Which tool is responsible for the most progress in our species? Is it microprocessors? Artificial Intelligence? Or the internet?

Each of these answers is right, but they’re incomplete. Microprocessors, AI, the internet, and every tool you can think of is a means for the real tool that has helped humankind progress in leaps and bounds: collaboration.

Collaboration was what put humans on the moon. It’s what enables humans to address humongous challenges like hunger, poverty, and the pandemic. It keeps us alive in the digital ether. And meaningful conversations are the scaffolding of collaboration.

Deep, constructive conversations turn strangers into friends, unite people to work for causes they’re passionate about, and lay the foundation for relationships that can last a lifetime. Such moments to hold stimulating conversations present themselves each time we meet a new person.

Sadly, they also often get missed. Over the past 100 years, almost every aspect—transport, computation, entertainment—has changed beyond recognition. But our conversations with strangers, like our schooling system, remain essentially the same. We often get asked the same safe yet dull questions, like:

What do you do?
Where do you work?
Where are you from?

Awkward silences and stalemates follow. Such small talk feels so painful that most of us would rather walk on burning coal than get dragged into it. As Bobby Powers wrote in an excellent article:

The sheer lack of imagination applied to most conversations makes it seem like our species only developed speech a few decades ago and we’re still trying to figure it out.

As a result, hundreds of opportunities to get to know others, build an intelligent network, and discover ways to collaborate and embark on fulfilling journeys, are lost.

This is exactly how conversations were for an introvert like me. But I’ve also learned from experience that they don’t have to be. Conversations can open our minds to the world if we open our hearts and minds to them.

Over the last year, I’ve had stimulating discussions with people I admire, which eventually spawned a podcast. These included conversations with:

1. A career coach and prolific writer, who deleted all social media apps from his phone in front of me on our video call.
2. A Venture Capitalist, who showed me his entire note-taking system.
3. The Chief Product Officer at a startup that’s designing solutions for the Indian Air Force.

Such conversations left a deep impact on me, and, by their admission, on my guests as well. I realized that conversations don’t have to be awkward, nor do meaningful ones have to feel as effortful as wrestling a 900-pound crocodile.

Here are four steps I followed to make conversations with strangers an enriching experience for both of us. If you want to build or sharpen this skill, they might prove useful to you as well.

1. Conduct research in advance.

The reason we hold small-talk with strangers is to search for common ground. Finding it makes people appear familiar, and conversations with familiar people are less intimidating and awkward.

This is a common practice, but the outcomes are as predictable as the roll of a dice. Not finding common ground leads to awkward and painful silence. An easier and more effective approach is to search for something interesting about the other person. This enables you to ask them thoughtful questions that stoke engaging conversations.

For instance, I was keen to know how Akshay Ballal grew from an intern to a Chief Product Officer at FabHeads in just two years, and his take on 3D Printing since the startup is in that field. That led to a 90-minute conversation even though he initially said he had only 45 minutes.

Research the person in advance. It shows you genuinely care about getting to know them. Read their LinkedIn profiles. Browse the content they share on social media. Instead of looking for common ground, search for what makes them tick.

When you have a conversation on subjects that interest your counterparts, you come across as an interesting person yourself.

2. Start with a blank slate.

How do you feel when you’re in a conversation with someone who has an agenda? Words like “limited,” “restricted,” and “uncomfortable” come to my mind.

An agenda makes meetings productive. Conversations, meanwhile, aren’t supposed to be “productive.” The memorable ones flow freely and allow an exchange of ideas. which is why boxing them is a bad idea.

In the beginning, I didn’t know how much research on my guests was too much. I spent days browsing their profiles and making a list of 15 questions to ask. I thought this would show how diligent my research was.

But flitting between 15 topics in a 45-minute conversation became tedious for them. The conversation felt like an interrogation. It flowed superfluously while my guests’ real wisdom lay like sediment at the bottom of the riverbed.

Then I changed strategies. I identified just three questions I wanted to ask, shared just the first question with my guest in advance, and went with the flow. As a result, we could go deep into interesting subjects. And my guests got the freedom to express their raw, authentic selves to the listeners and me.

A conversation doesn’t fit in a box. It flows like a river, often in unexpected directions. Figure out your starting point, and then surrender to the flow instead of trying to control it.

3. Turn it into a game.

According to NPR host Celeste Headlee, a constructive conversation is like a game of catch, where you throw as much as you catch. You observe the throw’s direction, height, and speed, and adjust accordingly. Your counterpart does the same.

Many people assume effective listening means shutting up so the speaker feels heard. But think about the last time you spoke with someone who didn’t add much to the conversation. How did you feel?

You probably put a crazy amount of effort to keep the conversation going. You felt unsure whether they understood what you said or whether they were interested at all. The conversation probably felt draining and eventually ran out of steam.

I committed this mistake in the beginning as well. I got so engrossed in listening that I left my guests yearning for some engagement. Now that I know better, I just summarize what they say. This helps me understand their perspectives and lets them know whether their thoughts got conveyed effectively.

Lob meaningful questions, summarize the other person’s views, and add your perspectives in respectful ways. Most of your counterparts want you to engage as if you both are playing a game of catch.

4. Use the 30-second rule.

Alright. So your voice is important to make a conversation meaningful. But how long should you make others listen to you?

Some people use any opportunity to speak as a chance to let their thoughts run amok. They go off on tangents, and speak and speak until the listener loses interest. This dead-end is far from ideal. It also kills any possibility of a potential relationship. (Who wants to keep in touch with a bore?)

Instead, apply a constraint of speaking for 30 seconds at a time. And if what you want to say is too vast to condense in half a minute, pause after 30 seconds to check in with your listener. While checking in, avoid ego reinforcers like “Am I making myself clear?” or “Am I right?” Questions like “Does this make sense?” and “What do you think?” are better because they welcome listeners to open up with their views.

Resist the temptation to hog the mic. You will get your chance to share your thoughts. Maybe not today, but that’s okay. Sometimes one person gets more spotlight, but the scale balances out in the long term. Besides, if you have an important point to make, you can bring it up at the end.

Use the 30-second rule to prioritize what the listener needs to know over what you want to say. This constraint keeps you on point, encourages dialogue, and sets the stage for progress.

Summing Up

The fulfillment you experience in life relies to a large extent on the quality of your personal and professional relationships. And these relationships get built on the back of dialogue.

Conversations don’t have to be awkward. Nor do meaningful ones have to feel effortful. You can take a few simple steps to make them feel as comfortable as sex on a Sunday afternoon.

1. Research people in advance. This will make them appear familiar, and conversations with familiar people rarely feel awkward.
2. Go into the conversation blank. Know your starting point, then let the flow guide you. The journey and destination will be more enjoyable than if you enforce an agenda.
3. Treat it like a game of catch. Switch between the role of a listener and speaker. Pose thoughtful questions, summarize what your counterpart says, and add your perspectives in a respectful manner.
4. Prioritize what the listener needs to know. Stop speaking after 30 seconds so that you stay on point. And if you need to go on, check in with your listener first.

Like collaboration, conversations can open your mind to a universe of possibilities when you open your heart and mind to them.

When I joined the corporate world, I was keen on climbing the ladder quickly.

The secret to achieving this was to be likeable, my seniors said, as did books and articles on the subject. But what did “being likeable” mean?

Did I have to appear smart? Did I have to establish my credibility? Did I have to say yes to everything? Did I have to do whatever it took for people to see me as a nice guy?

Nobody knew. So like everyone else, I made up my own answers. Unfortunately, many of them were wrong. And by the time I figured it out, I had left the corporate world and begun freelancing.

Here’s what I learned.

Likability is a polarizing trait. Some think of it as a superpower. Others look down on it because they think it’s about sucking up to people and selling your soul to Lucifer. You’re better off letting your work do the talking.

But frankly, your work cannot do the talking if nobody wants to talk to you. You could have kickass technical skills and solve problems at the drop of a hat. But if people cannot sense good vibes from you, they don’t want to work with you. And your career is as dead as a horse.

In his book Works Well With Others, Ross McCammon proposed a simple method to determine much you like someone: the ‘two beers and a puppy test.’ It’s basically this: Pick a person in your life — a coworker, friend, cousin — and ask yourself two questions:

1. Would I drink two beers with this person?
2. Would I trust them to look after my puppy over a weekend?

Some people are “two beers and no puppy,” which means they’re fun to hang out with, but you don’t trust them with the important stuff. Some people are “no beers and a puppy.” (They may not be fun to hang out with, but are trustworthy.) Some are “a pitcher of beer and litter of puppies,” while others are “None of The Above.”

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This test gives you a new lens through which you can look at your relationships. But if you flip it, you get a new lens to look at yourself as well, to know how likeable you are to others. Pick a person you respect — a colleague, friend, mentor, senior — and ask yourself:

1. Would this person drink two beers with me?
2. Would they trust me to look after their puppy over a weekend?

If their answers are yes and yes, you’re on the right track. When people you admire like you, they help you become better, not just in your technical and soft skills, but also as a person. And life becomes more enjoyable when you’re in the company of such people.

If you think likability is an important trait, here are a few straightforward steps you can take. (The best part is that “fake it till you make it” is not one of them.)

1. Keep your promises.

This is, bar none, the most critical trait that makes people likeable.

Many people make promises, even the ones they know they can’t keep because they don’t want to appear as jerks by saying “no.” But when it’s time to follow their words up with actions, they come up with different excuses.

They use “get-out clauses” like, “Well, that’s business!” Or, “It’s ok, they know I’m always busy.” Or they bite off more than they can chew and as a result, cannot keep their promises even if they want to.

Such people don’t just let others down; they also let themselves down. Nothing makes us lose credibility in others’ eyes faster than failing to keep our word.

Sadly, this is a norm in the corporate world. It’s a problem we’ve learned to live with. We treat people’s behaviour of not keeping promises like the weather. We know it’s bad but we just shrug our shoulders and say, “It’s the weather. What can I do?”

Ever faced one of those days when you dread getting out of bed? Me too.

Ever started a day filled with energy, only to see it turn into a drag halfway through? Me too.

Ever wondered why the clock appears to stand still when you’re burning out? Me too.

You attend meeting after meeting but no work gets done. The project you’ve spent days reworking has exhausted you, but it just won’t finish. Your child has suffered from an illness for days, and there’s no sign of it getting better. Yuk!

Lousy days are inevitable, and their effects can leave you feeling low for long. But it doesn’t mean you have to wallow in them. In fact, if you want the results to get better, you must keep taking small but important steps to get out of the rut.

I’ve been through phases when lousy days extended for weeks, only for events to suddenly work out. When they did, I double- and tripled-checked whether I was missing something, but I wasn’t.

So I began to journal my daily activities to identify what I did on good days and on not-so-good ones. Now I know what to do if I want to get out of a funk.

Here are five steps that have helped me and many people I know. Hopefully, they’ll be useful for you too.

1. Cheat a little to indulge yourself.

A large part of where we are depends on our mood. How we feel in the moment impacts our actions which impacts results to a large extent.

As long as we feel mopey, we drag our feet on what we should do and things stay the way they are. But research shows that a tiny shot of dopamine is enough to motivate us to take meaningful action.

So when you’re having a crappy day, read a few pages from your favourite book. Listen to your favourite upbeat music. Treat yourself to an extra coffee from your favourite mug, or to a portion of pizza or cake. Do anything that makes you feel good.

People often use such activities as rewards for achieving a milestone or making it through a rough day. But these activities can also fire up your brain and trick it into feeling good. When your mood improves, you return to the stalemate feeling energized.

It’s important to practice moderation though. Overindulgence might feel good in the moment. But in the long term, you’ll feel guilty, which will further aggravate your stuck-ness. So avoid binging on dessert or junk food, going on shopping sprees, or scrolling Instagram for hours.

2. Work smart and score tiny wins.

On a recent podcast episode, Jordan Gross narrated an insightful anecdote.

When he played baseball as a child, Jordan tried to smash every ball out of the park. In doing so, he got out a lot. One day, his team coach said, “Jordan, a single is as good as a home run. You get to the next base. Run four singles and you complete a home run.”

What his coach was teaching him was that collecting small wins inevitably leads to larger ones.

When we feel stuck in a rut, we either passively surrender to circumstances or swing for the fences. Both extremes only worsen our days further. A simpler and more potent option is to score tiny wins.

If you’re exhausted by meetings, delay attending the next one by 15 minutes. In that time, make a note of tasks to be completed. Just putting those points down on paper will substantially ease your anxiety.

If your current project is stuck, shift your focus to a quick task you can complete. Finishing such a task will instantly put you in a better mood. If your child’s health isn’t improving, tell her a funny story or watch a cartoon while she cuddles up with you.

When I’m stuck while writing an article or working on a project, staring at the screen never helps me get unstuck. Instead, I email someone I admire. Or I hit the gym and try to have a good workout. Or I figure out a tune I like on the guitar.

Tiny wins don’t just make you feel better. They also help you salvage something from seemingly hopeless days.

Keep taking quick singles. You’ll have a much healthier strike rate than the batter who swings for the fences each time.

3. Be selfish in connecting with friends.

Talking to someone is a definitive way to de-stress. It lets you understand your own emotions and see things more clearly.

But talking to anyone you know just because they’re available at that moment could spiral into larger problems if they don’t understand you. Instead, choose whom you talk to. Engage with loving critics—people who have your best interest at heart but will also tell you what you need to hear.

Such people will let you give your feelings an outlet. But when needed, they’ll also tell you things as they see them. And many times, such perspectives are exactly what you need to get unstuck, take action, and turn bad days around.

Texting is an option too, but I’m not a big fan of it because:

1. Texting is slow, and I think faster than I can type.
2. I tend to censor myself rather than express my true feelings.
3. There’s plenty of scope for misunderstanding.

Pick up the phone. Don’t be afraid to vent your true feelings or disrupt your friends’ schedules. It’s okay to be a little selfish during such times.

4. Get up and get out.

Much of how we feel stems from our environment. And one reason for bad situations to turn worse is that we stay stuck in the environment that led to the problems in the first place.

Such environments put us in a state of mind that’s too close to the problem. And as Einstein said, we cannot solve problems with the same mindsets we used to create them.

The first step to shifting your state of mind is to change your environment. Move. Get out of the space where you feel constrained. Take a walk in nature without your headphones. Visit the nearby marketplace and spend some time there instead of hurriedly running errands. Sip on your favourite coffee in your favourite café and observe the people around.

Someone I know visits unknown places and chats with strangers, or just stands in a busy place and observes things around him. Such activities either clear his mind and offer fresh perspectives, or they let him accept the inevitability of what cannot be changed and move forward.

Another friend goes for long walks in the park late in the evening every day. And she uses this time to catch up with her friends and vent if she really needs to. The break from her home environment leaves her feeling fresh at the end of any day, including bad ones.

5. Suck it up.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference: Serenity Prayer

You cannot control outcomes, no matter how hard you try. The only things you can control are your perceptions, actions, and willpower.

Sometimes, the day will refuse to get better regardless of what you try. You will still get dragged into meaningless meetings, the project will remain stalled, your child’s illness will continue to frustrate her and you.

On such days, don’t take rash action that you could regret later. Like losing your cool in a meeting or at your child, or deleting the document that has frustrated you for days. Instead, cancel the pity party.

Allow yourself time to wallow and feel angry or upset in private, then suck it up. Accept that the situation is beyond your control and that better days will come if you’re patient. Go to bed early instead of drinking your day away or binging on Netflix and Instagram.

When I go through days where I feel stuck, burned out, or angry, I shut off all electronic devices by 8:30 PM. I play my guitar for some time, journal how I felt during the day, and meditate for half an hour. Observing my thoughts doesn’t just give me clarity; it also makes me feel lighter in the head. Then I sleep by 10:30 PM. And almost always, I wake up the next morning feeling better.

You can make it through to bedtime regardless of how heavy your burden is. That’s all you have to do. Just make it through the day. Because each new day brings myriad possibilities with it.

Summing Up

Without the dark, we cannot know the value of light. Likewise, without bad days, we cannot understand the value of good ones.

Bad days bring balance to our lives. But it doesn’t mean you have to surrender to them. You can take simple steps consistently to overcome them.

Indulge yourself in moderation. Score tiny wins. Connect with friends. Change your environment. And if nothing works, suck it up and go to bed with the hope that tomorrow will be better.

Life is not what happens to you, but how you respond to what happens. And you can always make your response count.

About a decade ago, when I was employed, my manager assigned our team a project and asked us to distribute the responsibilities among ourselves. I got tasked with watching a video and capturing its highlights.

I put the task on the back burner and spent days scrolling Twitter instead (it was new back then). On the final night before the deadline, I skimmed through the video and made a few quick notes. I knew I had not done a good job, but hoped I would get away with it.

What happened the next day caught me off-guard.

We met in the conference room to present our work to the project leader, who was also our teammate. When I showed mine, he highlighted a few points I hadn’t captured and said I hadn’t watched the video. He was right on both counts, but I took it as an accusation, probably because he flung it at me in front of the whole team.

I countered by saying I had watched the video twice, and that the points he mentioned weren’t in the video. Immediately, he played the part of the video to call out my lie. And I accused him of targeting me. Tempers flew, things got ugly, and the meeting had to be postponed.

For the next hour, I told anyone within an earshot how I was being victimized instead of being appreciated for my effort. By lunchtime, I genuinely believed I had watched the video twice and worked on it for three days.

In fact, I lugged that lie around as a truth for a long time.

One day about six years later, the memory returned while I was meditating. Instead of dismissing it, I chose to observe it. That’s how I meditate — I let thoughts rise, fall, and flow like waves. Sitting with thoughts and memories helps me gain clarity on them.

Staying with the unpleasant memory made me see it for what it was for the first time. I remembered everything. I hadn’t watched the video, I had lied about watching it twice, and shockingly, I believed the lie for years.

In hindsight, this wasn’t shocking because though I didn’t know it at that time, I had fallen prey to a cognitive bias named the backfire effect.

What is the Backfire Effect

David McRaney presented a simple explanation of the cognitive bias:

The Misconception: When your beliefs are challenged with facts, you alter your opinions and incorporate the new information into your thinking.

The Truth: When your deepest convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, your beliefs get stronger.

I believed I was a dedicated executive. But the project leader’s accusation, however accurate, challenged that belief. The added fear of being seen as a screw-up in front of my teammates was enough to activate my fight-or-flight response. And more evidence he presented that challenged my beliefs, the deeper the untruth that I had watched the video twice embedded itself in me.

In his book You Are Now Less Dumb, McRaney wrote:

Once something is added to your collection of beliefs, you protect it from harm. You do this instinctively and unconsciously when confronted with attitude-inconsistent information. Just as confirmation bias shields you when you actively seek information, the backfire effect defends you when the information seeks you, when it blindsides you. Coming or going, you stick to your beliefs instead of questioning them. When someone tries to correct you, tries to dilute your misconceptions, it backfires and strengthens those misconceptions instead. Over time, the backfire effect makes you less skeptical of those things that allow you to continue seeing your beliefs and attitudes as true and proper.

This effect is more common in our daily lives than we know.

If someone who prides himself on being a great human comes across evidence that challenges his belief, he may not just reject it; he could use it to reinforce his existing beliefs. The same occurs with investors who get emotionally attached to a stock or people who view their toxic partners through rose-tinted glasses.

In fact, this phenomenon is just all in a day’s work on the internet. Climate change, vaccination, politics — the more people come across facts that challenge their beliefs, the more they cling to their misconceptions.

How to Overcome the Backfire Effect

Facts that challenge people’s beliefs don’t change their minds. In fact, people see them as attacks on their identity. As a result, they either recoil into their shell or fight back with everything they have.

Here are better ways to help them overcome such a bias:

1. Appeal to their identity

I wonder what would happen if my teammate had said, “If you’re saying the point is not in the video, then it probably isn’t. You’re not a liar,” rather than proving that I’d done a slipshod job.

Instead of a conflict between him and me, his words would’ve created a conflict between me and myself. I would’ve lied about doing good work AND about not being a liar. I probably would’ve felt like crap, confessed to him after the meeting, and never repeated the mistake.

Appeal to people’s self-esteem and allow them to save face when they walk away. You might lose the battle, but you stand a better chance to win the war.

2. Paint a bright picture

I also wonder how things would’ve turned out if he shared his thoughts in a positive way. What if he had said, “This is well done. Just a couple of points are missing. Could you have a quick look at it again?” Bright chances are I would’ve gladly complied instead of getting into an ego war.

Instead of calling people out, encourage them for their effort and then ask for a few rough edges to be smoothed out. This technique is simple, but it’s not easy. I succumb to my ego and fail to apply this lesson far more than I would like. But I try to get a wee bit better each day.

3. Don’t fool yourself

For six years, I lived with the feeling that I was wronged when the truth was that I was wrong when I should’ve taken less than 24 hours to figure this out.

As humans, we’re good at spotting cognitive biases in others, but weak to spot them in ourselves, Tali Sharot wrote in The Optimism Bias. This creates a bias where we believe we’re immune to cognitive biases, which is the irony of cognitive biases.

You’re just as prone to the backfire effect as anyone else. Train yourself to be objective while looking at evidence that challenges your views and readjust your perspectives accordingly. As Daniel Dennett wrote,

“The chief trick to making good mistakes is to not hide them — especially not from yourself.”

Making mistakes indicates that you’re human. Acknowledging and working on them indicates that you’re learning.

Final Thoughts

The backfire effect makes us cling tighter to our deepest convictions when we encounter evidence that challenges us. This cognitive bias makes us get in our own way of seeking growth and the truth.

Overcoming it is no mean feat, and we’re never really done. Because like all cognitive biases, it shows up over and over again and demands that we stay on our toes.

Being aware of this effect is the first step in the right direction. It makes you flexible, lets you remove the shame from saying “I don’t know,” and broadens your horizons.

It’s impossible to be smart all the time. A better approach is to be less foolish, a part of which is allowing yourself the luxuries of accepting that you were wrong and changing your mind.

Such a mindset is incredibly liberating. And a liberated life is a happy one.