Most people seek to accomplish great things so that they can tell people about them at dinner instead of awkwardly nodding at others while thinking about what to say next. Somewhat successful people accomplish great things and tell about them at dinner, then feel awkward again and leave the dinner table early to go back to accomplishing great things and have new things to say.

Truly successful people realize that making oneself pleasant at dinner is a comprehensive set of skills—in  arousing interest, in telling jokes, in timely self-effacement, attentive listening and undying curiosity—that cannot be honed but through direct practice. They understand that to become a great dinner companion, it pays more to spend time making one's company richer than to wish it as a byproduct of time spent on outside projects. They reckon that investing in one's own company dominates investing in great things, unless one's company is less than great.

Michel de Montaigne was a very successful humanist thinker. He successfully brokered negotiations between two French kings and the Duc de Guise, who headed the pretty successful though ultimately defeated Catholic League, and built a very successful friendship with La Boétie, anticipating on the concept of bromance by more than 400 years. As a very successful person, Montaigne knew he'd better invest primarily in his own company than in eminent things around him. In Book 3, Chapter X of his Essays, he writes: 

"But against such affections as wholly carry me away from myself and fix me elsewhere, against those, I say, I oppose myself with my utmost power. 'Tis my opinion that a man should lend himself to others, and only give himself to himself. [...] If, sometimes, I have been put upon the management of other men's affairs, I have promised to take them in hand, but not into my lungs and liver; to take them upon me, not to incorporate them; to take pains, yes: to be impassioned about it, by no means; I have a care of them, but I will not sit upon them. I have enough to do to order and govern the domestic throng of those that I have in my own veins and bowels, without introducing a crowd of other men's affairs; and am sufficiently concerned about my own proper and natural business, without meddling with the concerns of others. Such as know how much they owe to themselves, and how many offices they are bound to of their own, find that nature has cut them out work enough of their own to keep them from being idle.''

Do like Michel de Montaigne: Invest in your own company.

Most people seek to make their conversation gripping by telling gossip that only people at the same floor in their company can be interested in. Somewhat successful people do it through witty puns that can appeal to a somewhat wider audience, but that ultimately only people in their walk of like can understand.

Truly successful people aim at being pleasant company to anyone, so they seek to be universally engaging. They realize that the audience for niche topics can only grow up to some point, so they go for topics that make it possible to connect with anyone. They understand that the fact that all topics can be made interesting is not a license to narrow themselves to a couple of obsessions but an invitation to broaden their interests.

Blaise Pascal was a very successful scientist. He invented probabilities, showed that nature does not abhor vacuum so much as it just simply does not care what vacuum thinks, and locked himself in his room to repair computers 300 years before the term nerd was even coined, which implies he first had to create the first computer in order to repair it. As a very successful person, Pascal realized that he could not blame others for not being interested in whatever nerdy topic he was interested in himself. Instead, he actively sought to broaden his interests towards subjects he could discuss with anyone. In his Thoughts, he writes:

"I have spent much time in the study of the abstract sciences; but the paucity of persons with whom you can communicate on such subjects disgusted me with them. When I began to study man, I saw that these abstract sciences are not suited to him, and that in diving into them, I wandered farther from my real object than those who knew them not, and I forgave them for not having attended to these things."

Do like Blaise Pascal: Focus on the conversations that can be scaled up.

When asked what is up, most people answer with whatever is up, regardless of whether what is up can make for a good conversation. Somewhat successful people do notice when their day is not good material and make up stories that did not happen instead.

Truly successful people reason backward, starting from the end goal. They anticipate that they will want to have a good response when asked what is up and organize their lives accordingly so that they only do things that make for good conversations.

Oscar Wilde was a very successful playwright. He wrote the play The Importance of Being Earnest, which in the Victorian area was a very successful quality to have. Because he was very successful, Oscar Wilde realized that the best way to be great company at dinner was to think ahead and to only do things that would make him good company. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, he writes:

"I should fancy, however, that murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.''

Do like Oscar Wilde: Keep the end in mind and do not end people's lives.

Most people behave at dinner based on the way they think people want them to behave. Somewhat successful people google what the best way to dine is and watch movies to find out. If they are European, they spend the night asking people whether they have read Pascal, because it is what Jean-Louis Trintignant does in My Night with Maude. If they live in the US, they tell stories about how they flew to Poland to practice the Stanislavsky method in the woods, because this is what Andre talks about during most of the movie My dinner with Andre.

Truly successful people develop their own unique way of being pleasant company. While they acknowledge that Françoise Fabian is mesmerizing in My Night with Maude, they understand that the essence of good companionship is that it is attached to an individuality and cannot be easily substituted.

Socrates was a very successful Greek philosopher. He started out Western philosophy when living in Athens, the most successful city-state of the Delian league in the Vth century BC, which is widely considered to be Athen's most successful century ever. In his book The Symposium, Plato, an almost equally successful Greek person, recounts the dinner party Agathon organized to celebrate his victory at the Dionysia of 416 BC. He tells how at that dinner Eryximachus suggested that all the guests should make a speech praising Eros, and how, like all other guests, Socrates accepted. But when his turn came, Socrates found in himself the strength to recognize that doing a speech like others had done was not being true to himself, and offered to do a speech in his own manner instead:

"And then I perceived how foolish I had been in consenting to take my turn with you in praising Eros, and saying that I too was a master of the art, when I really had no conception how anything ought to be praised.'

[...] Farewell then to such a strain: for I do not praise in that way; no, indeed, I cannot. But if you like to here the truth about Eros, I am ready to speak in my own manner, though I will not make myself ridiculous by entering into any rivalry with you. Say then, Phaedrus, whether you would like, to have the truth about Eros, spoken in any words and in any order which may happen to come into my mind at the time. Will that be agreeable to you?''

Do like Socrates: Talk about Eros in your own way.

Most people think of themselves as either a good or a bad dinner companion. They take whatever dinner skills they have as immutable. They dine at a fixed time and have a fixed dinner mindset. Somewhat successful people are ok with having dinner a bit later on Tuesdays because they have their calligraphy class on that day. But they still have a fixed dinner mindset.

Truly successful people have a growth dinner mindset. They understand that dining skills can be grown like the vegetables that are in their plates. They know that however naturally talented one may be at purposeful, compassionate and witty conversations, excellence in companionship cannot be achieved without spending grueling hours at the dinner table. They realize that great dining only comes with great work. So they dine hard.

Dining hard is demanding, because it requires spending less time on things that have low dinner impact. You cannot become great at dining if you have built a habit of staying late at work in the evening to get ahead of the pack. Most people find breaking such habits daunting, because work is enjoyable and brings a sense of purpose. But having the single-mindedness to break such habits and build new ones pays handsomely. You do not need to give up work, nor should you. But if you work more than is necessary to sustain yourself and cover your dinner expenses, your interests will shrink, your conversation will turn dry, and your company will become unpleasant to everyone outside the narrow set of your colleagues.

Bertrand Russell was a very successful logician. He laid out the foundations of modern logic and gave its name to the Russell paradox, which states that an axiomatic system cannot be very successful if it postulates unlimited comprehension. Because he was a very successful person, Bertrand Russell understood the risks of not putting in long hours in building the skills necessary to good dining. He also realized the geopolitical consequences of not doing so. Despite writing 50 years before Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms, he foresaw the risks of falling behind China. In The Conquest of Happiness, he writes:

"The art of general conversation, for example, brought to perfection in the French salons of the XVIIIth century, was still a living tradition forty years ago. It was a very exquisite art, bringing the highest faculties into play for the sake of something completely evanescent. But who in our age cares for anything so leisurely? In China the art still flourished in perfection ten years ago [...]’’

Do like Bertrand Russell: Dine hard so that we don't lose out to China.

To dine hard on a sustained basis though, you must prevent things from going down in flames. Most people actively seek to avoid burning dinner. Somewhat successful people seek to avoid dinner being even slightly overcooked.

Truly successful people not only avoid burning dinner, they avoid burning themselves out too. They keep their dinner agenda filled, but they turn down the one invitation that will push them to the brink and make them unable to attend future dinners. They are captivating and entertaining and delectable, but they do not risk their health for a laugh.

Even the most successful people are at risk of burning themselves out at dinner. Alcibiades was a very successful Greek general. During the Peloponnesian War, he served as a general for Athens, then for Athens's enemy Sparta, then for Athens and Sparta's common enemy Persia, making him somewhat untrustworthy but three times as successful. Yet, his desire to successfully entertain could backfire. In Plato's Symposium, when he bursts in Agathon's place uninvited and completely drunk and warns Agathon against dating Socrates by telling everyone about the night he invited Socrates at his place and Socrates did not try to make any move on him, although he makes the evening more enjoyable for everyone, he is doing so at the cost of his own mental balance.

"[...] and so without waiting to hear more I got up, and throwing my coat about him crept under his threadbare cloak, as the time of year was winter, and there I lay during the whole night having this wonderful monster in my arms. This again, Socrates, will not be denied by you. And yet, notwithstanding all, he was so superior to my solicitations, so contemptuous and derisive and disdainful of my beauty—which really, as I fancied, had some attractions—hear, O judges; for judges you shall be of the haughty virtue of Socrates—nothing more happened, but in the morning when I awoke (let all the gods and goddesses be my witnesses) I arose as from the couch of a father or an elder brother.''

Don't do like Alcibiades: Do not take this article's invitation to nurture the time you spend with the people you love as another opportunity for burnouts.

Most people wait for dinner invitations to arrive, rarely thinking of throwing a dinner party themselves. Somewhat successful people collect dinner invitations for years, then when they change places decide on throwing a housewarming party.

Truly successful people do their shares of organizing dinner parties, and then some more.

Jesus of Nazareth was a very successful prophet. He gave birth to Christianity, a religion that currently counts more than two billions believers, making it the most successful religion ever. As the son of God, he did all the things above:

-He invested in his own company, making his presence, and not the one of the prophets from the Old Testament, felt at all moments.

-He focused on universal topics such as loving one's neighbors, something that can appeal to everyone who has neighbors.

-He did not commit any murder.

-He came up with his own way of pleasing people at dinner, such as multiplying loaves and fishes at the Wedding at Cana.

-He dined hard, pushing himself and others to dine in occasions where most people saw no reason for dining, such as the return of the prodigal son.

-He did not burn himself out but instead died from crucifixion.

But he also took the lead in inviting people for dinner. Although he let the apostles prepare everything for his Last Supper, he is the one who told the apostles to go to a certain man and tell him they would celebrate Passover at that man's place.

Judas Iscariot was a much less successful person. Although he had been invited to the Last Supper by Jesus of Nazareth, he never returned the invitation. Instead, he went to the chief priests and asked what they were willing to give him to deliver Jesus over to them, and accepted thirty pieces of silver for doing that. Judas Iscariot may have thought that doing so would make him sound interesting, but he just ruined the thing for everyone. Ultimately, he created no religion, hung himself, and for that reason was never again invited by the other apostles, as Matthew 27:3-5 recounts:

"Then when Judas, who had betrayed Him, saw that He had been condemned, he felt remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, ``I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” But they said, “What is that to us? See to that yourself'' And he threw the pieces of silver into the temple sanctuary and departed; and he went away and hanged himself.''

Don't do like Judas: Keep your dinner partners alive so there can be more dinners.

Most people balk at the idea of dining of sliced bread and jam. They find it unhealthy and immature, and worry that being seen eating jam at dinner would reflect badly on them. Somewhat successful people confidently admit of having occasionally dined of a bowl of cereals when they were still in the 20s, but make sure people understand they are past such habits now.

Truly successful people do not see any issue with occasionally eating jam for dinner. They reason that if jam is good and has no long-term adverse effects as part of a balance diet when it is consumed for breakfast, then it is equally good when occasionally eaten at dinner. They do not care about being seen as childish. They do not care about what others think. They care about enjoying dinner.

John Maynard Keynes was a very successful economist. He gave his name to numerous ism with prefixes such as neo, post, and new, which is the metric of success in the social sciences. As a very successful person, he understood that eating jam is not only ok but even key to success. In his Economic Possibilities for our Grand-Children, which he wrote in 1930, he argued in favor of a future where jam-eating would be not only socially acceptable but socially valued. But he also foresaw the barriers that such a social change would encounter:

"All kinds of social customs and economic practices, affecting the distribution of wealth and of economic rewards and penalties, which we now maintain at all costs, however distasteful and unjust they may be in themselves, because they are tremendously useful in promoting the accumulation of capital, we shall then be free, at last, to discard. Of course there will still be many people with intense, unsatisfied purposiveness who will blindly pursue wealth—unless they can find some plausible substitute. But the rest of us will no longer be under any obligation to applaud and encourage them. For we shall inquire more curiously than is safe to-day into the true character of this "purposiveness" with which in varying degrees Nature has endowed almost all of us. For purposiveness means that we are more concerned with the remote future results of our actions than with their own quality or their immediate effects on our own environment. The "purposive" man is always trying to secure a spurious and delusive immortality for his acts by pushing his interest in them forward into time. He does not love his cat, but his cat’s kittens; nor, in truth, the kittens, but only the kittens' kittens, and so on forward forever to the end of cat-dom. For him jam is not jam unless it is a case of jam to-morrow and never jam to-day.''

Do like John Maynard Keynes: Do not take jam that won't be jam to be no jam.

Most people do not share desserts. They identify the dessert they prefer on the menu and order it for themselves. They do not see what is to gain in trading half a dessert that they enjoy more against half a dessert they enjoy less. They are trapped in zero-sum thinking. Somewhat successful people share desserts when there are two desserts they both like and find it difficult to choose between the two, like the panna cotta and the tiramisu at an Italian place. But they refuse to share desserts whenever they have a clear preference for one particular dessert.

Truly successful people value diversity in desserts, and realize that the possibility of sampling a bit of all desserts is a benefit for everyone. They think win-win.

Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin was a very successful chef, so successful that he became a cheese, the Brillat-Savarin. In his Physiology of Taste, he writes:

"You can become a cook, but you need to be born as a roaster.''

This does not really back the present advice, but dinner is too important a matter to be left to cooks.

Do like Brillat-Savarin: Dine so well that you become a cheese.