What to Talk About on a Phone Call When You Run Out of Things to Say

You get about eleven minutes in. How was your day, fine, how was yours, fine, work was work. And then the silence arrives, and one of you says "anyway" in a way that means neither of you knows what comes next.

This happens to people who like each other very much. It is worth saying that first, because the silence tends to get read as evidence of something, and it usually is not.

Why calls run out

Three things are working against you, and none of them is the relationship.

You are dividing the same life over more conversations. Talking every day does not generate more to talk about. A week of life spread over seven calls is a seventh as much news per call as one call a week. The silence is arithmetic.

There is nothing in the room. People sitting together are not producing a constant stream of interesting subjects. They are reacting to what is in front of them - the television, the dog, the thing on the counter. On a call, every subject has to be invented, by one of you, from nothing.

"How was your day" cannot be answered. It is too big. The honest answer is fourteen hours long, so the brain does what brains do with impossible questions and returns the cheapest thing that fits: fine.

Ask smaller questions

The single change that works is making the question small enough to actually have an answer.

• Not "how was work" - "what was the most annoying thing that happened today"
• Not "what did you do" - "what did you eat, and was it any good"
• Not "how are you feeling" - "what is the thing you are quietly dreading this week"
• Not "anything new" - "who did you talk to today who was not me"

Notice that all of these have a specific, findable answer. That is the whole trick. A big question makes someone summarise; a small one makes them tell a story.

Have a couple of rituals

A ritual is a question you always ask, which sounds boring and is not. Its value is that neither of you has to think of it.

• High and low. Best moment of the day, worst moment. Two minutes, works forever.
• Rate the day out of ten - and justify it. The number is nothing. The justification is the conversation.
• One thing you learned. Anything. A fact, a word, something about a colleague.
• What are you looking forward to. Even if the honest answer is Thursday.

Do something instead of finding a subject

This is the part most advice misses. When a call is flat, the instinct is to search harder for a topic - and searching harder is exactly what makes the pause feel like work.

Put something in front of both of you instead:

• Play something. TalkSibi opens in a browser on both phones - you send a four-letter code and you are on the same board while you stay on the call. Word games, guessing games, a team game built on one-word clues. Free, and no sign-up to try it.
• Watch the same thing. Count down, press play together, leave the line open, talk when there is something to say.
• Cook the same recipe. Two kitchens, one phone propped against a mug. An hour goes by without either of you trying.
• Work on the call in silence. No talking. Just an open line while you each get on with something. This is what people who live together actually do most evenings.

If you are calling to practise a language

The problem doubles. You are searching for a subject and for the words, at the same time, and it is why so many language exchange calls die in week two after both people have run out of ways to say hello.

A game solves it more completely here than anywhere else, because the words you need are decided by the game rather than by you. You are not performing a conversation - you are trying to make somebody guess a word, and the language is just the tool you reach for. TalkSibi is built specifically around this: live voice rooms where a word game is already running, with captions on screen so you can follow a conversation that is still slightly too fast for you.

Let some of it be quiet

Silence on a call feels like failure because you cannot see the other person being comfortable. You can only hear nothing, which sounds the same as being bored.

Say it out loud once - "I am happy just being on the line" - and a surprising amount of the pressure goes. Long calls between people who know each other well are mostly not talking. That is not the call going wrong. That is what it is for.

Common questions

Why do I run out of things to say on the phone but not in person?

Because in person you are reacting to a shared environment and most of what you say is prompted by something you can both see. On a call there is nothing to react to, so every subject has to be generated deliberately.

Is it a bad sign if we have nothing to talk about?

Usually not. It is far more often a sign that you are speaking very often, which leaves less accumulated news per conversation. It becomes a problem only when the silence feels tense rather than easy.

What should I do instead of forcing conversation?

Do something together over the call - a game, the same film, the same recipe, or nothing at all with the line open. Shared activity produces conversation as a side effect, which is the opposite of how people usually try to fix a quiet call.

Try TalkSibi free - it opens in a browser, and you can have a game running in about thirty seconds.