The average American hasn’t made one new friend in the last five years.[1] But the price we pay for giving up is just too high. As we age, research shows that we get more isolated from the people around us.[2] We feel more lonely, and have a harder time making close friends. Nearly half of Americans say they feel alone or left out most of the time. One in four Americans don’t feel like there’s anyone who really understands them.[3] The loneliness and isolation epidemic flies under the radar, damaging our health and wellbeing every step of the way. Loneliness and isolation wreak havoc on our internal systems: shortening our lifespan and increasing our chances of a multitude of health problems.[4] According to former Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy, loneliness puts as much stress on our body as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day.[5] I believe that the experience of community and human connection are as important to our health and well-being as having access to clean air, water, and food. We can live in a vacuum of isolation or a web of connection; either situation will significantly impact how we live our lives and how much happiness, health, and fulfillment we experience along the way.
- Location 101
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Cultivating friendship is like nurturing a garden. You clear a patch of land, prepare the beds, and assess which seeds and plants are the best fit for the location and season. You make sure that you’ll have the right amount of water, soil, and light. You plant your favorite seeds. And then you invest time and energy into caring for these newly growing things. As they send out shoots and start growing, you hope like hell that you don’t forget to water them or get struck with a heat spell—either of which could kick the life out of these baby sprouts and leave you back where you started with bare earth and a handful of tiny wishes.
- Location 113
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Based on my experiences and those of the people I spoke to, I realized that adult friendship has a user experience problem. Despite having more ways to meet and keep in contact with friends near and far, many people have fewer close friends and less fulfilling experiences of friendship than ever before. Intrigued, I threw myself into understanding this conundrum. I used a range of methods to help me…
- Location 121
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- [note::Interesting framing (friendship is a UX problem)! This makes me more excited to read this book.]

I used four types of qualitative research to investigate this problem: generative (defining the problem), descriptive (describing the problem), causal (figuring out what causes the problem) and evaluative (identifying what solutions exist and how successful they are). To answer these questions, I conducted one-on-one interviews, group discussions, telephone interviews, and email interviews. I spoke to hundreds of people about this topic over the last five years, and surveyed sixty-five of them in depth. I bolstered my qualitative research efforts with an extensive literature review of quantitative studies, as well as books and articles. I pored over existing research about friendship, happiness, loneliness, health, technology, and the effect of cities and modern life on interpersonal relationships. In doing so, I was able to learn about patterns of human connection and disconnection for adults living in cities, logged from as far back as 1938 to as recently as 2019. I’ve attempted to summarize academic findings while also retaining the heart, humanity, and emotion that are at the core of this topic. To create a manageable scope, I…
- Location 124
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- [note::Love this. Makes me eager to dive in.]

For example, it was really hard for me to form durable friendships during my first few years in the Bay Area; I was also frustrated by the neverending surface-level chit-chat at every social gathering I went to. So I created an experimental gathering called Better than Small Talk. I don’t ascribe to the belief that people need weeks or months of time to arbitrarily pass before they can move from superficial conversation to topics that are deeper, more thoughtful, or more personal. It’s absolutely possible to cut through the chit-chat and connect authentically more quickly. I know it’s possible because I’ve seen it happen over and over again.
- Location 145
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- [note::Ugh, YES. As my brother has consistently pointed out, I frequently ask questions that try to get to the core of a person's being - how they found themselves here in life, what motivates/excites them, etc.]

One of my favorite activities from my time working for Power of Hope was called Milling. You take a room full of people and instruct them to move around the room—sometimes in creative ways like pretending to walk through waist-deep molasses or imagining that they’re tiptoeing through the house to sneak out at midnight. Periodically we’d interrupt and pair people off to answer questions. We’d ask questions that ignite the imagination and invite people to share more about themselves, like: What’s something you gave up to be here tonight, and something you’re looking forward to? What’s something you love about where you live and something you’d change? If you had a microphone and the whole world was listening, what would you say?
- Location 154
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I’m not the only one who’s noticed this social deficit and tried to help fix it. In my research during this book, I learned about a multitude of other groups, organizations, and games that exist to help people access deep, meaningful conversation with the people around them. For example: The Ungame was invented in 1972, Conversation Cafe has been worldwide for over a decade, Free Intelligent Conversation is held in public spaces nationwide, Big Talk cards are available all over the world, Chatty Cafe is held in the U.K., End Small Talk (which I did one cross-continent collaboration event with) is held in Dubai, Tea with Strangers is held nationwide. In late 2019 even famous behavioral economist Dan Ariely started selling a deck of No Small Talk cards on his lab’s website. Additionally, there are hundreds if not thousands of meetups that invite people to make new friends via the practice of authentic conversation.
- Location 177
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This quiet desperation doesn’t even have a name, but a great many of us have felt it before. I call it platonic longing. This book is for everyone who has ever known this quiet ache:
- Location 187
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When songwriter Bill Withers felt nostalgic after moving to Los Angeles and found himself missing the strong connections and community spirit of his tiny hometown in West Virginia, he didn’t write a song called “I’ve Been Really Busy” or “Maybe We Can Catch Up Next Week.” No, Withers wrote the hit song “Lean On Me.”[1] Do you know who you can lean on?
- Location 235
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- [note::Who can I lean on? I don't have a satisfying answer to this question.]

You may have heard by now, perhaps a disappointing number of times already, that loneliness and social isolation are on the rise. They’re also correlated with having high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, poor cognitive functions, depression, personality disorders, dementia, and suicide.[2] A 2018 study by Cigna on loneliness found that: 46 percent of Americans report feeling lonely some or all of the time One in four Americans feel like there’s no one they can talk to, or like there’s no one who understands them One in five Americans report that they rarely or never feel close to people[3]
- Location 238
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Meaningful friendships aren’t just fun. They’ve also been shown to improve your health, increase your capacity to endure pain,[6] and they can literally help you live longer.[7] To help people live full, healthy, long lives, doctors might need to start handing out prescriptions for friend time. I’m not kidding. The UK’s Minister of Loneliness already recommends that Britain’s doctors utilize more social prescribing, which is the act of referring patients to non-medical wellbeing interventions such as art classes, gardening clubs, and cooking classes.[8] In some cases, social prescribing works just as well as pharmaceuticals when it comes to alleviating patients’ pain and suffering.[9] Just watch. Prescriptions for quality time with friends is coming next.
- Location 249
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- [note::Friend/social time is a requirement for optimal overall health]

The problem is that most cities were not designed to facilitate the friendship and happiness of their residents. In many cases, the physical layout, zoning laws, modes of transportation, and rules governing public spaces are the absolute opposite of what people need in order to experience the health, happiness, autonomy, and interactions that would benefit them the most.[12] As a result, while city life can be exciting and energizing, it can also be exhausting and lonesome.
- Location 260
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One notable record of this phenomenon comes from 1938 when the father of modern day sociology, Louis Wirth, attempted to create a sociological definition of the city. Cities overtook rural areas as the primary address for Americans around 1920 but no one had yet attempted to fully document what the impact of this change meant for people’s lives. Wirth’s report came back peppered with words and phrases like impersonal, … anonymity, … superficiality,… highly fractionalized, … social disorganization in technological society,…The bonds of kinship, of neighborliness, are likely to be absent, … And last but not least: Frequent close physical contact coupled with great social distance accentuates the reserve of unattached individuals toward one another and, unless compensated for by other opportunities for response, give rise to loneliness.[13] Wirth’s report is easy to find online, and reading it is incredibly cathartic. The way we relate to each other in big American cities hasn’t changed a lot in eighty-one years. So if you’ve been feeling frustrated or lonely or like it’s hard to connect with people in your city, take some solace in the fact that you aren’t alone. Big city life has been delivering the paradoxical experience of feeling crowded-yet-alienated for a very long time.
- Location 265
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- [note::Interesting - I would have thought the opposite.
I guess proximity, on average, doesn't necesarily give rise to greater companionship (?)]

Turning new acquaintances into solid friends can be especially tough. When I tried to figure out what made that transformation so hard for me, I realized what was getting in the way: the Big Buts. We all have a few that pop up frequently or impact us the most. Which ones are yours? Go on, check ’em off:
- Location 286
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I’d rather use my free time on personal development pursuits. I’d rather use my free time to exercise and get in shape. I’d rather use my free time to develop myself professionally and build my career. I’d rather use my free time to just relax alone. I have a side hustle or passion project that…
- Location 289
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I work a lot, probably too much, but I don’t feel like I can change this. I have long commutes that eat into my free time. I’m more focused on reaching for success in my career. I have too many financial demands. I don’t have the disposable income to spend on frivolous fun. I finally make enough money to have disposable income and I want to spend it on things like travel that don’t usually result in…
- Location 294
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I need time alone to recharge. I’ve been through some challenges in life so I have more walls to break through before I can open up and be vulnerable with new people that I meet. I don’t value friendship as much at this stage of my life. I don’t want to go out as much as I did before. It’s too tiring. I realized that I’m an introvert. Instead of burning myself out socializing, I’m making up for years of lost alone time. I hardly have enough time to keep up with my friends who live in other cities, so how can I also be there for friends locally? I’m too harsh on myself when I think about how I’ve performed in past social interactions, which makes me feel more anxious about hanging out with people in the future. I’m more guarded, less trusting, and more skeptical about people’s intentions. When someone asks to hang out more than twice a month, I start to worry that they’re some kind of stalker. I don’t trust strangers. I’m unnerved when someone I don’t know speaks to me. I don’t feel comfortable in uncurated interactions where unexpected things…
- Location 301
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Everybody else moves too much. I move too much. I moved to a place where nobody knows me. I moved here from really far away and communicating with people is really different here. It’s like I’m on another planet. I live too far away from my friends in this city, so we rarely cross paths spontaneously, and trying to schedule time together is harder than getting a doctor’s appointment. I…
- Location 315
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I spend most of my time dating because I’m looking for a romantic partner. I choose to spend most of my free time with my partner. I’m busy caring for one or more babies. I’m busy caring for and raising my child/children. I’m busy caring for aging parents. I’ve become socially isolated via marriage or divorce. Close family members or friends have passed away and that trauma has…
- Location 321
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I treat social media as the default place to catch up with friends, instead of in real life. It’s hard to get someone new to meet up face to face, so we just interact online. I don’t have time for a new friend because I already have 2,587 friends…
- Location 328
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This back and forth is like arguing about air pollution in the past compared to now. Some say the air is horrible now because of cars and industry, and some say that the air was worse in the past because of coal-burning locomotives and factories. In either case, what’s a good amount of pollution to have in the air? None. I’m not here to argue about when times were better or worse. The fact is, loneliness is the emotional pollution of our time, and it’s all around us.
- Location 337
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- [note::Love this analogy - arguing about differences in lived experience between generations is not useful unless it is used to provide insight into understanding or improving the current state of affairs.]

In a study called “How Many Hours Does It Take to Make a Friend,” Dr. Jeffrey Hall, a professor at the University of Kansas, found that it takes ninety to 200 hours to turn a stranger or acquaintance into a close friend.[1] This was under typical undergrad circumstances in which the study participants had abundant free time, similar schedules, and lived in close proximity to each other. A key factor in the students’ success forming new friends was having a large quantity of interactions. When I look back at my life, that seems to be true.
- Location 358
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I agree that the quantity of time spent together matters—it matters a lot. But I don’t believe it’s the only way. As a result of my own successful experiments bringing meaningful connection into the lives of busy adults who need and want friends, I firmly believe that a robust immersion in quality connection marked by vulnerability, self-disclosure, and empathetic listening, experienced in a concentrated form, can fast-track a friendship into existence in a shorter amount of time. I call this hydroponic friendship. In the absence of abundant soil (aka abundant time), nutrients (aka deeply-enriching, immersive experiences of connection) can be supplied to the plant (aka people) in such a way that growth (aka friendship) can fully blossom and thrive.
- Location 367
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Patterns began to emerge, revealing why some friendships falter and others thrive. I have identified a number of ingredients that are core to the creation and continuation of quality friendships. I call them the Seeds of Connection: proximity, frequency, compatibility and commitment. The more you cultivate these critical components in burgeoning or existing friendships, the greater your likelihood of success.
- Location 393
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If you think living nearby doesn’t matter, consider this: As reported in the book Who’s Your City, researchers at the University of London found that if a person moves away from a place where they have daily face-to-face interactions with friends and family, they will have to earn an extra $133,000 to make up for the unhappiness and social disconnection that their relocation causes.[2]
- Location 404
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- [note::Wow - this goes to show how huge the true cost of moving is]

Another important aspect of proximity is whether you and your potential friends are both new in town or long-term locals. For simplicity, let’s use the terms newcomers and long-termers. Often, long-termers are not open to newcomers, preferring to spend their time and energy with other long-termers who they know will be sticking around. Forming and maintaining friendships is a big investment of time and energy. If a newcomer is going to skip town in six months and leave the long-termers behind with no one to hang out with, the long-termers may think that building a friendship with them is a waste of time and effort. On the flip side, newcomers tend to make easy connections with other newcomers because of the shared experience of being in a new environment and interested in discovering their new surroundings.
- Location 408
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Another important thing to remember about proximity: friendship is more than a matter of convenience. ... But if your friendships are going to be real, then your connection to them should continue to exist even if they move across town, or across the planet. Enduring friendship goes beyond zip codes.
- Location 418
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Do the proximity assessment below to figure out where and with whom you want to cultivate better friendship. Then follow up with the Try It suggestions. Proximity Assessment Get your journal and create the following lists: Friends who live less than 15 minutes away Specify by: walking, biking, or driving Friends who live 20-60 minutes away Specify by: walking, biking, or driving Friends who live three or more hours away Specify by: car, bus, train, or airplane Questions for reflection Where do most of your close friends live in proximity relative to you? Which list are you most and least satisfied by? Does seeing the distance between you and your friends make you want to deepen any relationships with the people who are nearby? Describe an ideal weekend in your life if you could walk to ten friends in under ten minutes?
- Location 426
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- [note::!action]

Get your journal and create the following lists: Friends who live less than 15 minutes away Specify by: walking, biking, or driving Friends who live 20-60 minutes away Specify by: walking, biking, or driving Friends who live three or more hours away Specify by: car, bus, train, or airplane
- Location 429
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Questions for reflection
- Location 433
- h4,

Where do most of your close friends live in proximity relative to you? Which list are you most and least satisfied by? Does seeing the distance between you and your friends make you want to deepen any relationships with the people who are nearby? Describe an ideal weekend in your life if you could walk to ten friends in under ten minutes?
- Location 434
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There are simple things you can do to create a more friendly neighborhood, and to make friends with the people in your neighborhood. Where to start: Look people in the eye when you pass on the sidewalk. Smile at them and say hello. Introduce yourself to new people who move into the area; this can be in person or via a nice note dropped in their mailbox. Sit outside and chat with people when they pass. If your neighbor has a nice garden, talk to them about it. Hold a quarterly neighbor party where you invite neighbors to come over and get to know one another. If once per season feels like too much, then aim for a couple times a year. If your place feels too small, hold it outside on the stoop, driveway, sidewalk, or hallway.
- Location 440
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- [note::!action]

Pick a local coffee shop that has room for several people to sit together comfortably and chat at a conversational volume. Drop off invitations at your neighbors’ doors inviting them to a neighborhood social at that location for two hours on a Saturday afternoon. You don’t even have to write your name on the invitations if you want it to feel mysterious and a little magical, but signing the invite is a good way to build community. It lets people know that you’re open to being reached out to as well. You might find yourself on the receiving end of other invitations to dinners, game nights, movie nights, and extra baked goods. Who wouldn’t like a little more of that?
- Location 448
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- [note::!action]

For inspiration, check out teawithstrangers.com, which has tips for putting together successful gatherings like this.
- Location 453
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- [note::!action]

The spark of a new friendship fizzles with every passing day apart. If it takes several weeks and several dozen text messages to get a slot in someone’s calendar, your momentum could evaporate. If you had brunch in March and don’t hang out again until Labor Day, it might be too late for a real friendship to take root.
- Location 463
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Returning to Dr. Hall’s research, he found that you could become “good friends” if you spend 120-160 hours together over three weeks, and “best friends” if you spend 200 hours together over six weeks. On the flip side, he found that if more than four months pass after your initial meeting, then a real friendship is unlikely to ever fully form.[1] Knowing that college students were the test subjects, how would you adapt those time frames to the constraints of your life as a working adult?
- Location 468
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She relies on people’s tendency to be drawn to novelty as a way to increase the depth of her new friendships quickly. “Whenever I meet like-minded people and we feel an instant connection, there’s a sense of urgency in that. So we pull out our calendars and make plans for sometime within the next week,” she told me. “With my long-term friends there’s no sense of urgency, and a lot of them don’t reach out to me because they perceive me as someone who’s really busy. With a new acquaintance, I can just say ‘talk to you tomorrow.’” From there, she quickly invites her new friends into the ongoing hobbies that are already a big part of her life: tennis, playing music, and making videos.[2]
- Location 474
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Strong friendships often rely on routine to weave the fabric of your lives together. This becomes even more important as we age. Researchers at Michigan State University have found that for older adults, maintaining fewer high-quality friendships is more important than having many friends. Having close friendships even outperforms having positive relationships with family members, when it comes to overall emotional and physical wellbeing.[3]
- Location 486
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Get your journal and create the following lists: Friends you spend time with every week Friends you spend time with every month Friends you spend time with every few months or seasonally Friends you spend time with once or twice a year
- Location 508
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Questions for reflection
- Location 512
- h4,

How do you feel about the frequency with which you see your favorite friends? Which people do you wish you saw more frequently? What would be your favorite ways to increase your frequency with some of the people you listed? How would your life be different if you could spend time with your favorite friends as frequently as you wanted?
- Location 512
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Pick two friends who you want to be closer with. Ask if they’re up for increasing the frequency in your friendship. This doesn’t have to mean always getting together face to face, although that’s ideal. If they say yes, do whatever it takes to increase the frequency of your interactions. If you get lunch together once a month, go twice. If you normally talk on the phone once a week, spend a month talking twice a week, even if one of those calls is just ten minutes long. If you work out together once a week, throw some extra motivational texts into your weekly communication. You’re going for quantity here. Try touchpoints that are easy to accomplish. See how more of a good thing can be wonderful.
- Location 517
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- [note::!action]

It’s funny to me how many of us do the same kinds of errands every week as adults, but how infrequently we do them together. See which errands and tasks of yours can be done in the same time and place as your friends who have to do the same tasks. Ask your friends if they want to do them together. Spending time with friends doesn’t have to come at the cost of accomplishing adult responsibilities—combining the two can actually make each task more fun and fulfilling.
- Location 526
-
- [note::Wow - I've never considered this.]

See which errands and tasks of yours can be done in the same time and place as your friends who have to do the same tasks. Ask your friends if they want to do them together. Spending time with friends doesn’t have to come at the cost of accomplishing adult responsibilities—combining the two can actually make each task more fun and fulfilling.
- Location 527
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- [note::Wow - I've never considered this.]

In friendship, there are many ways in which we can be compatible or incompatible. The five main types of compatibility I’ve observed are: chemistry, communication style, lifestyle, socializing style, and values. Each serves as a possible point for connection or disconnection.
- Location 536
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We communicate in so many ways—verbally, nonverbally, and digitally—and each of these methods holds a mix of ways that we can be compatible or incompatible. We can speak in so many ways: quickly or slowly, bluntly or diplomatically, loudly or quietly. We may be passive or direct, formal or slangy, earnest or sarcastic, vulnerable or guarded. We might physically share our thoughts in waggled eyebrows, fist pumps, high fives, and hugs, or we might sit as still and placid as a lake at dawn. We may excitedly interrupt each other every few words, or we may listen quietly and allow roomy pauses to punctuate our speech. We can blow up each other’s phones with strings of emoji, bitmoji, goofy gifs, and chapter length updates about everything happening in our lives. Or we might reply with one-word questions and answers that trickle out slowly over the course of several days. There’s no right or wrong way to do any of this. What matters is that when you and your friends are keeping in touch, your communication styles pull you closer instead of driving you bananas.
- Location 546
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- [note::This is important to keep in mind - there is no right or wrong way to communicate. The only thing that matters is whether your method and frequency of communication is satisfactory to both parties.]

At the very least, hearing about the different things your friend is into hopefully won’t make you think, “Wow, that sounds…
- Location 559
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- [note::Relatable - I can be pretty judgemental when it comes to how other people spend their time. I feel like there are lots of people I just don't jive with because they don't seem have an interest in doing what I consider to be "cool things" with their life, whether that be helping others, creating innovative technology, or learning more about themselves or the world around them.
It's possible I might be subconsciously signaling this to others when I interact with them - I'd like to be more self-aware when it comes to this.
!action]

Lifestyle compatibility only really matters if activity-sharing is a goal of both people. For example, I don’t really like hiking. I have some friends who do. After being invited on one too many hiking excursions, I had to tell a couple of them, “Hey, so, I love nature but hate hiking. I don’t want you to think that I don’t want to hang out with you because I never say yes when you invite me to go on your 10-mile uphill hikes in the hot sun. So,…
- Location 561
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The more honest we are about our differences and expectations, the less we’ll…
- Location 564
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The size of your friend circle and how you opt to engage with it is what I refer to as your socializing style. It helps to be on the same page with your friends about how many friendships you are each trying to maintain. If you only want to have two or three close friends who you spend most of your free time with, but your friend wants to be a social butterfly with several dozen “close” friends, they probably…
- Location 566
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Recently, I faced the opposite situation. I realized that I was trying to maintain too many face-to-face friendships in my local area. I didn’t have the bandwidth to fit a newer acquaintance into my life, and I felt guilty turning down her invitations. So I just told her: “I have to be honest with you and admit that I’m stretched too thin. I’m not able to give each of my friends the attention they deserve, including you. I am realizing that I can only maintain a smaller social circle and so I need to take a step back. I wanted to let you know because I want to be fair to you, and so you can focus your energy on folks who have more availability to hang out with the wonderful person that you are.” It was hard to say, but it took a huge weight off my shoulders. She was gracious about it and said she…
- Location 569
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Similarly, it helps to be on the same page about what hangout styles work for you both. If you crave quiet one-on-one time and your friend only wants to hang out at house parties and festivals, that’s probably not gonna work out. Vary your hangout formats to…
- Location 577
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Friendships provide a safe place to be vulnerable, uncomfortable, ask “stupid questions,” and genuinely contribute to each other’s development, empathy, and understanding. These are friendships that live outside of the echo chambers and filter bubbles where we just have our own thoughts and experiences reflected back to us. I firmly believe that the world would be a better place if each person had at least two strong friendships with people who are remarkably different from them.
- Location 599
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- [note::I think I could make a better effort to make friends with people outside my typical social sphere.
In that realm, I'd like to update my Bumble profile to be more explicit about what I'm looking to get out of friendship (e.g. "I'd like to make friends with people who expand my worldview, particularly those with different lives experience than my own")
!action]

To be a good friend, you need to know who you are as a friend and what you’re looking for in your friendships.
- Location 604
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All of the compatibility types exist on a spectrum, so it’s useful to know where you sit on that spectrum and where your friends do, too. Head over to weshouldgettogether.com/compatibility and download the free compatibility assessment worksheets. There’s no right or wrong answers — they’re just a handy way to help you know yourself better, and to help you and your friends know each other better. You and your friends can even complete the worksheets together and then compare notes.
- Location 606
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- [note::!action]

Peak friendship is getting a platonic love letter from a friend. Take some time and write down what you appreciate about your friend so much. Don’t be shy about it. Be descriptive. Be effusive. Tell them what you love about them and why. Deliver it any way you know would delight them. A text message trailed by a dozen silly bitmoji? A flyer stapled to the telephone pole in front of their apartment? A handwritten letter via snail mail? A tweet tagging everyone you both know? A guitar serenade in front of all your mutual friends at happy hour? Celebrate the compatibility you share because stumbling upon it is special and rare.
- Location 612
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- [note::!action]

If you want to make a new friend while in pursuit of bridging divides in our society, check out the project Hi From The Other Side which aims to create a more compassionate world by getting people who are politically different from each other to connect as friends on a human to human level.[4]
- Location 625
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- [note::!action]

Whether a friendship is one day old or has been grooving for forty years, commitment is the mutual investment that powers the train and keeps it on the tracks. It’s demonstrated through dedicated action and it’s based on what you do, not what you say.
- Location 633
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We show our commitment through five core behaviors: openness, caring, trust, dedication, and reciprocity. Each of these components fortifies the depth and strength of quality friendships.
- Location 635
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No amount of “I really like you too’s” will convince someone that you want to be friends if you don’t take actions to make time and space for them in your life. When ... You show your openness when you free up space in your calendar and life to incorporate the other person. It is making space for them physically and emotionally.
- Location 638
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- [note::I don't allocate enough effort towards this]

Too often we forfeit depth in our conversations and replace it with “catching up,” where the whole point of the conversation is to update each other about what occurred during the weeks or months in between. This can become more of an IRL news feed than an experience of real bonding. Being emotionally open requires that you move beyond a bullet list of headlines and reveal who you really are.
- Location 643
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You can tell that you really care about someone (and that they really care about you) when you’re excited about them, believe in them, and are pumped for the things they’re pumped about. Caring is evident when you’re there for each other as you reach for new heights or struggle through life’s challenges. People who care about each other will take the time to thoughtfully challenge each other when they see a way that the other person can grow or improve.
- Location 650
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Caring can be as small as a “You got this!” text message sent the morning of your friend’s job interview, or by being at their side during a crisis.
- Location 653
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Andrea Bonoir, Ph.D. and author of The Friendship Fix, has written that trust is built when we have the opportunity to let someone down—but we don’t.[3]
- Location 664
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- [note::Interesting framing - being responsible means that other people trust you to not let them down]

You show your dedication when you take action. Inadequate follow-through is one of the biggest friendship-related frustrations that people deal with. Sometimes it seems like we’re in a famine of follow-through. In my friendship survey, a lack of dedication was named as the second biggest reason why it’s hard to make and maintain friendships. Flakiness—either the other person’s or one’s own—gets in the way of establishing closeness.
- Location 673
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- [note::Lack of dedication in relationships is a positive feedback loop. The less dedicated more flaky one comes across, the more unwilling others are to demonstrate dedicated/non-flaky behavior.
To stop this cycle, you must be willing to demonstrate dedication to your relationships and accept the risk of rejection even when the other party has not demonstrated their own level of dedication.]

I tried to chalk it up as a fluke, but I’ve since learned that this is ridiculously common. People will RSVP Yes, then vanish like yesterday’s Snapchat messages. The prevalence of this behavior makes the act of showing up that much more powerful. There are many ways to demonstrate your dedication to your friends. For starters, show up when you say you will. Remember the details of their lives. Call them on their birthdays, after job interviews, and when you know they’re going through nerve-wracking trials and tribulations. Or on any old regular day, just let them know that they matter to you. If your memory is bad, then set a recurring reminder in your phone to check in on your friends. It doesn’t matter how you remember to do it, what matters is that you do it.
- Location 682
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There are many ways to demonstrate your dedication to your friends. For starters, show up when you say you will. Remember the details of their lives. Call them on their birthdays, after job interviews, and when you know they’re going through nerve-wracking trials and tribulations.
- Location 684
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Real friendship goes both ways. It doesn’t mean that we have to offer each other identical invitations at an identical pace, trading interactions and favors like we’re bartering on the open market. Friendship isn’t a transaction. But…
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Gary Chapman’s “5 Love Languages” doesn’t only work for romantic relationships—it offers excellent tools to put into…
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Which of your friends seems as committed to you as you are to them? Or rather, which of their specific actions make their commitment evident? Keep in mind, this is all about how you feel, not how someone else might want to be seen or how they’d justify their behavior. Grab your journal and make a list of the things your friends do that give you the feeling of being valued and connected. Then list the things that you do to demonstrate your commitment to your friends. Are there things you can do more of? Have you ever asked a friend what actions they appreciate the most as a demonstration of caring and dedication? How can you show up as a better friend? Meditate on…
- Location 696
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- [note::!action]

Think about the people who you’d like to have a closer friendship with. Look in all areas of your life: friends near and far in your current city, work friends, the people you bump into in the places where you spend your free time, long-distance pals, or those from your past. Write their names on a piece of paper. Write down the excuses that have held you back from being closer to them, and what you can do to overcome those obstacles in the future. Then, open up and reach out. It might take some courage to let existing…
- Location 705
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- [note::!action]

Check out weshouldgettogether.com/seedsofconnection for tips on identifying…
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When dating, it’s normal to ask someone what they’re looking for in a relationship, and to have an answer to that question yourself. It’s equally compassionate and efficient to be up front in the process of making friends. We usually spend more time describing what we want to share (e.g. hiking, happy hours, movie nights) than we spend describing how we want to share it. If you go to a meetup to make new friends, practice describing who you are and what you’re looking for in friendship. An example: “Hi, I’m ____. I moved here a couple years ago and plan to stay for at least a few more. I’m looking to make a couple close friends who live less than twenty minutes away and who are also staying in town for a few more years. It’s important to me to hang out in person once every week or two. My ideal friend would be someone trustworthy who is into personal growth, and a good…
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- [note::This is a great starting off point for my Bumble profile revamp
!action]

Sure, you can take the tween’s way out and ghost the other person, letting their texts go unanswered and disingenuously saying “yeah, I’d love to hang out” while you’re thinking “never gonna…
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- [note::I'm guilty of doing this with Kevin :(]

This stuff matters. Research shows that positive social relationships add years to your life and keep you healthier while you live it.[4] Turning down friendships just because we don’t expect to stay in our current cities forever is like saying, “No thanks, I prefer to die early.” Why rob yourself of the benefits of human connection, however fleeting?
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What if, when it came to friendship, we treated every new address as if it were our last? What if we opted for high-intensity short-term friendships where, instead of deciding it’s not worth it, we said, “We’re only going to be here for a minute, so let’s make it amazing.”
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Pick two people that you see on a regular basis and who seem pretty friendly: they can be people who commute on public transit on the same schedule that you do, or neighbors in your apartment or on your block. The next couple times you see them, strike up a conversation. Introduce yourself if you haven’t before. Ask how they like living in the neighborhood, or if they have made friends with other neighbors in the area. Let them know that you’ve been trying to get to know more people in the building/neighborhood and ask if they want to go for a walk or hang out sometime. (If none of these prompts feel comfortable, then by all means, say what feels natural to you.) It’s no guarantee that every person you meet will become your new BFF, but even if it doesn’t work out, at least you’ll both up feeling more like friendly neighbors and less like total strangers.
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- [note::!action]

Do you have a couple of friends at work that you really like but haven’t hung out with outside of work yet? Go ahead and ask them if they want to get together. The easiest times are likely to be right before or right after you’re both going to be at work since you know that you’re going to be near the same location at the same time. Or take it a step further and make plans to do something together on a non-work day. When you make plans, follow through. And when you hang out, don’t just talk about work-related gossip. Get to know each other as people who have entire lives and identities beyond your roles at work. Grab a few conversation starters from the list at the back of this book to kick things off and see where the conversation takes you.
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- [note::!action]

Embrace the power of a pulling together a small group and trying various experience experiments. Remember that one of the best things you can do to ensure success is to pick an unusual activity that you and your friends haven’t done before. Pull together: Someone you know well Someone you know a little bit Someone you barely know at all but really like Then pick an unconventional activity to do together: Take the strangest cooking class you can find Go to an exhibit for an unfamiliar artist Attend a lecture by an unfamiliar speaker on an unusual topic at an unfamiliar place Go to an art class or workshop that’s new for all of you, like pinhole camera making, ceramics, puppet-making, screen-printing or glass-blowing Be a spectator at a game that none of you is familiar with Go to a meetup for something you’ve never heard of Get off the train somewhere you’ve never been and take a neighborhood discovery walk Go to a concert for a band none of you has seen live before Take a dance class that none of you have tried before, e.g. Afrobeat, Bhangra, Pole, Zydeco Volunteer together to help an organization that none of you are familiar with Visit a music shop and play around on unusual instruments Go to a protest or demonstration, especially if you’ve never attended one before Check out a festival or convention that is unlike any you’ve ever been to before, e.g. AlienCon, Sand Sculpture Competition, Pun-Off Competition, Tattoo Convention, Tiny Living Festival, etc.
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- [note::!action]

stay at home more with our closest friends. It’s the same reason why I think we should stay home more often with our not-yet-close friends who we want to be closer to. When you’re somewhere you feel at ease, you put others at ease, and when you’re both at ease, it’s easy to connect in more authentic ways. Inviting someone in is literally and figuratively inviting them in.
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If you never invite someone into the spaces that are a reflection of who you truly are, like your home, what does that say about how much you’re willing to let them know about you as a person? Some of us know more about which coffee shop has the best ambiance, or which bar makes the best cocktails, than we know about the ingredients that make up the person we’re talking to.
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In college we lived in dorms, slept in close quarters, and spent lots of time together in our most homey spaces: bedrooms, bathrooms, shared study spaces. If, as adults, we only spend time with potential friends in spaces that are inoculated of any personal essence, like coffee shops, stores, bars, and restaurants, what are we communicating? With the distance we put between the other person and our personal physical space, are we silently saying, “I don’t want to get too close to you. I don’t want you to know more about me and the environmental clues about what makes me up as a person. I prefer to keep a distance between you and the artifacts of my personal life that might expose more about who I really am. I prefer to see you in tightly controlled, external, and highly curated experiences, instead of in the raw, sometimes messy, sometimes uncomfortable real moments of my life.”
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- [note::This is such a great point. As teens and college students, we invited our friends into our homes out of necessity. It was just the natural thing to do.
As adults, the natural (but not necessarily optimal) thing to do is to hang out in spaces that we don't have a personal connection to. That is, places that don't implicitly communicate to others "I want you to become a part of my personal life"]

I felt especially hesitant to have people over when I had roommates who would leave huge messes all over the place. I didn’t want to be judged for that. I censored my own invitations and let my worries about the shared space not being nice enough stop me from inviting people over. But is this really something we need to worry about? Have you ever been invited to someone’s house and immediately walked out the door because their stack of mail on the counter or cereal bowl in the sink was just too intolerable to handle? I doubt it. We need to stop judging ourselves so harshly and thinking that we can only “host” people when our homes look like an Instagram photo with thousands of likes. Just invite people in. Sit anywhere. Your decorations don’t matter. You’re not “entertaining,” you’re spending time with someone you really like. That’s what matters. Trust me, this is something I try to remind myself all the time.
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- [note::Love this: "you're not entertaining, you're spending time with someone you really like."]

I’ve noticed something else about this that has come with getting older. When I was younger, having people over was just “hanging out.” But somewhere during my thirties, having people over turned into “hosting.” What’s that about? This isn’t a late night talk show. Why am I “hosting” all of a sudden? It’s just a vocabulary change, but words come with their own baggage. This is one that I think deserves some scrutiny. “Hosting” and “entertaining” are words that fancy lifestyle magazines and HGTV makeover shows use to describe having people over—usually while they’re redesigning a deck or remodeling a den-kitchen combo complete with pool table, twelve-seat sectional, and wet bar. I for one feel a completely different type of energy when I use those words. Entertaining and hosting are words that fill me with a sense of pressure, anxiety, and expectations about how things “should” be. Something about those words robs the focus away from feelings, emotions, and interactions, and puts the focus instead on the structure, style, and execution. Think about it this way. In real life, when you’ve been at a best friend’s house having a heart-to-heart about something that really matters in your life, did you get up and formally thank them for “entertaining” you when it was over? I doubt it. That would probably come off as clinical and transactional.
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- [note::YESSSS]

In fact, if you’re worried about potential friends judging you for not living somewhere that looks like the set of a photo shoot, I’d like to offer you a challenge: invite people over when your house is just a little bit messy purposely leave a few dirty dishes in the sink or leave your pile of mail on the counter or leave your basket of unfolded laundry in the living room If such a minor mess disqualifies you as a friend, you probably don’t want to be friends with that person anyway.
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To crank down any nervousness you might feel about the imperfections of your home or the pressure to be a perfect “host,” try what I did the last time I invited Tracy, a newish friend, to come over and hang out. Text the other person ahead of time and say, “Feel free to wear sweats if you want to be super comfortable because I am definitely ultra casual right now. Let’s keep this easy and relaxing :).” I got home from work, changed into my sweats, and left the dishes in the sink instead of frantically rushing to make everything look perfect. When I said jokingly, “Thanks for not judging me for my dirty dishes in the sink,” Tracy laughed and replied, “I’m so glad they’re there. It makes me feel more at home because this is what my sink looks like.” I always want my friends to feel at home when they’re around me. I’ve learned that one of the best ways to do that is to bring them there.
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- friendship, expectational transparency,
- [note::I loveee this. Making people feel at ease by implicitly acknowledging their potential fears (not looking nice enough) and being transparent about your expectations when it comes to "hanging out"]

Laura Parker, creator of Transforming Loneliness, an online summit that explores the many facets of loneliness, says one of her favorite friendship-building ideas is to invite someone over to share a task like gardening or cooking.[3] “It allows for gentle spaces and easy silences that break up the conversation at a natural pace. It just feels more relaxed.” Conversations like these have a different energy than the sitting-upright-in-a-chair conversations that happen when you’re in a coffee shop surrounded by strangers who can’t help but eavesdrop because they’re sitting one foot away.
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If there’s something you’ve been wanting to get done, but you’ve put it off to prioritize socializing instead, combine the two. Clean out your closet, repot your plants, organize the cabinets, sort through old magazines or art supplies, organize your desk, do your meal prep. Just add “hang out with a friend” to the list at the same time.
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This leads us to regard the strangers we’re closest in proximity to with hesitation and mistrust. How comfortable would you feel knocking on your neighbor’s door? How would you feel if they knocked on yours? If the thought of interacting with your neighbors is off-putting, ask yourself what you lose by maintaining this unnecessary distancing. What might you gain instead?
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Does it ever feel like life is a giant to-do list of things to check off, rather than an unfolding tapestry of experiences? If so, practice your capacity to surrender to spontaneity. A report by The Washington Post found that people were happier when they didn’t assign their free time activities to a specific time slot in their calendar, opting instead to do them spontaneously or during a nonspecific time frame. In their study, even something fun like getting ice cream with a friend was reported as more enjoyable when it wasn’t assigned to an exact day and time in advance. Their findings showed that things that are supposed to be fun (e.g. writing a letter to a friend, practicing a creative hobby, having sex) feel less fun when they’re scheduled. Rough scheduling, as opposed to strict scheduling, resulted in greater happiness and satisfaction for the participants in the study.[2]
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Get a pen and a piece of paper. Draw a line down the middle from top to bottom. On the left side, make a list of the distractions, time-sucks, and attention-grabbers that continually succeed at getting you to squander your precious time. Then write down approximately how many minutes per day, week, or month that you currently give to them.
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After you make a list of your time-sucks, make a list on the right side of all the things you’d rather be devoting your time to. Give this list a fun name. It can include hopes, aspirations, and curiosities. Be imaginative and lavish as you list out the things you’d like to do in your life and in your friendships. When your list is at least one page long, read it over. Everything you put on this list is what you’re trading away every time you give your minutes and hours to the list of time-wasters. Hopefully, seeing the way your lost time stacks up, you’ll start to see where you can compile that “200 hours it takes to make a friend” after all.
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Next, grab a red pen and draw some big juicy arrows from the time-wasters you’re ready to relinquish or reduce to the things on the life-giving list that you want to replace them with. Consider, as technology ethicist James Williams says, whether your distractions are “keeping you from living the life you want to live.”[2] What are the things you want to do that will give back to you in fulfillment, connection, happiness, and joy? Prioritize those things. Who are the people who make you smile, who you love talking to, and who you love being around? Prioritize having moments of connection and time with those people. How hard would it be to replace some of your distractions with intentional actions that will cultivate the friendship and meaningful connections you want? Here are some easy examples of things you can do with all the time you’ve gained back: Send a thoughtful note to a friend(s) 20 minutes Go for a walk with a neighbor that you want to be friends with 30 minutes Call a friend on the phone 2 hours What else would you do if your biggest goal for the year was cultivating one or two deeper friendships, and you now realize that you have more than enough time to make it happen?
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People living in cities marked by high achievement like New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles have told me that it feels like their city is characterized by constant striving. A lot of social interactions have an underlying energy of competition and value extraction. There’s a thinly veiled aura of “What can you do for me? How can I prove myself to you? How will knowing you serve my goals? What are you going to ask from me?” It’s all very transactional. In contrast, Jabu explained that the people she met in Santa Fe were interested in getting to know people based on their curiosity about them, not based on the value they can extract from them. Spaciousness and openness permeated their calendars and interactions.
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My friend Jed in London has adopted a novel approach to keep himself accountable for busyness in his calendar.[1] He’s been practicing eliminating the phrase “I’m busy” from his vocabulary and avoids using that generic phrase as an excuse or answer for anything. Whenever someone asks him how he’s been, he doesn’t say, “I’ve been really busy.” He tells them what he’s actually been spending his time on. If someone asks him to do something at a time when he has other plans, he’s specific when he declines. If he would rather exercise than go to a movie, he won’t just say, “I’m busy that day”—he’ll say, “I’ve been trying to stick to my fitness goals, and I have a commitment with myself to exercise at that time.” He said that this practice makes him check himself to make sure he’s not just copping out by using a vague reply that modern society takes as an acceptable or even admirable answer. An additional bonus is that by being specific, he lets the other person in on more details of his life. It often sparks a conversation, or leads him to feel closer to the other person.
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- [note::I really like this approach. It makes it clear to the other person that you're not just making excused. Instead, you're being transparent about things you've pre-committed to (whether those commitments are made with others OR your own self)]

If we choose to spend twelve hours at a meditation retreat or at twelve different locations spread all over town, those twelve hours will be filled to the same capacity: twelve hours in total. So, in a way, busyness is less about the fullness of our days, and more so about the way we feel as those days pass by. Busyness is a choice and a mindset. It’s an attitude that many of us are addicted to identifying with. And it’s a habitual way of thinking that we are capable of setting aside when we’re ready to feel our days, and fill our days, with whatever thoughts and actions we decide would be more beautiful and fulfilling.
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Want more ideas? Check out: A Helpful Guide to Becoming Unbusy: www.becomingminimalist.com/un-busy/ Blog: Becoming Unbusy www.becomingunbusy.com/ The Bored and Brilliant Challenge www.wnyc.org/series/bored-and-brilliant
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- [note::!action]

A basic but critical part of nurturing relationships is the act of following up and checking in with people. Because I know that being an absent-minded adult with a full life can make it too easy to forget to do this task regularly, I gave my brain some outside assistance. I scheduled repeating reminders in my phone to reach out to both my old friends and new friends. “Old friends” include anyone I’ve known more than two years. “New friends” include anyone I’ve met in the last one to two years. The “old friends” reminder includes five names; so does the “new friends” reminder (and I periodically refresh the set of names) Each week, one reminder pings me. This is a notification worth getting. When I get the notification, I pick one or two people from the list and reach out. Sometimes I set up a time to connect 1:1, such as a meal, phone call, or walk. Sometimes I just let them know I’m thinking about them. I might drop a postcard in the mail or send them an article, photo, song, or podcast that I think they’d like. It might sound weird to have reminders to check in on my friends, but I swear it has done wonders for the continuity of my connection with friends near and far. Connection has become a supported habit.
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Be intentional about using your time to connect with: mutual friends that you met as a couple, each partner’s set of friends that you established before or outside the relationship, and last but not least, seeing individual friends by yourself. Getting together purposefully with each type of friend will help keep your relationship balanced and meet each person’s friendship needs. Spending time as a couple with mutual friends that you met as an existing couple can galvanize your relationship. It allows you to become known, and to express yourself, as a unit. The risk here is having your personal identity erased as you’re absorbed into the singular unit of the relationship, as Levi vented about above. That’s why this shouldn’t be your only way of seeing friends. Spending time as a couple with each partner’s existing friends can deepen your perspective about your partner. You get to learn what traits they value in other people, and their friends can give you insight into how your partner has grown over time. The risk here is that there’s an inherent imbalance anytime you’re hanging out with only one partner’s friend group—that partner obviously has more rapport with their own friends, and so the partner whose friends aren’t present may feel alienated or less emotionally fulfilled. Spending time apart hanging out with your friends solo gives you the chance to be known as an individual. And let’s face it, sometimes you’ll need a confidential place to vent about your partner or to ask for relationship advice. The risk here is that if you only see your friends separately, you miss out on building the trust that comes from letting your partner and friends get to know each other. Taken to extremes, this distancing can lead to suspicion, jealousy, or resentment.
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Try to make friends with families who live within walking distance from you, whether you consider walking distance to be one block or ten. This will give your kids the psychological benefit of having friends nearby, and it will be less stressful to make play dates that don’t involve driving and parking.
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Instead of putting so much pressure on having a match between everyone in your family and one other family, let your partner and kids invite people to a multi-family hangout. That way, each person will have at least one other friend present who they connect with. Don’t forget to invite your single and childfree friends, too. Just because they don’t have partners or kids doesn’t meant they don’t want to see you; they’re also a perfect fit if you’re looking for someone to have conversation with about non-parenting-related topics. If your house is too small for a big gathering, pick somewhere free and flexible like a local park.
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Warp and Weft by Sarah Dunning Park Somewhere along the line, your friends dispersed like seeds scooped from a sack, a few slipping through fingers and back in the bag with you— the rest flying out, pitched to far cities, to root down in places other than here. Here, you inch forward in a line of cars, wondering if the other mothers dropping off kids are like you, or if they would like you— and pondering the irony that you are alike at least in this: each of you has narrowed the scope of your focus to encompass only the most pressing needs of your family. But you remember when you’d woven your living in with the weft of your friends’— not planning social events in the cracks of packed schedules, but pooling your leftovers to share improvised meals. Most days, now, you improvise alone— if you don’t mind defining alone as shadowed by a chattering child— and later you commune with friends through a cold screen. You spend your time observing your child’s likes and dislikes and which scraps of thought she chooses to voice; you try to see these as seeds of her adult self— like fiddlehead ferns with their Fibonacci spirals, slowly unfurling. You can picture, down the line, the fully opened fronds and how they’ll form a crown of green— this is how you remind yourself that in time, and with luck, she’ll become your dear friend. But it’s not enough, or it’s too much that you’ve concentrated on one spot, like a magnifying glass clutched in patient suspension, intensifying the rays of the sun to the point of combustion. You must widen your gaze. Recall the critical importance of dropping your shoulders and allowing your chest to rise, to draw open your lungs, to permit the intake of a full breath. And then— remember your need for friends to stand beside you and breathe too.
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It’s also the thing we have the most control over: ourselves. Our ability to bond with others and maintain durable friendships is inversely proportional to the walls that we build around our hearts. There are many kinds of walls. Some walls are made of smartphones and apps. Some walls are made of busyness and schedules that prevent us from sitting still long enough to get close. Some walls are made of frightened hearts and the lips they keep unnecessarily zipped in moments of soft and safe intimacy. Some walls are made of the incomplete maps we carry for navigating unfamiliar emotional territory. Some walls are made of the one-sided imitation friendships we maintain with the celebrities and entertainers we follow and listen to daily, who don’t even know that we exist. The toughest walls are made of our own stubborn refusal to be vulnerable and brave in our pursuit of fulfilling friendships. It’s critical that we approach our endeavors to rehabilitate our withering capacity for intimacy with gusto. We must focus and be intentional in our pursuit.…
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- [note::This is beautifully put]

My wariness of Facebook grew when I noticed another phenomenon that other friends said they experienced too. It started to seem like sharing our life updates on social media had the unfortunate side effect of atrophying our existing friends’ curiosity. People quit calling to hear how life was going because social media allowed them to feel like they already knew. The human brain is adept at creating simple stories and filling in the gaps. Snippets on social media make that easy. When you see “person standing in front of Eiffel Tower” or “smiling people in front of the ocean” or “latte art and a croissant in front of a window,” you think you know what’s going on, but maybe you don’t. Social media platforms want you to share what you’ve been up to, but only on a surface level. They encourage us to skim the news about the world and about our friends’ lives. But real friendship isn’t about skimming.
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Social media posts give their viewers the illusion of having shared a meaningful interaction with the person who posted it. Meanwhile, the person who posted it may not even know that the viewer saw it. Does the person who shares on social media need each individual person in their audience, or do they just need an audience? When we share, what exactly is shared? Certainly not a moment of meaningful connection. If I execute the one-way transfer of a tiny piece of my personal data into your awareness, you might know more about me or my life, but does that mean we’ve grown closer to each other? I don’t think so.
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Following our friends’ lives on social media subjects us to a cognitive bias where the spectator starts thinking that they’re closer than they really are to someone whose information they’re consuming. ... In the 1950s, psychologists Richard Wohl and Donald Horton gave this phenomenon a name: parasocial interaction.[3]
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Relationships mediated by digital devices “give us the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship,”[4] writes Sherry Turkel, a PhD and professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT, in her book Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other.
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Instead of posting on Facebook or Instagram all the time, I like to text a picture to a friend who I think would like it. I save a lot of my big updates for phone calls or in-person get-togethers instead of throwing it onto the internet and seeking a few meager likes or comments in return. Angelica in San Francisco is a fan of the latter approach. “I try to defy the social media [norms] by making my posts super introspective. I try to have deeper conversations online, even though it’s not easy.”[6] Julia Nguyen, a computer engineer and the founder of If-Me.org, an open source mental health app, takes the same approach. She does her part to upend the shallowness of social media by being open online about mental health, insecurities, and emotions like burnout, self-doubt, and frustration.[7] Her posts and articles are brave and raw and real.
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- [note::!action]

When you look at the last five or ten people who liked, commented on, or reposted something that you shared, are they people you would feel comfortable calling on the phone right now to talk or asking them to come over for dinner tomorrow? What about the people whose posts you recently liked, commented on, or reposted? I’m not saying that we should all delete every social media app and never use them again (although I do think it might be healthy). However, I do encourage you to think about how and why you use social media the way you do.
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- [note::!action]

Version 1
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- h4,

The next time you want to share an update with all of your followers, pick one or two people that you think would be most interested in your news and tell them each directly instead.
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Version 2
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- h4,

The next time a friend shares something on social media that you connect with or are curious about, instead of posting a comment, take the time to tell them directly, whether as a direct message, text message, voice memo, or IRL conversation. Want to hear more about their family visit, vacation, conference presentation, latest achievement, or recent struggle? Ask if they’ll tell you about it over the phone or in person.
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For one month, instead of posting photos on Instagram, send each IG-worthy photo to only one person. Send it to them directly or show them the next time you see each other. If your photo isn’t good enough to share with an audience of one, then why are you sharing it with all of your followers? See what happens if you go deep with one person instead of sharing photos indirectly with many people.
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- [note::I think one of the hang ups I have with this is "not wanting to bother others" - e.g. if I send this photo to JUST Leslie, I'll make her feel obligated to respond and that feels like I'm imposing or pushing some kind of expectation onto her. What if I'm annoying her? What if I think she thinks the update is less important/exciting than I think it is? What if she actually doesn't like me? I think that's actually the core fear I have that prevents me from reaching out to folks regularly.
I think this line of thinking is related to a deeper issue I have about being comfortable "imposing" myself onto other people or relatedly, "taking up space" or "feeling worthy of love/friendship/companionship", which is likely related to my conflict avoidance.
!reflection]

Version 3
- Location 1653
- h4,

One day, while I was riding home from work listening to hosts Jen and Trin discuss a listener’s question on the Friendshipping podcast, it occurred to me that what I was really listening to was a conversation between friends. I laughed at their jokes. I had follow-up questions and commentary of my own, albeit just in my head. I admired the way they bounced ideas and perspectives off each other. And I wondered if, in that moment, I wasn’t only listening because I was interested in the subject of the podcast, but because I wanted to “hang out” with some of my favorite podcasters. I haven’t been able to shake the suspicion that there might be a connection between the meteoric rise in the popularity of podcasts and the simultaneous increase in rates of loneliness. Despite the fact that people have a harder time making conversation in their own lives, they’re still hungry for it. Listening to other people have good conversation serves as a substitute for having our own.
- Location 1665
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- [note::INTERESTING parallel. I think this theory has some merit!
Perhaps the underlying reason why I feel compelled to listen to so many thought-provoking podcasts is because I'm unable to feel intellectually satisfied by the people in my own social network?
!reflection]

Podcasts are a no-risk way to siphon feelings of depth and connection to humans we wish were our actual friends—but without all the pesky performance anxiety. When you’re just passively listening, you don’t need to make any effort. But you also only get a fraction of the benefit of sharing a two-way connection. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that listening to podcasts is a bad thing. I love podcasts. But there’s no substitute for having a real conversation where you can share your thoughts, feelings, and experiences with someone who is listening to you, too. If you’re into podcasts, let your listening be a catalyst for human connection instead of a replacement for it.
- Location 1678
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- [note::"No risk" - I think this is the key. Friendship requires one to take on a relatively high amount of risk (both in terms of uncertain payoff and potential anxiety-inducing conflict) that listening to podcasts is highly attractive in comparison.]

There’s no need to stop listening to podcasts if they add value to your life. But see if you can find a way to balance your passive consumption by proactively pursuing conversation and connection, too. For one month, use each podcast you listen to as a jumping off point for a conversation with one person in real life. Or ask a friend to listen to the same podcast episode before you talk. You could even ask people to come to a “Dinner Pod-dy” with a subject they want to talk about, such as the topic of a podcast they listened to, something they’ve read that had an impact on them, or something they wonder about. Subscribe to episodes of awesome real-life storytelling with the people you already know or want to know better.
- Location 1684
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Great follow-up questions will reference the details that the other person shared, but simple open-ended follow-up questions work well too. For example: “Can you say more about that?”, “Can you give me an example?”, or “How did that make you feel?” Even being purposefully silent—accompanied by a nod, eye contact, and a breath—can work as a follow-up, since it leaves a space that the other person will often fill with elaboration.
- Location 1712
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If you want to have better conversations but don’t know where to begin, I have included several hundred conversation-starter questions at the back of this book that I wrote and compiled over the last few years. Begin by picking two or three that you really like and keep those in your back pocket so that you can pull them out at a time when you’d normally default to the usual small talk. Periodically, switch out those questions for new ones and see how your conversations get better in all parts of your life.
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“Smartphones are making us more afraid to take chances socially,”[2] he told me. One cause he suspects is the overabundance of options that the online world habituates us to expecting, and which can lead to procrastination or decision paralysis. “People are in a compulsive act of seeing what their options are all day every day, but they never get themselves to go out and take the next step,” he said. “For example, they might be texting someone for a month but never actually planning on meeting them in person.” He doesn’t see this as being a problem restricted to youth. He’s seen the same behavior in a client who was in his seventies. “People are really compulsive with the constant checking of the phone, the constant scrolling, the constant what-if. And there’s not a lot of taking action. There’s fear there. Whether romantic or with friendship, it’s a similar problem.”
- Location 1740
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- [note::I can relate to this]

“Awkward is the word that people use the most. It’s a catch-all for any form of discomfort or unease. Essentially, it all comes down to fear.” ... It also helps to replace the word “awkward” with a more discrete and specific emotion. “When people say, ‘that would be awkward,’ we explore which of the six basic emotions they’re actually talking about feeling,” Shriner says. “Is it happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, or surprise? Awkward is vague. It doesn’t mean that much. If you can replace it with a clearer emotion, then it’s easier to suss out what your mind is really saying. If you’re afraid, you can explore what you’re afraid of. If you’re sad, what are you sad about?”
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New research by Dacher Keltner, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Berkeley Social Interaction Lab at UC Berkeley, points to as many as 27 categories of emotion, all experienced on a spectrum of intensity.[4]
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To get over her fear of social discomfort, she went all the way to ten on the awkwardness scale. Even though she had no prior experience, she started doing improvisational theatre. “Improv teaches you that you can fail miserably and fuck up and no one will do anything because they’re also terrified about what they’re doing,” she told me over the phone. “I actually think that’s really helped with vulnerability. It invites the other person to bring themselves totally: their weirdness, their off-the-wall-ness.
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Taylor was successful in her search for friends as a result of dedicated action. First, she identified what her core hesitation was (fear). Then, she made an initial attempt to face her fear in a safe way (improv). When that was successful, she tried a new way (social board gaming), and when that went well, she took it a level further (role-playing games). Along the way, she saw how her feelings of awkwardness flew out the window when she wasn’t focused on whether or not she felt awkward.
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When it comes to trying new things or facing conversations that make us feel stressed out or uncomfortable, pithy inspirational missives like “Just Do It” can be too open-ended. Jack Shriner suggests breaking the task down into steps using a cognitive-behavioral treatment tool called the exposure hierarchy.[7] How to do it: Write a list of all the things you could do to confront your fear or to address the situation that causes you to feel afraid. Rank the list from the scariest action to the easiest action, rating how much distress you predict this will cause you on a scale of one to ten (with ten being most distressing). In the following week, try the easiest one. Use mindfulness and breathing practices to help you stay grounded. Tackle every item on your list one by one until you get to the action that’s hardest. You don’t have to go in order—experiment with jumping around on the list.
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- [note::!action]

The Center for Non-Violent Communication provides an exhaustive list of feelings and needs, with over 200 specific feelings to pick from. Their list also categories feelings into two groups: when our needs are being met, and when our needs are not being met. The feelings list is meant to be used on conjunction with their list of needs, to help people have clearer and more compassionate communication about how they feel and what they would like to request from others. Find each list at: www.cnvc.org/training/resource/feelings-inventory www.cnvc.org/training/resource/needs-inventory
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Another way to move past feelings of awkwardness in a social situation is to shift your focus from yourself to your surroundings. It doesn’t even require talking to anyone else; it’s all done silently in your own head. Here’s how to do it. First, take a deep breath and turn your attention outward. Using your powers of observation, notice: Five things you can see Four things you can hear Three things you can feel Two things you can smell (or could smell if you got closer) One thing you can (or would like to) taste
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- [note::I've heard of this - was this featured in the Active Hope course?]

Jamie Utt, an author and diversity and inclusion consultant, writes on Everyday Feminism that the best apologies are ones in which the apologizer focuses on the impact on their actions and resists the urge to frame their message around their intentions, regardless of how harmless they were.
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Staying alive through the ages has been a constantly humbling practice of enlisting other people’s help, and getting involved in whatever they’re trying to accomplish too. Today, millions of people feel like they don’t have anyone to lean on—not for the big life stuff that Olivia was dealing with, nor for the small things like navigating the world and making day-to-day decisions. I mean, think about it: if you live in a modern city and you have a credit card and an internet connection, you don’t really need to ask anyone for help. Google Maps gives you directions. Yelp offers recommendations. Google can serve up advice and answers for nearly everything. You can make your own professional connections on LinkedIn. Public and private transportation gets you where you need to go. You hardly ever need to ask another person directly for help with anything. This is amazing and terrible. It’s like we’re in a race to prove that we can make other humans unnecessary. If you’re not in the habit of developing relationships that foster intimacy and reciprocal care, who will you turn to on a hard day when you just want a hug and to be listened to while you cry it out? There’s no app for that.
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No one wants to be thought of as overly needy. But the downside of being too self-sufficient is that it can impede connection. If we don’t ask for help, we don’t give other people a chance to share their gifts with us, and vice versa. We don’t show them our weaknesses, or our imperfect humanness. We miss out on the chance to deepen our connection by showing our friends that we’re there for them, too.
- Location 1976
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Functional social support usually comes in one of four ways: Emotional, tangible, informational, and companionate.[7] Emotional support (a.k.a. esteem support or appraisal support) looks like giving someone love, affection, acceptance, caring, empathy, and other behaviors that foster mutually positive feelings. Tangible support is concrete and direct, like helping someone move from one apartment to another, giving them money, or making them meals. Informational support includes giving advice, recommendations, introductions, and practical solutions. Companionate support is given and received when we are present with each other in ways that contribute to feelings of belonging, like showing up to celebrate someone’s birthday, visiting them when they’re in the hospital, or sitting together when you know they’re having a hard day. Receiving support when we need it matters, and what’s interesting is that some researchers have found that it matters even more to simply know that support would be there for you, even if you rarely ever call upon it.
- Location 2008
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Giving and receiving help in your friendships benefits your mental health and physical health in just about every way you can imagine.[8] It all begins with having the courage to make a humble request. Embrace radical vulnerability in your asking and practice effusive generosity in your giving. It will help you develop trust and mutuality in your friendships and in all areas of your life.
- Location 2020
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Have you checked the batteries on your friendships? Do you know who you can count on in a time of need? Who would pick up the phone and be there for you when you need them most? Now’s a great time to have those conversations. Start by asking a friend or two who they would call in a time of need. Let them know that you’d be there for them, and ask if it’s okay for you to reach out to them too. A great lead-in to the conversation is to share stories about a time when you each received or gave help to other people.
- Location 2027
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For one week, every time you think about looking something up online, ask someone instead. You can tell them about your experiment so they don’t think you’re a total weirdo. Ask them if they know the answer—and they’re not allowed to look on the internet either. Have a conversation about it. Share your best guesses. Have the conversations you would have if the internet was down. See if life feels any different when you try connecting to people more and relying on your phone less.
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- [note::Can also ask directions from strangers!]

Extra Credit
- Location 2038
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See your world: Try to navigate through the world using your memory or intuition. Don’t look at Google Maps. If you get lost, figure it out, or pretend that you’re a tourist whose phone has a dead battery and ask a human to help you find your way. Be adventurous: For three months, don’t read any reviews of restaurants, bars, or stores before you go to them. This sounds like a long time, but the point is to break the habit of relying on the internet to guide your every step. If you want a suggestion, ask a person. Untether yourself: Ask someone what time it is or use an old-school watch instead of checking the time on your phone.
- Location 2038
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She does think it’s easier if you live with others, but cultivating meaningful friendship and community has less to do with the format of your home and more to do with how you show up in the world. “You have to ask yourself, ‘What is my life for? Is my life about consuming resources and having whatever I want, or is my life a gift to the world?’” She encourages people to say to themselves: “I was born as a gift to the planet. How am I sharing that gift?”
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- [note::I'd like to cultivate this kind of mindset, but this is something I struggle with (i.e. I'm harming the world just by existing)]

To those who don’t know what their gifts are or how to share them, she quotes Howard Thurman: “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” “What brings you life? What brings you joy? Go connect with people from that place, and there’s your community. Is it food? Music? That place of love is your higher place. It doesn’t matter if you’re an introvert or an extrovert. Ask what brings you into your creative place. And get comfortable with yourself.
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A lot of times you find your truth by finding what’s your not-truth. If you look at life as school, it’s a lot easier. Every relationship and every community is that—all these possibilities for learning.”
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The QQ10 Method. The two Q’s stand for Quality+Quantity, and the 10 stands for ten days. My hypothesis was that if two people who have decent chemistry commit to ten consecutive days of quality time, then they’ll be able to form the kind of closeness that typically takes months to build. When I was using dating apps, I even posed this challenge in my profile and had a couple takers. Each time, it worked wonderfully. In two week’s time, we could log enough hours of shared togetherness to make us feel like we’d known each other for way longer. The same thing can happen for platonic friendships that we want to supercharge from the get-go. How it works For ten days straight, you and the other person see each other and communicate daily, as much as comfortably possible. It can be face to face or by phone or video call. The goal is sustained immersion. You can do big things like seeing a show or taking a class together, or you can do tiny things like grocery shopping, cooking, sharing a meal, or sitting in a park to people-watch and talk about life. You’ll be using all four Seeds of Connection by sharing proximity, immersing yourself in frequency, developing and exploring your compatibility, and demonstrating your commitment. This provides you with:
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Have you checked to make sure you both want to create a closer friendship with each other? Are you each willing to give this the kind of committed attention that you’d give to finishing several seasons of Grey’s Anatomy or Game of Thrones? If the answer to all three of the above questions is yes, and you’re looking for something more intensive, I suggest trying The Friendship Incubator. First,…
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Pick a start date and an end date three months later. Put it in both your calendars. You’ll also be putting some other stuff in your calendar (see below), but clearly mark the beginning and the end of your incubator window. You don’t need to wait for the…
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Aim to get together at least twelve times during your three-month window. If you can’t do twelve, don’t give up—aim for eleven or ten. More is ok but absolutely no less than twelve. Yes, be nerdy and put it in both of your calendars, whether your preference is to schedule loosely or strictly (I recommend both). NO cancelling plans unless you’re in bed with the flu. Actually, you can still hang out if…
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Vary your activities. Do at least three different kinds of things together. For example, don’t always go to the movies, don’t always go to dinner, don’t always go to happy hour, etc. Of course you can repeat things that are convenient and fun, but aim for variety. Make sure you choose activities that at least one of…
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Do at least two exciting things together like attending an unusual workshop that neither one of you has done before, going to a concert by a band you both love, or taking a day trip…
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Spend time in each other’s homes at least twice each. Don’t worry about making your home into some kind of picture-perfect palace. You’re not “entertaining” or “hosting”—you’re hanging out. Relax. Do “boring” things together like laundry, cooking, pulling weeds, sitting on the couch eating chocolate, or talking while one of you organizes your closet. You don’t need to have a plan in advance for your stay-home hangouts. They can…
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This is a heart-to-heart conversation with some guide rails on it for people who otherwise find it hard to be vulnerable or open up emotionally. If neither of you are prone to spontaneously sharing about personal or emotional topics, scheduling a Heart Time gives you a special setting to do it intentionally. It’s time-boxed so if this is super uncomfortable for you, you know it won’t last all night. If you and your friend are already super comfortable having heart to heart talks, feel free to skip to the next page. How it works: Get a timer and go to a place where you both feel comfortable and won’t be interrupted. Decide who’s going to speak first. The first person gets ten minutes to share something that they’re struggling with, having a hard time with, frustrated by, embarrassed to talk about, secretly excited about, or otherwise keeping inside. The entire ten minutes are theirs; if they say they’re done talking after five minutes, then sit in silence for the remaining five minutes, or they can take a break then speak some more until their time is up. The listener’s job is to listen deeply for that first ten minutes—minimize questions and interruptions, and don’t butt in with anecdotes about yourself. Listen as patiently and empathetically as you can. After the first person has talked for ten minutes, they should say what kind of feedback they want: advice, suggestions, silence, thoughtful questions, back and forth conversation, etc. Set the timer for ten minutes and share feedback. Then reset the timer and switch roles. After both of you have spoken, and given feedback, debrief by talking about…
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Week 1: Cook dinner (or order takeout) at one of your houses. Week 2: Go for a walk at a nearby park or check out a show at a local venue. Week 3: Attend a meetup, museum, or class together. Week 4: Hang out after work at one of your houses. Have Heart Time #1. Week 5: Go for a walk in one or both of your neighborhoods. Week 6: Arrange a small group outing with 2-3 additional people; Branch out when you select the activity: go to a show, lecture, class, nature setting, or volunteer activity together. Week 7: Heart Time #2 Week 8: Happy hour or board game night Week 9: Go for a mini-road trip to a nearby town. Eat pancakes at a diner. Ask the server to take your picture. Week 10: Hang out at the other one of your…
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In the spring of 2017, I was headed to my grandmother’s funeral
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I got some surprising catharsis when I read the book Who’s Your City by Dr. Richard Florida. In it, I learned that social scientists have verified that San Francisco really is a place where it’s especially hard to make friends.[2] Dr. Florida and a team of psychologists and analysts crunched through enormous datasets to figure out the personalities of different cities and regions in the United States.
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- [note::I'd be interested to look up their findings for Philly and how that compares to other cities.
!action]

While a good portion of this book contains advice for making friends, the thing to remember is that if we do a crap job of maintaining those friendships, then it doesn’t matter how many friends we make. If our friendships are low quality, we’ll be unsatisfied, and many of them will fizzle out and fade away. Then we have to start over. Remember that the effort you put into any relationship, be it platonic, romantic, or familial, is an investment. Not all investments pay off, but for the ones that do, the payoff is sweet.
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Taylor in Sydney sees the time-intensive work of cultivating friendships as a gift to her future self. “Cultivating friendships requires a lot of effort, energy, and time. You have to be willing to put yourself out there and expend that emotional energy because you’re investing in your future happiness. And it goes both ways. Your friends are investing in you, hoping that you’ll be a friend to them, and then you return the favor as much as possible.”
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- [note::LOVE this framing - "Cultivating friendship is a gift to your future self"]

If you’ve been having a hard time making new friends and maintaining existing friendships, please don’t feel ashamed or embarrassed about it. Talk to other people about it. Statistically, there’s a 50/50 chance that any person you talk to will feel the same way.[5] ... If it’s something you really want to talk about, practice asking people questions like, “What was it like making friends when you moved here?” or “Can I ask you a question—what’s your experience of friendship like these days?” If you’ve been unsatisfied with your own journey through adult friendship, open up about it.
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Understanding your feelings is key to navigating them successfully and communicating them to others. This single succinct chart is one of my favorite resources for helping with that process. Emotions Chart created by and provided courtesy of Anamaria Nino-Murcia and Michael Terrell, Founders of Fort Light, and Gary Dexter, Lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. For more information, see fortlight.com and gsb.stanford.edu
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- [note::!action]

Charles Montgomery, Happy City: Transforming Our Lives through Urban Design, 194–195, 278-279, (Toronto, Ontario: Anchor Canada, 2014), “Chapter 8: Mobilicities I: How Moving Feels and Why It Does Not Feel Better”; “Chapter 12: Retrofitting Sprawl.”
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