Yes-i-can-read-why-do-you-ask - Letters

“Can everybody hear me?”

Presenters often open by asking “Can everybody hear me?” or “Can everyone hear me without the microphone?”

This isn’t a very effective way to find out if everyone can hear you. It feels like asking, but it isn’t really — because it doesn’t usually give people the opportunity to say no.

If you want to know if everyone can hear you, this way of asking works better:

First, ask if everyone can hear you. This will get the attention of the people who can.

Next, ask everyone “Can the person next to you hear me?”

Wait 7 seconds for people to ask each other

Next, say, “Raise your hand if you or someone near you needs me to talk louder or use the microphone.”

Wait at least 7 seconds before moving on. 

(7 seconds feels really long as a presenter. It helps to literally count silently to yourself).

Asking this way solves two problems:

It makes it easier for people to hear the question:

If someone can’t hear you well, they may not hear “Can everybody hear me?”

This can give you the misleading impression that everyone can hear you.

When you ask, “Can everybody hear me?” the people who can, tend to respond “yes” immediately

The people who *can’t* hear you well, often don’t hear the question.

Or they may not understand what you’ve said until you’ve already moved on.

But they probably *can* hear people who are close to them talking to them directly.

Asking “can the person next to you hear me?” makes it more likely that people who can’t hear you will understand the question.

It makes it easier for people to respond to the question:

Saying “Can everybody hear me?” or “Can everyone hear me without the microphone?” *feels* like asking, but often it really isn’t. 

The problem is that asking that way doesn’t give people an obvious socially acceptable way to respond.

So in order for people to say “I can’t hear you” or “I need you to use the microphone”, they have to interrupt you.

Which feels like a conflict, and most people don’t want to go into a presentation and immediately have a conflict with the presenter.

It also makes them have to identify themselves as having an inconvenient impairment in front of the whole group.

That’s uncomfortable on a number of levels, and may be actively frightening. 

Not everyone is going to be willing or able to interrupt you or take risks. 

Even when people are willing, it’s still anxiety provoking in a way that’s likely to make your presentation less comfortable and effective

Giving people a clear way to respond gets you better information, and helps you to build a better rapport with your audience 

(And doing it in the specific way I suggest makes it possible for people to let you know they can’t hear you without having to interrupt you, identify themselves to you, or identify themselves to the whole group.)

Tl;dr If you’re giving a presentation, asking “Can everyone hear me?” probably won’t result in people who can’t hear you telling you so. Scroll up for more detailed information about a more effective approach and why it works better.

ADHD reward system? Please tell me your secret!

My therapist has been helping me find a reward system that works for me, and as it turns out, gold star stickers are really helpful for making me feel like a tangible goal was met, and helps give me that sweet, sweet dopamine release that comes with completing a task, something which us ADHD’ers really struggle to achieve and are already coming at from a disadvantage with our brains regularly not producing enough “happy” hormones as it is.

It was supposed to be “a sticker for every time you finish a chapter”, but after some revision, my therapist said that was too tall of a goal, and that I should pick something smaller. So instead I now get a star every time I finish a 500-word milestone, placing the sticker in my writing calendar/journal thing that I use to keep track of my writing, and ironically, I have started to produce more work than when I was stiving for one chapter a day.

To give you an idea of how staggeringly effective this has been for me, I’ve written over 30k of original fiction in the last week. (75k total if you include my social media and blog stuff, which I currently do not but likely should.)

So this is what it looked like when I was attempting to do a chapter of edits and revisions a day during the month of December 2019 (note: I was supposed to start this in Nov, so you can see how well that worked out for me lol):

ID: A calendar showing days of the month with a shiny star sticker showing a completed task.

And this is what my writing journal looks like now that I’m doing a star for every 500 words:

ID: an image of a handwritten journal with the dates mapped out, followed by a shiny star sticker for every completed 500-word milestone. There are 65 stars in total for the month of January 2020. It’s also tinged by a green light cause I’m doing a chronic pain experiment, so far with positive results!

So as of today, January 8th, with ever star = 500 words, then 65*500 = 32500 words totalled in 7 days. This does not include, like I said, my social media output where I am far more productive, this is just my fiction and some editing work for friends.

(Which side note: this is not to flex, or to say that others should be able to achieve this level of output. I am a professional writer, this is my main job and only source of income. And also, I was forged in the fires of understaffed editing hell where we would be expected to churn out 100k+ a week in edits and revisions to keep on track. I have the time and a learned skillset I have spent years amassing to be able to do this and am working towards a rigid deadline. I simply have not been healthy enough in a long time to manage it, and am finally working my way back up to speed after years of illness. Don’t look at this and think, “I’m not achieving enough”, every victory no matter how small is worth celebrating. And I say that with the utmost sincerity, as someone who spent most of the last 2-3 years unable to get out of bed.)

I’ve also started using it to help keep track of bills and chores around the home. So every time something gets done/done on time, whoever completed the task gets a star on the calendar. This includes Oppy the Not-A-Roomba, who does a very good job of taking care of the house on a daily basis:

ID: an image of a chore calendar denoting various tasks that have been marked off with a holographic silver star sticker, including our robot vacuum who does an excellent job and deserves all the stars. (Our names got blurred out cause ETD doesn’t want his real name out there in the world, so that’s what is blurry.)

This system is useful for several reasons, the primary one being a sense of achievement and continued motivation, and the second, to allow you to review each month to see where you are doing well, and where you might otherwise be struggling.

For example, if I have a bad day for writing or decide to take a day off, I write that down in the calendar rather than leaving it blank, so that I have a record of what went wrong (or right, if I am electing to self care that day and take a day off) and how my overall progress is doing.

In terms of house stuff, this has been especially useful for ETD and myself, as it shows us where we are managing to do a good job with the house, and where our executive dysnfunction issues really trip us up and where we need to make improvements. And I don’t just mean in an “I should try harder way”, I mean you have to actively sit down and be like “hey! What is preventing me from completing this thing” and trying to figure out effective ways to either get around it or resolve a larger issue at hand.

So for us, the biggest thing we tend to miss is doing dishes after dinner, meaning we get left with a pile-up of dishes to deal with first thing in the morning, and my ADHD can’t handle that. It won’t let me eat until I’ve cleared all the mess, but I usually don’t have the energy to clean up if I haven’t eaten, so it’s this awful cycle of ineptitude. We’re doing better with the star reward system, cause it’s showing us our progress loud and clear on the fridge door, but we are both usually so fatigued and exhausted by the end of dinner that doing dishes is just one thing too many for our mutual disorders. So, the solution for this would, of course, be a dishwasher, cause if we had one of those, we could load stuff in, turn it on, and let those dishes get done while we go to bed then put them away in the morning. We can’t afford to do that right now, and we have other appliances we need to buy/replace before we can do that (still don’t have a tumble dryer, or a washer I can access, rip) but it does give us a tangible goal to work toward, and also, the motivation to keep on top of things because it goes from “an endless task with no end in sight” to “there’s a solution for this, we can manage a while longer.”

Now you could be saying, but Joy, I’m an adult! Surely I shouldn’t expect rewards for completing every day tasks that I should be able to do?!

To which I say, neurotypical people get rewards all the time and get an unconscious dose of dopamine/serotonin from their brains every time they complete a task. They’re playing the game of life on easy mode, the gold star is your achievement for completing it daily on Nintendo 99 hard mode. IF THE STICKER WORKS, TAKE THE STICKER

YOU’VE EARNED IT.

Item: zip-up hooded robe

if any of you guys are interested in giffing or well just p1rating I'm compiling a list of free resources i use on my edits (video+programs+assets+non edit stuff) and like my general presence because piracy is always moral and right