Make invitations specific

Set things up to happen with a single reply

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
tip is to make your invitations specific. If you are
suggesting getting together with someone, offer enough details that it

(00:28):
can actually happen with one reply. Today's tip like another
this week, comes from Anna Goldfarb, who is the author
of the new book Modern Friendship. Goldfarb notes that it
is really harder to make friends in our disconnected age,
but this is an important but it is not impossible.

(00:52):
One way to move casual acquaintances up the friendship ladder
is to invite them to get together in a new way.
A lot of people know this intuitively. You chat with
your fellow yoga class attendee regularly, so at the end
of a class you say, we should get together sometime.

(01:13):
The problem is that while the intention is lovely, this
statement is pretty much unworkable. Imagine the person enthusiastically says yes,
now what you say, okay, when I don't know I
need to check my calendar. We still don't know what's
going on, or what you're doing, or how long it
will take, and now we need to come back to

(01:35):
each other at some other point, to make it happen.
I know people who will stay on it until it happens.
But these people already have tons of friends because they
are just like that. For the rest of us, these
are some fairly long odds, so Goldfarb suggests making your

(01:56):
invitations more specific. You should ask ask the person to
do something that you strongly suspect they will be interested in.
You should give them a specific time, or maybe even
a backup time. If it's something more vague, you could
explain the upside for them. She offers examples. For instance,

(02:18):
if you've noticed that someone seems into their nails or
at least wants to be want to get manicures next weekend.
I'm thinking eleven am on Saturday at the place near
your gym.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
We can grab Chipotle afterwards. If you have time or
for someone interested in food, you might email thinking of you.
Any interest in going to a farmer's market with me
on Saturday from ten am to noon we can grab
almond croissants from the new bakery that just open nearby.
Or it's been too long since we've seen each other.

(02:48):
Any interest in going with me to the new tapas
place for sungria on Thursday, say six pm, we need
Sungria in our lives. I know if anyone I had
chatted with enjoyably extended one of those invitations to me,
that would be a pretty easy yes. If I couldn't
because of the timing, I would immediately come back with, well, gosh,

(03:11):
I'd love to, but I have a kid's piano recital
at eleven am on Saturday. Could we do two o'clock
or could we do the next Saturday. The specificity of
the invitation invites specificity in response and guessing. These would
be easy yeses, or at least easy yeses with modifications

(03:31):
for you as well. So if you would be excited,
probably most people you would extend these specific invitations too
would be excited as well. The odds are good that
you will wind up spending time together. As you spend
time together, the relationship grows. So follow Goldfarbe's advice in

(03:54):
Modern Friendship and make these invitations specific. Your social life
will likely improve as a result. In the meantime, this
is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making the
most of our time. Thanks for listening to before breakfast.

(04:21):
If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast
is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia,
please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

(04:43):
listen to your favorite shows.