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There was a study that was done at Harvard Business School
where they asked students, before they had a conversation with a stranger,
they asked all the students to write down three topics that they thought they could discuss.
This took like 10 seconds, right?
People would write down like, you know, this weekend's game and what TV shows I watch.
Just little dumb throwaway things.
And then they went and they had conversations with strangers.
And everyone would put the card away.
Many of them would put it in their back pocket.
And the topics they had jotted down...
Often never came up.
But the fact that they were there almost
overwhelmingly made all of the participants feel less anxious about those discussions.
And as a result, those discussions went much, much better.