Survey Article: How do I become a more interesting person?

"How do I become a more interesting person?"

Have interests beyond being interesting. Be an interested person, and be willing to share that interest with others.

I'd change the question a little. Unless this is about self image "I am an interesting person", if what you want is to have more people to be interested in you, there is an obvious strategy to that - sell yourself as best you can. Figure out your "interesting" comparative advantage, identify your target market, and sell sell sell. Advertise what you've got to sell to people who might be buyers

Many years ago I listened to an audiobook by I think Jim Rohn. It concluded a segment where he said: "Even if you don't have had a near-death experience, you still experience something in your life worth talking about."

My response was "Well, I do have had an experience that can be reasonably described as near-death experience but I still have nothing to talk about." At that point, I admited to myself that my issue wasn't lack of interesting experiences but a lack of an ability to talk about my experiences. I would guess that this is also true for the majority of people on LW who don't feel like they are interesting.

You give dancing as a stereotypical interesting hobby. I don't think the fact that I was dancing Salsa for 6 1/2 years on average 2 times per week made me an interesting conversation partner. It rather provided me with a space for social interaction where I didn't have to practice telling stories very much.

Jim Rohn advice was that if you experience something worth telling other people about, write it in a notebook. Then when you have a situation where there's an opportunity to tell the story, tell the story. The ability to tell stories is a lot more important than the content of the story. If you think you are bad at it and afraid to practice it at complex social interaction, maybe your parents would be happy to hear the story from you. You might call your mother or father and tell them: "Something happened in my life that I want to tell you about. It's not a big event but I want to tell you about it." Then you tell them the story. If your parents are typical they very likely appreciate the act of you sharing the story with them, even if you don't have much skill at telling it.

Offer and accept ridiculous dares instead of money when betting on the outcomes of specific queries.

You get to calibrate yourself in a fun way (hopefully), experience things outside your comfort zone, and get a reputation. (Also, see the beginning of Chesterton's Tales of the Long Bow for an example.)

I think a lot could be gained from asking the question of whether being an interesting person or having an interesting life is in and of itself a valuable thing. How much of it is a proxy for something else, and perhaps we could extract the "something else" and it'd be much easier to figure out how to get there? Or, what does one intend to gain by becoming more interesting? And is that thing valuable?

I am myself not particularly interesting, and I actually find other people finding me boring to be a good thing, most of the time, since interesting people have to talk more:), however, I know two people who are definitely different, in a good sense. Both are environmentalists, passionate about it, but otherwise very unlike.

One is kind. I have no other word for it. He's just easy to be about, has a sense of humor, makes a funny face if annoyed, sometimes boasts or exaggerates - but somehow, in a way that doesn't wound feelings, downloads tons of music, wears baggy sweaters, is a womaniser, goes to his former flames (mostly successfully married) to play with their kids, was raised by a photographer who welds things from scrap (like 'toy' ships), plays a guitar and something else, travels often, works with GIS (maps records of rare animals), can discuss legislation patiently, does not drink or swear (AFAIK), is rather sickly but quite resilient, and is just generally a person who lets others cool down.

The other is a very focused man, drives people to him by getting shit done, drives them away by careless treatment which he himself doesn't consider an issue (like, he values others' time less than his own, disregards grammar, which sometimes makes his messages impolite), attracts them back when they understand that shit still needs to get done, drinks sometimes (and has been touchingly attentive to his friends so that he'd not offend them awfully under the influence), is quite fearless when it comes to confronting superior odds (and trusts his friends to be fearless, too - a most engaging trait), waves his hands around, vies for being the leader, treats 'his people' as 'His People', shares generously, has a naive appreciation of poetry and a non-naive - of art, been to Antarctica, and generally gets under people's skins:)

Related old post (especially the comment thread)

Also, whenever I see a person carrying a large roll, looking like a map, I automatically tag them as likely interesting.

I imagine that there are quite a few benefits from being interesting like gaining status, getting introduced to more people or having more fun. But this seems to come at a price in terms of effort and possibly risk. So can somebody tell a convincing story when this will be a net positive. Or simply: Why?

I think there's more to this than having interesting experiences and skills.

Being interesting is largely about being able to present things in an interesting manner. You could have lived an amazing life yet still bore people to tears telling them about it.

"then the high priest threw me in the snake pit, there were a lot of snakes in the snake pit"

As such, a useful skill to learn is how to tell somewhat mundane stories in an interesting or funny way.

I put some effort into practicing speaking more like some stage performers and comedians who tell stories and got good results.

Some people can make a trip to the shops sound interesting, learn from those people.

You might want to reformat the links. I can barely see them.

It's interesting :-) how in the minds of many the difference between being an interesting person and being socially popular is muddled or even non-existent.

Fantastic post.

To push this thread in one particular direction within this parent post, let us consider interestingness as it relates to LWers.

Given that saying that which everyone agrees with (astrology is bullshit for the secular masses, something more sophisticated among LW but particular agreeable here) is likely to solicit karma, and something more cutting edge is likely to solicit both upvotes and downvotes, I suspect a karma score closest to zero among those who already have your high regard due to the content of their posts are those you want to keep an eye on if you want to learn and upgrade your paradigms and have been here for a while already.