Indeed I've had a similar realization and it's a very helpful reminder. Also every time I go to a meetup, I remind myself: to be interesting, you must be interested.
I think thats the crux of it, most people respond positively when others are interested in them. As long as its genuine, asking about, or be interested in, others goes a really long way.
Take for instance someone telling you about their career. "I'm a software developer".
You can express interest with a response like "Oh, thats cool, what made you go into that line of work?" but thats a very generic, shallow response.
If you know a thing or two about software, for example, you can ask more interesting questions that show your interest in them, and your knowledge of the space. "Woh cool, how is AI coding impacting your life?"
Suddenly, it seems like you're much more interesting yourself, AND you're interested in them.
The tricky part nowadays is everyone has very niche interests. It's harder than ever to really have a breadth of knowledge that is broadly applicable. This was easier before the internet, before travel, before telecommunication. When your community was your community and news traveled slowly, it was a lot easier to learn about what impacted others.
Some people act so shocked when you tell them you did something because it would make you richer and not because an angel came to you in a dream and whispered in your ear to save the disenfranchised underclass (and all the cats) by writing code, or whatever's the current faux na pas reason to pursue a vocation these days.
Answering why you picked this particular path to high income is more interesting of an answer to the person asking and carries the conversation. Did your parents do it, did you have a professor that captured your attention, did you just google “easiest job to make a lot of money?” and pick the first one?
Someone asking wants to understand how and why you make decisions. What motives you. Etc. It’s the XY problem and from the other person’s perspective, you’re answering the wrong one.
This is too simplistic. Someone might ask that for a million reasons. Also, you will be judged not only by your answer. Being so direct might show you are not on autopilot in the conversation, your humour or that you only care about money, depending on a lot of other factors. It might make one more memorable as well. I personally would read it as light humour, unless it is accompanied by a dead eyes stare.
To be fair, most people are uninteresting.
Maybe the goal should be to be okay with being ordinary.
TRYING to be interesting (or interested) is just tiresome.
If you meet someone who is completely and utterly uninteresting, that in itself is interesting.
And yet everybody cares precisely nothing about almost all natural numbers.
How do we even define interesting ? Like interesting opinions/hobbies? Good storyteller ? Who cares about that. I do need to like you and you need to be an agreeable person imo, but no having a real unique life or opinions is really not that necessary imo. Having a sense of humor is a big plus to me though.
What do you mean by that? What's the difference between a person and their story?
This is why you can not "interview" innovative or creative people- and only get a flat "imposter" image of the creative person. The observation hinders the process and all you get is basically the "house keeping" routines- weaving together some plausible stories, on how a "idea" came to be.
The true process is a walk in the mountains. Some scribbled notes. Glued together during some conversation on a similar topic with friends. I always found it fascinating, how the "iterrators" can dismiss something/someone that clearly works- just because they can not dissect and reproduce it.
And it doesn't have to be anything special; you could find joy together in the mundane:
Petting cats, watching the rain, taking a walk through the woods without saying anything..
I can find "interesting" (based on a boring reading from a dictionary) the unknown days events of a friend even if while knowing the person was not engaged in breaking down understanding of reality.
It's not the person or their todo list that's interesting but awareness of a cognitive disconnect of not knowing what their todo list was that day.
As another person for whom relation stuff does not come naturally, this was incredibly helpful because little pieces of advise really do work, because they really are nice things to do/say.
A favorite example of mine, when starting to talk to someone who probably already doesn't care for you is to find something -- anything -- that it's clear they like or chose, which you also happen to like, and pay it a genuine positive complement. And perhaps talk about it a little bit.
But let's put that aside, the negativity really comes from the fact that every time I have seen it brought up in real life, it is being wielded like a cudgel by a person not practicing what is in the book. It is effectively corporate short hand for "you need to learn how to be a better servant".
Some folks take this over the top and do a weird, false-feeling thing like sprinkle the person's name into conversation over and over, or at the start/middle/end. And it makes the conversation feel stilted, fake, and like a situation is being forced. And that casts a negative light on the overarching idea that people like being remembered, and their own name is a big part of that.