my thesis for adult friendships is you want high intensity High proximity experiences which is what
like a weekend trip with friends is and you'll notice that it actually mimics how you made
friends as a kid because being stuck in school together and doing stuff together is really high
intensity High proximity experiences I found that like you know sometimes in school for example I
would go and have dinners with people like all the time and I actually never became friends
with them because they were just low intensity experiences but over the past couple years I've
made essentially all my friends through these high proximity high intensity like weekend getaways and
then from there we can do really low intensity things and maintain our friendship over time
that was a long intro and this is by no means the only way to do adult friendships but if you want
to plan it we can get away with your friends for a birthday for an anniversary for a celebration
for Christmas for your family whatever and you want to do it in like a templatized way
then here's how I do it okay so we can friends getaway template on notion I will link below
um just like the you know template that you can use if you want okay so my thesis on adult
friendships again is that you want high intensity High proximity activities in order to make good
friends that can be like a rollerblading trip or going camping or going to church every weekend
or something like that but this is an example of a high intensity High proximity experience
and then from there you can use lower intensity activities like dinners and going on walks and
stuff like that to maintain and grow those friendships but you need that initial Spark
okay so here are the sections of this template we start with an overall timeline oh my God uh
essentially you want to send invite texts like one to two months before and you want to text
everyone individually because a bunch of people are going to say no so if you text a group chat
it's going to be very awkward your list needs to be at least twice as long as the people you expect
um you might want to ask for deposits depending on how flaky your friends are and how expensive this
trip is then you want to send out the logistics text which I have a template up below two weeks
before make sure that everyone recommits at this point because you're going to have an
enormous Dropout drop out flake rate depending on your friend group and how many people you invite
and stuff like that but I would anticipate at least 30 to 50 percent of people are going to
drop out which is again why the deposits and asking people again and again if they're going
to come is very important you will probably if there are people flaking invite new people so you
need a backup list that's also very long at the end of it all you will send out venmo requests
based on the final budget breakdown um I always have like a left to do section which is all the
tasks that I haven't gotten done yet um these by the way are like partially real personally
not real name so don't look into it too much I don't know if it's actually fully consistent
um I like to pay attention to who's going to be sleeping in what rooms because if you have couples
obviously they're actually kind of nice because they can sleep in the same room versus if you have
you know a bunch of girlfriends they can sleep in the same room um who know each other but there's
a lot of people who might feel uncomfortable sleeping in the same room as others so even
though like an Airbnb or a verbal or whatever says that they have room for 10. it might not
really be 10 if your friend group can't stay in the same room so that's something to consider
um in terms of how to do these successfully so you want to make sure that every person knows
at least one to two other people so that they feel comfortable um otherwise they're much more
likely to flake uh you I think it's like nice to kind of consider gender so that maybe you do do an
all girls trip or an all guys trip but it's just something to be aware of you definitely want to
know how many couples there are mostly because it tells you how many rooms people will need
um and then of course you want to pay attention to what other personalities like because some people
you know are really Rowdy and want to drink with their friends and some people just want
to like watch movies every night and those can Clash okay so for the Friends board why I think
this is a great template is because for future events if you host one of these like every year
or every six months or you know Etc it's actually just really useful to have a list of friends that
you frequently want to invite um in the city or you know whatever and so I keep this list here
again these are not real names I also like to like just in parentheses write a little bit about them
or how I met them or things like that a because some people have the same names and B because it
helps you realize who knows each other like your friends from school might know each other versus
your friends from summer camp might know each other Etc um and then as you invite people you
can drag them over and as they have confirmed and maybe love to deposit but primarily confirmed you
can move them into the final category um yeah next uh in terms of the logistics session section uh
most people I think book these with airbnbs but I actually prefer booking with verbo or
hotels.com because I often get better deals on them particularly hotels.com if you I'll
link actually my video on cashbacks because I'm a cashback queen and I get great cashbacks through
hotels.com but like you know very frequently people who do this through Airbnb and so I just
put an example Airbnb here it's nice to know what the distance is and the time you probably want to
add at least 30 minutes to the time and if you're leaving on a long weekend you need to figure out
how long it takes usually on a long weekend so for example a trip that's usually two and a half
hours on a long weekend might turn into a five six hour trip something to be aware of okay in
terms of cars your two biggest cost drivers for running one of these events is housing and then
cars so if one of your friends has a car they will save you a ton of money so see if you ask around
um otherwise you can use turo or another rental car service like hurts Etc to you know book a car
um you want to pay attention by the way on those sites for uh how much you'll be charged for miles
and whether they have delivery delivery is great they deliver to your door otherwise you're going
to have to like uber to pick it up and then often they have unlimited miles but only within
a certain range so if you're trying to go like across state borders or something it's going
to be a more expensive trip and then this part just tells you like how many cars is it gonna be
delivered or not pick up times you can read Etc um and then you of course your designated driver
in terms of food uh what I found is to be like the most effective types of food planning is group
meals that can be very quickly put together so hamburgers are a really great example of this
tacos are a great example of this spaghetti lasagna
dumplings that you can pre-make essentially things that you can uh make very quickly with a
large group of people that do different jobs like sliced onions and tomatoes and stuff like that are
the best types of meals so this is just an example and then I write down all the ingredients I need
and cross them off as I buy them from there we have an activities board again I actually think
the best part of this which is very similar to why I love like the Friends board is that
you just have a growing list as you use this template more and more of activities you might
do at any given moment some of these activities require other things so for example um if you're
doing like a fall weekend getaway you might want to do pumpkins and pumpkin carving and you know
you need a Sharpie in order to or like you need a pen or something in order to draw on the pumpkin
um if you're doing drinking games you'll maybe want like a beer pong table Red Solo
Cup uh ping pong balls Etc um and then uh yeah I have a list of things that like I've already
done or I'm planning to do for this trip so this might be like my overall list for example um and
then I drag it to here for the specific event that I'm posting so for example for this event
um you might want things to play music you might want um some photography stuff one of the really
fun things you can do is leave a disposable camera around I choose a reusable disposable camera but
essentially leave an easy cam easy to use camera around and your friends can take cute photos
um if you want to do a campfire and s'mores and then any of the things that are just
easily accessible like hiking or board games or hot tubs if your Airbnb happens to have one
um I think it's great to ask your friends to bring stuff like one friend may have a speaker
and the other friend has board games the other hat friend has a poker set or has cards or whatever
great thing to do uh and then these are templatized texts that you can send people
so this is an invite text this is the logistics plan this is the venmo request and then finally
I've broken down the beginnings of a budget for one of these trips now the trip that I
have here is actually a very expensive trip and how you choose to cover it can be in different
ways I've seen people who are a bit older who cover the entire trip sometimes they'll cover
um you know just the lodgings and everyone else splits everything else which is what's the case
here sometimes you have everyone split everything uh sometimes you have the birthday person not
split anything so this is totally up to you you also don't have to go to a huge Airbnb this can
be host you can host a sleepover using the same template but hopefully I know it sounds a little
crazy to templatize these but it's because they actually take a lot of work to host these like
really fun experiences for your friends and so it's nice to one learn from all the work
you've already done and to build off of it and systematize it so that it's easily repeatable
so you can host spend more time having fun less time planning these goddamn things okay that's
all I have to say see ya just want to reiterate that it does not have to be so expensive you can
manipulate this template in any way that you want to make it fit your needs and make it fit your
budget I think this is just a template for having meaningful experiences with people you care about
um I I just also I don't need to explain myself but I kind of want to explain that like where I
learned this from is from people who are a few years older than me and so they've just had a
few years to accumulate like money and they hosted these and that's where I would start
was inspired to start hosting these so maybe it's just for a period of time too um but if you like
want to use this for your own experiences then and it's helpful then that's awesome