For me the draining part is small talk. I don't really feel confident in my ability to small talk and I also really don't like to do it. But I feel it is a kind of bonding ritual between strangers that I don't understand. I feel that most people don't even think about it and can just do it naturally, like riding a bike. But for me it is like juggling ten balls. Even checking out groceries with a cashier is really draining.
I used to feel this way until I heard an explanation that made it click ever since. Small talk is a channel with a single bit of information, which is "I am not your enemy." This is different from "I am your friend." It's the same reason monkeys pull bugs out of each other's fur.
All people want from you when making small talk is for you to talk about the inane things in your life with a positive energy. The inane chatter shows you're normal and relatable (you're someone who's going to enjoy the latest TV show and get burgers for lunch, instead of shooting up a school), and the positive energy shows you're not harboring ill will towards them.
Similar: I think of it as the "I'm not crazy and/or dangerous" indicator. It also allows you to assess how compatible you'll be conversationally.
It's the handshake portion of the Human Data Exchange Protocol (HDEP). I'm fine with that, but similarly to the previous poster, I'm lost when small talk goes beyond the first few transactions. I usually don't know what to say and/or don't usually care about what they are saying.
> The inane chatter shows you're normal and relatable (you're someone who's going to enjoy the latest TV show and get burgers for lunch, instead of shooting up a school)
"Relatable" carries a lot of water here. If you're a woman in a roomful of men, somebody who grew up rich in a room full of people who grew up poor, or maybe don't enjoy watching the latest TV shows or eating burgers, this doesn't reduce the stress of small talk.
I totally agree with what you're saying about the goal of small talk, but that the goal is simple authentication doesn't make the implementation simple or hacking it trivial. People are sniffing around for in-group stuff, and its a test you can fail quickly.
Also, if you fail, now you've fallen into the "shooting up a school" category.
So my answer: talk about the weather today, in the recent past, and projected into the future. Discuss how you both arrived at the place you are at (traffic, routes...) If you were both around when someone else said something interesting earlier, talk about that. Seize upon any answers that hint at something the person you're talking to is passionate about but that you are not passionate about. Ask questions about those. If they start to bore you to death, act like it's all too complicated for you, and either GOTO 10 or drift away. If they don't, then you're having a good time and learning something you didn't know before.
The interesting thing, and I tested this extensively years ago in an attempt to be more social, is that it takes very little. Most people don't care about you talking, as much as being given the right signals. And most people love to be the ones talking.
Here's an "exercise": Next time you're in a shop, get your wallet ready before you get to the cashier. At the cashiers most people look down at their wallet or at their shopping, and so giving cashiers eye contact is like a super-power. Look them in the eye and say "how are you?" as you pay. And rather than hurry, pause at that point for a second.
It's absolutely remarkable how much of a difference it made, to the point where I dialled it back because it led to too much extra social contact for me. E.g. I also started greeting the bus drivers at my local bus route, and within a week one of them recognised me at the gym and started talking to me regularly. I'd lived there and taken the same bus for a decade prior to that and never gotten recognised. At the shop near where I worked, cashiers who had never said a word to me in the previous years, suddenly started telling me their life stories, and I'd observe them rush to open new lanes when I approached and there was a queue, sometimes even specifically telling me. And I made no effort to actually hold a conversation beyond that "how are you?" or occasionally "how was your weekend?" once I'd talked to them a couple of times.
The point being that you can learn a handful of little "magic" incantations that basically hand all the job of the chatting over to the other person, and leave you basically doing simple "followups" like asking "really?" or agreeing.
The irony is that doing that, you can let people learn absolutely nothing about you, and they'll still go away with a positive impression of you because you gave them an opportunity to talk about the things they care about.
If you're interested in that approach, Leil Lowndes has books that are quite useful in offering advice that are relatively pragmatic in this way of how to "be social" without necessarily being a chatterbox. I think "Goodbye to shy" is one of them.
The biggest problem for me is I hate wasting time listening to people prattle on. I am aware that I can befriend people, most of the time I don't want to because I don't expect more than endless boring information about their drive to work or the weather or whatever.
Usually I'd rather be neutral and anonymous and not have to stand and listen. Of course this isn't ideal in a work environment, but honestly there's very few people that I actually enjoy listening to, and even less that I enjoy talking about myself to. I'm a private person and at work that becomes difficult.
I get that. I feel much the same myself. It's a tradeoff between what you're willing to sacrifice for the sake of building a relationship with someone. For me, experimenting with it was helpful in that it taught me that on one hand I didn't want to be social most of the time - I at one point thought that if I just got better at it I'd learn to like it, but I don't. On the other hand, being better at it did make it easier to put up with selectively doing it when it feels like it's worth it - e.g. with people whom I want to be able to work more effectively with for example. It can also help in being able to at least lessen the pain to get better at redirecting the conversation to be the least annoying possible.
Knowing how to appear sociable is an important skill, I can do it but find it quite mentally draining.
I suspect that I just don't think like most people, I prefer deep one-on-one conversations to superficial stuff.
Having said that, I do understand the paradox that I will never get to the deep conversations without having to get through the small talk with someone I don't know well, but at that stage I don't even know if they're the kind of person who is capable of or even wants to have a deep conversation at all... I haven't worked that one out yet.
I think it's because of time pressure. I don't ever seem to be able to find enough time for myself as it is. I have much more "free" time than most people, but my hobbies seem to automatically and seamlessly fill whatever time I have! Most people don't seem to be ever become so focused on their hobbies, except people on the internet with their super-detailed sites on niche topics, but I never seem to meet them, or perhaps I just never elicit their obsession out of them.
If I had unlimited time with no responsibilities, maybe I would feel like I have more time to chat with others, but that's not reality, and at least up until now I have not once ever felt like I have as much free time as I'd want.
Just rambling now, but it boggles my mind how anyone could ever get a chance to feel bored with so much interesting stuff in this world.
>It can also help in being able to at least lessen the pain to get better at redirecting the conversation to be the least annoying possible.
Haha, this resonated with me.
I will try to focus on redirection rather than avoidance strategies. Thanks for that.
I read a quote recently, "Be curious, not judgemental", and I will try to do that.
> But I feel it is a kind of bonding ritual between strangers that I don't understand.
I see it as exploratory. You're just trying to find some common ground with someone you don't know. Eventually you'll find something you both like/dislike and can bond over that a little.
You can usually skip a lot of it and just ask about/mention something that interests you and if they've ever done/seen/heard/read about anything like that. If you open up about something personal, people usually respond in kind.
For instance, I've always wanted to go hang gliding and after being cooped up during the pandemic, I took the opportunity to go when restrictions relaxed a bit. Did you anything as soon as things opened up again? The pandemic is a shared misery we can all bond over.
