Four Strategies to Prioritize Your Friendships

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It happens to everyone — we get so caught up in the daily grind that our social lives often take a back seat. But making time for friends is essential to a healthy and joyful life.

Time with friends can contribute to a laundry list of health benefits. Friends improve your mood, lower the risk of depression and anxiety, and contribute to a longer, less stressful life. Collaborative friendships can even lead to a more productive day.

But adult life can make it so difficult to prioritize your friendships. Many factors, from family schedules to work commitments to geographical distance, put a wrench in sustaining these relationships. Time is a major factor — people just don’t seem to have enough of it!

However, that doesn’t mean you should throw in the towel and give up on your friends. Absolutely not! As a productivity expert, I know from experience that small changes and tweaks can have big impacts. And friendship is no exception. I appeared on PIX11 in New York City to talk about some unique ways to catch up with friends and invest in those relationships.

Here are my best tips:

1. Pick a theme.

You can pick something you all love to do and create a get-together around it, like a wine-tasting or tea-tasting club, a book club, or a TV-recap get-together. Or do a foodie night — pick a secret ingredient and have someone bring a dish using it. You could also pick different exercise classes to meet up and do together. For friends living far away, you can also set up a Zoom call version of a themed activity. It all depends on what your friends are interested in.

2. Throw a swap party.

Turn up the nostalgia and throw a swap party! Order in some food and invite your friends over to trade clothes, bags, and shoes that you don’t use anymore. It’ll bring back the nostalgia of how you shared everything when you were teenagers and you might get some fabulous stuff out of it. You can also do this with other items too if you’d like – like kitchen or garage tools.

3. Organize a trip.

You don’t have to go far, but sometimes getting out of your normal day-to-day routine is the only way to make time for friendships. Going somewhere for two or three days together will give you some much-needed togetherness time. Look for an anchor activity, like a concert, performance, or retreat, to organize your trip around. That will make everyone more motivated to plan.

4. Use your friends wisely.

Friendship and productivity can go hand-in-hand. Pick something on each of your to-do lists and help each other check it off! For example, if you’re tech-savvy, help a friend get her website up and running. Then she can shoot new headshots for you if she’s a super shutterbug. It’s another two-for-one, as it’s a chance to see each other and get more done.

You can check out the full replay here for all of my tips.

How are you going to make time for your friends?

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1. Pick a theme.

2. Throw a swap party.

3. Organize a trip.

4. Use your friends wisely.

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