Field Notes #28: How many hours does it take to make a close friend?

Hydroponic friendships, the final Creative Workshop, Seth Godin on what's relative

Good morning, friends! I’m thinking these days about bringing Daybreak Notes back, a daily little morning note I wrote mainly from 2018 to 2020. (You can see a few examples here, here, and here.) Yes, no, maybe so? Do you have any projects, hobbies, or passions tugging at your sleeves?

1} It’s all relative to us

Do you know Seth Godin? He writes a daily blog that’s part marketing, part observation of our world, part creative encouragement. He’s a guru of many sorts, an author of 20-some books like The Practice, an entrepreneur, a teacher. His current project is The Carbon Almanac.

One of his short blog posts earlier this week was called “Absolute and relative.” It reminded me how comparing someone’s pain or illness or challenge or joy to someone else’s is not helpful.

Seth wrote:

“It doesn’t matter that it’s not the Super Bowl or the World Cup. For this twelve-year old, tomorrow’s game is the big game, the biggest ever, and the emotional stakes are just as high.”

“It doesn’t matter that this illness isn’t going to be life or death in the next few days. For this patient, it feels that way.”

“Most of what we encounter is driven by emotions, and our emotions are always relative. When we’re shopping for a car or an avocado, we’re buying the way it makes us feel, not how it would make someone else feel.”

2} The Creative Workshop

Seth is also the founder of Akimbo, a collection of online workshops, including the altMBA, The Creative’s Workshop, The Podcasting Workshop, The Story Skills Workshop, and The Marketing Seminar. I’ve taken 5 of the 11.

The best one by far, in my opinion, is The Creative’s Workshop.

TCW, as it goes by sometimes, is three things in one: 1) a series of interesting prompts to help you explore your own creative practice and views, 2) your “Dailies,” which an online thread where you share a bit of your work in progress every single day, 3) a community of other creative people who are doing the workshop, too, and chime in on your threads and other people’s threads.

I was in the third (“PRO3”) and fifth (“PRO5”) cohorts of the workshop and met great friends in both, whom I still keep in touch with, really lovely people (hello there, if you are reading this!). The space in TCW is like nothing I’ve seen online — safe, supportive, intriguing, expansive. It was good for my art, my soul, and my health.

It’s much less expensive than, say, a college course, but it’s not cheap, in part because it’s 100+ days of engagement with real live coaches milling about to make sure the culture stays helpful and supportive, and in part because the magic comes from people committed to showing up and sharing their work. It requires time to read and comment, to really be present in the workshop. It is a lot of work! It’s also a lot of fun. Until Aug. 10 — today! — it’s $395, and then it goes up to $795 until enrollment closes Sept. 8.

Here’s why I’m mentioning it now: This is the last time Akimbo will hold The Creative’s Workshop (and all the other workshops, too, except for altMBA, which they are going all-in on).

If you are curious and creative and are looking for others to share your work with — and to support their work, too — this might be a wonderful workshop for you. Just sharing, just in case.

3} Hydrophonic friends

I’m reading a book called We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships by Kat Vellos. It was recommended by my friend Mary Chris, who writes The Healthier Hustle newsletter.

I’m sure I’ll have more to tell you about when I finish reading it, but this one little concept delighted me: “Hydroponic friendship.”

Kat had read a study by Dr. Jeffrey Hall, a University of Kansas professor, that calculated how many hours it takes to turn an acquaintance into a close friend.

The study concludes: “Casual friendships emerge around 30 hr, followed by friendships around 50 hr. Good friendships begin to emerge after 140 hr. Best friendships do not emerge until after 300 hr of time spent.”

Those might not be hard amounts to come by in grade school, when you could be seated next to a friend for 6 hours a day. But in grownup land, those numbers seem impossible, at least to this grownup.

Kat was skeptical but also optimistic: “I felt buoyed by my own observation that it’s possible to establish a friendship faster than that.” She calls this “hydroponic friendship.” Just as plants can thrive under different circumstances — suspended in water rather than planted in soil — so can friendships.

“In the absence of abundant soil (aka abundant time), nutrients (aka deeply enriching, immersive experiences of connection) can be supplied to the plant (aka people) in such a way that growth (aka friendship) can fully blossom and thrive,” she writes. “The time is ripe for an era of hydroponic friendship. It’s not only possible, but our modern life has made it necessary. The old pace of life that supported the slow and natural development of effortless friendship is harder and harder to come by.”

How have you made new friendships as a grownup? Did you find certain times or situations helped make friendships happen faster? I’m seriously curious.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend ahead of creativity and nurturing your health in all the ways.

To our journeys,

Brianne