Four topics that work almost anywhere
The best conversation topics aren’t clever. They’re easy to answer and lead somewhere. Almost every good topic falls into one of four groups, and if you remember the groups you won’t need a list.
- Things in front of you: the food, the venue, the event, the song playing.
- Things they chose: their job, neighborhood, hobby, the book on their phone.
- What’s coming up: weekend plans, a trip, something they’re looking forward to.
- Stories: the best, worst or strangest version of anything. ‘Worst apartment you’ve lived in?’
At a party or event
Start with the shared context, because everyone in the room has an answer. Then move to something they chose.
How to join a group conversation
- ‘How do you know the host?’
- ‘Have you been to one of these before?’
- ‘What are you drinking? It looks better than mine.’
- ‘What kept you busy this week, outside work?’
- ‘Is there a place around here you’d tell a visitor to go?’
On a first date
Dates go better with topics that show how someone thinks than with a job interview. Choose questions about preferences and stories, and answer them yourself too.
- ‘What’s something you’ve gotten into lately?’
- ‘What would your perfect free Saturday look like?’
- ‘What’s a small thing that makes a day good for you?’
- ‘Where’s somewhere you’ve been that you still think about?’
- ‘What did you want to be at ten years old?’
With coworkers
Keep it close to shared ground but outside the work itself. Lunch, commutes, weekends, and the small details of a desk or a screensaver are fair game. Salary, office politics and who’s leaving can wait until you know someone well.
- ‘Where’s good for lunch around here that I haven’t found yet?’
- ‘How long is your commute? Do you do anything with it?’
- ‘Anything good this weekend?’ Then on Monday: ‘How was the wedding?’
Over text or on an app
Text needs topics that are easy to answer from a phone: a choice, a photo, a quick opinion. Long hypotheticals can feel like homework. Reply to something specific the other person said or posted instead of opening something new.
Some apps give you a topic to start with. On HMU, every profile has a question to answer and there’s a new question every day, so you can reply to someone’s answer instead of starting cold.
- ‘Settle this: is a hot dog a sandwich?’
- ‘Send a photo of the view from where you are right now. I’ll go first.’
- ‘You said you just started running. Still at it, or did it win?’
With friends you’ve known for years
Old friends run out of topics differently. You know their job and their weekend. What you don’t know is what’s changed. Ask about the inside, not the update.
- ‘What’s taking up most of your head space right now?’
- ‘What’s something you’ve changed your mind about this year?’
- ‘If you had a free month and enough money, what would you do with it?’
- ‘What’s been the best part of your week, honestly?’
How to move from one topic to the next
Conversations rarely stall because you ran out of topics. They stall because the current one ended and nothing connected it to the next. Three bridges fix that.
Follow-up questions are the strongest bridge. In research by Karen Huang and colleagues, follow-up questions in particular increased how much people liked the person asking, because a follow-up shows you were actually listening.
- The detail bridge: pick one detail from their answer and ask about it. ‘You said you moved here for work. What was the first thing you liked about the city?’
- The sideways bridge: stay in the same category and change the angle. Food you love, then the worst meal you’ve had, then the best cheap place in town.
- The me-too bridge: share a short connected story, then hand it back. ‘My first apartment had a neighbor who practiced trumpet at 6 a.m. What was yours like?’
- If nothing connects, name the switch. ‘Totally random, but have you seen the new place on Main?’ Nobody minds.
Go one level deeper than feels comfortable
Most people stay shallow because they assume the other person wants to. In a series of experiments by Michael Kardas, Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley, strangers expected deep conversations to be more awkward than they were. The deep ones produced more happiness and connection than small talk, and people underestimated how interested their partner was in going deeper. One of the deep prompts was naming something you feel most grateful for in life.
You don’t have to start there. Move one step deeper from wherever you are. ‘What do you do?’ becomes ‘What made you pick that?’ Then ‘Would you pick it again?’
Topics that tend to stall
Weather and traffic work for one line, not five. Complaints can bond people for a minute, then drag. Save money, exes, and politics or religion as debates for when you know someone well, and follow their lead if they bring them up. If the replies keep getting shorter, that’s fine too. End it warmly and go.
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