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> Cavemen who weren't curious about the capabilities and fitness of other men in their group didn't get to pass on their genes to us.
Source please.
Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living
71–80 of 249 posts
Re: Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living
#72Secret life hack: you don't have to answer "what do you do?" by talking about your job. You can talk about literally anything else that you do, preferably something that seems relevant to the person in front of you, and turn it into a more interesting two-sided conversation.
Most of the time people steer the conversation right back to the two big hitters - how much money do you make and who are you sleeping with. To those that dont - you are truly the people I actually want to have a conversation with.
I've talked with endless amount of people, people I know since before and people I don't know since before, and I don't think anyone (unless relevant to the discussion at hand) has asked me how much money I make, or who I'm sleeping with.
Maybe it's because I'm not 16 years old, or maybe it's because I don't frequent night clubs in hot metropolitan areas anymore, but that strikes me as very odd that most of the people you end up talking with bring up those two subjects.
Re: Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living
#73Couldn't agree more. I absolutely hate being asked what I do for a living. I spend a large part of my life doing it, I don't want to spend my free time talking about it, or trying to explain it. It doesn't define me. It doesn't mean anything, I do it to get paid. The end. I always make a point of never asking people what they do for the same reason. Indeed there are people I have now known for years and I have no ide…
I write software. The end. Its boring, even to other people that write software.
At previous employers I was more specific about what I do for a living: walk around a park, go to phone meetings, stare out a window. In those cases I generally only wrote software as a personal hobby.
Re: Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living
#74Secret life hack: you don't have to answer "what do you do?" by talking about your job. You can talk about literally anything else that you do, preferably something that seems relevant to the person in front of you, and turn it into a more interesting two-sided conversation.
Yup, this is what I do when asked that question, I just start talking about my hobbies instead of what I get paid by others to do. Then I ask them what their passion is, which tends to be much more interesting than what they spend their work-days on.
Re: Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most of the time people steer the conversation right back to the two big hitters - how much money do you make and who are you sleeping with. To those that dont - you are truly the people I actually want to have a conversation with.
I've talked with endless amount of people, people I know since before and people I don't know since before, and I don't think anyone (unless relevant to the discussion at hand) has asked me how much money I make, or who I'm sleeping with. Maybe it's because I'm not 16 years old, or maybe it's because I don't frequent night clubs in hot metropolitan areas anymore, but that strikes me as very odd that most of the peopl…
People dont ask these things directly ... asking what you do for a living is asking how much money you make.
> 16 years old
Back then they asked what your parents did for a living
Re: Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living
#76A better way to frame the question of “what do you do for a living” is “what do you for leisure?” Or “how have you been spending your free time lately ?” Or “what have you been up to lately?”
“what have you been up to lately?”
Be a little careful with this one. I asked a similarly worded question at an event over Easter got the answer "Burying my husband."
Thankfully the lady was good natured about it and we managed to pull the conversation around, but for a minute or two I thought I'd stepped on a landmine.
I think in future I might lead with, "what do you enjoy doing?"
Re: Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living
#77Secret life hack: you don't have to answer "what do you do?" by talking about your job. You can talk about literally anything else that you do, preferably something that seems relevant to the person in front of you, and turn it into a more interesting two-sided conversation.
My wife and I’s favorite game when meeting new people is to try and go as long as possible without talking about our work or asking about theirs. It makes it so much more interesting when careers / jobs finally enter the dialog.
Around a decade ago, I stopped asking people the basic questions, like what they do, where they're from, how old they are, or their gender and pronouns when that is unclear. I find that it's irrelevant and will bias the relationship for no good reason.
I had a good friend with whom I mostly kept in touch over the phone and online for many years, and I didn't know their name until they died and I got a call from their relatives. I still don't know what their profession was.
Just connect and engage with people, and have fun. It's a lot easier to make friends when you drop these arbitrary filters of age, profession, place of origin, gender, and so on. And in some ways, in the time I've spent not trying to get those details anymore, they have become irrelevant to me.
Re: Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living
#78Couldn't agree more. I absolutely hate being asked what I do for a living. I spend a large part of my life doing it, I don't want to spend my free time talking about it, or trying to explain it. It doesn't define me. It doesn't mean anything, I do it to get paid. The end. I always make a point of never asking people what they do for the same reason. Indeed there are people I have now known for years and I have no ide…
I don't mean to be antagonistic, but could this just be due to poor job satisfaction on your side. There is nothing wrong with not loving your job. Maybe you use it as a means to an end but I personally really enjoy talking about what I do for a job because I love my job
Re: Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living
#79In the UK we do this as part of status negotiation - the second question anyone asks (after whats your name?) is what do you do?
Then we can decide whether we are above or below the other person in the status hierarchy, which is roughly as follows:
- Architect
- Artist/Designer/Creative
- Lawyer/Doctor/Teacher
- Executive/Manager
- ...
- ...
- Bar staff
- Engineer
- Software Engineer
- Waiter
- Driver
- CleanerRe: Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living
#80This is pretty much an American thing, the rest of the world don't build their identity on their profession or their political party affiliation that much. I've got close friends I've known for 20 years and I don't really know what they do for a living except for a vague idea of the field they're in. I don't care, since that doesn't define who they are.
This is pretty much a European thing, thinking if Americans do it and you don't, the rest of the world doesn't either. I'm 100% positive, through first hand experience, that both Indian and Chinese society put a heavy emphasis on the type of work one does. To the point where marriage may simply be out of the question for an individual if they don't hold a good enough job.
Fair point. Maybe we could correlate _people caring to prominently mention job in casual conversations_ with _people living in highly competitive environments_ and be done with it.
Or maybe, instead of trying to immediately show off next time one meets some new possibly interesting person, one could just listen first. And punctuate its own silences with smiles, and kind gestures.