5 Easy Ways to Fake Your Personality

Posted 9 months, 2 weeks ago at 2:30 pm. 3 comments

Wouldn’t it be so amazing if you could fake your personality and be instantly liked by anybody, anytime? Of course it would! Who wouldn’t want to have a charming personality 24/7 - that kind of thing would come in handy in life! But being a bit more realistic, sometimes we are forced to go into situations where having a better personality would immensely pay off. Sometimes we need to add a little smoke and mirrors to make ourselves appear great, even if we don’t feel that way.

There are five easy, simple ways to fake your personality:

1. Dress comfortably for you.
2. Be prepped and prepared for what you’re going into.
3. Smile!
4. Pretend you are interested and observant to everybody.
5. Look fully relaxed and at ease with yourself.

And now, getting into greater detail:

1. Dress comfortably for you.

Forget about “dressing for success”! Most people feel uncomfortable when they step up their wardrobe, because dressing to the nines feels unnatural to them. And if dressing up feels unnatural to you, you’re not going to be comfortable and at ease with yourself - no matter how hard you try. The best advice is to dress slightly above what you consider “normal”, but not so decked out that you feel out of your league. You should look fabulous, of course, but not like you are about to walk down the red carpet. Dressing up comfortably can naturally make you feel a step above the rest - and if you feel great about yourself, your personality will shine!

2. Be prepped and prepared for what you are going into.

You may be all smiles and have this totally fake, charismatic air going on, but that house of cards is going to collapse if you don’t have a clue how to talk the talk. If you’re going to a party, research a bit on the guests and what their interests are, for the purpose of small talk. If you’re going to join a club, find out all you can about the organization’s topic. If you’re giving a presentation, learn all you can about the subject and go all out! Present yourself as an expert, and people will think you are amazingly witty and knowledgeable!

3. Smile!

This one should be obvious, but a lot of people don’t smile. How many times have you ever walked in any store - say, the supermarket - and said to yourself “Wow, everybody looks so… sad today…”? When you smile yourself, you automatically boost up your mood (try it right now!) And smiles are contagious, as well - we all know when one person starts smiling, we all start smiling, even if we have no idea what that one person is smiling about. We automatically think of smiling, carefree people as having bubbly, effervescent personalities; on the opposite hand, we also automatically think of frowning, sad people as having sullen, upset personalities. Turn that frown upside down, and fake that smile!

4. Pretend you are interested and observant to everybody.

Not interested in what somebody is telling you? Fake it all the way. Nod your head when they say something that sounds profound, open up your eyes as if you’re thinking “Wow, that’s so fascinating!”, and use hand motions when it’s your turn to talk. People with personality are naturally interested in what everybody else is doing, thinking, and saying. If you want to fake having the personality of a social butterfly, you have to be able to give the impression that you actually care what’s going on around you. Other people love to blather on about their lives, hobbies, whatever, even if it’s the most boring topic on Earth. Look interested in what everybody else is saying, and you’ll appear to have a wonderful personality!

5. Look fully relaxed and at ease with yourself.

People who are the most affable are people who constantly look fully relaxed and at ease with themselves. No matter how many people they talk to in a given day, socializing appears to be a natural part of them. If you want to fake having a great personality, you must make your movements, your voice, and your movements seem very natural and fluid, not choppy, and mechanical. Nothing says “fake personality!” more than having the social grace of a robot. This tip might take some practice, but it’ll pay off in the long run.

So what are you waiting for? Start faking your golden personality today!

Timeboxing Tricks

Posted 9 months, 2 weeks ago at 11:30 am. 2 comments

“Timeboxing” is one of the most useful personal development skills I have ever learned. In fact, if there’s one skill you should learn from reading this blog, it’s this skill.

Timeboxing is a pretty simple technique once you understand the basics:

1. Choose a project to work on. Simple enough.
2. Set aside a block of time to work on the project. 30 minutes should be your bare minimum, though you can choose anywhere from 1 minute to any amount of time you’d like.
3. Try to finish that project in the allocated amount of time. Aim for completion of your project in the amount of time you gave yourself. Try not to go over your scheduled time, no matter what. It’s fine if you finish up sooner than you expected.
4. For the entire amount of time, stick to the task. Try not to take breaks unless you are giving yourself over an hour to work. It’s best if you can get into the stage of “flow” so your work becomes easier and more enjoyable.

Need an example? Let’s say you’re itching to write a new blog post, but you have horrible perfectionistic tendencies. Blog posts that should take you 45 minutes to write end up taking 4 hours. Because of that problem, it’s hard for you to commit to blogging. What should you do? Use timeboxing to write that new post! Set aside a block of time to compose, edit, and post the post, doing as best of a job as you can during that time frame. In this case, you could set aside an hour and a half, perhaps from 9:00AM to 10:30AM, and tackle the task to completion.

Having used this technique for so long now, I found there are two extremely useful tips I like to use that I’d love to share with you!

Tip #1 - Use it to knock off small, numerous, mundane tasks.

Batch together multiple, annoying tasks that need to get done, and timebox an amount of time to get through them all. Do you have several desk drawers that need to be cleared out and purged? Instead of doing one drawer at a time, timeboxing 30 minutes per drawer and spreading the task over three days, timebox one hour to purge all of the drawers. You’ll work faster, get the task completed sooner, and feel more accomplished.

Think of it this way. Before you go to the grocery store, you generally make a comprehensive list of everything you need so multiple trips aren’t necessary. Why take five separate trips for breads, fruits, vegetables, meats, and desserts when you can take one trip and buy everything you need in one swoop? Timebox multiple, similiar tasks for the same reasons.

Tip #2 - Timebox a small amount of time just for perfectionism.

Okay, so I admit it! I’m a total perfectionist when it comes to writing my blog posts. I can’t help but sit around and edit my posts after they’ve been up for days, trying to find the “right” phrases to make my posts stand out and shine.

However, I can’t let perfectionism run my blog. (Otherwise I wouldn’t get around to posting or doing advertising work!) Instead of gleefully editing all posts at all hours of the night for kicks and giggles, I instead timebox a small amount of time right after I post my post to let my perfectionism run free. I allow myself to do all of the editing I can in that small amount of time, and then once the minutes are up, I’m completely done and will never touch that post again. Does it work? Fantastically well!

Just remember - perfectionism can absolutely destroy a meaningful, valuable work; but on the other hand, if perfectionism is used constructively, it can completely enhance and boost up a project you are editing to an entirely new level. Timebox a specific time for perfectionism, and try this trick out for yourself.

What other timeboxing uses can you think up?

Your homework for tonight? Apply timeboxing to your life and see what a difference it makes! And after trying timeboxing out for a while, see what improvements you can make on this simple technique. You’d be surprised how much more productive you’ll become after just a few days of timeboxing tasks.