That's a hard pass for me. Spontaneity is a big part of what makes friendships work for me. I don't need more scheduling stress in my life. I'm ok with leting old friendships water down and sometimes even wither away. Sometimes they can be picked up later, sometimes they are replaced by new connections. And that's fine by me.

Hard agree. I started doing this with two or three close friends a few years ago, and started ramping it up to more friends some time last year.

Not everyone is willing to commit to monthly, but it's not as awkward as you might think. You could do one or two manually scheduled, and then after the meeting say "hey, want to make this a recurring get-together every [second thursday]?"

Pro-tip: you may have better luck arranging a hangout time immediately after the end of the workday (depending on the geography between you and them), with you both parting ways to eat a late supper afterwards. In my experience folks are more willing to commit to that schedule rather than give up their evening to meet up after supper.

My best friend just sent me a calendar invite for a ski day. We've been friends since we were four and have done everything that entails (cub scouts, sports, boy scouts, roommates, breakups, best-manning, etc.). I wouldn't ever want to lose touch with the guy, but even we schedule things like this. It's just part of lives getting more complicated and prioritizing things that matter.

God, Covid has severely hurt my friendships. It's hard to even think about "schedules" or anything until the summer -- over a year with minimal friendship contacts.

Video calls don't work for me, and everything is closed in SF. It's hard to explain, but video calls just don't seem real to me. It does very little to energize me in my friendships. I don't know how people do it.

Half my friends have taken the opportunity to move away, so they're gone for good except for a few times a year that we travel to each other after Covid. The other half I'm desperately hoping things naturally get back to pre-covid friendship levels.

My girlfriend and I do this among ourselves and with our friends. I find it's not as calculated or insensitive as it might first appear. If it's not "on the calendar" then any surprises, efforts, or frustrations (friction) that arises is on that party. Really cuts down on those "I told you about this last month" arguments, and also from welching on friends or family events. Keeps us both honest and on the same page. Might not be high-speed, but certainly is low-drag as far as relationships go.

This could be a gold mine of awkwardness, like if one side of the relationship now suggests a recurring invite twice a month and the other side was thinking, "once a year is plenty for me".

50/50 results... for contacts who are mostly work-related or arguably somewhere on the spectrum, the organised approach works and is appreciated; for the neuro-typical and/or more emotionally aware, it feels forced and not so genuine, so they prefer the feeling of me remembering they exist and wanting to talk to them.

Scheduling meetings with friends is very common in the Netherlands as it's seen as an efficient use of everyone's time. I always met two friends on a Thursday for a meal and when I moved away we still video call each week at the same time.

I have found this technique especially helpful in the WFH context created by the pandemic.

I also found it helpful to create a pretext for the recurring meetings -- like a "book club" -- even if the week-to-week interactions don't actually end up following that structure.

Starting recently... Every Monday, I have one morning call and one afternoon call scheduled with a pal — eight calls / pals per month. I don't even try to do deep work on Mondays — I just do small clerical tasks and other ad hoc calls. I go into the rest of the work week socially sated, and disconnect for a few days of deep work (ideally). I explained when proposing these recurring calls that I'm trying this to get a handle on my anxiety (which random interrupting calls don't help). Not for everyone, but I'm excited about it.

Any tips for making brand new friends in your 30s? Seems impossible.

I do the same, but not with fixed schedules in a calendar, but slightly randomized reminders with my iOS app.

Calendar events are simple, but I like that I can snooze in my app or reach out spontaneously. It's more flexible. But before I lose touch I will get that reminder.

https://apps.apple.com/app/us/id1481868897

I have tested this also. I have found Calendar reminders drive “conversion” or increased likelihood of attendance by both parties.

Just like work meetings.

I think this could work for me. I often feel stress around knowing I should catch up with someone, and then more people get added to that list, and piles up and up. Sometimes I think I put off socialising because there are too many people that I "should" see.I'm going to try something more regular like this and see if it helps.

I know somebody who did this (not only to keep in touch with me but also other friends) and it backfired pretty quickly.

It came off as being cold and didn't feel totally genuine. It didn't seem like this friend actually wanted to talk; more that they were being told (by their calendar) that they had to talk.

I only added an event monthly: "talk to a random friend". It's a nice experiment so far, I use it mostly to talk with friends from my home country I guess, that otherwise I wouldn't talk to

180 words and 25 of them are backlinks to other articles on his own blog. I really don't like this type of short content on HN.

I feel like this is just an exercise in creating stasis in your life.

Friends will arrive; friends will disappear.

Most of my friendships are with people I ride with regularly. Many of them on weekly rides, others I just bump into at a monthly social meeting our riding club does.

I guess when you are very active in a hobby that ends up where most of your friends are.

We also did a monthly game night, since my wife has been vaccinated along with several of our friends, we're likely to reboot that very soon.

My long winded way of saying that this is a great idea

I implemented this by accident with tabletop RPGs