Social skills are like any other skill -- if you practice, you get better.
But in order to practice, you have to start, and you have to keep going. And both of those things are very hard. It's really easy to wait to start until you're totally "ready" (which will be never), or burn yourself out by pursuing a new goal in an unsustainable way.
So instead, I want to show you a better way.
There's a website called Give it 100. The basic idea is that you practice something for 100 days in a row, and you film a 10 second clip of you doing it every day so you can see how you improve. You can also see what other users are doing, which is sometimes incredible and sometimes adorable.
Unfortunately, social skills don't really lend themselves well to 10 second clips (in fact, a great social skills tip: don't randomly start filming the people you're talking to.) So instead I want to give you a different "Give it 100" challenge. Are you ready? Here it is:
Do something that practices your social skills for ten minutes, ten days in a row.
For instance, you could
- Spend ten minutes reading a guide to social skills
- Spend ten minutes watching TV with the volume off to analyze body language
- Spend ten minutes researching therapists -- and then booking an appointment when you find one!
- Spend ten minutes talking to someone you otherwise wouldn't have.
At the end of ten days, you'll have spent 100 minutes improving your social skills. This doesn't sound like a lot, but it's about momentum.
I guarantee that if you "give it 100" you will see an improvement in your social skills and your confidence- - even if it's very small (which is ok, because every good thing starts small.)
Once you see that improvement, it will be much easier for you to keep improving, and do another 100, and then another 100 -- until you look back and you find that your first 100 minutes of improvement has become 100 hours.
So to summarize:
- Commit to spending 10 minutes over the next 10 days practicing your social skills. If possible, start today -- or at the latest, tomorrow.
- Once you've "given it 100", notice the improvement (even if it's small!) in your social skills and confidence
- Then, keep going! Give it another 100, or maybe another 1000!
- And come back and post your story in the comments, to encourage others 🙂
8 Comments on “Give It 100”
Love this,
I have a client I think this would work well for…especially the “watch TV with the sound off” part!
Hope all is well Dan!
-Jeff
Is there a way to share this as a link on Facebook? I’m on my phone, so I may missing the share button…but I think this is great and would like to share with my SLP and ASD teacher friends!
I don’t have a share button unfortunately, but you’re welcome to paste the link in on Facebook 🙂
This sounds like a good strategy. Simple and easy to follow.
Why not instead read a good solid piece of literature, such as George Elliot’s (sp) “Daniel Deronda” — one that will give you keen insight into human behavior?
Reading literature is also a good idea 🙂 I don’t think you will see immediate impacts in your life after ten days of reading literature (which is why I didn’t recommend it in this post), but over the long-term it certainly will help you understand relationships and emotion better. Good tip!
I’ve been practicing for interviews on and off for possible future jobs. It gave me the confidence that I would be able to interview well. I encourage everyone to improve on their job interview skills.
Love this idea! Our lives are busy, so it can be hard to find the time to work on your goals. But finding 10 minutes a day to work on something as important as your social skills is doable for pretty much everyone.