Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living
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Re: Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living
#2https://archive.is/MDbhu
I’m in the “introduces himself by his field, leaving out his title and firm name” camp. When possible, I leave out the field too.
Re: Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living
#3https://archive.is/MDbhu I’m in the “introduces himself by his field, leaving out his title and firm name” camp. When possible, I leave out the field too.
Is that a vague "I'm in publishing" or more closer to what you do day to day: "I'm a book editor/printer/book publicist/typesetter" etc. - I find the latter is more of interest.
Re: Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living
#4We spend tons of time at work and it’s where we got a lot of our value in our lives. I recently went to a dinner party where there were lots of people like me who wanted to talk about work and it was refreshing after spending so long talking to people who hate their jobs. Grass is greener and all that.
Re: Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living
#5A 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?”
Re: Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living
#6Telling people what you do is more than just telling them your job title, it's also a great opportunity to tell them what motivates you about your job, and thus showing some of your values, which is pretty important when meeting new people and allows you to more easily form bonds with those that share similar values.
Re: Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living
#7To be honest I have experienced this a lot in San Francisco, where people ask first what do you do, second where do you work and then what's your name...in Europe it really isn't the central part of the conversation and most likely the job doesn't even get mentioned in a dinner or a normal conversation with someone you met in a bar/club/wherever. It always shocked me how "what you do" defines the start of the conversation over there.
Re: Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living
#8https://archive.is/MDbhu I’m in the “introduces himself by his field, leaving out his title and firm name” camp. When possible, I leave out the field too.
Is that a vague "I'm in publishing" or more closer to what you do day to day: "I'm a book editor/printer/book publicist/typesetter" etc. - I find the latter is more of interest.
Same. Only people in my field will know the title (and whether they care or not is another story).
If I keep it to the broad job function that layfolks will understand, the topic usually quickly shifts to the next thing if it doesn't strike a chord with the other party. And that's cool. It's all just small talk jumpoffs until something both clicks for the two people in the convo.
Re: Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living
#9Telling people what you do is more than just telling them your job title, it's also a great opportunity to tell them what motivates you about your job, and thus showing some of your values, which is pretty important when meeting new people and allows you to more easily form bonds with those that share similar values.
No it's not, no one cares about your job. And having a job that reflect your values is not the norm. People want to know about YOU, not talk about what you do to get paid. Your hobbies for example are way more interesting.
Re: Stop Telling Everyone What You Do for a Living
#10Ideally, at some point in life you've reached "self-actualisation" and what you do for work is meaningful and important to you.