This is a section I'm working on for the book. It's not a simple answer...
Tooth and claw - the productivity answer
There were once two hikers setting up camp in the woods after a long day’s walking. They’d just finished their evening meal and were settling down in their tent, getting into their sleeping bags, when they heard the unmistakable sounds of a bear snuffling around the campsite. They froze with fear. Then they heard it getting closer, then they saw the bulge in the nylon as the bear rubbed against the outside of the tent. One of the hikers slowly reached over to their rucksack, dug out a pair of running shoes and silently started putting them on.
“What are you doing?” whispered the other hiker “You can’t outrun a bear”
“I don’t have to outrun a bear” the first hiker replied “I just have to outrun you”
This is a reason to be interesting. It’s a competitive world out there. In a world of work, a world of raising money to start a business, or to persuade someone to buy your new idea, or to support your cause, or whatever it is, it helps if you’ve got a little edge. And being more interesting can be that edge. It won’t make you the fastest runner in the world but it’ll help.
Just because - the life is for living answer
Someone once did a study which claimed that a greater proportion of scientists who won Nobel Prizes had hobbies than those that didn't. I posted this on the Do Interesting instagram and my friend James poked at it, questioning what I was suggesting: ‘be interesting so you can be successful, so you can win?’ And, yes, that's a bit of it, we talked about that above.
But there's more to it than that. I think it's a useful counter to all the productivity pom in the world to remember that not only is being maniacally focused on work unhealthy, but that it also doesn’t work. I like the Nobel/hobbies study because it demonstrates that hobbies don't get in the way of professional success. Many of us want to succeed professionally and feel like our hobbies should sit on pause while we do it. This is study is one indication that that's pointless.
What else is there? - the happiness answer
The Australian author Helen Garner just wrote a magnificent essay for The Guardian about happiness. She said she’d finally realised that it wasn’t a thing you got after a lifetime of striving but something that you ‘glimpse in the corner of your eye’ Something elusive, that slips away before you name it.
And then she writes:
“So I’m not going to spend what’s left of my life hanging round waiting for it. I’m going to settle for small, random stabs of extreme interestingness – moments of intense awareness of the things I’m about to lose, and of gladness that they exist. Things that remind me of other things. Tiny scenes. Words that people choose, their accidentally biblical turns of phrase. Hand-lettered signs, quotes from books, offhand remarks that make me think of dead people, or of living ones I can no longer stand the sight of. I plan to keep writing them down, praising them, arranging them like stepping stones into the dark. Maybe they’ll lead me somewhere good before I shrivel up and blow away.”
And then she tells you about the things she’s noticed. It’s magical and mundane. Go read it.
Being interesting means being interested. What else is there?