The best thing you can have at a party is a complicated answer to the question “What do you do?”

Want to know when you’re succeeding at carving your own path? Your answer to the question “what do you do?” is a complicated one.

This is a point raised by Tim Ferris in Four Hour Work Week. One of the go-to lines used when meeting a new person, is, ‘so what do you do?’.

To which we reply with a job title. A job title for a job which most of us hate doing. And it is quite sad that we live in a society where most of us define ourselves by a job we do not have passion for.

On the surface it makes sense — the question is trying to uncover what we do with most of our time. Because for many of us, most of our waking hours are spent working.

What do you get paid to do?

Maybe we should start asking people “What do you get paid to do?” as at least in this way, we acknowledge that what we do to generate an income may not necessarily define us.

Because the shorter question is just so goddam deep if you really think about it. I mean, “what do you do…?”… well “what do you do with your life?”.

What do you do with your life?

If you ask me that question, I could answer with the following: I write, I read, I work out, I go for walks, I do crazy activites with friends, I dream (a lot), I party, I write some more, I make videos, I educate, I connect people, I learn, I question, I ponder, I love, I market, I work on books, blogs and I do a lot of real estate work which pays me.

You can see why it’s hard to just say “I do real estate” when someone asks me what do I do. But like the rest of us, I give in to the temptation very often because it makes a conversation simpler. Too many times in the past, my answer to this question has led to some dazed, confused looks.

And for me that’s something to be proud of.

Why a complicated answer is a good one

To me, a complicated answer is a good one because it means you have some depth to your character.

Your interactions with people at parties are a lot more dynamic when you do something interesting. But in my humble opinion, it is always a sad state when you don’t find yourself interesting.

What you do is more than a job title. The way I see it, it might be a very sad state of affairs to not aspire to more in our lives than just a job title.

But hey. I could be wrong.

By Joe Wehbe, hang out with me on Instagram and LinkedIN if you think we’ll get along.