An enduring question when encountering a new acquaintance is, “What do you do?” (This is especially true if you live in North America). Answering that question—particularly if you want your answer to be compelling and memorable—can be hard. The safe answer is to go with a functional description of what you do. Even comprehensive statements of job function can sound still sound vague and abstract (and be in no way unique). When you want to stand out in your answer, you need to reframe how you define the question.
(Re)Finding Attention, Context and Meaning
Our brains are wonderful things. And so our our smartphones. We now have a smartphone in our pocket, and previously unimagined information at our fingertips. The challenge is knowing what to do with all that power. Or, more to the point, recognizing how the easy access to information makes us think about decisions and choices, and think in general. The more we take for granted about information that’s available, the less we take the time to recognize and work through what we already know.