How to make friends as an adult Pt. 1: Luck Surface Area

Sometimes it's as easy as being in the right place

This is one of many articles I’ll be writing about my experiences making friends post-formal education; hopefully you benefit from hearing the things that have worked for me :)

I sat, cross-legged and shoeless, on the floor of the incense-filled room. Nico, my roommate, sat across from me, grinning. Since he arrived in San Francisco he had been convincing me to go with him to study at this meditation center/ yoga studio/ tea shop near where we live. I was pretty apprehensive for some reason; what was wrong with just going to a coffee shop to study? Why had he dragged me into the basement of this old house filled with hippies and yogis? It was a quiet enough spot to get work done so I started going with him once or twice a week to drink tea and write code. The more we went the more Nico and I realized that, while our initial intention was to do work, it was always much more interesting to listen to the conversations that were happening around us. People were always having fascinating discussions that regularly had me turning off my headphones and tuning into the cacophony of peculiar discourse. A few weeks later I found myself a regular participant of these interesting discussions. By simply showing up to this communal living room I had begun to effortlessly make some dope friends; half of making new friends is spending consistent time in the right places.

A man named Jason Roberts wrote this super impactful blog post called Increase your surface area of luck. He explains that "The amount of serendipity that will occur in your life... is directly proportional to the degree to which you do something you're passionate about combined with the total number of people to whom this is effectively communicated." This concept can also be applied to making friendships: The amount of meaningful serendipitous interactions you have is directly proportional to the amount of time you spend in places with people who you would like to talk to.

There's this book called Bowling Alone that predicted a great truth about the current state of American communities: as society has become more distributed and cars are more of a necessity outside dense cities, we've lost many of our "third places" (religious centers, community lounges, bars, or any other communal space besides one's home or workplace where they spend time to work and passively build friendships with their neighbors.) I'm lucky to live in a dense and vibrant city where these pillars of the community are very prevalent, but those who do not have this fortune must be more intentional about finding a third place. The first step to a vibrant friend group is to increase your surface area of luck: prioritize spending intentional time in third places; join a club or organization in which you can invest a large portion of your time, and don't be too resistant when your friend invites you to hang out in a tea house :)

You may have great potential as a friend, but if you spend your free time in solitude, you'll live a life alone.