10 Tips on How to Be More Interesting

The drivers of interest are: feelings, relevance, human interest, emotions, humenes, fascination, and stories.

Feelings provide the fuel for interest. Feelings are there to be enjoyed.

Relevance is a key part of interest.

Basic human interest drivers are things like: sex, money, scandal, categories, etc. people are interested in people.

Emotions are strong. They may be be simple or mixed.

Humenes is a new word to cover the aspect of interest that derives from physiological behavior of the mind: humour, insight, surprise, etc.

Fascination is a powerful form of interest. For example the interest that is aroused by wildlife tv programmes. Curiosity is important here.

Stories are the content part of interest. Information and experiences. First or second-hand stories.

Open up and explore possibilities in your mind. Go beyond what is in front of you with hypothesis or speculation. Speculations are fun because they are open to people who do not have special knowledge. A hypothesis is much more serious.

Possibility is the most important word in the success of our civilization - where it has been successful, like in science and technology. Possibility is the basis of interest. If we could only deliver encyclopedic facts we should largely remain silent.

The process of opening things up is the key to being interesting. Being dogmatic and always narrowing down to certainty is boring. Opening up possibilities is a matter of scanning within the mind. There are different levels: certain, probable, possible, fancy or fantasy. Possibility is only limited by imagination. The more reasonable your speculations are the more interesting they will be. A fantasy may be amusing but it's not usually very interesting.

Generate alternatives deliberately: alternative explanations, actions, ways of looking things, etc. They are the best antidote to dogmatism and arrogance. Alternatives are the best alternative to negativity.

With normal argument you would disagree immediately. Instead you lay out the other person's point of view and then you lay out in parallel your own point of view. Parallel thinking is much quicker and more powerful than argument. The Six Hats method of parallel thinking is in use around the world.

Alternatives are not equally possible, valuable or practical. Interest lies in both generating the alternatives and then examining them. It is important to have a fixed point. Alternatives are not random.

Concepts are fundamentally important to all thinking. It is unlikely that the human mind could ever have been designed by an engineer. Almost all of the excellences of the human brain arise from its blurry engineering defects. Blurriness id a great advantage. Concept extraction is one of the key opeartions of interest. Without concepts we are stuck in detail. Concepts are the basis of abstract thinking and therefore not easy. Many people find dealing with them awkward. Simply spelling out possible concepts can be an interesting operation. You make the effort to find the essence of the system.

Running forward in your mind means visualization, imagination and projection.Look ahead, moment to moment, to see what follows. What happens next? Explore forward in time. Imagine you are fast-forwarding a video.

Learn to make connections to link up different matters. Skill at connecting things enlarges the field of interest. We are no longer limited to immediate matters. Connections are doors that are opened and proceeded through into another room.

Gossip works well because what is said immediately links up with people you know directly, or indirectly as celebrities. Sports fans or special-interest groups have interesting conversations because they already know so much information to link up with.

A skilled politician will always answer the question he or she wants to answer. Associations and triggers are very loose forms of connection. Functional links examine concepts, uses, values, similarities, differences and other aspects. Skill in establishing strong functional links adds to interest. It should be done smoothly. Keep going. There is no hurry.

With provocation there may not be a reason for saying something until after it has been said. The human brain works as a self-organizing information system. This means that asymmetric patterns are formed. Provocations are the basis of creativity. They open up new lines of thought. Provocation is fun. It can be outrageous and contrary to normal experience. The whole point of provocation is to be bold.

The provocation provides an unusual starting point from which we move forward with the process known as movement. It is quite different from judgement, where we are concerned with whether someone is right or wrong. With movement we are concerned with moving forwards to a new idea. In the practical use of lateral thinking we do intend to end up with and idea which is practical and valuable.

Where do we direct our attention? Why do we direct attention? Attention either flows on or is directed. Directing attention creates the dance of attention that is central to interest. The lively dance of interest is different from the pompous march of boredom.

A question is just a very simple way of asking someone to direct his or her attention to some matter. Most of thinking is a matter of directing attention. It can be directed to the consequences, benefits, dangers, alternatives, or other people's views.

The biological value of sensitization is obvious. It prepares our minds to notice things. There are some traditional frames of sensitization which are always in mind: human behavior, relationships, sex, money, power, and celebrity gossip. If you have special knowledge in an area then that also becomes a frame of sensitization.

If you pause to look around, then you will notice much more. It is the same with the flow of conversation.

We choose to open up and to pursue avenues and alleys of interest. How do we notice them? Why do we choose them? Themes are very broad areas of attention.

Interest is much more like exploring an old town than driving along a superhighway. It is like driving without a road map. In general, richness and relevance form the basis for choice.

There is a need to express things simply and to communicate them well.

Analogies and metaphors may be used to express complex relationships. They can never prove anything, but they can show the possibility of a relationship.

Lists are very valuable in clarifying thinking and providing attention points. Items on a list are more clearly separated out. Each item can then become a point for discussion or examination. A list is a powerful form of attention-directing both from the point of view of the compiler and also from the point of view of the people to whom the list is presented.

There are some people who have the ability to make something that is very simple appear very complex. There are other people who have the marvelous ability to take complex matters and make them appear quite simple. Simplicity horrifies those who cannot be simple. Many academics and critics fall into this category.

We usually think that if something is good, then more of it is better. In economics, Arthur Laffer showed that too much taxation actually reduced the tax take because people made more efforts to avoid paying tax.

We may need to simplify something to understand it. Summaries may be used at the end or at any point.