The Lazy Genius Podcast - #277 - How to Connect with Friends More Regularly

Episode Date: August 29, 2022

Today, I want to give us a bigger picture of what we expect from our friendships, and then after the break, I’ll share a couple of friendship principles along with your ideas on how to connect more regularly.   Helpful Companion Links Episode 275: What’s Saving My Life Laura Tremaine’s Instagram account My friendship post on Instagram Episode 276: How to Pack Lunch for Work Download a transcript of this episode.   This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Amazon presents Laura versus Fruitflies. Swarming your fruit and terrorizing your kitchen, these little freaks multiply at a rate that would make a rabbit say, yo. Chill. But Laura shopped on Amazon and saved on cleaning spray, countertop wipes, and fly traps. Hey, fruit flies, your baby boom ends here. Save the Everyday with Amazon. Hey there, you're listening to the lazy genius podcast. I'm Kendra Adachi, and I'm here to help me be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Today is episode 277, how to connect with friends more regularly. A couple of weeks ago in episode 275, I shared what's saving my life right now. I do those episodes about once a quarter. And one of the things I mentioned in this most recent one was something that was saving my future life, and that was scheduling chunks of time to spend with people.

Shortly after that, my dear friend, Laura Tremaine, the author of Share Your Stuff and the soon to be released, The Life Council, was asking questions on her Instagram account about friendship. She does this often because that's a lot of what she writes about, friendship, and how those relationships can shift, what we need from them, what we offer them, and how we can make them part of our lives. So I already had this episode topic today. I had it planned. And I loved that there was so much friendship conversation.

That energy was happening everywhere. So I asked on my own Instagram account how you all approach time with your friends and your people. And the answers were fantastic. So you can actually go check out that post to read them all. It's a photo of a pastel notepad if you want to read people's ideas on how they schedule time with friends. But today I want to share some of your answers. And before we do that, though, I just want to kind of break this down a little bit. Obviously, this is something that we're all thinking about, maybe often, but especially right now.

And I want to give us a bigger picture of what we expect from our friendships. And then after the break, I'll share a couple of friendship principles along with your ideas on how to connect more regularly. So when you think about connecting with your friends more regularly, what do you imagine? How does that picture kind of show up in your head? Do you think of all the people you want to see and then you get overwhelmed? Do you feel a lot of sadness that you don't have as many friends for any number of reasons, right? there could be a lot of reasons for that and you feel disappointed or discontent in that feeling. Do you feel like scheduling time with friends takes the kind of care and a spontaneity out of the relationship and you maybe resent that a little? Maybe you are tired of being the initiator

and you wish that someone would invite you to something for a change instead of you always doing it. Are you a pretty intense introvert who doesn't have many or any close relationships and you feel mostly fine with that, but wonder if you should be doing something differently. There are likely a lot of thoughts that might enter our heads when we think about spending time with friends. And honestly, I think that pop culture has messed with us the tiniest bit with this. They have really impacted our expectations of what friendship is supposed to be. Shows like actual friends, Sex and City, How I Met Your Mother, Seinfeld, even Stranger Things, and book series like The Babysitters Club or Nancy Drew or Harry,

Potter. There are a lot of pretty formative pop culture influences in our lives that highlight groups of friends being with each other a lot, being in each other's lives daily, even groups of kids, right? There is a camaraderie and connection that we see on screen or on the page. And it is beautiful. It is desirable. We want to have a friend group or even just a singular friend who is ride or die always, right? Who we are always doing life with, who we see all the time, who we call it a moment's notice with a quippy story, who comes over for dinner, at least weekly, who is almost like a spouse or a roommate because of how much they're in your life, right? I remember reading The Babysitters Club and reading Nancy Drewbock's quite a lot as a kid and

wishing that I had a group of friends like that, like the babysitters, like Nancy had. I love that they were always together. It was just a natural part of life to be in each other's lives all the time. I think that's one of the reasons we love the show Stranger Things. Those kids are pals. They're in and out of each other's homes every day. They have rhythms and traditions and they trick or treat together and play D&D and they eat food from each other's houses and they have walkie-talkies. They talk about hard things. They have rules like friends don't lie. They fight for each other. They risk their lives for each other, they cry with each other, they apologize and shake hands when they mess up. All of these things that, sure, they make a great show, but they also create a desire in us

to have connection. Humans are built for connection. And when we see a valuable one that is desirable, but may be fairly different from what we have, we have a sense of longing that's really hard to fill. If you're listening to this episode, if you were drawn to the title, even just a little, you likely feel like you want to connect with friends more regularly, right? There's a lack, even a tiny one, somewhere in your relationship rhythms right now and you're hoping for some help. I just don't think there are a lot of people who feel like they are deeply connected in the best way possible and are 100% content in their relationships across the board and how often they spend time with people. I just think we all long for a friendship to be part of our natural rhythms without

having to think about it, without having to plan it, we just want it to be. Somehow, I think that's the marker for an ideal friendship, that it doesn't need to be planned or scheduled, that it's just so natural that it happens, like on TV shows and in books, or even in real life examples that we see on the internet or in our own circles. So all that to say, I just want us to put our relationship expectations in context. I want us to be honest. about what really matters here. What really qualifies is connection with our friends and that we pay attention to our seasons of life and the way we live and how those things affect our relationships.

Several times this past summer, our power went out because our transformer or whatever is very tender and if the wind blows too hard, we lose power. One time in the summer when it was out on our street and I live in a neighborhood with like on a street with houses and yards and porches, right? I noticed that when the power went out, everyone went outside. It was just a couple of hours before sunset. And since homes were like getting a little darker and there were no lights or TVs or whatever, everyone went outside. People were on their porches.

They were walking to each other's porches saying like, hey, crazy, we lost power again or whatever. But just like chatting and hanging out. It was slower. It actually had the same vibe as early days of the pandemic when we were locked down. and staying at home and outside a lot more because we missed people. Like we were just, you know, in our yards. If we had a yard, just hoping we would see someone else's face. So I had this fairly obvious, but kind of profound realization that the very nature of our technological

culture makes it harder to just be a person in the ways that we might want to with the people in our like closest geographical proximity. We just get into our own rhythms and our own space. We depend on our technology, which I really like, by the way. I'm not saying like we're in all technology. I really like this. It's just an observation. But it's just really easy to stay isolated in our homes because for a lot of us, we have everything

we need and more. We don't need to go outside and chat on the porch because there's plenty to do inside, right? We don't need to become close with our neighbors because we have access to so much many people outside of where we live. We don't need to depend on friends or family to do things like pick up groceries or bring us a meal because we can just doordash it. This is not new information, but there are a lot of things we've lost because of how many of us experience life every day. And I think friendships, the kind that we long for, are a casualty of that lifestyle. We just don't need each other in the same ways. We don't need to become friends with our neighbors.

We don't need to interact with our friends as often just because of how we live. You know, we don't need it. It reminds me of a C.S. Lewis quote from the Four Loves where he says, friendship is unnecessary. Like philosophy, like art, it has no survival value. Rather, it is one of those things that gives value to survival. So last week, we talked about. hacking lunch. This is a weird segue. And how eating is essential to our survival, but eating a thoughtful

lunch that makes us happy in whatever way our food does, that that is less important. It gets pushed to the side, right? And yet we still have the expectation that we should be experiencing a certain kind of lunch every day. I said this in that episode, and it resonated with a lot of y'all. And I think it can apply to friendships to a point. And that is match your expectations. to the energy you're willing to give. Or maybe adjusting it for the topic of friendship. Maybe it's match your expectations to the energy you're able to give. A lot of us don't live lives where we can connect with our people face to face every day.

We just don't. That's normal and kind of part of the fabric of our days in many ways. We can try to adjust that fabric, but that's kind of our baseline, right? So in the rest of this episode, you are going to see a lot of lazy genius principles come into play in hopefully very helpful practical ways. But in light of this perspective on the realities of our relationships, I just want to remind you of two things. First, be kind to yourself. We all need different things. We have different life stages and schedules. We have different friendship dynamics and different ways of making our relationships matter. We all also mess up quite a bit.

So I want you to be kind to yourself in this process, this lifelong process of being in relationship with people. We're up against a lot in many ways. And we just sort of need to be kind as we navigate through that. The second principle that I want to bring up now is to start small. Earlier, I asked what you imagined when you thought about the concept of hanging out with friends more. And my guess is what you imagined was pretty big. Maybe the problem was big, the solutions were big, and therefore the movement towards change, it's not going to happen. When we start too big, we often do not move at all. So as we go through the rest of the episode, just please notice the ways you can start small and give yourself permission to experience

some shifts in your relationships slowly. We'll be right back. Aw isn't something we need to travel for. It's something waiting for us in everyday life, whether in a city street or a moment with a work of art. I'm Dr. Keltner, host of the Science of Happiness podcast. Join me for Cities of Aw A special series on how our public spaces can spark awe, wonder, and enhance the quality of public life. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. There are a couple of principles, not one of the 13 lazy genius principles, but some others that I think are really important when it comes to friendship. First, the first friendship principle, friendships change. I mean, duh, we know this.

But listen, some friendships last for a season in our lives, and then they're gone. Some friends stay, but how we interact with them changes, right? That's another level of change. So many things. Like we know that friendships change, but we just don't give them permission to. It's okay to grieve change and loss, if that's part of the story of your friendship, but just on a practical level, the things that once worked for you in connecting regularly with friends have likely shifted, possibly even drastically.

things change friendships change i'm actually in a season of some pretty big relationship shifts because i work during the day now and my kids are in school my days look different than they used to when my kids were little you know i used to be able to go for walks with other moms in the morning with their tiny kids i had time during the day to talk to my sister on the phone i drove more places to fill up time with the tiny kids and i could vox while i was in the car all of those things have changed. That rhythm has changed. Emily P. Freeman and I live three blocks away from each other and we will sometimes go an entire month without seeing each other's face. That's, you know, sad, but it's also a reality because of both of our seasons of life. And that's okay.

So we have to shift. We have had to shift. We schedule things on the calendar. My sister just started a new job that's a full-time job. And we have to start a new job. And we have to start scheduling lunches now to hang out because we just don't see each other in the same way anymore. And you cannot finish a song on the radio from my driveway to hers. Like she lives very close. But we have to shift. And she's my sister. I have another friend who I used to see every single day because our kids were in preschool

together and we were in the same community group at church. And now our kids are not at the same school and we aren't in the same community group anymore. We went from daily to barely weekly. So we have to adjust when and how we connect with each other. Friendships change. There are relational and logistical shifts. And that is not wrong. It is very, very normal.

This was one of the comments in that Instagram post I mentioned, and it's perfect to share right now. It is from Lauren E.F. Dunaway, who said, one of the best things I ever did was agreeing to go to breakfast every Friday with a small group. It's since dissolved, but for seven years consistently, in a season of babies and toddlers and working and finishing my PhD, I knew I had that. It kept me afloat and was the biggest gift. Now, I want you to notice the tense of this comment. It was one of the best things. It has since dissolved.

But she is sharing it with positivity and that it was a gift in that season. That is just so hugely important for us to notice and name when we, talk about friendships. Just because things change doesn't mean the change is bad. We can still embrace and remember those times of connection that no longer work without them being a judgment on how we do things now. So friendships are going to change. Friendships will change. Second principle of friendship, try not to keep a count. I say try because I realize this is difficult. And I think that this is harder for some based on personality. But when we keep a count of how often we initiate versus the other person or who calls who or how long it's been, we feel resentment towards the other person for not

being the kind of friend that we want them to be. And that's going to likely enter us into a pretty difficult place. Now, there's a caveat here. I realize that there are relationships where you don't feel reciprocity. You don't feel like the effort that you're putting in, is being seen or honored by the other person, not just in terms of like a balance sheet or whatever, but in the actual relationship, in the intimacy of the relationship. Some friendships just don't work.

And that's okay. So I want to be clear that saying not to keep a count, it doesn't mean to not have boundaries or needs. It just means that keeping track or keeping score, it isn't our ultimate goal in a meaningful, connected friendship. I know it can be really hard being the initiator, some people just are and others are not and when you are an initiator it feels like everyone else should be capable of doing it right it's not hard for you so why is it so hard for everybody else

but if you ask someone who is not motivated by the same things that you are who has a different personality who has different perspective a different propensity towards introversion you know something else that causes behavior to be different than yours if you're asking that person to behave in the same way that you are, you're kind of an you're asking an unfair question. We're all capable of learning and growing, of course, but some people are just naturally more wired to reach out, to be bold, to be a planner, or whatever else, and others are not. They're just not. There was even one comment in the post about how there is someone who is a quality time person and hates being scheduled in.

Now, I think it's really good to say those feelings out loud. I do. And at the same time, we have to name that all of us approach our relationships differently. And we want to honor that and not keep a count, not keep tabs or track or score. I think if we resent people for scheduling us, then we kind of lose the thread on the relationship. And we don't want that to happen, right? So that's the second thing. Try not to keep a count. See what happens if you don't keep a count. And then third, anything is better than nothing. Anything is better than nothing. We want our friendship rhythms to be thriving and full of traditions and daily contact and whatever else. And if we don't have that or we can't create it out of the gate,

we think it's not working and we just stop. And it's just not true. Anything is better than nothing. and the small steps of planning anything, even the smallest things, it's going to lead to more. So start small today in this episode. Start small this week in your own relationships. Believe that texting someone, you know, thinking of you today without any context or just sending a meme. It's like we think that if we don't offer, you know, we should get together every Thursday for lunch and like systemize it, that like it doesn't count. And those small things, anything, they are better than doing nothing at all. They absolutely count. It's better than doing nothing at all because the thing is not right or it's not big enough

or it's not taking care of every relationship in your life, right? We think we have to do it across the board for everyone ad nauseum. Start small instead. Anything is better than nothing. and those tiny drops in the friendship buckets, they don't really dry out, right? They just keep dripping. And then you'll get deeper. That's a good pun. It's not a pun, but like, I like where that analogy went. Okay. Now, I want to share a few of your practical ideas of how to connect with friends more regularly. I think that this is just like a big old decide once party. These are examples of people who decided

something about how to be with a friend or a group of friends and then they just kept doing it. So we're going to roll through some of these, and I really think that you're going to get an idea in here for sure. These are some really fabulous ideas. So we will start with Mary Van Geffen, who is a wonderful parenting expert on Instagram. I mean, just in life she is, but she's on Instagram, Mary Van Geffen, she said this. I am fastidious. I love that she used the word fastidious. I am fastidious about an annual accounting of my relationships.

I literally make a list of everyone local who brings me joy and a list of faraway friends that need maintenance via phone calls and travel, then on an attendance sheet bullet journal page. I check off each time I get to spend quality time with each person throughout the year, noticing who I need to see more. I keep this page very private, so I don't have to worry about whose feelings might be heard if they are not on it. But maybe I should hire someone to come burn it before my funeral, probably. I think we all need a friend who will delete, like, all of our correspondence when we die.

but I do love the thoughtfulness of this approach. Now, this might be too big for some of you, but it sounds like this is also something that Mary has been doing for a while, and she probably started pretty small with it. It sounds like Mary does this maybe once a year, and that leaves space for changing of seasons and changing of relationships and how one friend that was local might have moved away and needs a different approach now, right?

But this is almost like a friendship review or an audit, which could sound kind of harsh, but you could also rethink it as intentional. Laura Tremaine, the previously mentioned voice on friendship and a dear friend of mine, said, I don't overly schedule the time with friends. That seems to happen more organically, but I do try to schedule time for friends, meaning I have a relationship section on my to do list, just like I have a work section and a home section.

I schedule time to sit down and return texts. send voxer messages, et cetera. If I don't schedule in friendship, it won't get done. This is not what I expected adult friendship to look like, but it does. I love the reality check of this example and of what adult friendships might look like. It's very different than riding bikes and playing board games and having sleepovers or whatever, you know. We have to plan it in or it doesn't happen. It's just the reality.

All right. Alexandria Cokes said, sorry, I don't, sorry, I don't know how to say your name, said six years ago, several of my coworkers and friends and I decided once to meet once a month on a Thursday. We sip a specific wine each month, we eat food, and we spend time together. There's only been a handful of times we haven't all been able to gather, but we've been doing it for years and it's basically the best. We've created our own traditions based on the time. of year. Rose on the boat always in July. It's super helpful to plan our next month's meeting date

before we leave the current meeting instead of saying, oh, let's do this again sometime. Okay, so there are several things that I love about this. First, the decide once of the time, right? It's just like one Thursday a month. And also that wine and food are involved. You know, that's like that's chosen. Second, I love that there's seasonal themes and traditions like the July gathering on the boat with Rose. And that probably gradually became a thing, right? They didn't start with like, this is going to be our tradition. And then third, that they plan the next one at the current one. That suggestion came up a ton in the comments as a way to be proactive and not lose momentum on seeing friends regularly. Plan the next time when you're actually together. Here's another

example of that in just a slightly different context. Stubborn Dev shared this. My two BFFs and I all made the decide once decision to pick the next quarterly meeting time. We all live in different cities at the current gathering. So for last year, post-Christmas hang determined early April bookcation, which then led into July birthday grill out, which then put us into our October getaway. We also try to do two adults only and two with varying numbers of family. Dev, I really love that variation. I think that's great. So like if you're if you're friends with who have partners or kids or other humans in their home, some of the gatherings can include those people, right?

So I love that intentionality. Here is another example of that kind of intentionality and planning. E.A.M. Robinson shared this. Every Tuesday night at 7 p.m. we have Bridge Club. But now it is extra planned because we have kids. The first and third Tuesdays of the month are the whole group. Second Tuesday, guys meet. Fourth Tuesday, girls meet.

So life-giving. and only need babysitters two times a month. It's brilliant from a group dynamic standpoint and also the babysitting one. You know, we're just, we're being aware of different types of group dynamics and relationship dynamics in one whole group. Little Loomis shared this. This year I decided for my birthday to go to dinner with my three girlfriends, and that started a girlfriend birthday dinner tradition, extra fun since our four birthdays are spaced apart every

couple of months. It was a very simple thing, and we don't always manage it. on the birthday date itself, but we love planning it. Again, super simple and a decide once. My mother-in-law actually does this with her Japanese friends. They have birthday dinners. And since they're like a good number of them, that's really when they hang out is birthday dinners. It's pretty fantastic. Okay. Next up, Kathy 4G. Kathy says, I have a group of friends from our PTA days. Our kids are now adults. And we decided once and still now meet the second Wednesday of every month for dinner.

decide where the next month will be when we are at dinner. If someone has to miss, we go ahead and they just catch up next month. That's another theme that showed up a lot. You plan something, and it's okay if not everyone can come. They'll come the next time. Amy B. 7399 said a similar thing. A standing date, the last Tuesday of odd months. I love the odd month thing.

I love that. Don't try to juggle it around if not everyone can make it. If you try to make it work, if you try to make it work for everybody, you likely end up canceling until the next time. This one is really smart and very realistic, which I like. It's consistent and it's okay if someone can't come. Because if you change the date to help everyone, you're likely not going to do it, right? Again, anything is better than nothing. Here is a good one from a scheduling standpoint.

This is from Ms. Vali. My BFF and I try to get together for breakfast on Saturday. We don't meet every Saturday. but once or twice a month, if possible. Early a.m. before things get too hectic at home works for us. Also, grouping things like working out or walking with a friend or volunteering together can be a good time to connect. Such great ideas there in that one.

I actually really love like an early weekend breakfast, if you have tiny kids especially. It's so good. Okay, I love this next one. This is from the Hummel. When my friend was living overseas for a few months, we would share a meal together, via video chat, her dinner time, my lunchtime. When she came back, we still lived in different states. So now we have a weekly Sunday afternoon phone call. It's a highlight of my week. I love the idea of having a meal with someone over video chat. It is absolutely better than nothing.

And it can happen when you don't live on different continents too, right? That is something I know we want to be like in person with people, that anything is better than nothing. Being on video with each other is better than not seeing each other for months and months and months, I would assume. I would assume that would be true for you. Next is Mrs. Sarah Jane Griffin. When a friend and I say, we should get together, I have started whipping my phone out and saying, okay, when? Let's set a date now. Does it sometimes get canceled or reschedule? Sure. But we keep those dates pretty frequently. And it's a lot better than saying sometime and that sometime turning into never because we didn't just set the date. this is another beautiful example of anything is better than nothing. Schedule it. Hop on it right then.

It also shows the person I think that they matter to you, which is lovely. Okay, a few things that I'm doing that you might also like in addition to these comments. I am setting aside one day a week. That's my get lunch with somebody day. So I have that on my calendar. Like it's always blocked, right? So that I can just invite people to lunch or if someone's like, can you get lunch this week? I'm like, sure, how about? You know, I'm also doing things like choosing like one Saturday a month to have people over for dinner, putting that on the calendar. Now, would I like to have people over more often than what really amounts to once a month? Yes, very much so. Is it realistic to do that right now? I mean, not to plan for, for sure, right? And we'll probably have more than once a month.

but anything's better than nothing, you know? At least it's on there. So I think just maybe try blocking off a monthly time for something and add in the person later. It's kind of like what Laura said earlier that she doesn't necessarily schedule time with friends, but for friends. Like when is the time that I'm going to spend on my friends, on my relationships? When am I going to do that?

And even though that might feel like a system, and it is, you know, it's not a huge system. You can start even smaller than that by like how you schedule your time. You know, you don't have to do a relationship audit like Mary does. But I think that what we are after, what we are after in our relationships, the depth that we want, the consistency that we want, it is not accomplished by building a big system and plugging it in, pressing start. It is built on the singular text. It is built on just the casual checking in. It is built on having dinner once a quarter. Anything is better than nothing. And the thing that you want, you actually can get to that place quicker than you realize with small steps. Actually, you'll get there quicker than if you

wait for a big machine. If you wait for things to not get busy. Are you kidding me? It's okay. that it doesn't look exactly the way that you want it to right from the get-go. Start small. Ultimately, however you kind of approach this, we just want to be kind to ourselves and to our people in this process. I want you to recognize the world that we live in and that having the kinds of the relationships that we're drawn to, it's harder to make that happen.

And that's okay. Instead, we can adjust our expectations to the energy we have available. and we can start small from there, right? We can remember that friendships change, what worked to connect before, it might not work now, adjust and don't see that as a bad thing, schedule and don't see that as a bad thing, and try not to keep account,

like let friendships ebb and flow the way they need to based on personalities and schedules and all the things. And I think the biggest thing is just to remember that anything is better than nothing. A text, one single meal, that's not repeated for two years, one walk with a friend out of every dozen texts that say, hey, do you want to have to take a walk today? Those are better than not doing anything at all. And for sure, for sure, decide once some stuff with a friend or two or the kind of time that you

want to spend. Put it on the calendar. Like choose a consistent block of time and put it on your calendar. Schedule it, just like you schedule meetings and appointments. I really think that maybe this is not ideal and how to connect with friends more regularly. But we can't always aim for the ideal. If we do, nothing happens. And we kind of stay lonely and we miss our people. So this is a good way to at least start small and connecting with your friends more regularly. Okay, before we go, let's celebrate the lazy genius of the week.

This week, it is Emily Robinson. Emily sent me this quick DM that I love for the season that we're, in and for this episode theme, actually. And here's what she wrote. My BFF and I, lazy genius, Christmas photos this year. We booked many sessions with a photographer friend, but this year decided to book back to back so we can help with child pet wrangling during the other person's 20 minute session. How great is this? You're scheduling something that you both need to do, and you're doing it at times that you can help each other. And then it's kind of a fun chance to see each other and hang out, right? Depending on the day and the attitudes of the kids and the

pets and stuff, like you, this could easily be followed by a meal together or playing in the park or walking through the city or whatever. I just love this idea, Emily. So for you all listening, hopefully this inspires like something else that you need to schedule that's necessary and you can schedule it with someone that you're close to, you know, whether it's family photos or grocery shopping or anything. I just really love this idea, Emily. So thank you for sharing it, congratulations on being the lazy genius of the week. Okay, that's it for today, you guys. Thank you so much for listening. And until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra. I'll see you next week. Have you ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life?

It's so dangerous to live that more dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life because when you're living a B or B plus life, you don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it? I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A-plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You wherever you get your podcasts.