You Need to Talk to Someone but Feel Like You Have Nothing Interesting to Say – Here’s What to Do Next

I remember that when I was younger and had to go to different events, one of my biggest fears was that I would end up talking to someone and we wouldn’t find any common ground. I would wonder what we’d talk about, whether the conversation would get awkward after the first few questions, and, probably my biggest concern, whether I’d have anything to say.

If I’m honest, many of those conversations started very simply. We talked about the event we were attending, something that had happened there, or what the other person did, which is still one of the easiest questions to reach for even though there are many better ways to start a conversation than “What do you do?”. And yes, sometimes we talked about subjects that would probably look rather boring if someone had written them on a piece of paper beforehand: work, traffic, food, something we had bought, the place we were in, or some small thing that had happened that week.

I know I’m far from the only person who has gone into a social situation thinking, I have nothing interesting to say, or worrying that the other person will be much more interesting and somehow expect the conversation to live up to that.

Researchers have actually tested what happens when people are asked to talk about subjects they already expect to find boring, comparing their predictions before the conversation with what they thought after they had actually had it – and some of the topics people were given or chose themselves make the experiment even more interesting.

But I was curious about more than whether a supposedly boring conversation could turn out better than expected. How much can we learn from a conversation that doesn’t sound promising at first? Can a very simple topic develop into something much deeper? Are we even good at judging whether the other person enjoyed talking to us?

I found research looking at all of these questions, and I’m also adding what I’ve learned from more than 20 years working in communication about what to talk about when you think you have nothing interesting to say, especially when your mind seems to go blank just when you need it not to.

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Researchers Asked 1,800 People to Talk About Topics They Expected to Be Boring

Elizabeth Trinh, Nicole Thio, and Nadav Klein tested this across nine preregistered experiments involving 1,800 participants, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2026. People predicted how interesting and enjoyable their conversations would be, had the conversations, and then rated the experience afterward. The researchers included friends and strangers, online and face-to-face conversations, and both assigned topics and subjects participants themselves considered boring.

According to the American Psychological Association, the topics included the stock market, cats, vegan diets, nonfiction books, the World Wars, math, onions, and Pokémon. I like that list because what sounds painfully boring to one person could keep someone else talking all evening, which is exactly why the researchers looked at people’s own expectations rather than trying to decide which topics are universally boring.

Across the experiments, people expected conversations about boring topics to be less interesting and enjoyable than they actually were. The result appeared with friends and strangers and remained even when both people considered the topic boring, so it couldn’t simply be explained by one bored participant being paired with someone who happened to love the subject.

Why We Get This Wrong

Before a conversation begins, the topic is one of the few things you can judge. If someone tells you that you’re about to spend ten minutes discussing onions, you already know how you feel about onions, but you don’t know what the other person will say, whether they’ll mention something unexpected, remind you of an experience, disagree with you, make you laugh, or take the conversation somewhere completely different.

The researchers found that people can give too much weight to that initial topic and not enough to the engagement that develops once two people start listening and responding to each other. A conversation about onions could move into cooking, childhood foods, family recipes, restaurants, gardening, grocery prices, or something else entirely, which is very similar to what happens when we reject our own possible conversation topics because they don’t sound interesting enough before we’ve even said them.

What to Talk About When You Think You Have Nothing Interesting to Say

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After years of meetings, conferences, launches, training sessions, professional events, dinners, and all the less formal conversations that come with them, I’ve never found that good conversations require both people to arrive with a collection of impressive stories prepared in advance. Trying too hard to sound interesting can make an exchange less natural, especially when someone is clearly waiting for the smallest opening to tell the story they have already decided everyone needs to hear.

Start With Something You Already Share

If you’re at an event and don’t know what to talk about, the easiest material is often already around you. You have the event itself, the venue, the speaker, the food, the crowd, the reason you came, something that has just happened, something you’re waiting to see, or whether you’ve attended something similar before.

You don’t need an ingenious opening. Depending on where you are, something as simple as one of these can give the other person plenty of room to answer:

• “Have you been to this event before?”
• “How did you hear about this?”
• “What did you think about the speaker?”
• “Have you tried the food yet?”
• “Did you expect it to be this busy?”

“Have you been to this event before?” doesn’t sound extraordinary, but the answer can take you into why someone came, what they expected, who they know, where they travelled from, another event they attended, or something they’re working on. You aren’t trying to make the opening question carry the whole conversation; you’re giving both of you somewhere to begin.

The same applies outside formal events. A small thing from your day can give another person much more to work with than you might expect, even when it doesn’t feel like a story worth telling. You spent far too long comparing phones, tried a recipe that went wrong, finally bought something you’ve been postponing for months, discovered an old object while cleaning a cupboard, got stuck in traffic, watched a series you can’t decide whether you liked, or noticed that something you buy regularly has become ridiculously expensive.

If nothing in your day sounds “interesting enough,” try thinking in terms of details rather than stories. You don’t need something with a beginning, a dramatic middle, and a wonderful ending. You need one thing another person can react to.

Take the phone example. If I say that I spent half an afternoon trying to choose a new phone, the conversation doesn’t have to remain a comparison of specifications. Someone might ask what happened to my old one, which could lead to how long we keep phones, whether new models are actually worth the price, which features we use, how much we rely on our phones when travelling, the first phones we owned, children and screen time, photography, apps, or technology we wish we didn’t need.

Use Something the Other Person Has Already Said

One reason people run out of things to say is that they keep looking for the next completely new subject when the previous answer has already given them several options. If you listen for a detail rather than waiting for your turn to introduce another topic, the conversation becomes much easier to continue.

For example:

• “We went away for the weekend.” You could ask where they went, whether they’d been there before, what they did, or whether the trip was planned or spontaneous.
• “We’re renovating the kitchen and the house is a disaster.” You already have what they’re changing, how long it has taken, whether they’re doing any of it themselves, what has gone wrong, and whether they’d ever renovate again.
• “Work has been crazy this week.” You could ask what happened, whether this is an unusually busy period, or simply give them room to explain if they want to.

Being easy to talk to comes from responding to the conversation happening now instead of constantly searching for the next question.

There is research behind that too. Karen Huang, Michael Yeomans, Alison Wood Brooks, Julia Minson, and Francesca Gino found across several studies that people who asked more questions, especially follow-up questions, tended to be better liked by the people they talked to. A correction published in 2025 changed some of the reported statistical details but said the substantive hypothesis-test results remained unchanged.

I wouldn’t turn this into a rule that every answer needs another question, because that gets tiring quickly. Sometimes the natural response is a question, sometimes it’s a reaction, sometimes you share something related from your own life, and sometimes the other person keeps talking without needing anything from you except to know that you’re actually listening.

Give the Other Person a Little More to Work With Too

Conversations can stall even when plenty of topics are available because both people give answers that close every door. “How was your weekend?” gets “Fine.” “How’s work?” gets “Good.” “Have you been busy?” gets “Yes.” If neither person offers anything beyond the minimum answer, someone eventually has to keep inventing new questions.

If you want the conversation to continue, add one detail rather than trying to give a much longer answer:

• Instead of “Fine,” you could say, “It was good. We finally tried that new restaurant near the park.”
• Instead of “Work’s busy,” you could say, “Work’s been busy because we’re preparing a launch next week.”
• Instead of “Nothing much,” you could mention one small thing you actually did, watched, bought, fixed, cooked, or planned.

None of these answers is remarkable, and they don’t need to be. They simply give the other person several possible responses without turning a routine question into a monologue.

I looked at a related problem in the article about what to say instead of “I’m fine”, because automatic answers are useful when we don’t actually want to talk, but they can work against us when we do. You don’t need to disclose something personal every time someone asks how you are; even one small specific detail can make the exchange easier when you want to keep talking.

Ask for an Opinion Without Asking a Huge Question

“Tell me something interesting about yourself” sounds like it should spark a fascinating conversation, yet it puts a lot of pressure on the person answering. What qualifies as interesting? Which part of their life do you want? How personal should they be? A lighter opinion or preference is often easier because it gives both people something concrete to work with.

You could ask:

• “What did you think of it?” when you’ve both just seen or experienced something.
• “Have you tried that place?” if a restaurant, attraction, shop, or venue comes up.
• “Are you watching anything good at the moment?”
• “Would you actually recommend it?”
• “If you could go away for a weekend right now, where would you choose?”

There is enough room in questions like these for the answer to become more interesting than the question itself. Someone can explain a preference, disagree with you, tell you about an experience, or introduce something neither of you was discussing a minute earlier.

Sometimes a topic starts normally and then veers somewhere you don’t want to go, especially when people move into politics, money, health, family, relationships, or another personal area. You can change the subject when a conversation gets awkward without having to explain your entire reason for doing it.

You May Learn More Than You Expected

I found another study that adds an interesting layer to the fear that you and someone else won’t have enough to talk about. Stav Atir, Kristina Wald, and Nicholas Epley examined how much people expected to learn from conversations with strangers and compared those predictions with what participants said they had actually learned afterward.

Across seven experiments, people underestimated how much they would learn during the conversations. Part of the problem was uncertainty: before speaking to another person, you don’t know what information they have that you don’t, which makes it difficult to predict what could come out of the exchange.

You can start with a subject that sounds completely unremarkable and discover that the person beside you once lived in a city you’re planning to visit, works in an area you’ve always wondered about, has dealt with a problem you’re currently facing, knows something surprising about a familiar subject, recommends something you’d never heard of, or sees a situation very differently from you.

Learning in this context doesn’t have to mean receiving a mini-lecture or coming home with useful professional information. You can learn how another person thinks, what an unfamiliar job actually involves, why someone made a decision you would never make yourself, what a place is like to live in, how another family handles something, or how an everyday problem looks from someone else’s perspective.

And there is a funny contradiction in worrying that someone will be boring because you don’t have much in common. Having less in common can mean that they know things you don’t, have experiences you haven’t had, and can introduce subjects that would never have come up with someone whose life looks very similar to yours.

A Conversation Can Start Small and Become More Personal

Michael Kardas, Amit Kumar, and Nicholas Epley studied another prediction people tend to get wrong: how uncomfortable deeper conversations with strangers will feel. Their research included 12 experiments with more than 1,800 participants, examining what people expected before deeper conversations and how they evaluated them afterward.

Participants expected strangers to care less about what they shared and expected deeper exchanges to be more awkward than they turned out to be. After those conversations, people reported greater connectedness and happiness than they had predicted, while experiments comparing shallow and deeper conversations found more connection in the deeper condition.

I wouldn’t take that research as advice to skip every normal social boundary and ask someone you met three minutes ago about their biggest regret. People are different, situations are different, and there are subjects I wouldn’t discuss with a stranger simply because they asked. What I find more useful is that a conversation can move gradually from something simple into something more personal without either person having to decide, Right, now we’re going to have a deep conversation.

You can start by talking about the weather and hear that someone hates very hot summers because they used to live in a much colder country. You ask what took them there, and they tell you they moved for a job. From there you could end up talking about changing careers, moving away from family, living abroad, whether they would do it again, or why they eventually came back.

Small talk can give you the first detail. What you do with that detail determines whether you stay with the weather or move somewhere more interesting.

The same happens when people share good news, worries, plans, frustrations, or things they’re excited about. How you respond influences whether they keep going, which is why research on what to say when someone shares good news is relevant here too: a conversation develops through responses to what was just said, rather than through a constant search for more impressive topics.

Questions Help, but a Conversation Isn’t an Interview

Once you know that follow-up questions can help, it’s easy to overcorrect and turn the whole exchange into question after question: where are you from, what do you do, do you have children, what are your hobbies, where did you go on vacation, what are you doing next weekend?

Even friendly questions can start to feel like an interview when the other person is permanently in the position of supplying answers while you keep choosing the subjects. Normal conversation moves in more directions than that: you ask something, react to the answer, share a thought or a related experience, return to something the other person mentioned, let them ask you something, and occasionally abandon the original topic because another one has become more interesting.

A more natural rhythm can look like this:

“We went to Lisbon last month.”

Follow what they said: “Did you like it? I’ve heard completely different opinions about how crowded it has become.”

They tell you about the trip, and if you’ve been there too, you can share something from your experience where it fits. You don’t have to pretend you know nothing about Lisbon simply to keep asking questions.

A different problem arises when the question is only a route back to yourself. Researchers use the term boomerasking for questions people ask when they really want to provide their own answer afterward. You ask about someone’s vacation because you want to talk about yours, or ask what they are watching because you’ve been waiting for an opportunity to recommend your favorite series.

Sharing your own experience isn’t the problem; we’d have very strange conversations if people were never allowed to relate something another person said to their own lives. In the research I covered in my article about boomerasking, the difficulty appeared when the initial question looked less sincere because the asker quickly redirected attention toward themselves.

If someone tells you they went to Lisbon and you’ve been there too, stay with their experience long enough to hear what they actually want to tell you, then share yours where it fits. You don’t need a formula for exactly how many questions you should ask before you’re “allowed” to talk about yourself; you can usually tell the difference between exchanging experiences and waiting impatiently for your turn.

We Can Be Surprisingly Bad at Judging How a Conversation Went

The research on boring topics isn’t the only place where people’s predictions about conversations turn out to be more negative than the experience itself. Gillian Sandstrom and Erica Boothby examined several of those expectations across seven studies involving 2,304 participants. People worried about whether they would enjoy talking to strangers, whether the stranger would enjoy talking to them, whether they would like one another, and whether they themselves would be good conversational partners.

When the predictions were compared with people’s experiences, the fears tended to be more negative than what happened. One part of that research is especially relevant for anyone who spends a lot of time reading tips before a social event: receiving conversation advice didn’t substantially change the experience, while actually having a pleasant conversation could improve expectations about future interactions.

Nicholas Epley and Juliana Schroeder found something related in a real-world commuter experiment. People travelling by train or bus were assigned to connect with a stranger, remain disconnected, or behave as they normally would. Participants who talked to a stranger reported a more positive experience, while participants who predicted the outcome expected solitude to be preferable and underestimated how willing strangers would be to talk.

Then there is the liking gap. Erica Boothby, Gus Cooney, Gillian Sandstrom, and Margaret Clark found that after conversations, people tended to underestimate how much their partners liked them and enjoyed talking to them. The effect appeared in several settings, including interactions between strangers and relationships that were beginning to develop.

I find this part especially interesting because the fear of having nothing interesting to say doesn’t always disappear when the conversation ends. You can have a perfectly normal exchange, go home, and start examining everything you said: I talked too much about work. I wasn’t funny. I should have asked something else. That story was boring. I don’t think they liked me. Meanwhile, the other person isn’t hearing the edited version of the conversation playing in your head; they had their own experience.

Sometimes the Conversation Really Isn’t Going Anywhere

Research showing that people can underestimate how well conversations will go can be taken too far, and I don’t think it should be. Some conversations really are boring. Sometimes two people don’t click, someone is tired or distracted, neither person is interested in the subject, or one person simply doesn’t want to talk.

There are practical signals worth paying attention to. If someone keeps giving very short answers without adding anything, repeatedly looks back at their work or phone, turns toward other people, doesn’t respond to any opening that could continue the exchange, or tells you they need to go, there is no reason to treat the interaction as a challenge you have to win.

A topic that looks boring and a person who doesn’t want to continue talking aren’t the same thing. The research gives us a reason not to reject every simple subject before we begin, not a reason to ignore what the person in front of us is doing.

The same applies when another person keeps moving into subjects you don’t want to discuss. A conversation becoming more personal can be enjoyable when both people want it, but you don’t owe anyone details about your income, health, relationship, children, plans, or anything else because they decided to ask. You can handle intrusive questions without being rude while keeping as much of your privacy as you want.

Forcing an exchange can create problems that have nothing to do with whether the original subject was interesting. Talking too long before giving the other person room, ignoring what they just said, constantly bringing the subject back to yourself, or not noticing they are trying to leave are conversation habits that can make people lose interest, even when the topic has potential.

Easy Ways to Find the Next Thing to Talk About

If you’re standing beside someone at an event and genuinely can’t think of anything interesting to say, I wouldn’t try to search your memory for your best story or mentally scroll through a list of clever conversation questions. You can make the problem much smaller by looking for only the next thing you can say.

If you need something immediately, try one of these:

• Look around you. Mention the event, place, food, speaker, queue, music, crowd, weather, or something that just happened.
• Go back to something they said. A detail from two minutes ago is still available; you don’t need a new subject every time the conversation slows.
• Mention one small thing from your day. It doesn’t need to qualify as a story before you say it.
• Ask for an opinion. “What did you think?” is often easier for both people than a huge open question.
• Give them one extra detail when they ask you something. If you want the conversation to continue, don’t make them do all the work of finding the next topic.

And if none of those produces a wonderful conversation, that’s fine too. You don’t have to have a fantastic exchange with absolutely everyone you meet.

My approach to these situations is very different from when I was younger, because I no longer feel that I need to arrive with enough interesting material to carry the whole interaction myself. There are two people in a conversation, and I’ve had enough simple subjects go in completely unexpected directions to know that what the other person adds can be more important than whether my opening topic sounded impressive beforehand.

Conclusion

The fear that you have nothing interesting to say suggests the problem is a shortage of good topics, yet the research suggests we aren’t particularly good at predicting what will happen from the topic alone. In nine experiments involving 1,800 participants, conversations about subjects people expected to find boring repeatedly turned out to be more interesting and enjoyable than they anticipated, while other studies have found similar prediction gaps around how much people learn from conversations, how deeper exchanges will feel, and how positively their conversational partners see them.

I still wouldn’t go to an event planning to discuss onions simply because researchers managed to get people to do it. But if all I can think of is something small, everyday, or not especially impressive, I wouldn’t discard it for that reason either. I’ve had enough conversations that began with completely simple subjects and went somewhere I couldn’t have predicted at the beginning, and apparently the people in these studies had similar experiences.

Questions About What to Talk About When You Have Nothing Interesting to Say

What can I talk about when I have nothing interesting to say?

Use something already available in the situation rather than trying to invent an impressive subject: where you are, what you’re doing, something that happened that day, a small detail from your life, or something the other person has just mentioned. Research published in 2026 found that people systematically underestimated how interesting and enjoyable conversations about topics they considered boring would eventually be.

Why do I feel like I have nothing to say in conversations?

One possibility is that you’re rejecting potential topics before giving them a chance because they don’t sound interesting enough on their own. A conversation adds another person’s experiences, reactions, memories, opinions, and questions, so the subject you evaluate beforehand isn’t necessarily the subject you’ll still be discussing several minutes later.

What should I say when my mind goes blank in a conversation?

Return to the immediate context or something the person already told you. You can ask about the place you’re in, mention what brought you there, follow up on a detail from their previous answer, or offer one specific detail from your own day rather than searching for an entirely new topic.

Do you need interesting topics to have a good conversation?

An interesting topic can help, but it isn’t a requirement. In 2026 research involving 1,800 people, participants had conversations about subjects they expected to be boring and consistently found those conversations more enjoyable and interesting than they predicted.

How do you keep a conversation going when you run out of things to say?

Listen for details in the other person’s answer that give you somewhere to go, respond to what they said, and share related information from your own experience when it fits. If both people keep offering a little material rather than answering every question with one word, you don’t have to continually invent unrelated subjects.

How do you make a boring conversation more interesting?

You can give the subject more room to develop by asking about a detail, adding your own experience, asking for an opinion, or following a tangent that appears naturally. You don’t have to keep returning to the original topic simply because that’s where the conversation began.

Can small talk become a deeper conversation?

Yes, and it often happens without anyone deliberately deciding to have a deep conversation. Research on deeper conversations found that people tended to expect more awkwardness and less interest from strangers than they experienced, while everyday topics can naturally lead into more personal experiences when both people are comfortable continuing.

What if the other person doesn’t seem interested in talking?

Let the conversation end rather than forcing it into something better. Repeated short answers, little engagement, turning back toward another activity, or a direct indication that they need to leave are very different from simply starting with a topic that doesn’t sound exciting.

Violeta Loredana

Violeta-Loredana Pascal is a communications expert, business mentor, and the founder of Earth’s Attractions and PRwave INTERNATIONAL. A pioneer in the Romanian digital PR landscape since 2005, she holds a degree in Communication and Social Sciences from SNSPA Bucharest. Violeta is a senior trainer at AcademiadeAfaceri.ro, where she leverages over 20 years of experience to teach professional courses in PR strategy and workplace productivity. By blending high-level business consulting with a passion for holistic travel and wellness, she empowers solopreneurs to overcome procrastination, build profitable brands, and design a life of purposeful adventure.