Arguably, the foremost reason that conversations are difficult is because we don’t prepare for them or work to get better at them. This is the argument of my Harvard colleague Alison Wood Brooks (no relation), whose new book, Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves, follows decades of research on how we interact with people, and how to do it better and more enjoyably. As Brooks shows, people generally spend more time thinking about what they will wear to a dinner party than what they will talk about. Researchers have found that, laziness aside, this insouciance about conversation is because 50 percent believe that thinking about topics in advance will make a conversation feel forced and artificial; only 12 percent of people think such mental preparation will enhance the experience.
~ Arthur C. Brooks, from Don’t Make Small Talk. Think Big Talk
I have the opposite problem: I spend a ton of time thinking about both. I should probably think less about dressing. It really really matters how you think about conversation, how much you think about conversation, and how you prepare for conversation. I absolutely agree that the more you prepare, the more interesting things are—without exception.
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This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://openandcurious.org/2025/05/01/how-do-you-prepare/