In a generation where community is prized but community spaces are disappearing, I hear many of my generation lamenting the difficulty of making good friends and finding community.  The good news?  Community is all around you, and fascinating people and good friends are there to be found.  It just takes a bit of practice and a healthy dose of patience.  For me, making friends and building community has gotten easier with every move: building new social connections is a habit that you can improve with practice and exercise.  Here are my tips for making friends as an adult:

Principles:

• Don’t rely on your partner for your social needs, or on your partner’s friends for community.  This forces you to get out, seek variety, and define your own interests.
• Make community time the default. Figure out how to lower the activation energy required for social/community time so that being around other people is the default, and you’re alone when you choose to be alone.
• You’ll get the vibes you show up with. Try an experiment:  At an event where you know nobody, be a little over-the-top with your energy, a little bit too goofy and outgoing. I bet you’ll find that people start conversations with you, as they’ve seen you express yourself and they know you aren’t to be feared.  Related experiment: Try being the first person on the dance floor.
• Everyone feels awkward sometimes.  Nobody’s always effortlessly smooth at meeting strangers.  It always takes effort, but there’s no class you’ve missed or perfect script- just charge boldly forward with a smile and honest curiosity, and you’ll do great.
• Make memories, not calendar appointments. A deep and connected conversation or profound shared experience can be more memorable than dozen late-night bar sessions or TV afternoons.  Peoples’ memories of you will be tinted by the intensity of the shared experience- if you make those experiences wonderful, a few brief encounters can feel like a long friendship.
• Reliability and just showing up counts for a lot.  If you reliably show up, provide encouragement to others, and are a good spirit, you will be cemented by peoples’ memories as being “part of the crew” – even if you haven’t been there as many seasons as a less reliable attendee.
• Don’t stretch yourself too thin: Be conscious and be committed.  Know yourself enough to be able to say “no” to commitments and friendships which don’t feel like they’re taking you in the right direction.
• Friendship emerges from hours spent building trust and shared experience together, not instant chemistry.  If you want to get close to somebody, you have to log hours with them- that means reaching out, following up, and being willing to come to them.

Tools for finding people

Clubs:

• Neighborhood non-profit associations
• Bicycling / running / triathlon clubs: Ask at your local specialty sports store
• Political committees or political parties
• Places of worship: These often have strong values around community, shared values, and introspection. Try out an eclectic variety: Progressive/nondenominational Shabbat services, zen meditation groups, Quaker Meetings, and Unitarian Universalist churches are all usually welcoming and open-minded even if you’ve never been to any sort of spiritual service before.

Classes:

• Social Dancing lesson cycles: Find a 6-week beginner-friendly Swing dancing class, and be the one who always has a suggestion for where to go to drinks afterward
• Exercise classes: Getting sweaty together is a good way to break down social walls.
• Improv comedy: Improv is inherently about being awkward and open to interactions, and comedians generally like to grab drinks and socialize afterward.
• Community centers – Social dance, band, choir, and art classes all might be available for free at your local community center. Look it up, and check it out!
• Hippy vibes: Ecstatic Dance, Contact Improv, and meditation or sound healing classes aren’t for everyone, but they are good for finding open-hearted, friendly people with eclectic backgrounds. Ask whether there are

The internet:

• Meetup.com: Great when you have a specific/quirky interest, and live in an active city.
• Nextdoor.com: despite its reputation, Nextdoor can be good for finding local event series or getting answers to the question “I was wondering, has anyone found a good club for <acro yoga birdwatching vegan dog-owners>?
• Facebook events: Despite a quirky recommender algorithm, this is probably the most-densely-populated event source.
• Local events listing websites: Every city has an event publicizer website (e.g. timeout.com, DoTheBay.com, sf.funcheap.com), where promoters pay to publicize their events. Newspapers also typically have an Events page

Scripts to break the ice

Don’t talk about work (unless it’s a professional event). Avoid dead-end questions which can be answered with a single word. Focus on open-ended questions or lines of questioning which build a shared understanding and rapport with someone’s background.

• What brings you here? How did hear about the org / how did you meet the hosts?
• Where do you live? Have you lived there long? How do you like it?
• What do you do for fun / what do you do when you’re not [working / at this type of an event]? What brings you to life and sets you on fire?
• What’s something you’re hopeful about in [topic of event]?

Hacks

• Have a list of friends organized into geographic clusters (e.g. SF/South Bay/East Bay; or NYC/Boston).  When you’re outside of your normal neighborhood, text 3 friends and say “Hey, I’m in your neighborhood- want to meet up?”
• The easiest spot to make friends is behind the Welcome table.  Want to go to an event, but don’t know anyone? Reach out to the event organizers to see if they need help signing guests in. You’ll get to know everyone’s names, have a natural conversation opener, and often get free admission!
• Build a calendar of potentially-interesting events.  Once a week, spend 30-45 minutes skimming event-listing websites and build a shortlist of events you’d be interest in attending, and keep them somewhere convenient. If you find yourself footloose and bored, look up this list.
• Have a “Blast List” of no-regrets invitees.  Oftentimes, the biggest hurdle to getting friends together is choosing who you want to invite.  Maintain a set of no-regrets invitees (group chat, Whatsapp group, Google Contacts list) and blast them when you’re headed to an interesting event.
  • The power of bcc. Email isn’t in vogue, but if you use GMail you can label a list of contacts in Google Contacts, then bcc that label-name when writing an email blast. voila! You’ve created an email list without the cost and friction of Mailchimp.

The Power of Volunteering

The biggest superpower I’ve discovered is the power of volunteering and stepping into leadership, before you feel like you have a right to.

If you find a community you’re excited about, ask how you can help out and volunteer! While it’s intimidating to volunteer early, I would encourage you to step up and volunteer as soon as you realize you’ve found a group that makes you excited to get deeply involved.

Whether it’s by maintaining an online bulletin board or by checking people in to in-person events, organizers will be delighted to offload tasks onto you- and you’ll get a chance to know all the group members, while being viewed by them as an integral part of the community- even if it’s your first time!

This acts as a multiplier for all the other tools I’ve mentioned above- I can’t emphasize this enough. Volunteering for event-specific tasks is something you can do immediately, for any of the events on your to-do list, and is generally no-regrets: you’ll even usually get a free ticket!

Conclusion

Building community and social connections is a habit which gets stronger with exercise.  It’s a skill which can be improved, and which can get stronger (or weaker) with age. Use the above tools to get more deeply engrained in your communities, or to find friends as you settle into a new place!