Written outreach to people you already know, then one-to-one conversations — which gets more replies than cold messaging strangers and involves no rooms full of them. Four weeks, a few minutes a day.
People you already know and lost touch with reply far more often — and because contact lapsed, they're connected to things your current circle isn't. There's also no room to walk into.
You get to draft it, edit it, and pick your moment. That's a genuine edge over someone improvising in a corridor, and it's odd that it gets treated as the lesser option.
Generic praise and warmth that would fit anyone is the tell, and inboxes are full of it now. One detail you actually looked up beats a polished paragraph you didn't write.
If you dread it for days, avoid opportunities that matter, or replay conversations for hours, that's social anxiety rather than temperament — a different thing, and one that responds to actual treatment.