How to Make 5 New Friends Tomorrow
Ever feel like you need to get out more?
Have you worked so hard every week, only to find yourself so spent during the last few weekends that you were even excited to not do a damn thing each time? Content to just hide away as a hermit until Monday returns?
Maybe you’re self enterprising or an entrepreneur building your passion projects. You find your work commitments encourage you to spend weekends or nights slaving away under the guise of “productivity” or creative solitude. I’ve found myself in both places too often, where enough time alone passed that I regretted the lack of connection and felt the emptiness it created in my spirit, motivation, and general well being.
It’s time to bump that noise. We need connection. We need to never lose the desire to make friends and share the gift of being a friend.
It’s a fantastic motivator towards career progression, general networking, unique life opportunities, increased energy for passion projects, and endless other known and unknown benefits.
The utter NONSENSE out there
When researching, I searched variations of “how to make new friends”. Most of the advice was pathetically vague or broad, and boiled down to abstract trite niceties like:
(all real “steps” in articles about making friends)
So specific. Hm. When should I NOT be persistent in general?
Wonderful. Thanks Fast Company! That’s about as useful as cooking instructions that have a step titled “make good food”.
“Look Broadly”
… what!? That’s about as broad of advice with the word “broad” in it as it can get.
Being a tactical thinker and doer, I like my advice the way I like my flights — no connections with a route straight to my destination. Don’t take me to other cities of roundabout views and wisdom, I just want to land where I want to go, and know what I want to know.
Naturally, everybody is different and will have unique personalities that affect the way they execute such sweeping social guidance. What will never change though and undoubtedly is a requirement, is that putting yourself out there and starting the engagement puts you on the path to being better at making friends.
The challenge and specifics:
Here’s a direct, specific challenge that you can execute right after reading this. It will tell you what to do, not how or why or any other fluffy reasoning. Just leverage the moments I am mentioning below and bring your genuine and vulnerable “you” to the table:
1. Social Platforming
Pick any area of interest that you like, search social platforms (IE: Facebook) and join relevant groups and privately message 5–10+ people within the group that seem to be commenting or posting. Say hello and ask a genuine question about the topic, and indicate you’d like to connect and learn more about X topic by following them.
2. Spice Up the Commute
On your commute speak to at least two people and introduce yourself. If you commute by car then plan to head to a breakfast place. Tell them about your goal to make your commute less boring, and that you quickly want to get to know them and connect via social media or however they’d prefer to keep any kind of connection going.
3. Lay it down at Lunch
Make conversation with at least three people during your lunch. This could be at your local spot, or you can plan to walk around and talk to people. I used to do this down on Wall Street and just chat it up with folks.
4. The Different Department Email
Pick a colleague in a job lateral to yours or different department and ask to do lunch or get to know them better. Colleagues will often be open to this, and one of my closer friends came from this experience.
5. Afterwork Extracurriculars
Whether it’s inviting colleagues to happy hour, a basketball league, or just heading to a park to practice back handsprings (I had no life after work), this is prime time to approach and introduce yourself to at least two or three people.
I did this same routine each day for a week two years ago and it ended in 31 people met, 4 good friends to this day, and one that helped me in huge ways that honestly altered the direction of my life.
If you have the nerve to bust out of your funk and commit to these five actions, you should get at least five new acquaintances! Stay excited, maintain the connections, and keep on throwing yourself out there — your inner recluse will smile and be delighted to take the back seat for once.
