6 Effective Strategies that can Help You Improve Your Persuasion Skills
Persuasion is one of the most important skills, not only at work but also in many aspects of life. Want to convince your mother to cook some chicken rice for you? Haggling with an auntie at the flea market? Trying to persuade your boss to give you a raise? Persuasion can help us live well and there are many ways to persuade someone.
Be confident
This one is already pretty obvious. Displaying an aura of confidence helps convince your audience that you know what you are doing and you are sure that you’re going to get what you want. The ones in the receiving end of your persuading will pick up in that confidence and will eventually learn to trust you.
Highlight the benefits
How will you even persuade someone if you mention nothing about the benefits right? But you shouldn’t only point out the benefits, remember to highlight how the result can benefit them. If you want to convince your father to play golf with you, point out all the benefits he can get from playing.
Keep things simple
If you want to persuade someone effectively, keep your words and ideas simple and easy to understand. This comes from the idea that people confuse easily. When we are faced with complex arguments that we do not understand immediately, we tend not to trust them because we think there might be hidden agendas. So, keep things simple and direct.
Choose the right words
The simple explanation for this is to use words that appeal to your audience. There are certain words old people use that don’t appeal to younger ones. There are words you can use when talking to your workmates but not to your boss, same with ones you can use with friends and not your parents. If you do choose the right words, you show your audience respect and they will be able to relate to you better.
Add a dash of flattery
This is another common strategy that many people use to persuade others. These days though, there are also people who easily notice flattery and therefore is not easily influenced by it. So instead of saying compliments directly, try to keep it subtle and mostly indirect.
Learn to Concede
If the argument is not going your way, learn to step down for a while. There is usually a benefit to taking a break and reconsidering the things you want. There are even times when you might benefit more from not having convinced the other person in the end.
Just a quick note. Although this article is about persuasion, you should never use any of these to take advantage of other people. Never try to influence them into doing something that can harm their health, safety, and dignity. Let’s all be good men and women for others!
5 Ways to Beat the Heat in Your HDB Flat (Without Raising Your Aircon Bill)
Heat and humidity are two of the biggest things that everyone in Singapore has to deal with every year, but that doesn’t mean you have to deal with it all the time. Here’s how you can cool down your HDB flat without raising your electricity bill or adding to global warming:
1. Draw the blinds
You might think that opening your windows might allow air to circulate, but the truth is that you may just end up heating your HDB flat even more since sunlight can enter more directly.
This is when you want to draw your curtains and blinds while keeping the windows themselves open.
2. Add refreshments
Serving cold water or fruit juice is not just a good way to cool down without having to switch on your air conditioner, but it’s also a great way to stay hydrated when you or everyone at home is feeling sweaty.
If you don’t already have a water cooler in your home, simply keeping a pitcher or two of cold water in your fridge helps everyone cool down.
Other than cold water or fruit juice, adding chilled fruit can easily turn a hot day into a great summer season any day of the year.
3. Switch out your incandescent bulbs
If you still have incandescent bulbs in your HDB flat, you’re better off switching them out for LED lights, which are cheaper, more energy-efficient, last longer, and give your room a much cooler atmosphere.
You can also keep everything cooler by keeping unused appliances unplugged, since the electricity they use can easily turn into heat.
4. Switch to fans
Electric fans are a good alternative to keeping cool without raising your electric bill too high. If you have a ceiling fan, use it instead of your air conditioner as a way to cool down by keeping the air circulating throughout your home.
When you do use an electric or a ceiling fan, make sure that it’s up to standard. Its blades should be angled by at least twelve degrees and at most sixteen degrees to create the right amount of airflow.
5. Add more plants
Plants absorb and filter heat and light, which makes them a simple way of improving air quality in your home. Many plants are also low-maintenance and grow quickly, which doesn’t make them too much trouble to have in your HDB flat or condo unit.
This means that by getting the right indoor plants and placing them in the right areas where they get enough sunlight, you have an easy way of keeping your home as cool as possible – and you only have to water them every other day.
5 Bedroom Design Mistakes You Can Fix Right Now
Your bedroom isn’t usually on public display, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t have to skip on the design. In fact, there’s a good chance that there are more than a few bad choices need fixing, such as the following:
1. Bad lighting
Your bedroom should have multiple ambient lighting options that you can adjust, especially if you like to read in bed or work in your room. For instance, having a shaded lamp allows you to adjust the brightness you need.
2. Not having a right place for everything
The biggest reason why you need to have drawers and shelves in your room is to provide a place for all your things, and when you don’t have enough places for your things, you either have too much stuff or not enough places.
The same can be said for your power outlets – you can easily find your room lacking in power outlets, which can be inconvenient when you need to charge your gadgets.
3. Not positioning your bed the right way
The optimal position for your bed should be somewhere that you can see the wall, and there’s a good reason for this. Not only is it really helpful to see someone enter the room, but it also leaves enough space around the bed for you to move around.
This is why you almost always see bedrooms at the corner of the room, facing the door. If your bed isn’t positioned this way already, try it out and see how easier it makes things for you.
4. Choosing loud colors
Bold, bright colors might be great in areas of your home that experience high traffic, such as your living room or kitchen, but they are terrible in your bedroom since you want to be able to rest and calm down at the end of the day.
The best colors for bedrooms are ones that are cooler and calmer. Blues, greens, or even browns and greys make for better colors that allow you to relax and unwind, as well as give an overall more peaceful aura.
5. Lack of privacy
The biggest flaw you can have with a bedroom is that it doesn’t offer enough privacy. Even though you like waking up with the sun every morning, if the room fails to provide the adequate cover for you, the room can suffer from a serious of lack of space that’s truly personal.
Fortunately, this is easy to solve since there are many solutions you can get. Many window treatments, or even room dividers, can give you the cover that will ensure privacy for your bedroom so you can sleep without worry.
Tips for Delivering an Impromptu Speech
You might notice much but there are places, groups, and events around Singapore focused on impromptu speaking. It is no question that speaking in public can be terrifying for some. Let alone speaking and thinking on your feet because you don’t have anything prepared. Not to worry though! Here are some tips for delivering an impromptu speech well:
Build Confidence
Building confidence before the speech can help you speak clearly and deliver your speech effectively. That is why you should try to incorporate the building of confidence in your daily activities. You can try engaging in small talk with strangers, for example. This might not seem like it, but it’s actually a good way to boost confidence. Having good posture is another sign of confidence, so try to avoid slouching and sit up and stand up straight.
Use impromptu speaking templates
An impromptu speaking template is basically a simple structure to deliver your speech. One common method is the Point. Reason. Example. Point or P.R.E.P. You start by plainly stating our point. Then, share the primary reasons and give an example after. Lastly, you conclude everything by summarizing your main point again. Using templates is just a simple way to organize your thoughts so you can deliver them comprehensively.
Use personal experiences
During your speech, if you intend to include a story, you should tell something you’ve experienced yourself. This means that you are speaking the truth and that you are pertaining to something that you have profoundly experienced. When you narrate an experience, there are chances that some in the audience would be able to relate and even understand because you are sharing something that you’ve experienced intimately. Of course, make sure that the story you tell is related to your topic.
Utilize appropriate body language
Smiling, eye contact, appropriate movement, and hand gestures are also obviously important when delivering an impromptu speech. It is very easy to fidget and slouch when you’re already speaking simply because you are nervous. This possibly comes from not having enough time to prepare what you want to say. But when you display strong and proper body language, the audience will not easily notice and might even take you as a good speaker.
Practice your delivery
Your voice, of course, plays a crucial role in speech delivery. Speak loudly and slowly. Speaking loudly definitely does not mean shouting, rather speaking with a clear and understandable tone. Practice speaking loudly so that you not only train your voice but also the ability to think on your feet. You should also learn to speak slowly.
Usually, you’ll find that a person speaks too quickly when he/she is nervous. Use pauses and speak at a pace your audience can follow.
Things You Can Do to Stop Procrastination
The urge to put off something unpleasant, like homework or a business project, is just too strong to resist sometimes. This is procrastination, the habit of delaying an important task and focusing on unnecessary yet more enjoyable and easier activities instead. When you let procrastination take over your life, it can be the cause of a lot of stress and anxiety. So, here are some things you can do to avoid procrastinating.
Plan ahead
Many people procrastinate not just in aspects like school or work, but also in their daily lives. But, simply deciding to stop worrying and just start doing what you have to do is not going to work. What you should do is to focus on getting a routine and schedule working in your favor. By planning it, you can make it happen in a much more organized way and you’ll be able to establish time restraints in your work.
Reward yourself after everything is done
Don’t forget to reward yourself after finishing your work. This is a good training for your brain to think that it’s better to do things earlier than putting them off for later. It doesn’t have to be big and grand too, simply eating out or watching movies with your friends would be good ways to do so. If you’ve just finished a job with a heavy workload, take a nature hike at Bukit Timah Nature Reserve or do something that you can relax with!
Make a list of the things you have to do that day
On a journal or piece of paper, write down all the important things you need to do for the day. This helps you map out your priorities and focus on them. For example, you’ve written two important things to do, and one is your business proposal. You Break this down to smaller parts, do the introduction, then take a break without being distracted by unnecessary things, then move to the statistics, and so on. Remind yourself that you don’t have to do it all at once – tackle it a bit at a time and get your work done slowly but surely.
Stop trying to make things perfect
Let’s say you want to ask a girl out on a date but you delay it worrying about the things you should do after asking her. You then start saying, “I’ll just do it tomorrow” or “I’ll wait for the right time”. By doing this, you’re putting more stress on yourself by imagining a “perfect” scenario where nothing goes wrong. If you have anxiety about getting started, just accept that feeling rather than using it to delay your plans. You should understand that getting things done is a way to help get rid of the stress that’s building up on you.