- The Pursuit
- Posts
- The Pursuit, Vol. 2
Intro
Hi friends, this newsletter is shorter and sweeter. It revolves around how people define us and how we define ourselves.
Thank you for all the great feedback on the last one. I’m going to make these more informal/blog-style and generally less academic. Please share it with anyone who would enjoy it: pursuit.beehiiv.com
Readings (listenings?)
“What do you do?”
I was listening to a podcast (excerpt begins at 45:50) in which billionaire investor Chamath Palihapitiya was describing his vacation to Italy, where he owns a house, and how it allows him to escape the very American, very business-centric way of defining himself and others:
“[T]here’s this heightened psychological sensation that everybody else is doing better than you are, and so you have to find these mechanisms of rationalizing and explaining.”
…
“How long can you go without asking that question: ‘What do you do?’ And I find it’s so amazing to have conversations with people where that question never comes up.”
This has been my go-to technique for the past month or so, and it’s awesome. There are so many different ways to avoid asking someone what they “do” that lead conversations in more interesting directions.
I’ve also found that, for many people, “what I do” is a proxy for “what other people can most easily remember me as.” It is distinctly not what they dream about, what their long-term goals entail, or what best captures their aura. It’s what makes them comparable to others, not what makes them unique.
Above all, the privilege of college is the time to think. The smartest people I’ve ever met are all in the same place, thinking about the most random topics imaginable. I can look up their Linkedin if I want to know what they do for work. Why on earth would I waste their and my time by asking how other people define them?
Some people have particularly interesting replies to, “What do you do?” Those people are awesome, but I’d argue that they’d be even more awesome when you free them from the pressure of a narrow question.
My favorite question to ask friends recently is, “What’s on your mind recently?“ Even if they are thinking about work or work-related lessons, this question elicits more general, circumspect replies. You get to see someone think out loud, often using a familiar framework (work) to set the stage, but pulling thoughts from different directions to complete their thoughts.
This week, try to avoid asking people “What do you do?” for as long as possible. Let me know how it goes.