Vanessa Van Edwards says swap boring questions like "What do you do?" for "Working on anything exciting recently?" Excitement triggers dopamine in the listener's brain, which creates the mental markers that make them remember you.
To be interesting, you be interested. What does that mean? How do I do that? Research has found that when we produce dopamine in conversation, it actually makes you more memorable. It's the chemical of motivation. It's the chemical of pleasure and excitement. And when you're asked about things that make you feel excited, you actually produce dopamine and you create what are called mental markers. Your brain goes, ooh, this person makes me feel good. I'm going to remember them. People are more likely to remember your name, more likely to remember you. So how do we produce dopamine? You literally use dopamine-triggering words. Do not ask, "What do you do?" anymore. When you ask someone, "What do you do?" you're asking their brain to stay asleep. You're basically saying, "I want you to stay on autopilot and answer the same question you've answered 1,000 times before." "What do you do?" is really asking, "What are you worth?" It's actually a little bit of an offensive question. What you wanna replace it with are things that someone defines themself by that get them excited. "Working on anything exciting recently?" That's a very, very simple swap, and they can answer with work or they can answer with pleasure. All we're doing is we're trying to sub out autopilot questions for dopamine-producing questions.
