Run Game Conversation

What to talk about when your life feels boring

6 min read

When your life feels boring, talk about the small, specific details of it and get curious about the other person. People rarely need a big story. A weird thing your coworker said, a recipe that went wrong, or the reason you picked a certain route home is enough material, and a real question about the other person's day carries a conversation further than a good anecdote does.

Most of the "I have nothing to say" feeling comes from judging your own life by the highlight reel. The person you're talking to isn't comparing you with a travel documentary. They're deciding whether this is easy and pleasant.

Why you probably underrate yourself

Two studies point the same way, with limits.

Erica Boothby, Gus Cooney, Margaret Clark and Gillian Sandstrom (Psychological Science, 2018) ran five studies of people having conversations: strangers in the lab, college roommates, and others. On average, people liked their partner more than they believed their partner liked them, and the gap showed up in longer conversations and lasted for months among roommates. The authors suggest people don't notice their partner's signs of interest and focus on their own slip-ups. The press release doesn't give sample sizes, and the conversations were arranged by researchers, so it describes a tendency, not a guarantee.

Michael Kardas, Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2021) ran 12 experiments with more than 1,800 participants. People expected conversations with strangers, especially deeper ones, to be more awkward than they turned out to be, and underestimated how interested their partner would be in hearing about them. Both studies are about conversation in general, not dating, and they use short, structured conversations in research settings.

The practical read: your worry about being boring is probably louder than the other person's verdict.

Small details are enough

Boring-feeling lives still contain details. The trick is to notice them and say them out loud.

If you tend to freeze when someone asks how your week was, conversation threading shows how to turn one remark into several topics.

Three questions to ask yourself each week

Keep these in your notes app and answer them on Sunday. It takes about five minutes.

  1. What was one thing that made me laugh or annoyed me this week? The small gripe or the odd moment.
  2. What did I learn or notice that I didn't know before? A fact, a trick, a place, a word.
  3. What am I looking forward to or working on? Even a minor thing, like fixing a bike or planning a hike.

After a month you have a dozen specific things to pull from, and you've also trained yourself to notice them as they happen. That's the point of the exercise. The answers are less important than the noticing.

Pick up one small new thing

A bigger life isn't required, but one small change gives you material. Once a week, try one thing you've never done and can finish in an hour:

It doesn't need to be impressive. "I tried a cooking class and my knife skills were embarrassing" is a good story precisely because it's a bit embarrassing. If you want somewhere to start, meeting people through hobbies lists activities where talking comes naturally.

Be curious about the other person

The easiest way out of "I have nothing to say" is to stop looking inside for material. Ask about them, then follow what they say.

Karen Huang, Michael Yeomans, Alison Wood Brooks, Julia Minson and Francesca Gino (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2017) had 430 people chat in pairs for 15 minutes by instant message. People who were asked to ask more questions were rated as more responsive and more likeable, particularly when they asked follow-up questions. Asking too many questions, or rude and repetitive ones, could backfire, and the chats were text-based, so face-to-face results could differ.

What a good follow-up looks like:

A follow-up picks up the last thing they said and asks about the part you're curious about. It also gives you something to react to, which gives you something to say. How to be a better listener goes through the habits that make this easier.

When you're actually stuck

You can feel boring on a given day, because you're tired, anxious or just out of material. A few fallbacks:

A note on comparing yourself

If you feel boring most of the time, not only in certain situations, it can be a sign of something worth talking to a professional about, such as low mood or social anxiety. That's not a verdict, just a pointer. Ordinary quiet stretches in your life are not the same thing.

For more on what makes someone engaging to talk to, see how to be interesting and how to talk about yourself without bragging. And if you're texting more than talking, text a girl without being boring has examples for message threads.

What to do next

  1. This Sunday, answer the three weekly questions in your notes app. Do it for four weeks.
  2. Schedule one small new thing this week and put it in your calendar.
  3. Before your next conversation, pick two details from your last 48 hours you could mention.
  4. In that conversation, ask at least two follow-up questions that build on what the person said.
  5. When you blank, say so, then ask about them.
  6. Tell one story out loud to a friend before you tell it to someone new.

If you're going out to meet people, Run Game lets you add notes to a session, which is a handy place to write down the small details from a night: what you said, what made someone laugh, what you'd say differently. They tend to turn into the material for next week.

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