These are key questions. What's interesting is not the questions, but the answers. And in listening. Listening is itself an investment. What's important to your partner? Find a way to make that important to you.
I can speak those six questions in a few seconds. But I am listening to the answers, and to the associated streams of thought, attentively, for about 30 minutes.
We used the six questions approach for our first seven or so years. In the last 10 years, we actually ask the questions less frequently.
We are apart about 10 or 11 hours per day, 5 days a week. So we each have about 30 minutes to catch up on 10 hours.
But I find the biggest value in the weekends, when we're together most of the day. In that case, I can usually predict will want to talk about. But that doesn't make it boring. That gives me an excellent chance to fine-tune my understanding of her mind and emotions. The gap between what I expect she has been thinking about and what she was actually thinking about is an excellent education.
And she does the same with me.
Recall the baseline assertion: my relationship with my wife is the most important thing in my life.
I listen to people talk for hours at work, which is pretty important. Listening to my wife for 30 minutes is a no brainer for me.
Wow, so many assumptions there:
1) All they do in a given day is work
2) Their work is monotonous
3) These questions result in boring, factual answers (perhaps instead they lead to long, interesting conversations far away from the original topic)
Etc, etc. IMO, it's much more productive to take the time to think about reasons why something would work for somebody else rather than immediately dismiss what they do.
I like to say that one of my biggest advantages at work is that I have an intelligent, invested and attentive counselor at home. My wife gives me tons of excellent work-related feedback, because she sees things differently than I do. And that's an incredibly valuable thing.
Some ceremony led to highly consistent, timely communication. The latter is the goal, the former is just a tool.
I'm all about good communication but asking those exact six questions every evening would get old fast. Do the two of you have so little in common that all you have to talk about is your monotonous work day?
There is something to be said for having shared hobbies in a relationship (yes, also individual hobbies) if only to give you something to talk about. We talk politics extensively for one example.