Multithreading in Python, for example. Or how to use Queues.

So here’s something for myself next time I need a refresher. It’s the bare-bones concepts of Queuing and Threading in Python.

Let’s start with Queuing in Python.

Before you do anything else, import Queue.

from Queue import Queue

A queue is kind of like a list:

my_list = []
my_list.append(1)
my_list.append(2)
my_list.append(3)
print my_list.pop(0)
# Outputs: 1

The above code creates a list, assigns it three values, then removes the first value in so the list now has only 2 values (which are 2 and 3).

my_queue = Queue(maxsize=0)
my_queue.put(1)
my_queue.put(2)
my_queue.put(3)
print my_queue.get()
my_queue.task_done()
# Outputs: 1

There are only a couple differences in how queues work visually. First we set a maximum size to the queue, where 0 means infinite. It’s pretty dumb but I’m sure it’s useful somehow.

The second visual difference is the task_done() bit at the end. That tells the queue that not only have I retrieved the information from the list, but I’ve finished with it. If I don’t call task_done() then I run into trouble in threading. So let’s just say in Queues, you have to call this.

The big important point about Queues is that they work really well with threading. In fact, you just can’t use lists the way you can use queues in threading. That’s why I’m even bothering to bring them up here.

Here’s an example of a simple program that uses Queues:

from Queue import Queue

def do_stuff(q):
  while not q.empty():
    print q.get()
    q.task_done()

q = Queue(maxsize=0)

for x in range(20):
  q.put(x)

do_stuff(q)

It outputs 0-19. In like the most complicated way possible to output 0-19.

Notice how do_stuff() is just whipping through the whole queue. That’s nice. But what if it was trying to do a big task, or a task that required a lot of waiting (like pulling data from APIs)? Assume for example that do_stuff() takes 30 second to run each time and it’s just waiting on stupid APIs to return something. The function would take 30 seconds every time it ran, and it would run 20 times so it would take 10 minutes to get through just 20 items. That’s really shitty.

Enter Python Threading.

Start with importing the right stuff:

from Queue import Queue
from threading import Thread

Threads are probably really complex. Or so I’m lead to believe. All you need to know for now, though, is that they use a worker function to get stuff done, they run at the same time, and you can pull them all together when they’re done. So first you need to set up a worker function:

def do_stuff(q):
  while True:
    print q.get()
    q.task_done()

We’re more or less just stealing the function from the last bit except we’re setting it up for an infinite loop (while True). It just means that I want my threads always ready to accept new tasks.

Now I want to create the actual threads and set them running. Before I do that, though, I need to give them a Queue to work with. The Queue doesn’t have to have anything on it, it just needs to be defined so that my threads know what they’ll be working on. Here’s how I set my (10) threads running:

q = Queue(maxsize=0)
num_threads = 10

for i in range(num_threads):
  worker = Thread(target=do_stuff, args=(q,))
  worker.setDaemon(True)
  worker.start()

So you see the Queue set up (as “q”), then I define a loop to run the thread creation bits 10 times. The first line in the loop sets up a thread and points it first at the do_stuff function, and then passes it “q” which is the Queue we just defined. Then something about a daemon, and we start the bugger. That’s 10 threads running (remember the infinite loop in do_stuff()?) and waiting for me to put something in the Queue.

The rest of the code is the same as the Queue example so I’m just going to put it all together and let you figure it out:

from Queue import Queue
from threading import Thread

def do_stuff(q):
  while True:
    print q.get()
    q.task_done()

q = Queue(maxsize=0)
num_threads = 10

for i in range(num_threads):
  worker = Thread(target=do_stuff, args=(q,))
  worker.setDaemon(True)
  worker.start()

for x in range(100):
  q.put(x)

q.join()

The only bit that should be new is the q.join() bit right at the end. This basically just waits until the queue is empty and all of the threads are done working (which it knows because task_done() will have been called on every element of the queue). If you were running a program in batches, you might use q.join() to wait for the batch to finish and then write the results to a file, and then just throw more tasks into the queue.

Consider revising the last 3 lines into a loop:

for y in range (10):
  for x in range(100):
    q.put(x + y * 100)
  q.join()
  print "Batch " + str(y) + " Done"

It’s cool that Queues can get added to willy nilly and these Threads will just pick them up, and whenever I want to I can stop and join all of them together for a second so I can check in, maybe write to a file or database or just let the user know that I’m still working away.

Remember the example I gave before about each run of do_stuff() taking 30 seconds? And since I had to run it 20 times it’d take 10 minutes? Now I can just run 20 different threads and the whole program will be done in about 30 seconds rather than 10 minutes. Obviously your results may vary, but it’s definitely faster.

In any case, hope this helped. If you want the nitty gritty details, go read the documentation. This should get you started though.

The post The Basics of Python Multithreading and Queues appeared first on Troy Fawkes.

I’m also looking at a picture of a beautiful girl who chased me down at a party months ago and made me stay up late and tell her stories until the sun popped up over the windowsill.

That wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t changed something. Something big. Clarity isn’t the whole picture–you can get a bit more on speaking skills in general here and even more by subscribing to my newsletter–but this is a start.

I realize that you might expect advice on speaking clearly to be about whether or not you’re spending more time chewing on your tongue than sending coherent words out into the world. That one problem has a very simple solution: speak slower and choose every word. This also makes you appear more confident (confident people have slower dialogues). But it’s not what I think will give you the most bang for your buck.

Here’s what I’d like to cover:

• Be Direct and Responsible with your Meaning
• Speak Loudly. Call Attention To Yourself.
• Avoid Slang, Jargon and Pop-Culture References
• Some Exercises to Improve Clarity

William Zinsser is the author of the writer’s bible, On Writing Well. The biggest flaw that most writers have, he writes, is a lack of clarity. This is also true of speakers.

You might lisp or mumble or speak too quietly. But you might also be confusing your audience with slang, jargon or vague pop-culture references.

Besides the obvious benefits, people who speak clearly also come across as more confident and significantly more persuasive. When everyone is talking around an issue, the clearest, most blunt speaker will gain the most attention. That attention is your super power: now you give your solution, just as clearly and persuasively, and who’s going to argue with you? Someone who has vague answers? Everyone is listening to you.

All of those details follow as well as some exercises that you can use to improve the clarity of your speech.

If you’d like to keep up to date with these articles and get more information on how to speak clearly, sign up to my email newsletter. I don’t always send email, but when I do I save my best stuff for it!

Enjoy irresponsibly.

Be Direct and Responsible with your Meaning

I want to start by sharing an email I got from a former landlady. Reading it, I’d like you to try to understand what she’s talking about. I removed some information above and below that doesn’t clarify the message.

I did however want to run by you whether you are comfortable here or not. I do not want to infringe on your privacy, but as you know this is a family home and there are certain things that need to be respected. I am not sure if you can or are willing to do so for the next 6 months. If you are, then all is well and we can continue with our arrangement. However, if you cannot deal/are not comfortable with the limits in place – then now would be a good time to let me know, so that we don’t move forward with another 6 months.

You have been a great tenant and everything has been fine thus far – we must simply make sure that we are on the same page before moving forward.

She meant, “You have to stop having loud sex or I’m kicking you out.” Did you understand that from the email? I did, because she had banged on the floor the night before I got it and I got two text messages from her, each about volume.

We both knew what she was talking about, and yet she didn’t outright say it.

This is a great example of someone being afraid of speaking clearly. Her argument for being unclear is simple: she’s worried that her meaning will offend me. She doesn’t want to take responsibility for it, so she purposefully makes it vague. But, at the end of the day, we’re talking about sex and eviction.

She uses two different tactics to deal with her fear of clearly communicating her message:

1. She makes me responsible rather than herself
2. She addresses the issue indirectly

Instead of taking ownership of her discomfort, she writes, “You need to come to me and tell me that you’re uncomfortable with the new rules.” Notice that now I’m responsible. I have to go to her.

I don’t often see people writing or speaking like that. Most writers duck responsibility by using the passive voice.

With the passive voice, the writer usually expresses fear of not being taken seriously; it’s the voice of little boys wearing shoe polish mustaches and little girls clumping around in Mommy’s high heels.”

Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

The active voice is when someone does something. An example is, “I ate the hotdog.” The passive voice is when something was done. So, “The hotdog was eaten.”

Notice how, even though I’ve still eaten the hotdog, I’m not in the story anymore? If I wanted to tell someone that I had eaten their hotdog but I didn’t want to take responsibility for it, I might use the passive voice. “Sorry buddy, your hotdog was eaten.”

There’s a museum in Germany with a plaque that reads, “Russia was invaded.” My ex-girlfriend use to say, “It wasn’t appreciated.”

You’re just afraid of the responsibility. Guess how confident you look peeing your pants over word choice.

Clear speech is direct and takes responsibility of its meaning.

Understand this: your meaning is going to be the same whether you obscure it or not. The only thing obscuring your speech does is make you harder to understand and make you look scared. Be direct.

And more importantly, be responsible. Don’t say, “It wasn’t appreciated.” Say, “I don’t appreciate that.” Even better, don’t say, “we’re not sure what to do.” Say, “I’m not sure what to do.”

Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon.

Who can understand the clotted language of everyday American commerce: the memo, the corporation report, the business letter, the notice from the bank explaining its latest “simplified” statement? … Our national tendency is to inflate and thereby sound important.

William Zinsser, On Writing Well

The best way to master this form of clarity is to practice writing. I practiced in my text messages, rewriting each message 4-5 times for directness and responsibility. It’s just as useful to practice writing and rewriting emails. If you’re feeling creative, try dialogue.

If I was writing my landlady’s email to me to be direct and to take responsibility for what she intends to say, I would write this:

Hey Troy,

I get that you’re a bachelor, and that sex and relationships are going to be part of your life. But I’m not comfortable with rocking and banging and girls screaming in the basement. I don’t want my daughter hearing it either. If you’re not OK giving up sex here, I’ll give you some notice to move out.

I think you’re a great tenant and I don’t blame you for wanting to have sex, the problem is on my end and I’m sure you understand why.

Speak Loudly. Call Attention To Yourself.

My dad used to tell me that I mumbled. I’d deny it and sit, fuming, in the car. But he was right, and I continued to be quiet up until I realized how little being quiet served me.

It took a long time, but after I found out that speaking loudly, among other verbal cues, was a sign of confidence, I started to pursue it.

Vocal Signs of Confidence, Kimble and Seidel

Being loud encroaches on other people’s mental space. It’s the equivalent of standing in someone’s way and forcing them to walk around you. Suddenly it makes sense that the volume at which you talk is related to your confidence.

Watch the video below and tell me what role volume plays in your impression of Eric, the speaker.

Here’s what I learned from listening to Eric’s volume. It gives him:

1. Presence: When he’s loud, it’s HIS turn to speak. Everyone pays attention. Even if someone disagreed they’d be too nervous to speak over him.
2. Trust: If he had been speaking quietly I wouldn’t have believed his story, and I wouldn’t have felt motivated. Why? Because if he wasn’t confident in his words he wouldn’t speak them so loudly.
3. Passion: He’s given this presentation a thousand times, and yet he seems to passionate about it. You can show passion with faster and louder speech–don’t try this at home, it’s a side-effect of learning to speak loudly rather than something you should try to fake.

A good trick to figure out how loud you should be is to pretend that whoever you’re talking to is standing half again as far away. Talk to an imaginary person behind them.

Avoid Slang, Jargon and Pop-Culture References

Note: These aren’t always bad. The problem is that they’re usually over-used.

I learned French growing up but seldom speak it. To keep it up I read French novels, and my favourites are classics like Les Trois Mousquetaires. Alexandre Dumas, the author, was writing in the 1800s and has a very romantic and descriptive language. Think Shakespeare but with much cooler plots as he wasn’t limited by what you could do on a stage.

The unfortunate side-effect of my education coming from Dumas is that now my French is flowery.

Leaving a French friend behind as I moved from one city to another, she texted me, “Tu vas me manquer” [I'll miss you, or you'll be missed by me]. I responded, “Il n’y a que les montagnes qui ne se rencontrent pas” [Only mountains never meet].

That sounded completely normal to me, but to her it was like I had quoted the bible–over-emphatic and unclear.

My romantic expression, which may strike you as romantic, actually confused her a little bit and therefore didn’t accomplish what I had wanted it to. A clearer way to express that sentiment might have been, “I’ll miss you too, beautiful girl, but I WILL see you when I come back.”

Now, here’s the thing. I know a half dozen girls who’d have both understood and loved that. I dated a girl for a year after she saw that I quoted a poet in describing her: “Comparing other girls to her is like holding a candle to the sun.” Pop Culture references, like, when someone makes a social mistake, denying them soup, can be funny. Slang and jargon can be very expressive.

But a lot of people mistake flowery words with strong meaning, romantic words with romance, slang and jargon with coolness, and formal words as becoming of a business person. They don’t cater it to their audience, they just use it and expect it to work.

Take note of any time people give you vague looks, don’t laugh when you expect them to, or even end a conversation after you’ve been unclear. I doubt it never happens to you.

You’ll get the same result from making any of these mistakes–lack of understanding. You’ll get a ton of different reactions though:

1. Feigned understanding and a fake-sounding laugh or fake-looking nod
2. A confused look and a verbal pause
3. An affirmative (nod, “Yeah,” etc.) and then they’ll continue speaking while ignoring your comment
4. “What?” “Not sure what you mean…”

These are kind of hard to detect since most people won’t call you out on it.

If you want to see this reaction, just insert this line into any conversation you’re having:

“Death from a thousand cuts.”

And then pause.

Looking for these confused reactions will teach you when you’re going overboard with your jargon, slang or obscure references. If you feel this is a big problem for you, catch yourself every time you make one and express the idea differently.

A note on this horse before we leave off kicking it: there’s a word, cliché, that means “a phrase or opinion that is overused and betrays a lack of original thought.” Tired metaphors and similes make you sound as if you lack original thought. If you can’t come up with your own or add some creativity into the old ones then don’t use them.

Some Exercises to Improve Clarity

Here are three exercises that you can use to improve your clarity of speech.

Third Time’s the Charm

I’ll give you a topic and the moment you see it you’re going to speak for about 20 seconds. I don’t care what you say. Once you’ve finished, you’re going to think about what you just said, and express it more clearly. Then, you’re going to do it one more time with the same subject. The third time’s the charm.

Your goal is to go from being incoherent to having a focused path.

Every time you repeat this exercise, focus on a different part of speaking clearly:

1. Directness and Responsibility
2. Volume
3. Jargon, Slang and Pop-Culture References

Remember to start this challenge right away.

Your topic is: Dogs

The Motivational Battle Speech

A general giving a speech to his troops before battle, at least in the movies, is usually very evocative. He’s pissed off, or deadly serious. Or both.

Try to emulate some of these speeches.

Try this one from 300. It’s short and sweet, so you shouldn’t have much trouble. There’s a lot of good stuff in Pulp Fiction and Inglorious Bastards too!

Rapping

This one’s probably the toughest exercise for speaking clearly. Choose a rap and get every bit of it down.

Start with the first verse (usually 6-8 lines).

Make sure you’re not whispering it to yourself–rap it louder than you’re used to speaking. If you’re not used to singing, this is one of the most embarrassing things you’ll do until you’re good at it, and you’re more likely to be quiet when you’re embarrassed. Fight that urge.

Also make sure that you’re enunciating every syllable. Every word should be clear.

If you’re having trouble with one song, it might be too fast. Try something else. When you get one, try to memorize it and rap it from memory. Impress your friends!

Remember to check out the full article on how to improve speaking skills and sign up to the email list below to get updates.

See you next week!

The post How to Speak Clearly and Confidently appeared first on Troy Fawkes.

I have a mindmap that I keep open on my right monitor with all of my daily rituals:

I’m not saying that these are rituals you should pick up, or that mine are the best rituals. I just wanted to explore the concept of rituals and habits in relation to success and, well, you write what you know.

Why do I have this list of things that I start my day with, and how does it help?

• It’s the kind of thing that has worked for me in the past.
• It’s a set of best practices.
• It keeps me organized and motivated.
• It’s a building block for something bigger.
• It’s a WHY.

Worked in the Past

This is probably the easiest thing for me to cling to: my rituals (or habits) are what worked for me in the past to feel in control of my health, wealth and relationships.

They say it takes three weeks to build a habit. When I went rock climbing I had to force myself for the first three weeks, but after that it was easy to just go on that specific day of the week. It was unfathomable for me to not go.

I’ve used this for everything from building a social circle, meeting dozens of women whom I could date and possibly fall in love with, to getting a big-ticket ($1,500+ per close) commission job and within weeks becoming the highest performing employee.

If it works, I might as well use it!

Best Practices

Rituals, in my mind, are day-to-day habits. They’re like incantations. So when I get into the office I sit down, open up Sublime Text in distraction-free mode and start writing. I write anything; it doesn’t matter.

The reason I do this is because my job is a creative, thoughtful one. I can’t innitiate something unless it’s been invented, a complicated process has been put in place, I’ve budgeted the time and money and hired the right vendors for the job. William Zinsser says that writing is thinking clearly, and I agree, so I write every day to improve my thoughts.

Writing is thinking clearly.

That sounds very thought-through, and so are my rules on focusing on just one client at a time and ignoring email until almost lunch time.

That’s kind of the point.

Compare a thought-through, ritualized morning versus a normal one in which you’re constantly putting out fires and struggling to decide which mission-critical task to work on first.

By four o’clock you’ve decided, and by seven you’ve left the office distraught.

Organization and Motivation

I’m motivated when I know that what I’m doing is effective.

If I told you that if you invested $100 today, I’d give you $120 tomorrow at no risk, you’d invest right away.

My job is taking someone’s money and making its use be more valuable than the number written on the paper. I’m required to do exactly this every day, and it’s easy when I’m running plays that are guaranteed to work.

But on days when I’m not sure, I spend more time frustrated than motivated. So I organize myself such that even if I don’t know what’s going to work, I’m at least preparing tomorrow or the next day to make me that $120 back.

Building Blocks

Imagine if you went to the gym every day. That’s a lot. But now you’re the kind of person who goes to the gym every day.

You’ve just entirely changed yourself.

People will look at you differently, talk to you differently, and feel all of the non-tangible bits of your behaviour differently.

Now you’re ritualized.

And the thing with rituals is that when you start building them, they stack up. Someone who goes to the gym every day finds it easier to eat healthy with very few exceptions. That person then finds it easy to start writing every day. They find it easy to ask one stranger CEO on LinkedIn for career advice every week. They build rituals around their job and their family.

That person can, one block at a time, change the world.

It’s a WHY

WHY you do something changes HOW you do it. Say I woke up this morning and I said, I need to eat. That’s fine, I’ll put together a little bit of food.

But if my WHY is that I need to fuel myself for a productive day and Muay Thai right after work, because I need to be healthy enough to push my way up the ladder at work, because I want to change the world…

That’s going to be an ideal breakfast.

Rituals help you find a more powerful WHY for all of the little things.

The post Why Some People Win More Than Others appeared first on Troy Fawkes.

For example, at work I started marketing for multiple large clients. My objective is to increase their revenue steadily month-over-month. I’ve never done this before and results often lag by at least 30 days. I’m freaking out about this, because, previously, I’ve only ever worked on one client at a time.

This is often the cause of my gloominess on busy weeks.

The remedy is to “small-chunk.”

So in the case of working on my clients, I have to identify what needs to be (and can reasonably be) done in a month. Then I spend some time on my thinking couch, pondering process. These are both acts of idealism, and I used to stop at either one or the other and FREAK OUT.

Now I chunk them into weekly tasks. What comes before the other? What can I outsource? Is this really worth so much of my time or is there a better way? It’s a bit more manageable here, but weekly segments are still daunting.

My week next week, for example, involves designing 3 campaigns, doing outreach to 120 people, creating communications and publishing them for clients, refining a process for a major tool our company is going to start using, managing a weekly video project, and designing a training schedule for 4 employees who fit into two different roles.

So I chunk it down to days.

Monday, for example, I’ll start by vaguely outlining the training schedule, then I’ll design a campaign, do some outreach (taking notes on the process) and publish our weekly video.

That still sounds like a lot. I have a sticky note on my monitor that says, “Right now I am…” So, right now I am writing out my thoughts on small chunking. And, to the exception of all else including “emergencies,” I’m working on that one thing.

As a note on emergencies: instead of stopping and switching gears for other people’s moment-to-moment problems, I’ve been asking people to send me an email unless I decide that it actually is urgent. I should be doing this more.

The post Small Chunking Problems appeared first on Troy Fawkes.

Just because I can’t perfect it doesn’t mean I’m not going to try.

There’s nothing like being able to make my sister smile with some stupid joke. My friends deserve the living, engaging stories I tell them now rather than the dry monotone that I remember having. It’s exciting that I can make new friends just by chatting them up in the minute it takes the elevator to get to my floor.

There are two major buckets you need to think about when you’re learning about speech:

1. Fixing Mistakes
2. Adding and Improving Skills

Start by fixing mistakes you’re making. For me, fixing just two of these mistakes accounted for an 80% improvement in my conversational skills. I realize how silly that sounds–how do I know it was 80%? Why not 81%?–but when you go through the exercises a couple of times and focus on fixing these mistakes, you leave me a comment or send me an email and tell me what improvements you saw.

I’m not hiding the most important mistakes; they’re the first two steps.

On top of working on those mistakes, I built specific speaking skills. These are humour, story telling, volume, gestures, pace, mastery topics and more. These skills aren’t the whole of speaking–a great gesture doesn’t a great speaker make, but a tap on the nose makes a story cuter, and wide arms a statement grander.

This is where great conversationalists differentiate themselves: some love deep, highly emotional conversations controlled by pace, mastery topics and story telling; some play subtle games of humour, making their friends feel like everything is an inside joke they’re included in; some make their friends feel like great conversationalists by leading conversations to the most interesting bits, punctuating points properly with volume, gestures and physicality and then backing off.

Dabble now, focus later.

TODAY I’d like to go over how to improve speaking skills with exercises, behaviours and the daily grind.

Below are 7 simple steps that I hope will benefit you greatly. I was messing around with photoshop and came out with the JPEG below (How To Improve Speaking Skills in 7 Simple Steps) because why not.  There are also useful videos and I vow to answer all questions in the comments. If you’d like to get this kind of information in the future, sign up via email here:

Enjoy Irresponsibly.

1. Speak Clearly
2. Develop Flow
3. Choose Your Mastery Topics
4. Become a Topic Master
5. Develop Style
6. Practice Daily
7. Practice at Events

Speak Clearly

I’ve updated this section with an article, How to Speak Clearly and Confidently, dedicated entirely to it with its own exercises. It covers:

• Being Direct and Responsible with your Meaning
• Speaking Loudly and Calling Attention To Yourself.
• Avoiding Slang, Jargon and Pop-Culture References
• Some Exercises to Improve Clarity

Here’s a short excerpt:

As I’m writing this I’m remembering being a lame high school student. Standing at the edge of a circle of friends-by-inheritance and chiming in once every two days. Guess how I felt when the pretty girls would walk by and their eyes wouldn’t slide over me–they didn’t even look in my direction.

I’m also looking at a picture of a beautiful girl who chased me down at a party months ago and made me stay up late and tell her stories until the sun popped up over the windowsill.

That wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t changed something. Something big. Clarity isn’t the whole picture but this is a start.

Read More…

In summary, speak clearly. Enunciate and choose a volume as if it were on purpose. Select the easiest words to get your point across. Only once you’ve mastered clarity should you begin to braid some silvery strands into your language.

Challenge: Third Time’s the Charm

I’ll give you a topic and the moment you see it you’re going to speak for about 20 seconds. I don’t care what you say. Once you’ve finished, you’re going to think about what you just said, and express it more clearly. Then, you’re going to do it one more time. The third time’s the charm.

Remember to start this challenge right away.

Your topic is: Pasta.

Develop Flow

Imagine a river. The water is moving; it runs around rocks and over the ground beneath it. It’s disturbed by the legs of a bridge. To you, though, it looks smooth.

I doubt that the river learned how to flow, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t.

With flow we’re aiming at a level of comfort with speaking that lets you approach all topics with equal grace.

There are two aspects of flow that I’d like you to improve:

1. Pace
2. Pausing

Unless you’re James Malinchak or Les Brown, you speak too quickly. A mentor told me that I spoke too quickly because I was worried that someone else might speak over me–maybe that’s accurate for you as well. In any case, it is a truism that we.. should slow.. our pace.. down.

We also need to be comfortable pausing. If I had only thirty seconds of your time to help you improve your speaking skills, I would tell you to replace all of your filler words with a two second pause.

A filler word is “uh” or “um,” or anything you say that is equivalent. For example I like the word “like” but I shouldn’t. Notice whenever you use a filler word, pause for two seconds, and then continue.

Challenge: The Topic Game

For this challenge you’ll need a timer and a source for topics. Try using these conversation topics (sorted by quality), but also try to pick out individual words or use a random word generator.

Your challenge is to look at a word and speak about it for at least 60 seconds, focusing on your pace and pausing while you speak. You can tell relevant stories, relate it to your summer vacation, whatever works for you.

If 60 seconds is too easy, try two minutes or more. If you can’t stop using filler words, restart every time you use one.

Choose Your Mastery Topics

We’ve gone over how to improve speaking skills via Clarity and Flow. The focus was to fix some of the errors we were making and help us build a bit more confidence. The next steps let us build a stronger speaking strategies.

Let’s start by choosing Mastery Topics.

Mastery Topics are subjects that you’re interested in and passionate about. When you discuss these topics you naturally exude more confidence and excitement, and you’re more likely to draw listeners into your world. And, since you’ll be talking about your mastery topics so much, you’ll have all of the speaking nuances of the topics covered as well.

I’m passionate about living abroad, running a social skills business, general success, learning and food. And if I can I’ll pull our conversation over intto one of those topics and blow you away.

Challenge: A Master Of…

Let’s figure out what topics you’re passionate about. Give me a simple answer to each of these 5 questions:

1. What do you think about most?
2. What do you most often spend your money on?
3. What do you spend most of your free time on?
4. If you could do anything without a chance of failure, what would it be?
5. Without worrying about money, time or skill, what is your dream-vacation?

My answers were: Success, Food, Learning, Running a Social Skills Business, Living Abroad.

First we’ll sort them. Ask yourself, what is more generally interesting, Topic 1 or Topic 2? If Topic 1 is more interesting, ask yourself if Topic 1 is more generally interesting than Topic 3. Once you’re at the bottom of the list, add the most interesting topic to the new list.

My ordered list is: Living Abroad, Running a Business, Success, Learning, and Food. You should think that you can make the first topic on the list the most generally interesting. If so, let’s work on that Mastery Topic first.

Become a Topic Master

So you want to be a topic master? No? Well, make it your temporary day-dream.

Take a second to think about your everyday conversations.

Generally you fall into a topic that you’re comfortable with and your conversations follow similar paths. The why is fairly simple: we’re programmed to pursue pleasure–the same positive reactions to the same topics and jokes–and avoid pain–the potential shame of expressing an opinion that makes everyone around you uncomfortable.

There’s nothing wrong with this, but if we naturally do it all of the time we might as well do it on purpose. To add some flair to our speaking skills we’ll need to add some sub-topics to our Mastery Topic.

With these sub-topics we can practice our clarity, flow and style.

Challenge: What’s Interesting About…

You’ve selected a Mastery Topic and now you’re going to flesh it out. Ask yourself, “What’s interesting about THIS,” where THIS is your Mastery Topic. Keep going until you can’t think of any more, and then add one or two anyway.

Here are some examples for my Mastery Topic “Living Abroad”:

• Dream Life
  • I really want to live in Los Angeles
  • I thought of moving to Belize
• Why Live Abroad?
• Living in Toronto
• Living in China
  • I want to go back and study Mandarin
• Living in London
• Living in Sweden
• Living in Oxford

Develop Style

Droning on in a monotone will never be interesting, no matter the quality of the content coming out of your mouth. The trick is to express those same words in a more appealing manner.

To do this, I suggest you emulate somewhere better than yourself.

“Men nearly always follow the tracks made by others and proceed in their affairs by imitation, even though they cannot entirely keep to the tracks of others or emulate the prowess of their models. So a prudent man should always follow in the footsteps of great men and imitate those who have been outstanding. If his own prowess fails to compare with theirs, at least it has an air of greatness about it.” – Niccolo Machiavelli

Consider these five skills and your ability to use them to create interest in conversation:

1. Volume
2. Pace
3. Gestures
4. Humour
5. Story-telling

With all of those skills, you use them to emphasize the words that you’re speaking. Sometimes they replace words. Instead of going on about these skills, let’s go over the challenge.

Challenge: Stealing a Style

Choose one of these skills: volume, pace, gestures, humour and story-telling. Now choose a professional speaker, someone you’d like to emulate and watch a video of them speaking.

Ask yourself, how do they use this skill? What one aspect of the skill could I steal for myself? Write it down and keep the video.

Here are some suggestions for speakers to emulate:

Jim Rohn

Eric Thomas

Tony Robbins

Practice Daily

Be honest with yourself when you answer this question: do you think that you’re going to have improved speaking skills when you finish reading this post?

I don’t write that well.

But while reading won’t improve your speaking skills, behaviour will.

There are two behaviours that you should build:

1. Practice Daily
2. Practice at Events

The next section will cover events.

Practicing daily is fairly simple. Every day, put aside some time to go over one of the exercises from this post. If that sounds too hard–and I understand that committing to anything is often challenging–ask yourself whether 5 minutes a day for 15 days is too much. If it is, then something else is on your mind and you need to handle that.

If not, I put together the option of receiving a challenge a day for fifteen days. The challenges are short enough that you can complete them in 5 minutes or less.

Challenge: The Daily Grind

Build your own program of daily speaking practice

Practice at Events

Weight Watchers has been using the buddy system technique for years. The act of losing weight is motivational, but losing weight and being celebrated for it is far more exciting. Not to mention having people to hold you accountable when you have a bad week.

Where were you? Watching the game? Canada’s Next Top Lumberjack? Come on, this is important.

Attend an event that will let you focus on your conversational skills on a weekly basis. There are many events that you could attend, though my favourites are Toastmasters and professional networking events that you can easily find on Meetup.com.

I found this great clip of Jason McGarva, who attended Toastmasters to improve his speaking ability, giving an amazing speech:

Personally I attend meetup groups on a fairly regular basis and I have other social events that I use for the same purpose. The trick is to keep a short list of specific skills that you’d like to practice while you’re there.

1. I will use a broad gesture to create interest.
2. I will try speaking much slower than I’m used to.
3. I will will talk about my best Mastery Topic.

Challenge: Creature of Habit

Find at least one speaking or networking event that you can attend for the next four weeks and put it in your schedule. You can worry later about whether or not you’ll go.

Conclusion

I’ve told you to speak clearly and develop flow. I’ve introduced you to Mastery Topics and what they can do for you. I’ve asked you to emulate some pretty awesome public speakers. I’ve suggested that you practice, practice, practice and I’ve given you some great resources to do just that.

Now it’s all you!

If you’ve had some other insights on how to improve speaking skills I’d love to see them in the comments below. Please share what worked for you and what you’re currently trying out!

Grab this in PDF Format: How to Improve Speaking Skills PDF

The post How To Improve Speaking Skills in 7 Simple Steps appeared first on Troy Fawkes.

Well, assuming you’re reasonably intelligent.

Hurr….

First off, I’d like you to trust the messenger: me. I’m Troy. I’m 24. Up until a couple hours ago, I was the senior technical recruiter and team leader of a small staffing and recruiting start-up in Ottawa. Now I’m an SEO Specialist for a slightly larger and more successful digital marketing start-up in Toronto. Last year I was a professor of oral English in Changsha, China. I think the job immediately before that was serving tables, the rest is fairly exciting but not relevant.

While it might appear that I’m a gypsy and journey off to wherever the hell I can find work, fixing pans and stealing babies as I go, the reality is that for each employment I’ve set a very specific goal before choosing a job and place to settle.

The same kind of goal that you probably have: get a job that you like, in your field, that’ll advance your career and teach you amazing things. Preferably in an office with a foosball table and a liquor cabinet.

Obviously I’ve managed some pretty neat tricks with regards to what I’m qualified for and what goals I’ve set myself and somehow managed to achieve. Let that be a hint that a lot more than you think is possible. Either that or a reason to hate me for my apparently endless supply of luck.

In any case, the goal is the first step. The plan is the second–it’s also the magic pill.
Find or beg for an internship. Ask for $0 unless they offer more. Yes, up to three months making nothing. Four-hundred-and-eighty hours of your services for free is not a hard sell on most employers, believe me. So much so that many have internship programs in place regardless of your begging–Google “intern YOUR_FIELD YOUR_CITY” right now if you don’t believe me.

Going from your original phone call or email to actually having the job might be a hassle, but in my experience it’s much easier than those ridiculous group interviews at retail stores where they grill you on your passion for retail–hint, no one has a passion for retail, they’re just wondering how well you can drink the Kool-Aid.

But once you’re in, your position on LinkedIn suddenly changes from “Cashier – Tons of Totally Useful Skills Acquired, at The Corner Store” to “Digital Marketing Specialist, at a Company That Sounds Like It Has a Nice Office” or “Communications Officer, at a Three Letter Acronym (TLA) Company.” Granted you’re not getting paid for it, but now you’re working in your field.

Assuming they don’t hire you on permanently after three months, you now have coveted work experience in your field and can apply for junior positions elsewhere with great references.

It’s up to you to blow them away with your work, but then again, all you’ve ever asked for was a chance to prove yourself, right?

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In summary, this is an assortment of front-end and back-end tools that make building a new application very quick and easy. I didn’t make most of it. I just made sure all of the little pieces connect well.

The one part I’m responsible for is the front controller, which isn’t the most beautiful contraption but it gets the job done and is very flexible for a 150 line class.

Included:

• Sass, a css preprocessor: Makes writing CSS much quicker with zero performance hit
• Compass, a Sass extension: Extremely useful plugins and added functionality for Sass
• Twitter Bootstrap, a front-end framework: Makes wireframing a new project beautifully simple
• Savant3, a PHP Template System: A great way to separate view logic from controller logic
• My custom front controller: Nice URLs and the final touch for basic MVC functionality

NOTE: You’ll have to install SASS and Compass separately as they’re Ruby gems, but once they’re installed they’re already integrated into this new site setup.

Download here: sass_compass_bootstrap_savant3_customFrontController

These aren’t the same tools as I used for realcompliments, but it will be once I get around to restructuring that application into a stricter OO and MVC (roughly at the same time as I’ll be redoing the design). In the meantime, people have been adding tons of sweet things to say to your girlfriend over the holidays if you’re interested :)

The post Modern PHP Web Development Set-up, Happy Boxing Day! appeared first on Troy Fawkes.

I have so many stories. Not all of them are, to be honest, stories. Most of them are snippets, opinions, wisdom perhaps. I can remember warmly sharing the same ideas in the same words in a coffee shop in Ottawa to a friend I’d known for years; in a ritzy mansion-come-night club in Stockholm to a blond-haired, blue-eyed Victoria Secret model; and in a little garage restaurant on the outskirts of a Chinese city over my favourite three-legged dog to one of my students.

I’ve found that maybe they don’t have a plot, these little throw-away conversation pieces. But often they fall into the theme of living a beautiful life.

Eunoia is my favourite word. Not only is it the shortest word in the English language that includes all of the vowels, but it has the most incredible meaning. “Beautiful thinking.” …

Sky Lee once wrote, “Would you rather write a great novel, or live one?” That’s a heck of a question to ask yourself–would someone read this book that I’m living right now? …

Did you know that there are only 28,000 days in the average person’s life? 7,000 of which are when we’re too young to make decisions of our own. 7,000 of which are when we’re too old to act on our decisions. And we spend the other 7,000 sleeping, eating, and waiting in line. If you’re 18, you really only have 7,000 days left to live … and I don’t know about you, but I’m not 18 anymore. …

I’m not currently a writer, because, in Sky Lee’s eyes, I’m neither writing or living. I’m taking a break. Days and hours are going by that no one wants to read about. A book wouldn’t be beautiful if the author was negligent with his words, so despite the wonderful abstraction of hiding a mind beneath skin and skull, we can still assume that a brain is as average as the photograph it takes at the back of the home town coffee shop on the last day of a long weekend before going back to the drudgery of another week without stories.

The post When I Was a Writer appeared first on Troy Fawkes.

The Friend Zone occurs when a woman has categorized you as a friend and not a potential lover. For women, these categories are mutually exclusive. A guy is either a friend, or a potential boyfriend/husband, rarely both. There are exceptions, but they are very rare.

from Mark Manson’s, Models

I think Manson’s definition is the most common definition of The Friend Zone. The idea is that a guy is a friend or a potential lover, never or rarely both.

I vehemently disagree. Not that there is no friend zone–there definitely is–but the friend zone isn’t some arbitrary, nonsensical feminine rule.

The friend zone is simply the space in a relationship when you are friends.

So let’s examine this space and see why so many lonely singles are in the friend zone.

I believe that two people are friends because they value each other. If they’re good friends, or more than friends, they value each other a lot. Mutual value moves relationships forward.

I’ll write a big post about value later, but for now:

Value is all of the good things about you, minus all of the bad things.

All other things equal, beauty is better than ugliness, kindness is better than meanness, wealth is better than poverty, interesting is better than dull, etc. Mutual value is when you see value in each other; value is very subjective because it’s not concrete, it’s perceived.

There’s a fairly obvious addition to mutual value: intent. Intent is like the steering wheel of value. Someone in the relationship has to take action to direct where it is going.

While mutual value and intent push you forward, boundaries hold you back. A boundary is a rule that we use to protect ourselves; it lets us hold back on making a decision until we’ve made sure it’s safe.

When you use your mutual value and intent push against a boundary, it creates pressure. You might know this as sexual tension.

A girl who has a “three date rule” has a boundary against sleeping with a guy within three days. This will stop mutual value and intent from pushing the relationship into another phase.

This boundary is small since nothing horrible will happen if she breaks it. For the most part, small boundaries can be broken without hurting anyone. You break through this kind of boundary with pressure, which I’ve said is created by mutual value and intent pushing against a boundary.

It’s like squeezing a balloon until it pops–the balloon is the barrier, the air is the mutual value, and squeezing it is the intent. Without any of those, nothing happens.

As a guy with a girlfriend I would have a boundary against going on a romantic date with a girl friend of mine–the boundary isn’t against the date, it’s against the escalation of the friendship to something more, because if it went passed friendship then suddenly my steady relationship–among other things–is in danger.

If you push against this kind of boundary, the friendship can die. Either the huge amount of tension will make the person with the boundary uncomfortable or crossing the boundaries will cause the expected side-effects and lots of people get hurt. It’s where ethics come in–personally I’d be fine pushing through a 3 date rule boundary, but if a girl has a boyfriend sleeping with her is not an option.

How does this all relate to the friend zone? Isn’t a boundary what keeps you as a friend?

Boundaries keep you from going past the friend zone, but they are generic, not person-specific. No girl says, “Even if Joe Loser became super rich, incredibly sociable and respected, I found out that he was amazing in bed, and I was single, I’d never date him.”

No girl ever says, “I don’t want to date an awesome, compatible guy.”

If someone says to you, “let’s just be friends,“ they’re saying one of two things:

1. Our mutual value is too low. Of course, since I’m saying it to you, it’s really, “your value is too low.”
2. You have hit one of my boundaries and there’s too much pressure. In my mind, there are obvious reasons why we can’t or shouldn’t move forward.

For some reason I highly doubt all of the guys and girls complaining about being in the “friend zone” have built up so much sexual tension that it’s driving a girl crazy.

How often do you hear a guy say, “We hit it off amazingly, had wonderful sex, she’s single, I’m single, we’re both well off and compatible, and we both want to be in a long term monogamous relationship. But she doesn’t want to date me. She just wants to be friends.”

Never? Shocking!

So if they’re not hitting a barrier, then the problem isn’t some insane categorization. It’s a lack of value.

We all have standards of value that people need to meet before our relationship moves forward. Maybe those standards are time spent together, adventures had, conversational value or flirty teasing, or signs that a person is going to be fun in the future as well as this moment.

But would it surprise you if I said that people spending more time working on improving themselves–being more social, keeping healthy, learning about how to deal with their emotions, becoming less needy, exploring new skills and ideas–would never be complaining about the friend zone.

People who genuinely have all of that going for them will be complaining about specific boundaries instead.

The next time someone asks you how to get out of the friendzone, just let them know that there are no tricks. First, try–this is intent. If that doesn’t work, look for boundaries. If there are no valid ones–and they should be obvious–then, be really, truly happy to say this:

It’s you.

And now you have yet another reason to go about making yourself a better person, which is the most wonderful thing you could do for yourself anyway.

I promise to have a post about value, building value, etc. in the future since I know it’s on a lot of people’s minds now.

Enjoy Irresponsibly.

The post The Friend Zone appeared first on Troy Fawkes.

The book moves from 2000 to 2008. Over the course, I noticed that Pook became more and more negative.

I realize “negative” is vague, but let me paint the world to you in frightening colours:

You control your reality.

The world feeds you about 2 million bits of information every second, and your subconscious can only acknowledge around 134 bits. Consciously, we can only acknowledge 7 bits. How fast are you breathing? How fast is your heart beating? These things happen all of the time, but you don’t notice them.

How do we get from 2 million bits down to 134? How do we get down to 7? Through filters. You, your genes and your environment train your brain to filter information in a way that is deemed important. We call these filters “perception.”

Knowing this, you can use it to pump up your life. Take this whole week to start looking for positive people around you. You’ll see them everywhere for the whole week, as if you magically made them appear. Read this one sentence a hundred times: a person’s name is their favourite word in the English language, learn it and they’ll love you. Practice for this week–you’ll find that you remember (and try to remember) people’s names as if it was in your nature.

Sometimes you train your perception like this. Sometimes it’s trained for you–by television, friends, and family. Sometimes it’s an accident.

Pook trained himself to filter “people” into horrible little subcategories. Idiots. Sluts. Androgens. Failures.

Remember how you’re going to look for positive people this week? How they will all suddenly appear? Pook has trained himself to look for negative people. And he’s right–they’re everywhere. They’ll appear to him just as much as positive people will appear to you. Out of 2 million people, he will find the 134 worst to focus on.

And he built that world.

I realize that the concepts of filters, perception, and your world are alien to you. I appreciate that you have stuff to do with your time. But in five years, I don’t want you to wake up to negative people every day. If you won’t take this week to notice positive people and appreciate the importance of their names, at least take the couple seconds after you finish reading this post to think about how you might be building a potentially frightening world for yourself.

<3

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