Make time for friends

Time spent with friends feels magical. Here’s how to build more of it into your life.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Good morning, This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's tip is about how to make more time for friends.
Most of us see our colleagues when we go to work,
we see our families when we go home, but getting
together with friends can be challenging. We're so busy with
everything else that they tend to fall to the bottom

(00:22):
of the list. And that's too bad, because friends are
a good use of time. Indeed, good friends can make
us feel like we have more time. A few years ago,
for my book Off the Clock, I asked nine hundred
busy people to track their time for a day. Then
I asked them questions about how they felt about their time.
I found that the people who felt time was most

(00:44):
abundant spent a far higher proportion of their time interacting
with friends than people who felt time was scarce. And no,
it's not because the people who saw friends had less
going on. People who felt starved for time had just
as much leisure time as everyone else. They simply spent
more of it watching TV or on social media. The

(01:05):
correlation was so strong that I formed this theory. Being
social makes time. Social media kills time, So let's spend
more time with friends and less time on social media. Right.
I'm sure we could agree that this would be great,
But of course there are reasons we drift towards the screens.
When you're building our career and raising a family, a

(01:26):
lot of your leisure time appears late at night when
it's hard to cease, or it requires planning ahead, or
hiring a sitter, or trading off childcare duties with your spouse.
Your friends are just as busy, they faced the same challenges,
but Twitter is ready anytime you are. That said, I
do think that even busy people can make time for friends.

(01:48):
One option is that you can build what I call
relationship planning into your life. In an earlier episode of
Before Breakfast, we talked about planning your upcoming weeks on
Friday Afternoons. I suggested listing priorities in three categories, career, relationships, self.
The reason to make a three category list is that

(02:08):
it reminds you to put something in all three categories.
It's hard to make a three category list and then
leave one of the categories blank. This is a good
way to nudge yourself to have a more balanced life. Anyway,
the relationship category might naturally focus on your spouse or
your kids. But I challenge you to make a friend
activity a priority at least every other week. Think about

(02:30):
whose company you enjoy and which friendships you really value.
Then use this planning time on Friday to reach out
and get something on the calendar. It doesn't have to
be elaborate. A phone or video chat can work with
someone who doesn't live nearby, or you can plan to
meet for coffee or lunch. That's how you build relationship
planning into your life. But over years of studying people's time,

(02:53):
I've realized that the people who spend the most time
with their friends tend to structure their lives so they
don't need to plan reallyationship time. It happens automatically. Here's
what I mean. Some things happened once. Other things fall
into the category of recurring events. You don't have to
plan them. They just happen over and over. This is

(03:16):
neither good nor bad on its own. It can be
a bad thing. With recurring meetings at work, people keep
tramping to that Tuesday morning staff meeting week after week
just to report that, yep, they're still doing their jobs.
This meeting has long ceased to earn its place on
the calendar, but you keep going because it's there. But
the recurring event phenomenon can be a good thing. When

(03:37):
we're talking about getting together with friends, it's often the
planning that's the huge hurdle. I remember one get together
I was trying to plan a few years ago. I
sent out a doodle pole. We had to move forward
two months before we could find a time that most
people were available, and I kept going back and forth
with the venue as we looked at different dates. It
was a lot of work for one night, and while

(03:58):
it was really fun, it was not something that inspired
me to try again soon. Recurring events, though, don't have
this problem. If you know that your gang gets together
for drinks every Monday night at the same bar, you
don't have to plan each Monday. You can go or
you cannot go, but people tend to become regulars. You
start to build your life around these anchors in your calendar.

(04:20):
You promised to pick up the kids on Tuesday, if
your spouse will take Monday. When your colleagues asked a
schedule meeting, you don't suggest Monday at four thirty p m.
So if you have a group of friends you'd like
to see regularly. Think about what kind of recurring get
together would work. Maybe it's a Friday morning breakfast or
an early Saturday morning run. Maybe it's the first Thursday

(04:42):
of the month book club, or you could volunteer at
a food bank. Together every other Sunday. Think about the
logistics required to make this happen. Take some time today
to work on your calendar, talk with your spouse, maybe
get help from an extended family member or a babysitter.
But what I where it is if you make a
habit of it, it's more likely to happen. If you've

(05:04):
made a habit of getting to the other with friends,
I'd love to hear about it. You can email me
at Before Breakfast podcast at i heeart media dot com.
In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening and
here's to making the most of our time. Hey, everybody,

(05:26):
I'd love to hear from you. You can send me
your tips, your questions, or anything else. Just connect with
me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at Before Breakfast Pod
that's B the number four then Breakfast p o D.
You can also shoot me an email at Before Breakfast
podcast at i heeart media dot com that Before breakfast

(05:48):
is spelled out with all the letters. Thanks so much,
I look forward to staying in touch