🫣 TREE 796: Talking to strangers

This week, TREE is written by my supremely talented colleague Lois Payne. Lois is The writer on my team in my day job. She’s also better than me at ping pong, which is super annoying. You’re stuck with me for the music selections. —Jeff

How often do you speak to someone you don’t know?

It might be something that comes naturally to you. Then again, maybe you’re more like me. As an introvert with mild anxiety, I’ve never put much conscious effort into talking to strangers.

But recently, I read some cool research. It suggests the diversity of your social activity can affect your happiness levels as much as the amount of social activity.

As in, if on an average day you talk to colleagues, the florist, your family, spouse, a couple of friends and a Tesco delivery driver, you’re likely to have a richer and happier life than if you talk to the same echo chamber day in, day out.

It’s tough when nowadays, the way we use technology seems deliberately designed to reduce the number of people we need to talk to (ordering food from a barcode, anyone?)

But dagnabbit, I’m trying anyway.

Some days this looks like going to the cheerful looking person behind the counter instead of the self-checkout. Calling up my hairdresser when I could book online. Or asking my Uber driver how his shift is going. But I go slightly out of my way to have a greater variety of conversations than normal.

It’s out of my comfort zone. It goes against all my instincts. It’s making my life better.

Maybe it’ll do the same for you.

Something happened with Hinds. There used to be four of them in the band. Now there are two. Their new music still sounds fantastic.