August 28, 2026 — 5:00amEach week, Good Weekend’s how-to column shares expert advice on how to navigate some of modern life’s big – and small – challenges. This week: How to be interesting. Photo: Illustration by Simon Letch“In reality, being interesting is highly relational,” says Nick Enfield, professor of linguistics at Sydney University. “You’re not just interesting, you’re interesting to somebody.” In other words, one person’s interesting person is another person’s bore.To be interesting, stop trying to prove you are. Cultivating impressive qualities – unusual hobbies or flashy possessions, for example – is a misleading way to inspire intrigue. “There’s a trap with, ‘Oh, I want to be interesting,’ ” says Enfield. “It makes you want to go out and buy a Hawaiian shirt and take up juggling or something like that, but that would be self-focused, and I think that’s not the approach.”He notes that being in possession of certain skills – say, speaking five languages, piloting planes, or balancing on a beach ball while juggling six knives – can certainly be interesting, “but it might only be in the most superficial sense of the word”.The knack to being genuinely interesting, he believes, lies in being interested. Not necessarily staying quiet while someone else talks, but practising active listening: being curious, asking follow-up questions. “You get to engage and say things, but it’s really the other person who’s driving the interaction,” he says. “And, to be honest, people love that, right? They love to be able to talk about what they know and have other people show an interest in them.”He suggests practising “generous curiosity” – which, basically, means drawing someone into discussing a topic they know about and you want to explore. You’ll find the more you discover about others, the more you’ll have to say. You grow as a person by showing genuine interest in others. It’s normal to feel that you’re less interesting than those around you, but worrying about it can become a form of self-absorption.What about being interesting to groups? Enfield advises storytelling. “I could tell you the capital cities of all the world’s countries,” he says, “but it’s actually not very stimulating. If I’m telling a story, then that’s engaging my audience in a very specific sense.” Essentially, balance being specific with staying within the group’s grasp of the topic. And be happy to be disagreed with.So if you’re at a party and want to be interesting, find out what’s interesting to your fellow guests. “It’s not just what job they do or what suburb they live in,” says Enfield. “What you really want to find out is, what do they know about? What makes them tick? Once you get them going on that, you can step into that space and, hopefully, find mutual interest.”From our partners