Get to reality by asking on a scale

“How was your day?” “Fine.”

Or “Good.”

This tells you nothing. It’s just pleasantries. Which is fine, if you’re just making small talk.

But what if you really need to know? What if you’re asking “how’s the crucial project going”? Without anything to scale or anchor against, you’re likely to get some variation of “fine”, maybe with a lot more words to make it seem like a deeper answer than it actually is.

“On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is the worst you can imagine and 10 is the best day of your life, how was your day?”

Now you’re going to get some real information.