on now. This is what is important now. I will feel lighter when I am finished.” Even if the assignment is due in a few weeks, more than likely it is too much to do in one night. Split it up into quarters. Work for one hour, and if you’re close, finish it off. Give yourself this one hour.

·       You don’t have to make your bed, but take off the blankets and shake them out. If there’s crumbs on the mattress, vacuum, or wipe them off. If you have dirty clothes, put them in the hamper.

·       Now that your day is free, deal with your social problems. Is there someone you’ve been meaning to apologize to? Something you’ve upset? Something you’re unsure of? You have all of the rest of the day to deal with it. Take your time.

·       Before bed, pay special attention to your face. Wash it, clean your ears, put on acne medicine, moisturize it. Anything on your face that needs to be attended to. See how beautiful you are? Your skin will drink it up, it will look better tomorrow. Do this constantly.

·       Listen to songs you haven’t in a while. You forgot that one verse, the reason why you kept it.

·       Make a list of questions. How does a remote work? Why do we have toenails? What is this word? Look them up. They’re right there to know.

·       Ask for help

·       It’s fine to cry. I feel warm in the face afterwards. I feel smaller afterwards, less huge. Less of a problem. You need to understand that we want to matter, but when we mess up we don’t want it to matter. It goes both ways. You are the most important person. Your mistakes only have weight to you. Nobody minds as much as you think they do.

·       Do these things. Do them now.

dispatchrabbi:

copperbadge:

revyspite:

queendread:

Right now, I’m sifting through 50+ applications for a new entry-level position. Here’s some advice from the person who will actually be looking at your CV/resume and cover letter:

• ‘You must include a cover letter’ does not mean ‘write a single line about why you want this position’. If you can’t be bothered to write at least one actual paragraphs about why you want this job, I can’t be bothered to read your CV.
• Don’t bother including a list of your interests if all you can think of is ‘socialising with friends’ and ‘listening to music’. Everyone likes those things. Unless you can explain why the stuff you do enriches you as a person and a candidate (e.g. playing an instrument or a sport shows dedication and discipline) then I honestly don’t care how you spend your time. I won’t be looking at your CV thinking ‘huh, they haven’t included their interests, they must have none’, I’m just looking for what you have included.
  
• Even if you apply online, I can see the filename you used for your CV. Filenames that don’t include YOUR name are annoying. Filenames like ‘CV - media’ tell me that you’ve got several CVs you send off depending on the kind of job advertised and that you probably didn’t tailor it for this position. ‘[Full name] CV’ is best.
• USE. A. PDF. All the meta information, including how long you worked on it, when you created it, times, etc, is right there in a Word doc. PDFs are far more professional looking and clean and mean that I can’t make any (unconscious or not) decisions about you based on information about the file.
• I don’t care what the duties in your previous unrelated jobs were unless you can tell me why they’re useful to this job. If you worked in a shop, and you’re applying for an office job which involves talking to lots of people, don’t give me a list of stuff you did, write a sentence about how much you enjoyed working in a team to help everyone you interacted with and did your best to make them leave the shop with a smile. I want to know what makes you happy in a job, because I want you to be happy within the job I’m advertising.
• Does the application pack say who you’ll be reporting to? Can you find their name on the company website? Address your application to them. It’s super easy and shows that you give enough of a shit to google something. 95% of people don’t do this.
  
• Tell me who you are. Tell me what makes you want to get up in the morning and go to work and feel fulfilled. Tell me what you’re looking for, not just what you think I’m looking for.
• I will skim your CV. If you have a bunch of bullet points, make every one of them count. Make the first one the best one. If it’s not interesting to you, it’s probably not interesting to me. I’m overworked and tired. Make my job easy.
• “I work well in a team or individually” okay cool, you and everyone else. If the job means you’ll be part of a big team, talk about how much you love teamwork and how collaborating with people is the best way to solve problems. If the job requires lots of independence, talk about how you are great at taking direction and running with it, and how you have the confidence to follow your own ideas and seek out the insight of others when necessary. I am profoundly uninterested in cookie-cutter statements. I want to know how you actually work, not how a teacher once told you you should work.
  
• For an entry-level role, tell me how you’re looking forward to growing and developing and learning as much as you can. I will hire genuine enthusiasm and drive over cherry-picked skills any day. You can teach someone to use Excel, but you can’t teach someone to give a shit. It makes a real difference.

This is my advice for small, independent orgs like charities, etc. We usually don’t go through agencies, and the person reading through the applications is usually the person who will manage you, so it helps if you can give them a real sense of who you are and how you’ll grab hold of that entry level position and give it all you’ve got. This stuff might not apply to big companies with actual HR departments - it’s up to you to figure out the culture and what they’re looking for and mirror it. Do they use buzzwords? Use the same buzzwords! Do they write in a friendly, informal way? Do the same! And remember, 95% of job hunting (beyond who you know and flat-out nepotism, ugh) is luck. If you keep getting rejected, it’s not because you suck. You might just need a different approach, or it might just take the right pair of eyes landing on your CV.

And if you get rejected, it’s worthwhile asking why. You’ve already been rejected, the worst has already happened, there’s really nothing bad that can come out of you asking them for some constructive feedback (politely, informally, “if it isn’t too much trouble”). Pretty much all of us have been hopeless jobseekers at one point or another. We know it’s shitty and hard and soul-crushing. Friendliness goes a long way. Even if it’s just one line like “your cover letter wasn’t inspiring" at least you know where to start.

And seriously, if you have any friends that do any kind of hiring or have any involvement with that side of things, ask them to look at your CV with a big red pen and brutal honesty. I do this all the time, and the most important thing I do is making it so their CV doesn’t read exactly like that of every other person who took the same ‘how-to-get-a-job’ class in school. If your CV has a paragraph that starts with something like ‘I am a highly motivated and punctual individual who–’ then oh my god I AM ALREADY ASLEEP.

Very good post thanks for this.

Excellent advice for building and submitting job application documents.

This is the first good resume advice post I’ve seen on this site. Much better advice than the “lists of active verbs to use” and “here are resume templates”. Follow this advice.

oaluz:

“What if we treated our lovers more like friends? We saw in Chapter 3 that the privileging of love puts pressure on love relationships. Think about starting a new relationship: this person hasn’t spent as much time with you as some of your oldest friends and you haven’t yet told them about all the major events of your life but, somehow, because you’ve had sex, you expect them to telepathically know how you’re feeling and to respond perfectly to every situation in which you find yourselves. Also, we can handle our friend having opposing attitudes to us on some of the things we hold dear, but a lover can disagree with us on something as simple as whether its okay to miss the movie trailers and it is a major issue. It is easy to take lovers for granted. We may not be as grateful when a lover puts themselves out for us as we would if a friend did the same. We might not be as appreciative when they give up their evening to comfort us when we’re low. We might take out our irritations and frustrations out on them by being snappy, unfriendly, or quiet without explanation in a way we’d never do with a friend. Perhaps we should take a few moments, each time we’re being irritable with a lover, to ask ourselves, ‘How would I treat a friend in this situation?’

What if we were to treat our friends more like our lovers? Might it be good to put a bit more romance into our friendships? With lovers, we often celebrate by making a big thing of anniversaries or Valentine’s Day, or by spoiling them on their birthdays. We show our appreciation for them with little gifts and cards. We leave them a note when we depart in the morning after an enjoyable night together. We make time for them. Many of these things could be incorporated into friendships. We could send a friend a homemade CD when we hear they’ve been low. We could schedule in a regular lunch date. We could send a bunch of flowers to an old friend to let them know we’re thinking about them even though we haven’t seen each other in a while. We could arrange, each year, a day with a friend to specifically focus on our friendship, perhaps going away for a weekend together doing something we both enjoy, maybe acknowledging the day we met or cemented our friendship in some way. Perhaps friendships could also benefit from some of the ‘state of the relationship’ discussions we may have with overs. It may be easier to let friendships drift or to avoid talking about a problem because we’re not generally expected to reflect on, or work at, our friend relationships.”

Meg John Barker, Rewriting the Rules

cl0udb3rry:

katalyna-rose:

diaryofandnwoman:

doomhamster:

sandersstudies:

sandersstudies:

If you and your partner practice frequent, non-sexual consent, your relationship will be healthier and easier.

“Are you comfortable with me ranting about my day for a few minutes?”

“Oh, this is your poetry? Would it be okay if I read it?”

“Do you mind if I use your phone for a few minutes?”

“Wow, your meal looks awesome. Could I try some?”

It will save a lot of grief, especially in a developing relationship. Eventually, with consistent “yes’s” and “no’s” you can figure out more permanent boundaries and guidelines.

“I need to ask before ranting about my day or taking their food, but my partner is okay with me using their phone whenever. However, my partner does not like me reading their poetry unless they offer first.”

And this goes for friendships too! Even just stuff like “do you mind if I leave this door open?” 

…I never fully realized it before but this is a big part of why my relationship with my husband is so conflict-free. Both because him doing this all the time made it easy to trust him, back when we were a new item, and because it helped ME break out of the toxic idea that you should never ask about a partner’s preferences because if you Really Loved Them you should be able to intuit what they want, all the time, about anything. 

theconcealedweapon:

Evergreen.

incandescent-creativity:

whatsanwritepocalae:

writingisfancylying:

How do you write creepy stories

• Over describe things
• Under describe things
• Fingers, teeth, and eyes
• Short sentences in rapid succession build tension
• Single sentence paragraphs build dread
• Uncanny valley=things that aren’t normal almost getting it right
• Third person limited view
• Limited explanations
• Rot, mold, damage, age, static, flickering, especially in places it shouldn’t be
• Limited sights for your mc -blindness, darkness, fog, refuse
• Real consequences
• Being alone -the more people there are, the less scary it is
• Intimate knowledge, but only on one side

I don’t know I just write scary things but I don’t know what I’m doing.

Rule of Thumb: your reader’s imagination will scare them more than anything you could ever write. You don’t have to offer a perfectly concrete explanation for everything at the end. In fact, doing so may detract from your story.

vampireapologist:

vampireapologist:

mutuals do this

buy a small plot of farmland and contact your state’s NRCS chapter to have them evaluate the land for remnants of wetlands that were once there and destroyed for crops and let THEM pay YOU to allow them to restore it to benefit local wildlife and own it and protect it from development for the rest of time. even if you die and a rich corporation buys the land they can’t touch the wetland and i think that’s very sexy.

Ok but actually this is the NRCS wetland and agricultural easement program and how it works is if you have a spot on your land you think might’ve once been a wetland (always soggy, doesn’t drain after rain, etc.) or is a wetland that’s super damaged you can apply for their easement program and they will put you on a list and if you meet the qualifications they will purchase the land from you and restore the wetland to improve the local environment and for wildlife species and

Contrary to rumors this will not give people public access to your land. All it does is make it so you also aren’t allowed to build or develop in that spot anymore, but you can fish, hunt, boat or whatever else you want to do for fun in the wetland.

And it’s an easement owned by the government now so even if you sell your property or die or go bankrupt and leave, no one else who buys the land is ever allowed to damage or threaten the wetland. It’s your legacy.

They also do this to protect agricultural land from urban development.

These easements also exist through other organizations for grasslands, forests, and more.

I see all of you wanting to live in nature on farms with your friends and this is something to seriously look into if you ever do. The government will pay you to let them restore habitats on your land that you then get to enjoy.

Their biggest challenge right now is outreach and trust because a lot of farmers are historically uncertain about government involvement on their land so spread the word and check it out.