I saw Hard ‘N Phirm on Comedy Central months ago and totally fell in love with your comedy stylings. “Not Illegal” was stuck in my head for a solid week. Thank you for being awesome.

This post reminds me of the book “When I Say No, I Feel Guilty.” The author argues that we are inherently forthright and assertive, but we are taught non-assertive techniques of interacting by parents whose wills were beaten down by families and social structures that benefitted from them being pliable and non-assertive.

As a result, instead of telling people no if we don’t want to or can’t do something, we’ll make up excuses or try to make people feel bad for asking. Throw in some worries and experiences of conditional love, and we’re afraid that if we don’t live up to what people expect from us, they will withdraw from us, not like us, etc. And so we engage in one of the more absurd practices of the animal kingdom: we do things that we don’t want to do and shouldn’t do and feel miserable about it so that someone else gets what they want. This is the process by which homo sapiens becomes homo sap.

But you’re right, the only people who get mad at you for being honest are manipulative narcissists who are afraid of dealing with people they can’t control with manipulation. Who doesn’t love getting those people riled up?

Well, I guess I’ll stop masquerading as if I a firm grasp of human psychology, but it’s just so much fun.

But irregardless, taking away from someone what they want is a surefire way to make yourself irresistible.

That being said, I’d hate for you to lose valuable yes-dollars on my account. Looking forward to the podcast!

Fellow nerd here. I just read your article on productivity experts and was shattered to find that I’m not one of them. That’s just as well, since I think systems, frameworks, and lists of life categories are nothing but mental masturb… er, tricks used to keep consultants employed.

But could it be as simple as saying “No?” Get serious. I run a personal productivity podcast. If people started saying no, they wouldn’t need me. Would you like it if I started advising people to learn to laugh at themselves and their loved ones? I think not. You would be sitting in empty comedy clubs, listening to the three remaining glum people in the world bitch about their comb-over. Not pretty.

But if you absolutely insist on learning to say no, please let me offer a free, brief podcast on the topic. Sadly, had I to bring in an outside expert, since I suck at no-saying, but the advice is top-notch: http://is.gd/4Ky . And of course, feel free to say no.

So I figured I could edit and operate the sound at the same time. Every time I muted the mac and popped my headphones in, I was one page away from the next sound cue so I got nothing done! Eventually I was getting tired and I tried to cut it closer and closer to my sound cues to the point where I forgot to mute the mac and my video audio with the music and voice filled the auditorium with noise. Everyone just stopped what they were doing and look at me. Thats the story of how I was never permitted to use a mac in theatre again.

If only you could have been there to point and say “tard” when it happened. (ATOS Dare review.) Priceless!

a producer who recently signed on to something I cowrote told us to not let anyone know we can write and revise as fast as we do. she said that if you turn it in too far ahead of schedule, not only will they have unreasonable demands in the future, they’ll think you’re not putting in enough work.

sometimes I guess you just have to do what you can but not too quickly or they’ll hate you for it