#347： The Science of Social Awkwardness
Episode Stats
Summary
You ve likely experienced an awkward moment or two in your life where you say or do something that's socially out of sync, leaving the person you're interacting with bemused and confused and you feeling like running and hiding under a rock. While awkwardness is an uncomfortable feeling, it can hurt us socially. My guest today argues that there is some upside to it.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast you've likely
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experienced an awkward moment or two in your life you say or do something that's socially
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out of sync leaving the person you're interacting with bemused and confused and you feeling like
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running and hiding under a rock while awkwardness is an uncomfortable feeling it can hurt us socially
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my guest today argues that there is some upside to it his name is tai tashiro he's a psychologist
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and the author of awkward the science of why we're socially awkward and why that's awesome
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today on the show tai highlights his research on awkwardness he explains what exactly we feel when
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we feel awkward and what triggers the feeling he then digs into why some people are more awkward
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than others and the detriments that come with being socially awkward he then shares things chronically
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awkward people can do to be less so like developing social algorithms and studying manners and we end
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our conversation discussing the upsides of awkwardness and how to balance it with the downsides if you
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struggle with social awkwardness or know someone who does this episode will provide you with a lot
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of actionable advice and insights on both embracing and mitigating your propensities after the show's
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over check out our show notes at aom.is slash awkward where you find links to resources we can delve deeper
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into this topic all right tai tashiro welcome to the show hey thanks so much for having me on so
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you're a psychologist and you've specialized in researching something a particular it's a weird
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it's not i wouldn't say it's weird it's different you research awkwardness uh how does a psychologist
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get into researching awkwardness well uh that's a good question i got interested in social awkwardness
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about three years ago and it was just one of these life experience things where i had a lot of friends
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who had moved to new cities or were in new jobs just kind of coincidentally at the same time and some of
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these folks were socially awkward and i knew them to be great people they had great character and were
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really interesting and had a lot to offer but they did have that awkwardness where they stumbled around
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and were a little bit clumsy in the initial parts of social interactions and i thought to myself if
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they could just skip the first five minutes of social interactions they'd probably be a lot better
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off and i thought it was really too bad that other people weren't giving them a chance based on some of
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these small social graces that they had difficulty handling and so i got into the research literature and i
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thought people must be looking at social awkwardness it turns out nobody in the research community calls
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social awkwardness awkwardness they have all kinds of other terms for it but there's been about over a thousand
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studies that are related to social awkwardness that can tell us why people are awkward and also reveals
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this surprising upside to having an awkward disposition yeah so what what do researchers call awkwardness
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oh they have all kinds of things so social psychologists will call it a social skill deficit
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um you have behavioral geneticists who will call it the broad autism phenotype which is a very jargony term
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to say that you have social skill deficits some troubles communicating and you tend to get these
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obsessive interests where you really get narrowly focused on something that you really love so okay let's
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so awkward let's describe what it's just a feeling of ineptitude in small social situations like what
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causes us to feel awkward yeah so we can think about a lot of different ways uh there is that emotional
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component to it so people will say this feels really awkward and you get that visceral sensation of
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discomfort if you're the one being awkward in a moment then it feels like walking nose first into a glass
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door and kind of catches you by surprise you're really disoriented it's what psychologists would
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call a high activation emotion meaning that your heart rate's really going you're sweating your muscles
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are tense and it's not a great emotional state actually to problem solve so people have probably
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had the experience of doing something awkward and then whatever they do to try to fix it actually
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makes the situation worse so it's because we're so panicked we want to make the situation right
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so awkwardness can be emotional one of the favorite definitions for me is the root of the word awkward
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which is an old norse word afugur and that means facing a different direction and i really like that
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because it tells us a lot about what the psychological research shows us with awkwardness which is that
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awkward people see the world differently they might miss social cues or social expectations that are
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in plain sight to everybody else but it also means that they're looking at something unusual or
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different and that might be valuable or interesting in the long run yeah and we'll get to those upsides
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of awkwardness so like why like why do we have that feeling right like there's you know evolutionary
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reasons why we we feel happiness why we feel depressed why feel awkward yeah i think oh i feel awkward and
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there's also why i feel awkward so strongly because a lot of times awkward situations are not life or
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death situations if your fly is undone that's not going to kill anybody you know it's not going to hurt
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you or but boy we get really worked up about it and it probably goes back to the idea that we're such
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social animals as humans and it's you know if you look back at hunter gatherer times which was the
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majority of human history those were social groups of under 50 people and everybody knew everybody
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and your survival was not guaranteed so life expectancy for most of human history up to about 150 years ago
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was under 40 years old and so it was a life or death battle every day and you needed everybody to be
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focused on the same long-term goals like getting food or shelter protecting each other and so you needed a
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really cohesive efficient social unit and that's why we're so attuned to small social behaviors that
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are out of place because you didn't want to find out that larry was stealing food from the storage shed
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when everybody is starving or that someone was going to betray you in a battle uh once you're involved in
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it you needed to know beforehand if people were going to deviate from the larger social expectations
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gotcha and you argue in the book that feeling awkward right we felt it you know since caveman
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times you argue that feeling awkward is more common in our modern day why is that yeah there's been a lot
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of large sociological changes that have made all of us feel a little bit more awkward uh one of the
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obvious ones that's easy to overlook is that we're more urban than we used to be so we interact with
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certainly more than 50 people on a daily basis oftentimes and a lot of those folks are strangers
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so when we go to the coffee shop or the grocery store we don't know most of the people we're
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surrounded by that's actually unusual in the course of human history and all these different folks might
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have different cultural expectations or social expectations and that puts us in this state of
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unknowing and the state of trying to connect with people when we don't really know where they're coming
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from or what their background is and so that can make us feel awkward i think another thing is
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technology is just something that we're getting used to still and there's so many different forms so
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your etiquette over text versus facebook versus instagram or linkedin there's all different social
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expectations for what you do in those different mediums and also how you behave and so that's a little
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bit tricky to figure out how to navigate these things right yeah curb your enthusiasm when you said that
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you know the idea we're surrounded by strangers who have different ideas of what's appropriate like
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curb your enthusiasm is basically the show that highlights that yeah that is so true i mean he does
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such a great job of pointing out that there's all these little mysteries into social life on a daily
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basis some of which strike us as quite odd but we don't really want to ask anybody else if those things
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are odd but i think a lot of us feel that and it's good to know actually that hey most of your fellow
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human beings are feeling uncomfortable in a lot of these same social situations that feel ambiguous
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or nebulous to you right and going back to the technology one of the things you talk about in the
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book is that with technology um you miss out on nuance right you don't have that face-to-face where
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you can look at facial expressions body language so it's hard to detect okay was he being sarcastic
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or was that a joke yeah that is so true it's so easy to misinterpret what somebody else is saying
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and it creates a lot of anxiety and the person on the other end or even if someone doesn't text you
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back right away you can feel anxious about gosh did i say something stupid or are they mad at me
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oftentimes we find out that was just needless anxiety but that's what happens with technological
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communication we don't have things even like how far you stand from somebody sends a lot of social
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information or the amount of eye contact uh tactile you know touch is a huge thing and even the
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intonation of somebody's voice conveys a tremendous amount of social information if you're on email or
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text you're missing out on these wide variety of cues that were actually wired to be attentive to
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to decode what somebody else might be thinking gotcha so uh you mentioned earlier that awkward people
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the the word awkward comes with that uh norse word for like you know looking a different direction
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so they awkward people see the world differently so how do they see the world differently compared to
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non-awkward people you know i like to use this uh spotlight analogy uh to explain how awkward people
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see the world so imagine you see life unfold before you're on a stage and that stage is broadly
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illuminated so you could see people coming on stage exiting the stage uh you'd see probably spend most
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of your time center stage because that's where most of the central interactions would take place
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but you could also gather social context and that's how most people see the social world is broadly
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illuminated now awkward people on the other hand see their stage spotlighted and that spotlight
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tends to fall a little bit left of center by thought experiment and so that means they're going to miss
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out on some of the key social information this template center stage but it also means that they're seeing
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other aspects of what's going on in a great degree of detail and so they tend to have tremendous focus
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uh whatever they see under that spotlight is seen with brilliant clarity and so that can be a good thing
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but what you have to do when you're an awkward person is you have to learn to one recognize that
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you're prone to missing certain social cues or social expectations and you have to learn to move that
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spotlight to the right places at the right time so it takes a little bit more choreography in your mind
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right so this attention to detail that awkward people have in this focus and missing social cues it
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sounds like when you hear that it sounds like that's the traits of like the autism spectrum
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is awkwardness simply on the autism spectrum or can you be awkward and not be on the spectrum
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yeah you know as i got into the research i actually realized that was an important distinction to make
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because i think it's something in broader popular culture that we get a little bit confused about
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so it turns out that autism symptoms which are also asperger's symptoms there's three components
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there's the social skill deficits there's the communication problems and then these obsessive
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interests so those symptoms fall along a bell curve in the general population which means that the
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average person in the middle of that bell curve actually has a few autistic characteristics actually
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now as you get further out towards the edge of that curve let's say the 85th to 98th percentile
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that's kind of where the awkward people sit and then once you cross the 99th percentile
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that top one percentile that's where you diagnose somebody is autistic or with asperger's
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gotcha so the spotlight effect that people who are awkward tend to have like what else is going in
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what else is going on in their brain with that spotlight effect does it cause them to
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what do they miss specifically whenever they're interacting socially is it body cues is it you know
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meaning behind words what's going on there yeah you know if you talk to an awkward person a lot
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of times they'll say they're drawn to whatever sparkly in a room which you would think that
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they're kidding about that but it's actually sometimes true they they tend to focus on these
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peripheral sorts of things uh when you know not awkward people walk into a room let's say at a
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cocktail party or some kind of mixer what not awkward people do is they instinctively look
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for the most powerful person in the room and they're really good at identifying that without even
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having to think about it and then what they'll do is they'll look that person directly in the eyes to
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try to figure out what's their mood or what are they thinking and so non-awkward people do that
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without having to think twice about making sense of the social scene awkward people walk into a room
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and they tend to focus on the non-social aspects of the situation so they might look at the art or the
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architecture or the lighting or anything except what's social and in a social situation obviously
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you should probably be devoting your attention to those kinds of cues so right off the bat they're
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missing all kinds of contextual information when they enter a social scene um do do awkward people
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know that they're awkward easily yeah so most of the time they know that i kind of struggle here in
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certain social situations and can be a little bit off i don't know that it's always something that
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they want to think about a lot but if you get to a real honest conversation with an awkward person
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they'll say yeah i'm pretty awkward sometimes in rare cases if someone's really awkward you actually
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might get a lack of social awareness in those situations but most people do know right and are
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awkward people like are they socially anxious like do they have social anxiety like are they afraid to
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interact or they don't they're not afraid they just don't have the skills to interact you know
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adeptly or jointly yeah that's that's a really good point because the key component to social anxiety
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is that the worry is irrational or unfounded and i i think to tell the truth with awkward people
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they probably should be a little bit more worried than the average person about how they're going to
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handle a social situation because they have evidence that they mishandle social situations
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more often than the average person so i actually think as long as it's not debilitating as long as
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it doesn't keep them from being social or doesn't compromise their ability to interact calmly in a
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situation some of that social anxiety might be helpful because it motivates you to think ahead about
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okay what's what's this event and what are the expectations and how can i prime my brain to
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think about the things i need to do which is one of the good things about social awkwardness which is
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when awkward people think deliberately ahead of time about how to handle a situation they do
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significantly better and compared to people who aren't awkward who can just walk in and automatically
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be social awkward people have to do do some of that forethought to have a good interaction right
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yeah you talk about if you have a child that's awkward or if you yourself are awkward one of the
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things is like kind of create uh basically their algorithms for social interactions like if then
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i guess implementation intentions is what they call in the psychological field
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so can you give us like an example of those yeah well i can give you one from personal life
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actually so when i was a kid when we would go to the windys to get something to eat and this would
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go on for a long time so imagine you're 10 11 12 years old you know most most families would just go
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to the windys and go inside my parents would park the car they'd turn around and they'd say ty it's time
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to mentally prepare i'd say okay i knew exactly what that meant and they were going to walk me through a
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socratic dialogue about the kinds of social expectations i'd encounter inside and have me
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talk through how i was going to handle those so they might say what's the first thing you need to
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look for when you walk inside and i'd say well i should look for a line yeah that's right because
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sometimes i'd walk in and i'd cut to the front of the line not because i wanted to cheat or get ahead
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of anybody else just because i didn't see it or i didn't think about it and so okay so now i'm at
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the back of the line now what do you need to do i should think about what i need to order i should
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get my money ready when i get to the cashier i should say thank you when i turn around i should
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be careful not to hit anybody with my tray because i'm going too fast so we would go step by step through
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these things and we would do these mental preparation drills for these different situations
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dozens and dozens of times and eventually i would get it and i can happily walk into a wendy's now
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and order from myself and make the whole thing go smoothly but that's how awkward life goes and
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it takes a tremendous amount of patience and persistence from parents and i think kindness
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too to understand that their kid doesn't love being in this kind of situation and that kind of
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extra coaching is really vital to them being able to navigate social life so you were an awkward kid
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growing up oh yeah super super awkward um i'm you know i've been awkward for as long as i can remember
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i think when i was younger you don't really realize it because you know when you're in grade school
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your peers are pretty pretty forgiving about things but as junior high started to approach
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i had an internal realization that i need to pull it together my parents certainly did too and
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i'm really thankful that i had folks teachers parents coaches who saw that i just needed a little
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extra encouragement and instruction and that made all the difference in the world yeah i love the
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the story when you went to junior high for the first time and you the first day of school
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you dressed like an accountant uh i still do actually but uh yeah no i like khakis pleated khakis
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button-up starched oxford and these enormous square glasses that look like bifocals i'm going to my
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first day of seventh grade but i mean i love it because it's so relatable because i think everyone's
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done that at some point like they thought they were doing the thing that would make them look you know
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fit in and make them look awesome but we kind of find out now yeah kind of the harder we try
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sometimes right the worst it goes but um yeah you know i thought my my thinking behind that was
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and i thought all summer about this but uh i thought i need to be convey a mature and professional image
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in junior high because i was you know stepping up to this more mature environment which
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turned out to not be true right but uh so i thought yeah if i if i look the part then that
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now my awkward story from like when i was a kid it was in elementary school i think it was like
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third grade maybe and like my sister at the time she was in high school and this is when like new
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kids on the block were big and so she's she was a big new new kids on the block fan i thought okay
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my sister she's in high school i must like new kids on the block too because that's what middle i
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she was in middle school at the time and so i got a new kids on the block lunchbox and i remember i
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brought it to school i thought this is gonna be the coolest thing ever and i could pull it out and
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like everyone's like what in the world why do you have a new kids on the block and so you know i remember
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like the kids what you do at the lunch you set your lunchbox up so like you know it was on its side
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so you had like you know people could see your the cover of your lunchbox and you'd like hide behind it
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i didn't do that i would like hide it and i think i just stopped i went to i just told him i want a
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paper sack from here on out because i can't i can't do this retreat full retreat from the yeah yeah
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yeah i think uh well hey i can respect the thought behind it though it seemed like it should
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have worked but it did not um okay so you know being thoughtful about your social interactions and
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really breaking down every interaction into component parts can be very helpful you also talk
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about being less awkward with friends i know we've had people on the podcast talk about you know
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men in their 20s and 30s it gets hard to make friends it's easy to make friends when you're a kid
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for some reason it gets hard to make friends as an adult why is it so awkward um as an adult to make
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friends like when you're a kid like you just like hey let's be friends and you guys did but like now
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it's like it feels weird trying to make that connection with somebody else yeah it totally
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does and uh some of the demographic data about loneliness supports this in fact for men men are
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more lonely than women on average but the loneliest group demographically in the united states are young
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adult men actually and they have a really hard time connecting with each other and that changes
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dramatically from high school and and the college years so you know i think part of the problem
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is just this broader cultural belief that we need to be cool you know gino ariema the coach for
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uconn women's basketball he had a great press conference a while ago and they're asking him
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you know why have you been the most successful program um you know maybe in college basketball period
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and he said the key is that we recruit kids who are enthusiastic he said it's so hard to find people
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who are unapologetically enthusiastic about what they love because there's so much pressure to be
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cool and kind of aloof and detached and i that really resonated with me and i think that's really
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consistent with what we see in the psychological data which is that when we move to young adulthood
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for some reason that aloofness and that detachment we think that's the way that we need to present
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ourselves and interact with people but of course if we take a step back from it that's a really good
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way to not have friends so if somehow we could sign a treaty among all uh adults and just say hey
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let's drop the pretense and let's just say that we don't have friends and we're a little bit lonely
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and let's hang out uh things would go a lot better uh for each other but you know i think also part of
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it's being urban the more concentrated an urban population is the more aloof and detached people come
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across and it's partly that we don't want to get overwhelmed with too many friends or you know
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friends that we're stuck with that we didn't really want maybe right and so we err on the side of being
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overly cautious yeah yeah and one thing i've learned too is that people are reluctant to make the first
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move but i noticed i think that everyone's waiting for everyone else to make the first move right like
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just like invite yeah and you be like they're waiting for someone else to invite them to do the thing
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so yeah you might as well be the person that does the inviting yeah yeah you know i think we're so
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especially among men like we can be nervous about asking another guy to do things sometimes but uh it
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doesn't have to be weird you know you can just uh find a point of common interest that's you know
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there's there's just a few things that really predict how people become friends and one of them is
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proximity so you know put yourself in situations where you're nearby other people that you could
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become friends with and that sounds so common sense but we don't do that all the time sometimes
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we're at home with our netflix or our xbox or whatever else and that's okay but if it's taking
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us away from interactive situations then that's a problem and the other thing is a similarity so birds
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of a feather tend to flock together more often than opposites attract and so a real great way to
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ask somebody to hang out is just to go back to something where you found out that you shared a
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common interest and say hey you want to go watch the football game or you want to go golfing or
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whatever else that's a really easy way to make that initial i thought it was you talk about you
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highlight research that that was interesting uh about millennials and manners like how they're really
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into manners what's going on there why why has this been this uptick in interest amongst 20 somethings
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about you know emily post yeah right it seems a bit odd right uh i'm a gen xer and i remember being
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really bitter when people tried to impose manners upon me um and i think that was actually common for
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boomers and and gen xers millennials interestingly enough are going a lot to youtube and they're watching
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these videos about how to go to a nice restaurant or you know how to dress appropriately for a work
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event and they're really interested in picking up on these social graces that they've apparently not
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picked up uh while they were growing up and it's it's really kind of neat because they're saying hey i want
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to be sure i'm respectful i want to be sure that i'm not stepping on anybody's toes and presenting myself
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in a respectable manner so um i think it's actually a really neat thing but the implication there i think
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is that for whatever reason social life got so laid back when they were kids that they did pick up
00:26:19.820
these social graces that they really want because that helps to structure a social interaction and take
00:26:26.140
some of the anxiety and awkward manners are algorithms to combat awkwardness they totally are you
00:26:34.000
know i uh most awkward people i know uh when they you know really want to do well socially
00:26:40.100
uh they study manners and so sometimes you'll run into awkward people who are like overly rigid
00:26:46.180
with their manners or overly formal and it's actually an endearing quality because what they've done
00:26:52.920
is they've tried to prepare themselves ahead of time to interact in a way that was you know respectable
00:27:00.160
and socially right yeah you talk about the people who uh like read the 1950s etiquette guides
00:27:06.340
they try to bust that out it's like yeah and then it just makes it even more awkward
00:27:10.800
i had a couple students who did that because i think i had given a lecture one time uh you know
00:27:18.500
about hey if you're a little bit awkward you can study manners and that's a good thing to do
00:27:22.000
i forgot to say you should get the most recent edition of the manuals and so i had a couple students
00:27:27.960
doing these yeah old-timey kinds of manners and found out that they'd gotten the used copy from
00:27:32.720
30 years ago well you also talk about dating and dating's always been awkward courtship right but
00:27:38.820
you argue that it's more awkward than ever and why is it is it what we've talked about before it's
00:27:43.100
like there's more strangers it's like more ambiguity about what's acceptable technology is that what's
00:27:47.380
all going on there yeah you know that's that's part of it i think one thing that's happening is
00:27:53.760
people aren't marrying as much or aren't married period and so the rate of single people in the
00:28:00.280
united states is higher than it's ever been so we're dating a lot more than we used to so that's
00:28:05.220
part of it if someone's never been married then they're dating for longer than any other generation
00:28:10.740
has uh millennials compared to baby boomers are waiting basically twice as long to marry uh compared to
00:28:20.820
boomers who are married by 22 23 years old so you're just dating a lot more i think the second
00:28:26.800
thing are the dating apps so here's a new cultural medium where you need to interact with people and
00:28:32.900
i think apps are great and fine but there's new rules there and so it can be pretty uncomfortable
00:28:39.600
knowing how to be appropriate or how to handle other people's inappropriate behavior uh in in these
00:28:46.380
online forums so yeah it's it's really kind of ambiguous it was easier in some ways for boomers who
00:28:53.640
you know they were married by 22 uh 23 and so that kind of took care of it but now we're 27 28 29
00:29:00.700
still dating and it's a little yeah i guess when when there was an end goal of marriage like you were
00:29:07.320
able you had this end goal where you could define the relationship right and now it's like well
00:29:12.360
what are we what's going on here and people don't really have those explicit conversations and they
00:29:17.400
end up you know just awkward yeah i tried to look at the research on the different types of
00:29:24.000
relationships so you know serious married single friends with benefits there's all these different
00:29:29.440
categories and the way it looked visually was like a voting map of districts for voting so i actually
00:29:37.500
called one of the sections in that chapter gerrymandering the friend zone because it's
00:29:42.940
kind of ambiguous are we just friends or friends with benefits or you know what is this thing that
00:29:47.340
we're doing so uh we've been talking about the downsides of awkwardness right because you get in
00:29:52.360
the way of social interaction and like you know a lot of your success in life and happiness in life
00:29:56.220
depends on your social you know fluidity like how you're able to manage that but you you talk about
00:30:02.760
that while there's some downsides to being an awkward person there are some upsides what are
00:30:08.600
the benefits to being awkward yeah you know one of the things to know i think is that although awkward
00:30:16.440
people can struggle with some of these social skills or social expectations um it doesn't mean that
00:30:22.220
they're not likable and so i think as long as people can show can convey that they're fair and they're
00:30:30.620
kind people who would be loyal friends then they can have a really rich social life so i've been
00:30:37.740
really lucky pretty much throughout my life that i've had really rich gratifying social relationships
00:30:43.520
and people were willing to overlook my social awkwardness uh because i was able to convey that
00:30:49.620
hey i've got i've got a good heart and i'm trying to do the right thing here it might be a little clumsy
00:30:54.200
at the start but uh but we'll get there so i think that's one thing for awkward people to know
00:30:58.720
i think a second thing that's really interesting is the spotlighted focus if we come back to that so
00:31:04.600
you know you have the sharp focus and you see things with a great degree of detail and awkward
00:31:12.480
people tend to really love whatever it is they're interested in they just take it next level so like we
00:31:20.040
might like star wars for example but that doesn't necessarily mean we'll dress up like chewbacca
00:31:24.360
you know and go walk around the streets or um you know we might like video games but we don't
00:31:30.620
necessarily get in chat rooms and you know go to conventions and awkward people are kind of nerdy
00:31:36.140
in that way so they're they're really enthusiastic about the things they love and i think that alone
00:31:41.200
by itself is a great quality but if you combine the sharp focus and this attention to detail
00:31:47.280
and this great enthusiasm those are actually ingredients for what psychologists would call
00:31:53.800
deliberate practice and you might have heard that in the popular press with the 10 000 hours
00:31:58.700
people need to devote to become expert or good at something and you know the qualities awkward people
00:32:04.480
have actually dispose them towards deliberate practice and that can lead to some extraordinary
00:32:10.280
outcomes or even innovative breakthroughs yeah you called that i love that phrase i never heard it
00:32:15.440
before but like the rage for mastery yes a lot of people have yeah so uh you know a separate line
00:32:22.380
of research on gifted children uh done by ellen winner she's a great researcher at boston college and
00:32:27.980
she coined this phrase the rage to master and what she found was these chess geniuses or mathematical
00:32:35.080
geniuses or precocious ballerinas they all had this kind of obsessive quality to perfect the different
00:32:43.080
skills and components that were necessary to become great in their field and they importantly one of
00:32:49.700
the things that they do these kids with this rage to master is that they spend a disproportionate amount
00:32:56.580
of time on the things that they're worst at so if they if they love football or something like that and
00:33:04.680
they're not a great tackler let's say they will spend extra time working on that thing that's actually
00:33:11.420
their weakness and that's part of why they end up becoming really good at something in the long
00:33:16.200
right but then the downside is they might alienate themselves from others so you have to it's like
00:33:22.060
you have to balance that out with being intentional about your social skills as well oh yeah yeah i mean i
00:33:29.940
you know probably everybody knows someone who is very successful and who just can't shut it off
00:33:35.900
you know they're working at all times um even when they come home they're still on their phone or
00:33:41.980
they're still obsessing about work and yeah yeah that's one of the tricks is you have to find a way
00:33:46.700
to compartmentalize these things so that when you are working you're going 120 and giving it your best but
00:33:54.680
there have to be hard stops where you say okay i'm putting that away and now's the time to devote
00:34:00.980
100 of my energy to being social and being present especially for awkward people who you know might
00:34:06.740
have trouble with the social interaction anyways they need to bring 100 of their effort to these
00:34:12.040
social situations yeah because you talk about this in the book this is the upside of awkwardness this
00:34:16.620
intense focus that can make you very skillful what you do but as you talk about the book a lot of
00:34:21.540
success in life is being able to persuade people that you have a product or a skill that is of use to
00:34:28.680
them and so you have to balance your intense focus your math your rage to master with the ability to
00:34:35.900
socialize as well yeah absolutely true and you know that was another great message i got when i was
00:34:41.860
growing up from from mentors and parents they said hey you can be as clever as you want to be you know
00:34:48.480
but if you can't connect your ideas to people in a way that's understandable and useful then it's going
00:34:55.320
to be really hard for you to get to where you want to go and that really resonated with me and i'm
00:35:01.540
really glad that they emphasized that you need to take a step back time you need to think about
00:35:06.240
how you're going to make yourself a broader more well-rounded person because that wasn't something
00:35:11.740
that came naturally to me well hitai this is a great book and it's been a great conversation where
00:35:16.480
can people learn more about the book and your work yeah well they can go to awkwardbook.com
00:35:22.660
and i'll take them to my website and it's available on amazon barnes and noble all those
00:35:28.800
places and uh yeah i really appreciate people checking it out ty to shiro thanks so much for
00:35:33.580
your time it's been a pleasure hey thank you my guest today is ty to shiro he's the author of the
00:35:38.520
book awkward the science of why we're socially awkward and why that's awesome it's available on
00:35:42.220
amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you also find out more information about his work at
00:35:45.900
ty to shiro.com also check out our show notes at aom.is slash awkward bring fine links to resources
00:35:53.260
well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice
00:36:09.700
make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com if you enjoy the
00:36:13.100
podcast got something out of it i'd appreciate if you take a minute to give us a review on itunes or
00:36:16.880
stitcher helps that a lot and if you've done that already please tell a friend or two about the podcast
00:36:20.540
that helps out too as always thank you for continued support until next time this is brett mckay telling