Some of my friends are funny, others aren’t. When you’re not funny and you actually think you are, it’s pretty much a disaster. One of my co-workers is like this. It’s like he intentionally does all the unfunny things when he’s trying to make you laugh. He’s a great guy but his jokes are just painful. We laugh with him to avoid breaking rapport but drop him in a situation where he barely knows anyone and he’s gonna blow out bad.

You don’t have to be funny to be a fun person but it doesn’t hurt either. If you’re one of those unfunny blokes, you can consciously watch out for some things to become a little funnier. Maybe do a 7-day or 30-day trial of it, see if you can integrate into your personality.

Here are a few ideas you can use to adjust your humor for better results in social situations.

1. Stop trying to make people laugh. Trying is dying. Instead, do it for your own amusement or do it to find out if you can make yourself laugh or any other reason that wouldn’t involve getting validated by other people’s reaction.
2. Think playful instead of funny. If it’s hard for you to wrap your head around the idea of being funny, try being playful instead. Imagine you have an audience of your little nieces and nephews. Then mess around with them.
3. Don’t laugh before delivering your punchline.
4. Tell knock knock jokes without the “Knock! Knock!” Doing the whole knock, knock bit just announces that you are going to tell a joke. It diminishes momentum and surprise.
5. Put pauses in your setup. Just as in all manners of speaking, you hook people to listen when you put pauses in speech.
6. Always pause before the punchline.
7. Make funny faces by exaggerating your point facially. While most stand-up comics thrive on deadpan faces, in social situations I get bigger laughter with exaggerated facial expressions that compliment the punchline. This works especially well if you’re really cute, the contrast you create is amazing!
8. If nobody laughs, pretend you weren’t cracking a joke. Just ignore it and pretend you were making a serious statement instead. You’re not on stage so you’re not trying to be funny all the time.
9. If nobody laughs and they look at you funny, wink at them or scream something totally random like “Hotdog!” or “Chicken Syrup!”
10. Sex jokes are always funny if delivered tastefully. If you make a funny innuendo directed at someone, only do it once within ten minutes. Do it twice and you’re trying to embarass them. Do it thrice and it’s obvious you’re at a loss for funny things to say.
11. If you cracked something funny earlier, it’s ok to mention the punchline again later. Callback humor is great for at least two repeats. Any more and you risk being trite.
12. Callback earlier punchlines that weren’t funny. Making fun of something that was not funny can be funny. For example, nobody laughed when someone said that a guy is so fat he can eat a whole table. You can follow-up by saying it’s wrong, he is so fat he can actually eat 10 fat guys eating tables!
13. Never pass on an opportunity to make a side-comment. If nobody laughs, do #7 or #8.

Technorati Tags: Be Funny, Jokes, Humor

If you’re one of those people whose body clocks are now finely-tuned to wake up early in the morning either by default or by developed habit, congratulations, I’m impressed. Congratulate yourselves! And skip this post because you really don’t need it.

If you’re like me who struggle to get up early most mornings and depend on alarm clocks, I’m sure you can find this of some value.

How to Choose an Alarm Clock

• Must have an offensive ring
• Forget the alarm clocks with mp3 songs or those with sweet melodic hymns. If you’re buying it to wake you up, buy one with the ugliest, most offensive eardrum irritation you can find. One that sounds like a horrific-version of the old landline ring will be great.
• Must be loud
• Always check if there is a volume knob, then crank it up and test the alarm clock. I was amazed at how many alarm clocks did not have volume adjust and were preset at an average volume. That’s not good enough. It has to be really, really loud to really, really work.
• Must vibrate
• I’ve seen very few alarm clocks that vibrate. But if you can find one that is also loud, that will be a great choice.
• Multiple alarms
• This might be strictly confined to those digital-type ones but it’s really, really useful. I used to set my alarms at 7:00, 7:10, 7:15 up to 7:30. It’s very handy when you accidentally fall back into slumber without snoozing. Like I usually do.

Using a Cellphone as an Alarm Clock

This is not a bad idea but depends highly on the cellphone. Same criteria as above applies to your phone.

I used to alarm with only my cellphone back when I had an Ericsson. Ericsson phones are great alarm clocks, by the way. They have some of the most offensive ringtones I have ever heard bundled in their phones, including the retro-phone ring. They are very loud too. My old phone wasn’t a very hip model so there was only one alarm allowed.

I recently upgraded to a Samsung and it sucks as an alarm clock. The sound is too soft and the ringtones - even those made especially for alarms - are just too musical. It’s how I’ve always imagined alarm clocks would sound like in Sleeping Beauty, very Disney-like.

Alarm Clock Positioning for Maximum Wake-Up Effect

Here are some guidelines for alarm clock placement to maximize the possibility that it will actually do its job and get you awake.

• Two feet away from the bed
• This way, you’ll you have to get up to get it, making it harder to snooze
• Near enough to hear maximum loudage (too far and it may diminish the noise)
• On a wooden surface
• This is specifically for those alarm clocks with vibration features. It adds an extra level of irritating noise, like someone wildly tapping on your table
• If the vibration is strong enough, like with my old Ericsson phone, you will actually imagine someone was banging on your door
• Inside a cooking pot
• Use a relatively thin aluminum cooking pot and place the vibrating alarm clock inside (preferably a big one). This is seriously mad and sounds like the neighbors are destroying their kitchen.
• Next to another alarm clock
• I did this before more for my amusement than anything. Put multiple alarm clocks side by side, set them at the same time, and watch them explode!
• Right next to your spouse, mom, roommate, or whoever you live with
• Plant it right next to them so they can hear. They are guaranteed to get up, walk to your bed, and wake you up angrily. This is how I woke up for school back when I still lived at home! After a while, my mom got tired of it, hid my alarm clock and just started waking me up early everyday.

Technorati Tags: Alarm, Wake up, Early-Riser, Sleep

Some people equate self-development with books and ideas when it is not. Self-help is always about applying those ideas and getting results.

If you find yourself with a wad of books, tons of receipts from seminars, and a couple cd cases of audio programs yet continue to be stuck in areas you’ve been dreaming of progressing on, consider that you might be going about self-development the wrong way.

Realizations

Ever notice how something you read can change your entire perspective on some things?

That’s what profound ideas and concepts do. They engage you emotionally and allow you to see things in a different way. You finish it feeling like something has shifted.

Having your reality shattered, however, is not what self-development is about. If you decide to just let it sink in and leave it at that, within a couple of weeks, the same mountain-moving concept will not seem to even matter anymore.

I’ve come across many things that have bowled me over, destroying many previous conceptions yet, because everything around me stayed the same, it was incredibly easy to fall back into old habits and behavior. Without applied effort, realizations never changed me for good.

Just as an idea can change your perspective in a second, it can also be discarded in the same amount of time. It’s not self-development. It’s an inspiring thought that, unless acted upon, loses any real value.

How to Really Change

The second idea I adhere to when applying a self-development program for myself is a result of those many realizations that never quite stuck:

Work on specifics not concepts.

Personal development consists of activities, not learning materials. Once an idea stirs your spirits, you must break it down into activities that will move you towards the ideals that the concept has set forth.

For example, you are currently sold on the idea that you want to make your working hours more efficient. How do you do it?

First set a bar for what efficient is. Make it specific and measurable. Maybe it means “Finish or delegate all work by 4pm in the afternoon” or “Increase customer conversion rate by 5%.”

Second, define sets of behavior that will make it so. For me, it will consist of the following:

1. Get to work early (30 minutes before working hours)
2. Finish all the 5-minute items within the first hour on the job
3. Do a 15-minute staff meeting to go over work assignments after the first hour
4. If I get stuck more than 15 minutes on one problem, leave for a while and go back in an hour
5. Use email over phone calls

Third, figure out the ways to achieve each activity. Is it something you can do just by keeping it in mind or do you need additional help for it?

Get to work early (30 minutes before working hours)
- Wake up at 6am : not used to waking up this early, need help
- Do chores at night (iron shirts, prepare documents, pack lunch) : can do

Finish all the 5-minute items within the first hour on the job
- Skim over emails : can do
- Keep a list of 5-minute items on queue: not sure how to implement, need tool

Do a 15-minute staff meeting to go over work assignments after the first hour
- Send IMs 10-minutes before : can do

If I get stuck more than 15 minutes on one problem, leave for a while, and go back in an hour
- Keep a To-Do list : can do

Use email over phone calls
- Use answering machine and schedule call backs or email immediately for a response: can do

Doing it this way, you get a clear picture of activities you need to do in order to get your results. If all you did was go in with an inspired idea of wanting to be more efficient, you’ll end up wasting time deciding what to do every minute.

Using the above list, it’s also clear you only need two new pieces of information: (1) How you can wake up early and (2) How you can manage a list short tasks. You can now look up specifics on how to do the above and, when you find ones that you “can do”, you add them as your tasks.

So to recap:

1. Set a specific and measurable bar for you to reach for
2. Define specific things that will get you there
3. Define whether each item is an actionable task for you right now or something that needs further breakdown. For each non-actionable item, go back to 2.