Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 1: tip is to make your invitations specific. If you are
Speaker 1: suggesting getting together with someone, offer enough details that it
Speaker 1: can actually happen with one reply. Today's tip like another
Speaker 1: this week, comes from Anna Goldfarb, who is the author
Speaker 1: of the new book Modern Friendship. Goldfarb notes that it
Speaker 1: is really harder to make friends in our disconnected age,
Speaker 1: but this is an important but it is not impossible.
Speaker 1: One way to move casual acquaintances up the friendship ladder
Speaker 1: is to invite them to get together in a new way.
Speaker 1: A lot of people know this intuitively. You chat with
Speaker 1: your fellow yoga class attendee regularly, so at the end
Speaker 1: of a class you say, we should get together sometime.
Speaker 1: The problem is that while the intention is lovely, this
Speaker 1: statement is pretty much unworkable. Imagine the person enthusiastically says yes,
Speaker 1: now what you say, okay, when I don't know I
Speaker 1: need to check my calendar. We still don't know what's
Speaker 1: going on, or what you're doing, or how long it
Speaker 1: will take, and now we need to come back to
Speaker 1: each other at some other point, to make it happen.
Speaker 1: I know people who will stay on it until it happens.
Speaker 1: But these people already have tons of friends because they
Speaker 1: are just like that. For the rest of us, these
Speaker 1: are some fairly long odds, so Goldfarb suggests making your
Speaker 1: invitations more specific. You should ask ask the person to
Speaker 1: do something that you strongly suspect they will be interested in.
Speaker 1: You should give them a specific time, or maybe even
Speaker 1: a backup time. If it's something more vague, you could
Speaker 1: explain the upside for them. She offers examples. For instance,
Speaker 1: if you've noticed that someone seems into their nails or
Speaker 1: at least wants to be want to get manicures next weekend.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking eleven am on Saturday at the place near
Speaker 1: your gym.
Speaker 2: We can grab Chipotle afterwards. If you have time or
Speaker 2: for someone interested in food, you might email thinking of you.
Speaker 2: Any interest in going to a farmer's market with me
Speaker 2: on Saturday from ten am to noon we can grab
Speaker 2: almond croissants from the new bakery that just open nearby.
Speaker 2: Or it's been too long since we've seen each other.
Speaker 2: Any interest in going with me to the new tapas
Speaker 2: place for sungria on Thursday, say six pm, we need
Speaker 2: Sungria in our lives. I know if anyone I had
Speaker 2: chatted with enjoyably extended one of those invitations to me,
Speaker 2: that would be a pretty easy yes. If I couldn't
Speaker 2: because of the timing, I would immediately come back with, well, gosh,
Speaker 2: I'd love to, but I have a kid's piano recital
Speaker 2: at eleven am on Saturday. Could we do two o'clock
Speaker 2: or could we do the next Saturday. The specificity of
Speaker 2: the invitation invites specificity in response and guessing. These would
Speaker 2: be easy yeses, or at least easy yeses with modifications
Speaker 2: for you as well. So if you would be excited,
Speaker 2: probably most people you would extend these specific invitations too
Speaker 2: would be excited as well. The odds are good that
Speaker 2: you will wind up spending time together. As you spend
Speaker 2: time together, the relationship grows. So follow Goldfarbe's advice in
Speaker 2: Modern Friendship and make these invitations specific. Your social life
Speaker 2: will likely improve as a result. In the meantime, this
Speaker 2: is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making the
Speaker 2: most of our time. Thanks for listening to before breakfast.
Speaker 2: If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach
Speaker 2: me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast
Speaker 2: is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia,
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Speaker 2: listen to your favorite shows.