High-Density Days
Friendship is a function of time.
Let’s think about “total gross time spent with friends.”
Getting coffee with someone for half an hour a week, every other week, adds up to 13 hours a year. Like Will above, I recently had an odyssey with a friend. Ian and I spent about 17 hours together doing a mixed climb. In a day, Ian and I were able to spend more time together than in a year of LA peripheral friendship!
A bit of text from reflecting on that big day with Ian feels relevant:
Alpine Starts II
"Sometimes, we talk as we walk. We exchange anecdotes about our families and where we grew up. Sometimes, we trudge along without words, letting the rhythmic crunch of our boots in the snow and our heartbeats in our ears form a trance-like song that melts the hours away...
I find that adventures are often the best time to get to know someone beyond the superficial, and this long day added conviction to that sentiment."
Ian is one of my good pals. I’ve only known him, though for about a year and a half. How did we become such good friends? Friendship is a function of time. Our climb of Mt. Lady Washington isn’t the only odyssey I’ve been on with Ian, nor will it be the last.
The epic days we’ve enjoyed act like friendship multipliers, and these deep shared experiences can hold friendships together for years. I’ve got people I’d consider good friends that I’ve spent mere days with. The intensity and depth of those days, though, mean that there isn’t a doubt in my mind that they’d call me a good friend too.
In another post earlier this year, I started pulling on this string of an idea, writing about how camping in the desert with friends seems to have a unique power. The setting of the desert seems to surface profound interpersonal experiences more easily, but really it’s about what you’re doing in the desert: for the past three years, each spring I’ve organized a social desert trip with the explicit purpose of developing friendships.
If you typically reserve an hour a week to meet new people or develop nascent relationships, a camping trip will accomplish half a year’s worth of friendship development in a weekend.
A Morning and Night in the Desert
"I wipe a thin layer of red dirt off the lenses of my sunglasses. When you leave Moab, as we’re doing today, a bit of it always comes back with you. The signature red soil seems to find its way into every bag, orifice, nook, and cranny possible. I know I’ll find a pants pocket of sand in a few months or notice a film of red dirt on a neglected piece of cookware.
Likewise, you bring back sandy memories with you. The time spent with friends in this place creates profundity; somehow, these desert moments seem to have a higher density than usual."
When you’re camping, fewer extraneous distractions create ample opportunities for high-density moments. That has to be why it’s so easy to go on a trip or a long car ride with someone you hardly know and, afterwards, feel like you’ve skipped the superficial level of friendship and gone straight for the good stuff.
Recall keystone memories of friendships: moments, days, or trips that define how you think of a friend. For instance, I’m thinking of when I stayed up all night doing an entrepreneurship contest entry with Shreyas in college, or a certain evening of extraordinary banter with Jake where a specific bit was born. Both of these evenings were like keys turning in my mind, unlocking a deeper understanding of these friends, of how they worked, and how I relate to them.
High-density moments like these form friendships. They are the critical component to rich relationships. When you’re investing time in a relationship—whether it’s familial, platonic, or romantic—moments of high density are what you’re aiming for: discovering an unexpected connection, uncovering common beliefs and values, creating a unique memory. In short, clicking with others.
Look at this breakdown of how Americans spend time with others as they age:
Different relationships dominate different portions of our lives. Our time spent with our family and friends peaks as children and teenagers. Family is traded for coworkers and partners, quickly followed by children. As we age and work less, coworkers slowly lose their relative importance, mostly traded for more time with our partners or alone.
The average American 18 year old is spending 137.75 minutes a day with friends: a lifetime peak for friend-time. For my age bracket, the average person is spending 77.86 minutes per day with friends. That’s almost 475 hours a year. Sounds like a lot… but is it?
Now, to be fair, I don’t have kids or a significant other. My personal graph would skew far more towards time with friends compared to the average. But for the sake of illustration: for me, probably a quarter of those 475 hours would be spent with my three roommates. Maybe another third of my time goes to the usual suspects: 5-10 of my closest friends. I’ll allocate a fifth of my friend-time to my hardo friends for some adventures throughout the year, and an hour a week for my book club, leaving me with just under an hour a week remaining.
An hour a week! All the time to go around for meeting new people and spending time with people outside of my immediate circle. All of those catch-ups with people from high school and college. Hanging out with that “other” group of friends you don’t see very often but wish you did. All that in just an hour a week!
Time and how you spend it is, apparently, a theme of this blog. Investing in friendships is, without a doubt, one of the best returns on investment you can find.
Plan an insane day trip. Organize a camping weekend. Ride in the car with people you don’t know very well, or sit next to them at dinner. Text the person you’ve been wanting to befriend and ask them to do any of these things.
Seek moments of higher density.
Frankly, doing half an hour of coffee every two weeks feels far more committing, anyway.
I passed this along to a few friends I want to have high density days with this year!
Undoubtably the more friendships we have and our ability to interact with others on a consistent basis improves our mental health and prolongs our lives I truly believe. Without consistent interactions with others we slowly deteriorate on many different levels. May the year to come bring you many new friendships and interactions with a variety of people around the world.