How do I make her curious about my work?

At the core of love is curiosity in the other person.

By Kevin

I really love my work, I am very passionate about it and in a way it is who I am. There's a lot to me outside of work but at this stage of my life it has somewhat taken over a lot of who I am and therefore I became a reflection of my work.

My work is my passion, not in the sense that I am slaving my life away, but in the sense that I wake up with excitement to get on with a new day and solve all the problems that come my way.

The result of this is that most of my jokes, conversations, things that interest me, memes, social media algorithm, and just general interest has leaned into being about my work. This led to me losing connection with some friends and family. When sitting on a table and talking, I have nothing to add that would make people crack up and laugh or intrigue them. Not because I'm not interesting, but because my interests have become radically different to those around me.

I've thought a lot about this, especially when it comes to Claire. How can I not lose Claire in the process of pursuing my dreams and goals? How can I have her be interested in what I love without losing her and having her change herself. How can I have Claire still be Claire but also have a genuine real interest in the stuff I do?

I think I have a working formula but it's very hard and requires a whole new muscle that I haven't trained before. It's been 2 years now and I think we're in a much better place and it's mostly due to the exercise I've been doing to help Claire and others around be interested in what I do.

1: Simplify Simplify Simplify

It's so easy to say big words and abbreviations and other terms that will make you sound smart. That's the worst way to explain your job or whatever it is you do. You are smart when you make the other person feel smart, and you are stupid when you make the other person feel stupid. Your intelligence is reflected by how the other person feels.

So what does this mean? Well now whenever I wanna talk about the work I'm passionate about I always explain it in the most boiled down version as possible. Not in a way that reduces any of the value of my work, but in a way that is intelligent and delivers the core value of what I do without fluff.

So, for example, let's say my work is the following:

A Software Engineer building optimized Dijkstra tuned algorithms for last mile delivery.

As you can see that is a mouth full and makes me sound like I'm a smart guy, however it will make most readers feel stupid and that's my fault not theirs. A better way to say it is the following:

I help Uber Eats driver reach your house faster.

The difference is night and day. In one example you made the other person feel stupid and lost them, in the other example you already have them hooked because they probably use Uber Eats and never thought of the problem you solve and are now interested in how you make Uber Eats driver reach faster.

Then if they ask a follow up question you use the same format to answer all the follow up questions. People can't ask questions if they don't understand the foundations and curiosity is based on questions.

2: How does this benefit me?

This slightly relates to the first point. There's something in the brain that is selfish/narcissistic and is always looking to answer the question "How does this benefit me?". We are all always thinking of ourselves one way or another when listening to someone talk. So how can we use that to our advantage to help people understand and be interested in our work?

Let's do another example. Let's say you are are a Oil Field Engineer in the Atlantic that specializes in rigs and extraction. You're on a date with someone you really like and you want to impress them and have them be interested in you. How can you make "Oil Field Engineer" appear sexy?

Simple. First of all you think of what touch points does your date have with your work. What does the person you are on a date with do in their daily lives that interacts with you work one way or another. If you really understand your field you will always find a way to make a connection from your work to the person sitting next to you.

In this specific example it would be filling up gas, paying gas bills, or even Avocado Toast prices because Avocado's get shipped and their prices is correlative with oil prices. So a sexy thing to say on the date would be:

I make avocado toasts cheaper and no one gives me credit.

The above, if delivered with subtle sarcasm and at the right time, can be a nice introduction to what you do and can hook your date. Using many examples like this are not 100% guaranteed to make someone slightly more curious and interested in your work, but they are 100% guaranteed to work better than "I'm an oil field engineer".

I'm not an oil field engineer and I'm sure there could be many examples that are much better and funnier but this just gives you a taste of how I do it with Claire.

3: Never complain, always share highlights

Do not complain about your job, your manager, how busy you are, how annoying Sam is, or anything else. There is no benefit to doing that, especially early on when you are just starting to hook the other person and gain their interest.

There's some benefit in telling stories/drama such as "Sam from marketing just cheated on Eleanor with Mike and everyone in the office knows about it!". This will get you some attention and the other person could be hooked but I would not suggest it early on. Everyone is interested in drama and this would get you cheap attention that isn't really relevant to what your work actually is. If your goal is to have fun and intellectual conversations with your partner about your work and have them actually be interested then I would shy away from work drama and complaining.

The complaining will add negative emotions to your work and will not get you the result you really want. Instead I would share the highlights. The exciting thing you just did, the crazy thing that just happened, the unexpected event that just occurred, the super cool win you just had and so on

4: Open hooks and suspense

This is my personal favorite and has worked the most with me and Claire. I would do all the above and that would result in Claire being much more interested and curious about my work life.

Then I would start telling her about all the things I'm hoping to happen. For example a deal I'm about to close, a product I'm about to launch, a thing I'm very excited for. What this results in is that she started following up with me. She would say things like "What happened with x?" or "How did x go?". These all came out of natural and genuine curiousity. By telling her about the exciting things that are about to happen, I give her the opportunity to express genuine and real curiosity.

To conclude:

This isn't for everyone. There are lots of people that like to separate work from home, there are others that have 0 interest or energy in talking about their work at home. That is completely fine and works as well. This is more for the people who are so in love with what they do and it has become part of their identity. It's really tough to have a work, hobby, or interest that you genuinely love but have no one to talk to about it. It's even harder when you start losing connection with friends and family over it. The goal of this is to really help you keep going at what you really love without it costing you all your relationships.

It's hard, really hard sometimes, to pursue a thing you really love when your family and friends aren't in on it. You need their support and to get their support you need to start with having them interested enough to care. Otherwise you might grow silent resentment toward them and them toward you. It's your job to make people love what you love as much as you love it, and it's extremely doable. Best of luck!