Recipes for Belonging: The fundamental ingredients
This is part of a series I’m writing on Recipes for Belonging. See my introductory post here.
A recipe for belonging relies on some key ingredients, each of which plays an important role in the overall dish.
In food, you have different gastronomical components—proteins, vegetables, grains. Some of them tend be used more often than others—chicken, rice, beans, lettuce—and in tried-and-true combinations.
Similarly, a good recipe for belonging will rely upon common ingredients—a venue suitable for convening people, a meal, a shared activity—each of these can be adjusted to taste, but most gatherings will account for a lot of the same things.
Step 1: Determine what you’re trying to achieve
Before you make a food recipe, you are already making big decisions—are we talking about making a dinner, or a dessert? A side dish, or a main? Are we preparing for a big feast or an easy and affordable way to feed a family?
When designing a recipe for belonging, this is equally important—especially because most of us aren’t used to thinking this way when it comes to how we organize.
When you start with the overall objective you’re trying to achieve, you can be super versatile about how you go about it.
EXAMPLE: DEEP CONVERSATIONS
Let’s say, for example, you want to have deeper, more meaningful conversations. It’s a common and valuable need to address!
If you, like me, are used to organizing events in formal venues for larger groups, you might naturally jump into planning an event that fits that mold—something that will cost money and require significant resources to produce.
When you look at what you’re trying to achieve first, however, you might realize you have better options at your disposal.
What if, instead of producing a big event, you simply hosted a few friends at your home? It would require little more preparation than sending out some invites and tidying up your home. Maybe you can scratch your itch with minimal effort.
Once you have a strong idea of what you want to achieve and the best way of approaching it, you’ll know what kinds of ingredients you need to pick up.
The kind of meal you want to make ::
The kind of experience you want to create
Step 2: Pick a format
Knowing what you want to achieve, what format makes the most sense? This is a good opportunity to check your assumptions—if your purpose, for example, is to connect more to nature, you can do that in a lot of different ways:
Purpose: Connect to nature
Possible approaches:
- Go for a hike
- Go camping
- Go for a walk
Possible audiences:
- By yourself
- With one friend
- With a small group of friends
- With a medium group of friends
- With a large group of friends and friends-of-friends
- With a mix of friends and strangers
- Professionally, for paying customers
You can mix other elements into this as you see fit.
As you see here, simply by thinking this through, you give yourself a chance to dismantle your assumptions so you can find the most effective approach to achieve what you’re setting out to do.
Too often, I’ve turned a simple desire—like reconnecting to nature—into more of a production than I needed to.
When in doubt, start with the simplest possible version of what you are looking to do. It will give you valuable information to inform larger undertakings.
A good chef always tests out a new recipe before trying to serve it to a giant banquet!
I might naturally jump at the idea of addressing my need by organizing a camping trip.
Maybe that’s what I ought to do! But, looking through my list, perhaps I can start by going for a nice walk first.
Step 3: Set a date
When and where is this going to happen? Once you have these two components, you’re already well on your way to being able to send out save-the-dates.
For most gatherings, some notice—but not too much—tends to be what’s most effective.
Yes, you can organize something for tonight—spontaneity is fun, and maybe makes the experience better!
Alternatively, you can plan for something to happen far out in the future, a year or more from now—in the case of things like weddings, this is often expected and called for.
For most of what we want to do, however, we likely want to aim to host our gathering one to three weeks from now. I consider two weeks my sweet spot. (The equivalent of 350° on the oven, maybe?)
If you’re trying to do something that requires a specific type of venue, or is dependent on a person or resource outside your direct control, you may need to incorporate some flexibility into how you approach this.
Possible date ranges:
- Right now! Just go do the thing by yourself or with whoever is around.
- Tonight! Blast out some text messages and see who’s up for a spontaneous adventure.
- In the next few days—maybe because you are trying to do something that is specific and time-sensitive
- In two weeks or so—the sweet spot for many gatherings
- In a month or so—ideal for gatherings that require a little preparation, like securing speakers or attracting larger crowds of 30 or more.
- More than a month from now—best for bigger undertakings, or events that will ask people to make travel plans.
- Many months from now—called for when doing a big event that requires a lot of preparation, like a wedding or a conference. (If you do a regular anniversary party for your community, I recommend penciling in the dates for the next several years now—and then another calendar entry in advance to make time to prepare for the event, so it doesn’t sneak up on you each year.)
It’s important to balance what’s realistic, given your circumstances, with the inherent urgency of what you’re looking to do.
CRAZY IDEA AT A CONFERENCE
I might, for example, be super inspired at a conference to try out a new idea with the attendees from that conference.
In the throes of Super Conference Inspiration, I might want to try to organize something immediately, at the conference, before everyone parts ways.
That might make sense to attempt, but I also have to recognize the constraints of trying to pull something like that off. People are busy, I’m in an unfamiliar city, and there’s very little time to put something together.
Does that mean something great can’t be done? Heck no—some of the best parties I’ve thrown were done at the last minute. At the same time, it helps to know what’s realistic to expect and what isn’t.
In this instance, maybe I’m better off attempting something reasonable during conference time, to assess interest and flesh out my idea—and then setting another date, after the conference, to convene people interested in discussing more.
I could have a much easier time getting people excited about a future remote discussion—and collecting their info to let them know about it—than I might have by trying to get them to participate in something during an already busy conference week.
Step 4: Secure a venue
The next thing you want to do is to determine where your experience will take place. Oftentimes the venue dictates so many of the other things that follow, so it’s important to secure this as early as possible.
If it’s a place you have control over, like your own home, then you don’t have to worry so much about availability. If the nature of your endeavor requires a venue that isn’t always available, it becomes that much more important to lock it down sooner.
Possible venues:
- Your home
- Your friend’s home
- Your office or place of business
- A local coworking space! (I can talk to you for days about the untapped potential here.)
- A professional event space
- Hourly conference room rentals
- A park
- A library
- A sidewalk
- A restaurant
- A cafe
- A bar
(Don’t discount the power of public spaces—they often have a lot to offer!)
After you’ve got some experience under your belt, you’ll likely have a few steady spots you know you can count on.
MY PERSONAL LIST OF FAVORITE VENUES
In my case, for example, I know that I have my own home—which I specifically planned to make a place that’s appropriate for small gatherings—as my first go-to choice.
I also have Central Park not far away. In particular, I know a few specific spots that are convenient to public transportation and restrooms. Much of Central Park can be super inconvenient to get to, so making a gathering spot super accessible to people coming from all over the city is critical to me.
I also have friends who have told me I could use their venues if they need them. My friend Eric’s office is right in the middle of town. My friends at Prime Produce have a big, beautiful, professional event venue. If I need to, I know who to call.
I also know a few great restaurants and bars. When I host my annual New Work City holiday party, I know I can count on The Grafton in the East Village to rope off the back half of their bar just for us. I know it’s convenient enough to get to, I know the service is good, and I know they have a solid menu.
Organizing gets a lot easier when you know what venues you have at your disposal—build and track your own list of spaces as you go!
Step 5: Determine your guests
I think it’s important to note here just how simple we can keep these things. To gather people, you don’t need a web site, a logo, an online event, tickets, or even a detailed plan for what’s going to happen.
Once you have those core ingredients—purpose, format, date, and venue, you are already ready to invite people — fancy that!
Too often, we complicate things unnecessarily as an unconscious form of resistance. Notice if that’s happening for you and practice simplifying so you can keep things moving forward.
Next up, we need people to come and participate (assuming you’re not doing something by yourself, which is totally okay too!)
The more you know who exactly these people are and how you will reach them the better—you don’t want to commit too heavily to a program without having a reasonable expectation of how you’re going to get a critical mass of people to participate.
This is why the format is so important at this stage. If, after thinking about your audience, you discover that you’re not confident you can actually get enough people to participate in what you envision doing, that’s a good sign you might be better off trying something less ambitious.
SEQUENCING INCREASINGLY COMPLEX GATHERINGS
I work with my coworking space clients to develop a series of programs of increasing levels of commitment. Over the course of several months, it often looks something like this:
1. Pick several friends to have one-on-one chats with
2. Gather a small group of these friends for an informal lunch conversation
3. Host a formal pop-up coworking session
4. Host a regular series of pop-up coworking sessions
5. Host a formal interest meeting
6. Rally people around a project to build a coworking space
As you can see, each step is actually quite small and easy to take. You gather more information, you build interest, and you increase your capacity and confidence to take the next step.
Often, someone comes to me thinking they want to jump straight to Step 7, but they’re super stressed about how to go about it. It’s because they’re not ready for Step 7 yet!
In this case, a longer-term ambition—to build a coworking space—is out of reach from an audience perspective at first. I might not know enough people to attempt a big undertaking like that right now… but I *do* know a few people who might share my interest and who might know others I can talk to.
So, instead of trying to do something too ambitious that I might likely fail at, I can start with an activity that matches the audience I can reach right now. In this case, a handful of one-on-one conversations.
Start simple, build on what you learn, and evolve from there.
You can see the analogy here for cooking, too. Why try to tackle a big, complex meal with several different dishes if you’ve barely ever prepared a meal before? Break it down, build your fundamental understanding of the different components, and then work your way up from there.
Starting points for reliable recipes
If my imaginary spouse told me that some old friends were visiting from out of town and they’d be coming over for dinner in two hours, I wouldn’t try to get fancy with what I’d cook for them—I’d go back to what I know will work with minimal thinking or preparation.
Lately, for me, that means my most reliable dish—chicken and veggies, roasted in the oven. Healthy, affordable, can be made delicious, compatible with most diets.
Same goes for my lunch—I want to rely on some consistent meals so I don’t have to think too much about it.
So, when in doubt, I can always start with some core formats. Most of what I do will fit one of these.
Common starting points for a recipe
- A weeknight dinner party at my home
- A weekday evening event at my friend’s coworking space
- A weekday lunch meeting at my favorite restaurant with a big table downtown
- A weeknight happy hour at my favorite bar downtown
- A Saturday afternoon picnic at the most convenient spot in the park
Find the combinations of format, venue, and timing that work best for you and practice them. The more you do, the easier things get!
