“What do you do?”

My friend, Kevin Morrill, has a beautiful view on life. He told me the other night that he sincerely believes every person has something interesting about them, and he just has to ask the right questions to find it.

But most of us start with one question when getting to know another person: “What do you do?”

I’d say about 20–50% of the time, people ask this question because they genuinely want to get to know you, and learning about what you do for a living is a good starting point. The rest of the time, it’s a shortcut to putting someone in a box.

Above, that’s my nephew, Emmett, circa October 2014. Emmett basically plays for a living with a side gig in time out. That’s what he “does.” To us adults, we put him in the kid box where all kids generally do similar things.

As a startup founder, I’m not easy to put in a box. This question causes all sorts of problems, because, after learning that I have a small company, people have a tendency to follow up by asking me, “How do you make money?”

This is like asking a mechanic their favorite trick for removing a crankshaft pulley within five minutes of meeting them.

It’s not that I don’t have an answer to this that bothers me — I do. What bothers me is when the conversation turns from “getting to know each other,” to “one person putting the other person in the hot seat with a pass/fail question to determine how sharp they are” within three minutes of meeting.

The thing is, I doubt anyone does this on purpose or with any malicious intent. Asking someone what they do with a few follow up questions is just kind of what adults do when we meet other adults.

A friend of mine, Christian Long, organizes dinners where people are not only prohibited from asking this question, they are prohibited from talking about what they do or where they work. Instead, he prompts people to ask each other, “What were you like in kindergarten?” There’s also a catch: you can’t disparage your five-year old self (e.g. “I was the smelly kid,” etc.).

Everyone’s eyes light up as they remember what it was like to be in the “kid box.” As everyone shares, we quickly learn how diverse experiences in the kid box are.

I’d wager that’s true for the “doctor box,” the “founder box,” the “Mom box,” and all the other boxes we put people in. We just have to ask the right questions.

🎉 🍻 ❤️ — Andy

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