Trivia Competitions and the Good Life

Last night my friend Pavs (pronounced Pahvz) and I unwittingly got ourselves into a bar trivia competition. The experience reminded me of an important goal I set for myself: Don’t be good at trivia.

I don’t often find myself in trivia competitions, and I am certainly not one to seek them out, but if pride is on the line, and beer is to be had, then dammit I am going to play.

We were competing against a bunch of smarty pants Duke students, and it was only the two of us competing against larger sized groups, but I thought we had a fighting chance because Pavs and I carry a slew of random facts up our sleeves.

We finished 7th. Of 8.

We were pissed. For one, we knew we should have put “female” for January Jones. More to the point, if you’re going to play with my pride, don’t ask me to guess the gender of January Jones.

But then I remembered my goal. I think Don’t be good at trivia is a good mantra to live by because it provides a surprising amount of guidance on what to avoid. If you look at the things you do in an average day and ask which of them are most improving your trivia skills, I’d bet you’d also say those are some of the least valuable uses of your time.

So, as a simple rule of thumb...

Beware of that which improves your trivia skills.

That includes, of course, sitcoms and celebrity gossip but also things like news, sports, and politics.

(There is an obvious problem here that it depends on what kind of trivia competition you’re in. Maybe they are asking trivia questions about how best to deal with death or something, in which case this heuristic would buckle at the knees. Luckily, most trivia competitions ask nothing of the sort.)

I’d suggest that the mantra also applies to conversation. If you want to have meaningful connections with people, sure go ahead and start with a discussion of the Biebster, but unless a conversation advances beyond chit chat, it's hard to imagine that your connection will be any better than tenuous.