I want to go out and meet with people and there are a few events in my city.
However, I keep postponing it. I just feel like I should work, I feel tired, I should instead spend the evening with my gf, etc. I just don’t like pushing myself to go somewhere to meet new people for various reason, but I really need meeting new people and make friends beside my gf because it’s affecting negatively my mental health.
Most time when I was super happy in my life was when I was meeting many new people and making new friends.
I created a Beeminder goal to “plan to do social stuff”, which I do, but I flake at the last minute.
I’m starting this topic both to ask for recommendations, advices, thoughts and to journal a little bit how I’m going to achieve it, also talk about what goes on in my mind; maybe someone else who’ll relate will find this post
Definitely relate! Don’t have all the answers, but interested to hear what you discover.
Currently I maintain a small board game group that helps me maintain a few key friendships. I don’t beemind it, though I do have a recurring calendar event on a shared calendar with email notifications enabled to prompt myself to remind people to come.
You might try an upgrade-type goal, like social-upgrades or something, where you can add a +1 whenever you do a one-time action that has the potential to improve your social life going forward, even if it’s small. Like subscribing to your local library’s newsletter or reaching out for details on a local club.
I’ll give a try to the « social_upgrade » goal and report back. I think I just need to get the engine to start and then I’ll be invited / get the habit of going out to events / invite people like you’re doing with board games.
I had a similar problem a few years ago because I work fully remote. I have a “hangout” goal that requires me to see at least 1 person/friend/event every 16 days.
I occasionally derail because I flake but overall I just treat the derail like a tax and have greatly improved the number of times I hangout with people.
It’s kind of a different category of goal, but @rperce and I both have some kinds of goals which remind us to contact friends we haven’t spoken to recently. I have a spreadsheet (originated from this Intentionally Making Close Friends — LessWrong, which may have some other useful advice for you too) which tells me to contact people every X weeks or whatever, and a goal to just check the spreadsheet and contact some people once a week. I think Ceph’s solution is just a goal to contact one person who hasn’t been contacted in a while, nowadays.
I have a goal called “text_friend” but I just loop on my 3 favorite people lol and while it made me closer to them, I should get some diversity.
Will definitely take a read and try it out!
In my case I think I would just flake out 100% of the time or take “hangout with my girlfriend” as a +1.
(which could be solved with fineprint now that I think of it…)
(thank you all, will definitely update here once I make some progress – right now I’m on holidays which is breaking the routine and this is a bit less painful but I’ll definitely work on it when I come back home )
I have a goal called “text_friend” but I just loop on my 3 favorite people lol and while it made me closer to them, I should get some diversity.
I also have a goal to keep in touch with my dearest friends, but my general rule is that I only get a point for contacting someone that I’ve not messaged or seen for a while.
So far it’s been sufficient to not let myself count the same person twice in a row, but I probably loop on a few of them.
I use a rolodex goal for something similar! I have a list of important folks in Things.app, and I cycle through them regularly (using a custom Shortcut that’s somewhere on the forum here!). The list also contains my notes and last contact details for each of them.
I’d recommend you separate the planning from the doing and from the self-reflection. You can have one goal to maintain a list of promising and/or fun activities and make plans a few days in advance - even if you don’t feel like socializing right now. Those plans should also take care of things that give you enough energy to attend, e.g. alone-time if you are an introvert. Then it’s totally another goal to attend. From what I gather, your problem is getting over the hump and following through, and it helps to have everything set up for success. Afterwards, the next step is self-reflection: what was the true reason you didn’t go? Was it too much socializing, too many new people, too tired, etc? For more difficult goals, it’s ok to frame it as an experiment: you collect information about your limits even if in the end you don’t go - as long as you made honest efforts to go, and did an easier replacement in the end. Finally, friendships only stick if you actually enjoy spending time with each other and if you are not actively fighting the confines of your life. So watch that closely, and the planning stage only counts as a success if you take that into account.
Little update: went out to an event by myself for the first time in more than a year!
What helped is that it was an event where you have to pay 1$ in advance and it was enough to prevent me from flaking out despite the 1000 reasons for flaking out I was making.
My setup needs more improvement for sure.
@tjb I your idea of having a separate goal to maintain a list of interesting things to do, and I think that’s what I should implement next.
The best is to maintain a list of events on my calendar, and if the day it’s there, I feel like it, then I’ll go (rather than “if I put something on my calendar, I need to go or I’m failing”)
So mentally, I’m converting my “plan_social_things” goal in Beeminder to just “add social stuff on my calendar, and go there if I feel like it”
To update on this: moved back to my home country for a month or two so I should be able to see friends, but it’s too cold and I really don’t like it lol.
I’ve been getting into FPV Quadcopter racing (drones in first person basically) and I am thinking that it could be a really nice way to get in touch with like-minded people and create a small community near where I live.
Going out to meet people who don’t share the same outlook / interests is tiring, but I’d actually enjoy (I guess) spending time with people who like similar things as me.
So right now that’s my bet a little bit: that there are enough FPV enthusiasts near me, or if there aren’t, create and advertise my little community.
It’ll take time but it’ll be 10x better than just meeting new people for the sake of meeting new people.
)