48 questions to help you make awkward conversation easier.

How many times a week do you have to conduct meaningless conversations on topics that are of no interest to you or discuss issues that you have already discussed a thousand times because you just need to say something? This usually happens in moments of forced waiting for something, for example, in anticipation of a very slow-moving elevator in the company of your own colleagues or casual acquaintances during various events. To make such boring conversations more interesting, it is worth asking people unexpected questions that make them think, and to which one cannot simply answer “yes” or “no.”

The result is likely to be amazing: you will learn a lot of interesting facts about other people who you would never get out of the usual boring conversation. And, as an added bonus, you will become closer to each other. Sometimes it may be really important!
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If you are ready for non-sample actions - review the list of the most successful questions, which for convenience is divided into topics.

Of course, far from each of these questions is appropriate to talk with any person and in any situation, but, nevertheless, this list contains quite a wide choice to avoid awkward silence.

Job

1. If you didn’t work here, then what would you most likely do now?
2. How did you become ... (job title)?
3. What surprised you the most about this job?
4. What was the most ridiculous commission the boss ever gave you?
5. What would be preferable for you to work four days a week for 10 hours or five days for 8?
6. If you had guaranteed success in any position, what would you prefer to do?
7. What was your first job? Did you like her?
8. What is the most valuable professional development advice you have ever received? And which was the worst?

Entertainment

9. Do you read any interesting book now? I would like to get some recommendations. What about the show?
10. Do you have any applications on your phone that you can’t live without?
11. If you had the opportunity to watch only one of the movie genres for the rest of your life, what would you choose? What about musical preferences ?
12. What book of those that everyone admired did you hate? And vice versa?
13. Do you have any recommendations for podcasts?
14. Which of the movies you watched lately made you cry? And laugh out loud?
15. Who would you like to see as your partner in the reality show Amazing Race (“Amazing Race”)? In our realities, you can ask a similar question about programs like “Fort Boyard” or “Last Hero”.
16. Who is your favorite on Instagram? And vice versa? Oh, you do not have Instagram? Why?

Food

17. If you were told that until the end of life you can only have one product, what would it be?
18. What is the strangest dish you have ever tried in your life?
19. What habitual food is the most comfortable for you?
20. Is there any food that you will never eat?
21. Advise that you can easily and without problems take with you to work / study as a lunch, only this should not be sandwiches.
22. Where can you eat cheaply?
23. Does your family have any culinary secrets or traditional recipes?
24. What is your favorite restaurant / cafe of those who are not very well known to a wide range of people?

Travels

25. Is there a heavenly resting place somewhere nearby?
26. If you had the opportunity to fly somewhere absolutely free, where would you go?
27. What is the coolest road trip you've ever had to do?
28. What was the trip you did on your last vacation? What did you do there? What do you remember?
29. What type of recreation do you prefer - active or relaxing somewhere on a cozy beach?
30. What is the next trip already planned?
31. If you managed to take time off, or the opportunity to work on remote access, where would you go and what would you do?
32. What do you most like to do on the weekend?

Biography

33. Where did you live before? How does that city differ from your current place of residence?
34. Who, as a child, did you want to become when you grow up?
35. Do you have any hidden talents or unexpected hobbies?
36. What did you like to do in elementary school (outside the school curriculum)?
37. What kind of accessory or item was your “must-have” in childhood / adolescence, i.e., as you grow up?
38. What, from what ever happened to you, was the most incredible event?
39. Who for you was the most significant person, mentor, role model ?
40. Which of the tips that you have ever been given turned out to be the most valuable?

miscellanea

41. If you were trusted to select eight objects that would receive the status of "8 Wonders of the World", what would you add to this list?
42. What would they put in a “time capsule” 15 years ago?
43. Which of the compliments you received was the strangest?
44. Have you ever thought about "cool" inventions or the foundation of companies that, as it turned out, were already made or founded?
45. If you could teach any course in college, which subject would you choose?
46. ​​What is absolutely not characteristic of you, an act you ever committed?
47. What superpower would you like to have?
48. If you had the opportunity to have absolutely any pet, who would you choose?

PS We recommend another useful article on the work on yourself - 30 websites that will make you much more educated

Translated by Vyacheslav Davidenko, founder of the TESTutor company