1. Gather statistics.  Document your performance for the past 6 months and arrange it in a quantifiable manner.  You want to present numbers because everybody knows employers won’t bother verifying obfuscated math formulas and will often agree with your computations just to appear intelligent.  Bring in any statistics that will fall in your favor like how many sales, projects or tasks you’ve aced during the period and present a complex algebraic equation as to how you have derived them.  Of course, the complex math is optional but if you can wing it, doesn’t it make making more money twice as fun?

2. Check out salary ranges for your skillset.  Some of this will be available from the web, either from job hunting websites or professional organizations in your field.  Whatever is the highest figure you find, add 20 percent because you’re not average.  Otherwise, why will you be asking for a freaking increase?  When making your case, try to obliquely assert the reasons why your skills are unique to you even though everybody knows it’s not.  If you can successfully debate it, running out of rebutalls will compel anyone to accept your position eventually.

3. Make the pitch in accordance with how your company pays.  While you can ask for a higher salary than the CEO, it may not be the winningest idea in the pool.

4. Be open to compensation in terms of additional benefits or under-the-table bonuses.   Under-the-table rocks because you’re screwing the government and making more money at the same time.  You can then sing out, “I’m not paying for your war!” and actually have it mean something.:)

5. Be aware of your position in the organization.  Is your job dispensable?  Is there any part of your duties that only you, at this moment, can do?  You can use this as leverage which you can obliquely hint at later until they bring it up themselves.

6. Be prepared to walk.  Not all negotiations will end favorably and, more importantly, the power during the process will always be in the hands of that who has less attachment to a particular result. If this is not you, convince yourself that it is you.  During the meeting, sit with your body facing the door so you look like you’re ready to leave at the slightest provocation.  Otherwise, you’re fighting a losing battle.

7. When you do get the raise, try to come early at least for the next week.  You don’t want them to regret it so quickly, do you?

How do you focus your energies? Do you direct it outwards or in?

For a long time, I worked on focusing my energies outward. I am natually an introvert and, as a result, much of my energy is spent on inner things - thoughts, feelings, and imagination. I hated this part of me for the longest time. I remember back in high school just wanting to be as social and fun as everyone else.

When you focus your energy out correctly, you come across as energetic and full of zest. You see extroverts like this all the time - the fun guys that keep the room laughing, the funny teachers that everyone likes, the great speaker that inspires and motivates. Done too much, it can manifest as manic and harassed, such as when people are under panic or act restless.

Neither one of the two is better than the other. But in every situation, there is one that serves you more effectively. For instance, if you go to a bar to hang out with friends and meet new people, focusing outwardly will allow you to have more fun and experience better interactions. If you are studying, then focusing inwardly towards you own thoughts and patterns will yield you better results than focusing outwardly in your environment and other distractions.

What continues to be unclear to me is how to effectively shift focus outward when your natural inclination is to focus in. And inward when you’ve spent your life focusing out.

When I attempt to shift focus outwards, I have noticed three main situations where it was necessary to exert more effort.

1. Getting started. It’s always hard to get started. Especially after you’ve come from a consuming task that required you to focus inwardly, like work or a personal crisis. I’ve always had to work from the ground up, doing little things that slowly shift my focus to the environment and other things around me.

These little things normally consist of:

- Talking to as many people as possible (vendors, salesclerks, old people, anyone)
- Texting/emailing friends
- Playing a sport like shooting hoops or a quick arcade game like Video Poker
- Cooking
- Shopping

Those things all help to bring me out of my head and shift focus into things outside of me.

2. When you revert inward. This happens a lot to me. I’ll be in a good extroverted state and, suddenly, something will happen that will cause me to revert my focus inwards. It’s usually fast and out of my sudden consciousness, like an off-hand remark that affects me or seeing something that reminds of something personal and emotion-laden. I will usually solve this by changing focus towards something else in the environment.

3. When subjected to stress. When I find myself under stress, my default is always to focus inwards. I found this serves well as I am often very calm in situations where everybody around me can be panicking, such as a few years ago when we were in a tall building during a strong earthquake. I tend to not panic at all. The problem is when I find myself under minor stress and my response defaults to the same turning inwards, such as small fights. My reaction can be a little uncalled for and inappropriate for the shallowness of the situation.

One of my goals is to have the ability to focus outwardly at least 80% of my waking time. I want to do it at least a week and see what kind of changes it brings my life situation. Will it be better? Will my relationships be more fulfilling? Will I be more productive?

In continuing the quest to help my readers exhibit even more bizaare and weird behavior, here’s 9 things you can look out for when trying to irritate those around you by being your funny self:

1. Laugh before the punchline. Laugh before you tell it. Laugh in the middle. Keep laughing without having said anything funny so that when you say something that’s supposed to be funny, it’s not.

2. Tell a funny insult about one of the people listening to you. Then follow it up with another.

3. Tell explicit, tired sex jokes then make hints about being a stud in bed. Then tell another explicit, tired sex joke. Do it over and over until everybody can tell you’re a sexually frustrated liar.

4. Make fun of the people who don’t tell jokes. Call them boring.

5. Make sexual innuendo your staple comedy routine. Then make hints about being a stud in bed. Do it over and over until everybody can tell you’re a sexually frustrated liar.

6. Make fun of the disabled.

7. Be the loud, obnoxious joker in the room. Then get pissed off when someone takes a jab at you.

8. Make sick jokes your staple comedy routine. Keep an arsenal of fart, bukkake, shit, gore and piss jokes and tell them all the time, especially when people are eating.

9. When people say nicely that your joke is disgusting, make a mental note that it means “They loved it and they want more!”