Ask HN: How do you manage to stay social? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you manage to stay social?

36 pointsharias8 comments

Recently, I have noticed that I cannot remain social even though I want to. Most of my friends spend their time watching TV series, or in some other solitary activity. Thinking about it, it is like the present day world promotes if not help people stay solitary. Some articles suggested alarming consequences :https://www.marketwatch.com/story/america-has-a-big-loneliness-problem-2018-05-02 . But nobody even wants to talk about it.

View on HN

Whenever I get lunch with a group of coworkers, this is what everyone talks about and it’s absolutely exhausting. One issue is that I’m 24, craving new, novel social interaction, while most of them are in their late 20s or in their 30s, settled down, and fully in the Netflix trap.

The only benefit to seeing this is that it makes me want to never become like it.

The most genuine conversations I have are with actual friends: People I’d hit up on the weekend to walk in a park, drive somewhere for a hike, or grab dinner with. I also have a circle of friends that I go out with, which I understand not everyone is interested in.

Get out of the house as much as possible, and embrace the relationships that you genuinely enjoy. Small talk about Netflix will still be a thing with people you’re not close with, but you can help steer the conversation to be more interesting if you know the things that you do/don’t want to talk about.

One new tactic: I walk our dog at approximately 8:30 every night. I used to be mildly annoyed by this, treating it as a chore to do before I could get back home slink into my chair, and enjoy the rest of the evening.

I recently purchased a pair of Airpods, and having high-quality USB headphones on me at all times has changed the way I think about phone calls. I have a list of about 12 people (parents, brother, long-time friends that live in different cities now), that I'll call randomly during that walk. If they pick up, great. If not, I just go to the next one. At this point, most of them know that I may just call them while walking the dog, and that they're under no obligation to pick up.

The end result is 2-3 times a week, I spend 30+ minutes nurturing a relationship with someone who is important to me, but who I don't see face-to-face often. And my dog gets a longer walk because of it.

Find new (additional) friends who like to do sociable things. Meetup is a good place to find people like this. If you like a place which has its own subreddit (eg r/losangeles etc), you may find people who regularly do sociable stuff.

Turn solitary activities into group activities. If your friends are into a particular TV show, throw a get together/party where you hang out and watch and discuss that show.

Invite your friends who are into solitary activities to come along to some of your new found more group oriented activities.

I've done a poor job of it lately, but when I wasn't travelling as much and was single, I relied on Meetup and social mags to find things to do and people to meet. This has gotten harder to rely on after moving to Dallas. A lot of the events we've found on both sources are not to our liking, and a lot of the stuff that is (live music, mostly) are in bars, where people tend to go in groups and not interact much with each other. Most of the dope shit is on Facebook, but you need to know the right groups to be made aware of said dope shit.

Regardless, understand that most of the people you'll meet will be fleeting; finding and building deep relationships with other people is hard work!

That said, what you're feeling is normal. A lot of people's social circles extend to their workmates, old friends from school and folks they talk to a lot from church. (Churches do a really good job of bringing people together that otherwise wouldn't.) People tend to be very cliquey by default because it's comfortable. Making friends as an adult is a lot more difficult than as a kid.

Also, try to meet people outside of your industry. It will help you gain perspective and might even make you better at your own work. This is especially important in tech. Many of us make a lot of money and work in what most would consider paradise (if you get to wear whatever you want, have a ping pong table and beer/wine on tap, congrats, you qualify), but it's very easy to forget that and think that everything is terrible because there are wealthier folks out there. Venturing outside of the tech bubble helps with that.

Put yourself in a situation where you see the same people regularly. I show up to a weekly tennis clinic and hold season tickets to one of the local sports teams, for example.

Joiners know the answer, the rest of us have to grudgingly recognize that joining an organization (that isn't insane) which is doing something meaningful together is one of the few ways out of the house that doesn't lead to watching TV in bars.

Luckily, these are a lot easier to find (and scrutinize first) than they used to be.

Sometimes it’s fun to rent an Airbnb somewhere beautiful and invite friends to come hang and co work, hike, chill in the hot tub, invite their friends and hang out and talk as a group.

We bought a house with a porch and eat dinner out there whenever possible. We probably know about half of the people on our block.

Also, when you have kids it’s easier to bond over common ground with the kids. Otherwise I found myself in awkward conversations yakking about work.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com