4 ms·

Decline Invitations

21 points by surprisetalk 3y ago

3D39739091 3y ago
This is pretty awful work advice for the average person. Most people aren't Feynman. Taking this approach can free up your calendar, and it might even work out okay for you IF you are already indespensbile and you just produce so much value for your company that they'll put up with it. For everyone else, you might end up with your calendar permanantly cleared. As for the aspects relating to personal life, the author sounds like they could use some help.
codingdave 3y ago
Setting boundaries is one of the healthiest things you can do, so I have no argument with anyone who has concisely laid out their personal boundaries and approach to life as in this post... But at the same time, recognizing when the organization you are a part of is simply not a match for your needs is also important. If you need an article like this to help you navigate your current role... you are probably in the wrong job.
- madsbuch 3y ago
  I have the opposite sentiment. Most important are relations to me. everytime you decline an event, you drift one step away from a person or a group. However, you can decide that people are not important and cut them out all together. But if you decide that someone is important you can't pick and choose.
  - cxcorp 3y ago
    Yes, who's going to keep inviting someone who always declines?
    - bigyikes 3y ago
      You mean if I decline enough, I’ll stop getting invited? A dream! I have a bone to pick with our “ticket estimations” meeting. It’s a waste of time, we don’t even use the estimations for any planning purposes. We just sit there, reading tickets out loud as a group, saying pseudo random numbers that inevitably average out to a 2, 3, or 4. I’m convinced we’d have better estimations if we just nixed the meeting and sampled estimations from a normal distribution.
      - madsbuch 3y ago
        more like, if you don't attend you'll get expelled from the group. Meaning you'll get fired. But then again. if you don't like the group, your job, go on a quest to find someone else to spend you time with. that is probably the best investment you can do.
      - pavel_lishin 3y ago
        Have you considered speaking up, and trying to change your process?
      - tuna74 3y ago
        Those kind of ticket estimation meetings are always a waste of time. Have one person do the estimate and then follow up (in aggregate) how correct the estimations were. Hopefully you will get better over time.
omginternets 3y ago
I have a sneaking suspicion the author’s next article will be something along the lines of “people who are worse engineers than me keep getting promoted, and it’s not fair”.
- sweezyjeezy 3y ago
  100% - our daily stand-ups are a waste of time usually, but we have fantastic team camaraderie and I think us shooting the breeze for 5 minutes every day is a huge part of this.
  - choko 3y ago
    If your stand-ups are a waste of time, consider making it less status-y and more collaborative. We lengthed ours a bit and encouraged more dialog rather than just focusing on the traditional 3 questions (what did you work on since last standup, what are you doing before next standup, and where are you blocked) and it's been much more productive.
- surprisetalk 3y ago
  Author here. I'm flattered that you think there are worse engineers than me :) Besides, I've already been promoted far beyond my equilibrium level of incompetence. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
  - notpachet 3y ago
    Just be careful not to do any inadvertent organizational damage from up there.
swiftcoder 3y ago
I certainly appreceate the sentiment behind this, but I'm not sure that opting out of all group activities is going to work all that well for the overall team. Yeah, standup is a tax, but it's also a little bit important to see and be seen, and to know what is going on (unless you can convince your whole team to adopt this work style)
- jokethrowaway 3y ago
  Completely agree. Sabotaging the team practices won't get you far. That's exactly the problem with implementing things like standup and retros. You're confining information that would be shared asynchronously and in written form to a boring meeting nobody is interested in listening to. I hate standups, I won't listen to your update, if I need something I'll ask in the team channel. Before standups were a thing people just wrote when they finished something in a channel. They didn't waste an entire day and waited for a meeting to say it in an effort to appear busy. Before retros were a thing people just wrote whatever problem they had in the room and people could discuss problems in real time. Now they waste an entire month and then write a passive aggressive post-it on a Miro board - which most likely will end up ignored because look at how many others action points we have. People adapt to situations and they don't need formal processes to act correctly. If they do need them, you should fire heads that can't think. People over processes was Agile's mantra, why have we forgotten that? Nowadays "agile" is worse than waterfall: same load in processes and bureaucracy, none of the planning.
  - pavel_lishin 3y ago
    > I hate standups, I won't listen to your update, if I need something I'll ask in the team channel. If you won't listen to my update, why should I read and respond to your question? Please spend five minutes of your day actually working with your coworkers, instead of making extra work for them later on because you can't be bothered to sit still and listen for five minutes.
    - guiraldelli 3y ago
      > If you won't listen to my update, why should I read and respond to your question? I think there is a different perspective that you are not considering: one hates to listen to your and other N people updates, every single day. And, most of it, is not new or not correlated to one's work. > Please spend five minutes of your day actually working with your coworkers, instead of making extra work for them later on because you can't be bothered to sit still and listen for five minutes. Again, there is another perspective: because one wants to give you enough attention, one wants to have a one-on-one communication, independently of the time-box or shallowness of stand-up meetings. When I was junior, I used to think that (daily) stand-up meetings were an incredible idea. But on time, I realised they are busy work and do not represent, at all, "working with your coworkers", as you said. Actually, quite the contrary: it is shallow work, and that isn't as relevant as the deep work coworkers do in, for example, pair debugging sessions.
ryandrake 3y ago
I remember the day, sometime after I transitioned from high school to university, when I realized I was an adult, with agency and the power to decide whether or not I needed to go to class. I had just spent the last 12+ years of my life in the prison-like U.S. K-12 public school system where every limb movement was dictated by grown-ups. Now, here I am, with the ability to actually decide how I need to spend my time! I didn’t always make the right decision, but got better at it as I went through university. I think some people forget this when they go into their first professional office job, and revert back to primary school mentality: I have to go to this useless meeting! Boss says I need to be there, so what can I do?? This “all hands” is required. We forget we are grownups with agency and the ability to set boundaries and expectations with others. A lot of junior employees feel they simply have to attend every stupid meeting that appears on their calendar. When asked, I advise them that if they don’t think there is anything to learn, and you don’t have anything to contribute, simply don’t go. Nobody is going to send you to the principal’s office. I show them my calendar where I am double and triple-booked every half hour of every day: I decline meetings constantly! It’s not a big deal.
- notso411 3y ago
  [dead]
- scotty79 3y ago
  Yes! I'd very much advise every young person (who can) to start a business right after school instead going to work as an antidote for the oppression ingrained by more than decade of school. Especially the kind of business that provides services for other businesses. Seeing "grown ups" in contexts where they struggle and mess up and talking to them as equal and having ability to reject them if they want something you don't provide was very important.
- stavros 3y ago
  It's hard for me to decline meetings because I'm always afraid people will make wrong decisions. My job was very hard before I got invited to the meetings, as I had to run around correcting these decisions after the fact. Now at least I can catch them at inception, and minimize the damage.
scandox 3y ago
Hey new social norms to replace the old social norms. The old way was so oppressive and conformist. The new way is so delightful...can't wait to receive some arts and crafts from someone who is too important to attend a meeting!
mrichman 3y ago
How do you politely decline unending requests for 1:1 meetings with junior team members, despite when part of your job is to mentor them?
- diggan 3y ago
  Sounds misaligned, why would you agree to mentor people if you don't want to do that? Alternatively, if you want to mentor people, why would you decline their requests for meeting them?
- ecosto 3y ago
  Here's some ideas, many of which I wouldn't do myself: * Find them other mentors for particular problems. This isn't passing the buck, sometimes there are more appropriate mentors for their problems. * Ask them if any of it can be done async * Suggest less frequent 1:1s * Batch 1:1s so its less disruptive to you. * Its chaotic evil but Don't provide useful advice. They will eventually stop wasting their own time.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
Wouldn't work, in many Japanese companies (but I don't actually disagree with the premise of the essay). The Japanese have a consensus-driven process that is basically fueled by meetings. If you don't attend meetings (often, as the chap sleeping in the corner), then your department won't have a say in the project.
- loloquwowndueo 3y ago
  If you’re sleeping in the corner how do you have a say in the project anyway?
  - notpachet 3y ago
    They attach diodes to your head and monitor the alphawaves.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
    It's the fact that someone from your team was there. They don't have to participate. It's quite often that a manager needs to be in Meeting A, but he wants his team to have a say in the project that is running Meeting B, so he grabs some random schlub from the engineering team to go to Meeting B, just to have a representative of the team there. Said schlub has no idea what's going on, so they catch up on some shut-eye. No one even gives it a second thought. Really surprised me, the first time I ran into it.
JimDabell 3y ago
This has the veneer of “push back on obligations” but seems like the foundation is more like pushing the author’s own preferences over other people’s. Why is this article telling us to “evade Easter brunches” but also telling us to have “seasonal block parties” as an alternative? I get the impression it’s because the author doesn’t like one but does like the other. The article tells us to “decline invitations”; does that mean that the people the author invites to their seasonal block parties should decline? Is the author being unreasonable in inviting people to an event? I think it’s good to be mindful of where you spend your time, but this article doesn’t really convey anything useful in this regard. It’s more a list of things the author likes and dislikes.
- pavel_lishin 3y ago
  They also suggest "scheduling something together you’d actually enjoy doing rather than “hanging out”", but what if I like just hanging out? One of the best and most memorable evenings I spent with a friend was just ambling around the city.
- surprisetalk 3y ago
  Author here. Yeah, definitely lots of personal preferences embedded in there haha Personally, I find it easier to grok essays that focus on specifics. I can extract patterns out of examples, but it's harder to accurately do the reverse I write in second-person because it's shorter, not because it's prescriptive. I'm definitely open to suggestions on how to soften things
eterm 3y ago
> If you must attend an unfun event, make it memorable! Play pranks and plan ruses! Is this satire?
- tomashubelbauer 3y ago
  I certainly won't be taking their advice the next time I'm attending a funeral.
- simmerup 3y ago
  More evidence why you shouldnt take social advice from engineers
pavel_lishin 3y ago
> Skip stand-ups and all-hands. > Decline invitations by default. When you’re essential to an event, its host will notify you. > Play pranks and plan ruses! Be a mysterious, opaque asshole. Create more work for everyone you work with. And when you do show up, make sure that nobody knows whether you're on the level or not. Okay, that last one is uncharitable. Being memorable and fun is a valuable thing, and something I strive for, but as John Scalzi has pointed out, "the failure mode of 'clever' is 'asshole'."
- JimDabell 3y ago
  > Create more work for everyone you work with. It’s exhausting working with people that don’t show up to meetings. The rest of the team is all on the same page already and the special person needs everything explained to them individually because they never showed up to the meeting where the discussion happened. These people always seem to flame out of jobs while feeling they are too good for them.
  - toss1 3y ago
    Yup. Decline is an ok first-approximation default. But not as the full-on maximization goal the author pushes. Doing that will severely limit you. Other things to consider with meetings and gatherings: Might I add value to others, either by bringing knowledge or being present to take on tasks? Might be being seen as present & participating benefit you in the longer term? What surprises (by definition, things you don't yet know about) might happen at the event? Might hanging out with a friend or acquaintance be helpful for them? Defaulting to not doing each of these things at one time or another has been cause for regret in my life. I'd advise at least asking that set of questions and others before actually not accepting an invitation.
- op00to 3y ago
  I was surprised one of the ideas was not “pull a rabbit from under your fedora”.
kylecazar 3y ago
You can protect your time while not also eschewing everything that it means to be a paid member of a team.
mellutussa 3y ago
What a piece of shitty advice.
hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
>expensive outings >events where booze is the main attraction I have a formula that's working pretty well for us. My wife and I host a movie night every other week at our place, with a small WhatsApp group of friends who are free to both drop by unannounced and bring friends of their own unannounced. It's made clear from the outset that this is a zero-tolerance household: No alcohol, no drugs. We prep enough dinner for however many people might show up, which is around 7 people these days. We do not reveal the movie until the showing of, both to add a layer of mystery to the whole thing and just because people who are that picky about their movies are probably not a good fit for the rest of the visitors. A little selectivity goes a long way :) I'm quite liking the crowd we are beginning to gather for this low-key event. Monetary costs to the guests range somewhere between "free" and "the bag of chips you decided to bring"; costs to us are usually under $40 total. Everyone who has come by has enjoyed it, even if they decide once is enough and they have better things to do with their time (no offense!). The routineliness of the event has been a great way to quickly build a new friend group in a city neither of us have much history in. Among our regulars, we seem to disproportionately attract friends who are either full time employed or taking their studies quite seriously, both of which are indicators of quite good things. It's likely we'll have to change the event once kids enter the picture, but I'm sure by that point we'll have a whole different world of socialization options open up to us.
otterpro 3y ago
I wish I had been given advice like this when I was younger. As an introvert, I've learned my lesson to decline most social events as I got older. In my 20's and 30's, social event was almost a "YES", despite not wanting to participate. Now, it's almost always "NO", except for wedding, funeral, birthday for family members or close friends. I also decline any social company meeting, but I'm required to be present for work-related meetings and standups.

21 points by surprisetalk 3y ago

This is pretty awful work advice for the average person. Most people aren't Feynman. Taking this approach can free up your calendar, and it might even work out okay for you IF you are already indespensbile and you just produce so much value for your company that they'll put up with it. For everyone else, you might end up with your calendar permanantly cleared. As for the aspects relating to personal life, the author sounds like they could use some help.

codingdave 3y ago

Setting boundaries is one of the healthiest things you can do, so I have no argument with anyone who has concisely laid out their personal boundaries and approach to life as in this post... But at the same time, recognizing when the organization you are a part of is simply not a match for your needs is also important. If you need an article like this to help you navigate your current role... you are probably in the wrong job.

madsbuch 3y ago
I have the opposite sentiment. Most important are relations to me. everytime you decline an event, you drift one step away from a person or a group. However, you can decide that people are not important and cut them out all together. But if you decide that someone is important you can't pick and choose.
- cxcorp 3y ago
  Yes, who's going to keep inviting someone who always declines?
  - bigyikes 3y ago
    You mean if I decline enough, I’ll stop getting invited? A dream! I have a bone to pick with our “ticket estimations” meeting. It’s a waste of time, we don’t even use the estimations for any planning purposes. We just sit there, reading tickets out loud as a group, saying pseudo random numbers that inevitably average out to a 2, 3, or 4. I’m convinced we’d have better estimations if we just nixed the meeting and sampled estimations from a normal distribution.
    - madsbuch 3y ago
      more like, if you don't attend you'll get expelled from the group. Meaning you'll get fired. But then again. if you don't like the group, your job, go on a quest to find someone else to spend you time with. that is probably the best investment you can do.
    - pavel_lishin 3y ago
      Have you considered speaking up, and trying to change your process?
    - tuna74 3y ago
      Those kind of ticket estimation meetings are always a waste of time. Have one person do the estimate and then follow up (in aggregate) how correct the estimations were. Hopefully you will get better over time.

omginternets 3y ago

I have a sneaking suspicion the author’s next article will be something along the lines of “people who are worse engineers than me keep getting promoted, and it’s not fair”.

sweezyjeezy 3y ago
100% - our daily stand-ups are a waste of time usually, but we have fantastic team camaraderie and I think us shooting the breeze for 5 minutes every day is a huge part of this.
- choko 3y ago
  If your stand-ups are a waste of time, consider making it less status-y and more collaborative. We lengthed ours a bit and encouraged more dialog rather than just focusing on the traditional 3 questions (what did you work on since last standup, what are you doing before next standup, and where are you blocked) and it's been much more productive.
surprisetalk 3y ago
Author here. I'm flattered that you think there are worse engineers than me :) Besides, I've already been promoted far beyond my equilibrium level of incompetence. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
- notpachet 3y ago
  Just be careful not to do any inadvertent organizational damage from up there.

swiftcoder 3y ago

I certainly appreceate the sentiment behind this, but I'm not sure that opting out of all group activities is going to work all that well for the overall team. Yeah, standup is a tax, but it's also a little bit important to see and be seen, and to know what is going on (unless you can convince your whole team to adopt this work style)

jokethrowaway 3y ago
Completely agree. Sabotaging the team practices won't get you far. That's exactly the problem with implementing things like standup and retros. You're confining information that would be shared asynchronously and in written form to a boring meeting nobody is interested in listening to. I hate standups, I won't listen to your update, if I need something I'll ask in the team channel. Before standups were a thing people just wrote when they finished something in a channel. They didn't waste an entire day and waited for a meeting to say it in an effort to appear busy. Before retros were a thing people just wrote whatever problem they had in the room and people could discuss problems in real time. Now they waste an entire month and then write a passive aggressive post-it on a Miro board - which most likely will end up ignored because look at how many others action points we have. People adapt to situations and they don't need formal processes to act correctly. If they do need them, you should fire heads that can't think. People over processes was Agile's mantra, why have we forgotten that? Nowadays "agile" is worse than waterfall: same load in processes and bureaucracy, none of the planning.
- pavel_lishin 3y ago
  > I hate standups, I won't listen to your update, if I need something I'll ask in the team channel. If you won't listen to my update, why should I read and respond to your question? Please spend five minutes of your day actually working with your coworkers, instead of making extra work for them later on because you can't be bothered to sit still and listen for five minutes.
  - guiraldelli 3y ago
    > If you won't listen to my update, why should I read and respond to your question? I think there is a different perspective that you are not considering: one hates to listen to your and other N people updates, every single day. And, most of it, is not new or not correlated to one's work. > Please spend five minutes of your day actually working with your coworkers, instead of making extra work for them later on because you can't be bothered to sit still and listen for five minutes. Again, there is another perspective: because one wants to give you enough attention, one wants to have a one-on-one communication, independently of the time-box or shallowness of stand-up meetings. When I was junior, I used to think that (daily) stand-up meetings were an incredible idea. But on time, I realised they are busy work and do not represent, at all, "working with your coworkers", as you said. Actually, quite the contrary: it is shallow work, and that isn't as relevant as the deep work coworkers do in, for example, pair debugging sessions.

ryandrake 3y ago

I remember the day, sometime after I transitioned from high school to university, when I realized I was an adult, with agency and the power to decide whether or not I needed to go to class. I had just spent the last 12+ years of my life in the prison-like U.S. K-12 public school system where every limb movement was dictated by grown-ups. Now, here I am, with the ability to actually decide how I need to spend my time! I didn’t always make the right decision, but got better at it as I went through university. I think some people forget this when they go into their first professional office job, and revert back to primary school mentality: I have to go to this useless meeting! Boss says I need to be there, so what can I do?? This “all hands” is required. We forget we are grownups with agency and the ability to set boundaries and expectations with others. A lot of junior employees feel they simply have to attend every stupid meeting that appears on their calendar. When asked, I advise them that if they don’t think there is anything to learn, and you don’t have anything to contribute, simply don’t go. Nobody is going to send you to the principal’s office. I show them my calendar where I am double and triple-booked every half hour of every day: I decline meetings constantly! It’s not a big deal.

notso411 3y ago
[dead]
scotty79 3y ago
Yes! I'd very much advise every young person (who can) to start a business right after school instead going to work as an antidote for the oppression ingrained by more than decade of school. Especially the kind of business that provides services for other businesses. Seeing "grown ups" in contexts where they struggle and mess up and talking to them as equal and having ability to reject them if they want something you don't provide was very important.
stavros 3y ago
It's hard for me to decline meetings because I'm always afraid people will make wrong decisions. My job was very hard before I got invited to the meetings, as I had to run around correcting these decisions after the fact. Now at least I can catch them at inception, and minimize the damage.

scandox 3y ago

Hey new social norms to replace the old social norms. The old way was so oppressive and conformist. The new way is so delightful...can't wait to receive some arts and crafts from someone who is too important to attend a meeting!

mrichman 3y ago

How do you politely decline unending requests for 1:1 meetings with junior team members, despite when part of your job is to mentor them?

diggan 3y ago
Sounds misaligned, why would you agree to mentor people if you don't want to do that? Alternatively, if you want to mentor people, why would you decline their requests for meeting them?
ecosto 3y ago
Here's some ideas, many of which I wouldn't do myself: * Find them other mentors for particular problems. This isn't passing the buck, sometimes there are more appropriate mentors for their problems. * Ask them if any of it can be done async * Suggest less frequent 1:1s * Batch 1:1s so its less disruptive to you. * Its chaotic evil but Don't provide useful advice. They will eventually stop wasting their own time.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago

Wouldn't work, in many Japanese companies (but I don't actually disagree with the premise of the essay). The Japanese have a consensus-driven process that is basically fueled by meetings. If you don't attend meetings (often, as the chap sleeping in the corner), then your department won't have a say in the project.

loloquwowndueo 3y ago
If you’re sleeping in the corner how do you have a say in the project anyway?
- notpachet 3y ago
  They attach diodes to your head and monitor the alphawaves.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  It's the fact that someone from your team was there. They don't have to participate. It's quite often that a manager needs to be in Meeting A, but he wants his team to have a say in the project that is running Meeting B, so he grabs some random schlub from the engineering team to go to Meeting B, just to have a representative of the team there. Said schlub has no idea what's going on, so they catch up on some shut-eye. No one even gives it a second thought. Really surprised me, the first time I ran into it.

JimDabell 3y ago

This has the veneer of “push back on obligations” but seems like the foundation is more like pushing the author’s own preferences over other people’s. Why is this article telling us to “evade Easter brunches” but also telling us to have “seasonal block parties” as an alternative? I get the impression it’s because the author doesn’t like one but does like the other. The article tells us to “decline invitations”; does that mean that the people the author invites to their seasonal block parties should decline? Is the author being unreasonable in inviting people to an event? I think it’s good to be mindful of where you spend your time, but this article doesn’t really convey anything useful in this regard. It’s more a list of things the author likes and dislikes.

pavel_lishin 3y ago
They also suggest "scheduling something together you’d actually enjoy doing rather than “hanging out”", but what if I like just hanging out? One of the best and most memorable evenings I spent with a friend was just ambling around the city.
surprisetalk 3y ago
Author here. Yeah, definitely lots of personal preferences embedded in there haha Personally, I find it easier to grok essays that focus on specifics. I can extract patterns out of examples, but it's harder to accurately do the reverse I write in second-person because it's shorter, not because it's prescriptive. I'm definitely open to suggestions on how to soften things

eterm 3y ago

> If you must attend an unfun event, make it memorable! Play pranks and plan ruses! Is this satire?

tomashubelbauer 3y ago
I certainly won't be taking their advice the next time I'm attending a funeral.
simmerup 3y ago
More evidence why you shouldnt take social advice from engineers

pavel_lishin 3y ago

> Skip stand-ups and all-hands. > Decline invitations by default. When you’re essential to an event, its host will notify you. > Play pranks and plan ruses! Be a mysterious, opaque asshole. Create more work for everyone you work with. And when you do show up, make sure that nobody knows whether you're on the level or not. Okay, that last one is uncharitable. Being memorable and fun is a valuable thing, and something I strive for, but as John Scalzi has pointed out, "the failure mode of 'clever' is 'asshole'."

JimDabell 3y ago
> Create more work for everyone you work with. It’s exhausting working with people that don’t show up to meetings. The rest of the team is all on the same page already and the special person needs everything explained to them individually because they never showed up to the meeting where the discussion happened. These people always seem to flame out of jobs while feeling they are too good for them.
- toss1 3y ago
  Yup. Decline is an ok first-approximation default. But not as the full-on maximization goal the author pushes. Doing that will severely limit you. Other things to consider with meetings and gatherings: Might I add value to others, either by bringing knowledge or being present to take on tasks? Might be being seen as present & participating benefit you in the longer term? What surprises (by definition, things you don't yet know about) might happen at the event? Might hanging out with a friend or acquaintance be helpful for them? Defaulting to not doing each of these things at one time or another has been cause for regret in my life. I'd advise at least asking that set of questions and others before actually not accepting an invitation.
op00to 3y ago
I was surprised one of the ideas was not “pull a rabbit from under your fedora”.

kylecazar 3y ago

You can protect your time while not also eschewing everything that it means to be a paid member of a team.

mellutussa 3y ago

What a piece of shitty advice.

hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago

>expensive outings >events where booze is the main attraction I have a formula that's working pretty well for us. My wife and I host a movie night every other week at our place, with a small WhatsApp group of friends who are free to both drop by unannounced and bring friends of their own unannounced. It's made clear from the outset that this is a zero-tolerance household: No alcohol, no drugs. We prep enough dinner for however many people might show up, which is around 7 people these days. We do not reveal the movie until the showing of, both to add a layer of mystery to the whole thing and just because people who are that picky about their movies are probably not a good fit for the rest of the visitors. A little selectivity goes a long way :) I'm quite liking the crowd we are beginning to gather for this low-key event. Monetary costs to the guests range somewhere between "free" and "the bag of chips you decided to bring"; costs to us are usually under $40 total. Everyone who has come by has enjoyed it, even if they decide once is enough and they have better things to do with their time (no offense!). The routineliness of the event has been a great way to quickly build a new friend group in a city neither of us have much history in. Among our regulars, we seem to disproportionately attract friends who are either full time employed or taking their studies quite seriously, both of which are indicators of quite good things. It's likely we'll have to change the event once kids enter the picture, but I'm sure by that point we'll have a whole different world of socialization options open up to us.

otterpro 3y ago

I wish I had been given advice like this when I was younger. As an introvert, I've learned my lesson to decline most social events as I got older. In my 20's and 30's, social event was almost a "YES", despite not wanting to participate. Now, it's almost always "NO", except for wedding, funeral, birthday for family members or close friends. I also decline any social company meeting, but I'm required to be present for work-related meetings and standups.