4 ms·

Books on Making and Maintaining Friendships

sitkack 2y ago
It is odd how quickly this dropped from 1 to 58 (3rd from the bottom on the second page) in just the time I came back from lunch.
- brudgers 2y ago
  Historically on HN, booklists that feel like they were built for Amazon affiliate linking tend to get flagged by HN’ers.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
    I suspect that it would have remained higher, if it had simply been a discussion about what was learned from the books, as opposed to a list (basically, the first section of the post, with more text). I think folks on HN would want to talk/argue about it.
    - brudgers 2y ago
      I think once people feel like affiliate links are a significant motivation, it seems less intellectually interesting.
  - sitkack 2y ago
    Maybe it was flagged and unflagged between when I saw it? I never saw it flagged.
    - brudgers 2y ago
      Mostly, flags just increase the rate at which stories and comments fall down the page. “Flagged Dead” is an exceptional outcome.
wewewedxfgdf 2y ago
Intentionally making friends is a concept unfamiliar to me. I have a small collection of good friends, all made long in the past and deliberately maintained. Friendships are forged in shared experience and more easily when young - that's just my personal experience I know its different for others. And they cannot be primarily virtual or they wilt. I feel like if there was any sense of an intentional attempt to make friends I would push back and away. Of course your experience is different because friendships come in many forms.
- klipt 2y ago
  > Friendships are forged in shared experience and more easily when young That's great but what if you move to study or for a job. When you're the new person in town you have to make new friends or be socially isolated forever.
  - wewewedxfgdf 2y ago
    I deliberately stayed in my home town to keep my friendships - in many ways I would have been far better off leaving - I have often speculated about living somewhere else for a better financial and career life but fewer friendships.
- sundarurfriend 2y ago
  Your experience is the "standard" story about friendships portrayed in the media, and it's great when it works out that way, I'm glad it did for you. It's hard to know how standard that actually is though, how much of the population gets to experience it that way. A lot of people grow up in situations where they feel ostracized or just don't find anyone they connect to in their peer groups, and so don't get to forge friendships at that stage. And then there's many that go through a traumatic experience or big upheaval in their life in a way that makes it practically impossible to maintain the connections they did forge. It's true that sometimes it's those traumatic experiences or difficulties that deepen the friendship, but there's also many cases where those are so big and impactful that they alter one's identity and relationships (including friendships) forever. It's quite mature of you to be open to the fact that the experience is different for others, that's not often the case when one gets the "default" good experience of something. Many others who get that experience tend to dismiss conscious attempts to make or maintain friendships (like in the post) as not genuine, but friendship is also a skill that some people pick up unconsciously, and others need conscious attempts to learn and practice.
Isamu 2y ago
This may sound like I am joking but I think that engineering types tend to be literalists and could benefit from books with a more direct approach, like “How to be less of a jerk to everyone around you and why that matters” or maybe “It’s not everyone else, you’re the dick”. I should add that I am thinking primarily about people who are inadvertently abrasive, as a result of clumsy interactions.
- dcraw 2y ago
  My brother wrote an essay on how to work with "stupid" people (which starts with recognizing they're not stupid). https://jasoncrawford.org/how-to-work-with-stupid-people https://jasoncrawford.org/how-to-work-with-stupid-people
  - CharlieDigital 2y ago
    That's a great read and very, very high EQ way of thinking about these situations. Last 3 bullets are solid. Roughly same advice I often give to junior devs.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
    I spent most of my career at a company with some of the top engineers and optical scientists in the world. I'm pretty used to being the dumbest guy in the room, and I'm smarter than the average bear. Problem-solving/designing IQ is great, but it ain't the be-all/end-all. A lot of folks with two-digit IQs are my heroes.
  - hinkley 2y ago
    I think I could die happy if the following aphorism were attributed to me: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be properly explained by apathy. We treat other very smart people as stupid when we just haven’t given them any reason at all to make them give a fuck about our pet peeves, or daily pain. Everybody has days when they are just trying to make it to 5:00. Sell me on your idea. Scolding is a weapon of last resort, and some people reach for it very early.
    - 2y ago
stroz 2y ago
We built Soonly (https://soonly.com https://soonly.com) for doing exactly this! Build meaningful friendships with simple text reminders. It’s amazing how much value compounds from simply and consistently investing in your relationships over the course of your life.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
johnea 2y ago
People need a book on how to make a friend? Sorry, this is never going to work...
atlasunshrugged 2y ago
I've heard good things about "The Other Significant Others" by NPR's Rhaina Cohen (with the disclosure that the author is the partner of a friend of mine) https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250333025/theothersignificantothers/ https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250333025/theothersignifi...
adminm 2y ago
For any "self help" book, people split into three groups and they take it as 1. Gospel, 2. Nonsense, 3. Somewhere in the middle. I think you have to be in the third group for the books to be useful. You have to be able to pick out the truths and the nonsense. But also I think the nonsense is sometimes helpful to point out the truths. Me and you could read the same book, find it useful but what we took from it was quite different because what we needed was quite different. Even though we fundamentally had the same problem.
profstasiak 2y ago
I want to highlight this blog article which in my opinion gives more actionable advice than all of the books listed (I read 6/8 of those) on the topic of having good social life https://www.neelnanda.io/blog/mini-blog-post-23-taking-social-initiative https://www.neelnanda.io/blog/mini-blog-post-23-taking-socia... tldr; taking social initiative is like a cheat code. The easiest way to make friends is to start organizing. I started applying this approach to my social life and I created two new friends groups from scratch. 1. Me and my brother started organizing lasertag matches. Basically anyone is invited. We even post open invitation to all our friends. Right now we have 20 people in our group chat and we do lasertags + beers once a month. 2. I created a group of friends from highschool - like a reunion shit but once every month. When I reached out to people everyone was hyped. I had only one of these meetings atm but everyone was happy and said they want more. We will be having a second one soon. If I needed more friends that's what I would be focusing on. Organizing a cyclic get together of people. It's like a cheat code for having a lot of friends. Right now I am a bit of time constrained but I look forward to organizing something different in the future.
- sitkack 2y ago
  Yeah, when I was younger, I had a kickball mailing list running on my mail server early 2000s. It only had kickball traffic, anytime someone wanted to play a game they would post, their phone number and time and location of a game and people would just show up. Would organize larger games with more notice. Anyone who watched us for more than 15 seconds would be forced to play. If they had fun, we made them sign up.
nico 2y ago
When I first read “How to win friends …”, the advice in the book made sense, but I couldn’t take advantage of almost any of it, except maybe for written communication My social anxiety was so high, I couldn’t even get to the basic situations that are the base for all of Dale Carnegie’s book However, another book (and mainly the exercises in that book), that helped me a lot, was The Charisma Myth, by Olivia Fox-Cabane It has some excellent material on how to reduce social anxiety and be able to have better interactions Highly recommend it. And if you are curious, but don’t want to commit to a whole book, just find the intro somewhere online and follow the 3 tips in there
nvahalik 2y ago
Our men’s group has been reading “Side by Side” by Ed Welch. Great book.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
GlacierFox 2y ago
Tech does seem to be where I've met the most obliviously abrasive, socially inept people that would absolutely not gain a grain of insight from any book on this subject matter - purposefully.
disambiguation 2y ago
Autism, low social and emotional intelligence, weak theory of mind, inability to read and anticipate the emotional states of others. I suspect this is a major, yet unspoken, cognitive difference that separates the pro social from the anti social. Further im pessimistic that any amount of self help lists and techniques can make up for what is natural to many, yet deficient in others.

It is odd how quickly this dropped from 1 to 58 (3rd from the bottom on the second page) in just the time I came back from lunch.

brudgers 2y ago
Historically on HN, booklists that feel like they were built for Amazon affiliate linking tend to get flagged by HN’ers.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  I suspect that it would have remained higher, if it had simply been a discussion about what was learned from the books, as opposed to a list (basically, the first section of the post, with more text). I think folks on HN would want to talk/argue about it.
  - brudgers 2y ago
    I think once people feel like affiliate links are a significant motivation, it seems less intellectually interesting.
- sitkack 2y ago
  Maybe it was flagged and unflagged between when I saw it? I never saw it flagged.
  - brudgers 2y ago
    Mostly, flags just increase the rate at which stories and comments fall down the page. “Flagged Dead” is an exceptional outcome.

wewewedxfgdf 2y ago

Intentionally making friends is a concept unfamiliar to me. I have a small collection of good friends, all made long in the past and deliberately maintained. Friendships are forged in shared experience and more easily when young - that's just my personal experience I know its different for others. And they cannot be primarily virtual or they wilt. I feel like if there was any sense of an intentional attempt to make friends I would push back and away. Of course your experience is different because friendships come in many forms.

klipt 2y ago
> Friendships are forged in shared experience and more easily when young That's great but what if you move to study or for a job. When you're the new person in town you have to make new friends or be socially isolated forever.
- wewewedxfgdf 2y ago
  I deliberately stayed in my home town to keep my friendships - in many ways I would have been far better off leaving - I have often speculated about living somewhere else for a better financial and career life but fewer friendships.
sundarurfriend 2y ago
Your experience is the "standard" story about friendships portrayed in the media, and it's great when it works out that way, I'm glad it did for you. It's hard to know how standard that actually is though, how much of the population gets to experience it that way. A lot of people grow up in situations where they feel ostracized or just don't find anyone they connect to in their peer groups, and so don't get to forge friendships at that stage. And then there's many that go through a traumatic experience or big upheaval in their life in a way that makes it practically impossible to maintain the connections they did forge. It's true that sometimes it's those traumatic experiences or difficulties that deepen the friendship, but there's also many cases where those are so big and impactful that they alter one's identity and relationships (including friendships) forever. It's quite mature of you to be open to the fact that the experience is different for others, that's not often the case when one gets the "default" good experience of something. Many others who get that experience tend to dismiss conscious attempts to make or maintain friendships (like in the post) as not genuine, but friendship is also a skill that some people pick up unconsciously, and others need conscious attempts to learn and practice.

Isamu 2y ago

This may sound like I am joking but I think that engineering types tend to be literalists and could benefit from books with a more direct approach, like “How to be less of a jerk to everyone around you and why that matters” or maybe “It’s not everyone else, you’re the dick”. I should add that I am thinking primarily about people who are inadvertently abrasive, as a result of clumsy interactions.

dcraw 2y ago
My brother wrote an essay on how to work with "stupid" people (which starts with recognizing they're not stupid). https://jasoncrawford.org/how-to-work-with-stupid-people https://jasoncrawford.org/how-to-work-with-stupid-people
- CharlieDigital 2y ago
  That's a great read and very, very high EQ way of thinking about these situations. Last 3 bullets are solid. Roughly same advice I often give to junior devs.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  I spent most of my career at a company with some of the top engineers and optical scientists in the world. I'm pretty used to being the dumbest guy in the room, and I'm smarter than the average bear. Problem-solving/designing IQ is great, but it ain't the be-all/end-all. A lot of folks with two-digit IQs are my heroes.
- hinkley 2y ago
  I think I could die happy if the following aphorism were attributed to me: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be properly explained by apathy. We treat other very smart people as stupid when we just haven’t given them any reason at all to make them give a fuck about our pet peeves, or daily pain. Everybody has days when they are just trying to make it to 5:00. Sell me on your idea. Scolding is a weapon of last resort, and some people reach for it very early.
  - 2y ago

stroz 2y ago

We built Soonly (https://soonly.com https://soonly.com) for doing exactly this! Build meaningful friendships with simple text reminders. It’s amazing how much value compounds from simply and consistently investing in your relationships over the course of your life.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

johnea 2y ago

People need a book on how to make a friend? Sorry, this is never going to work...

atlasunshrugged 2y ago

I've heard good things about "The Other Significant Others" by NPR's Rhaina Cohen (with the disclosure that the author is the partner of a friend of mine) https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250333025/theothersignificantothers/ https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250333025/theothersignifi...

adminm 2y ago

For any "self help" book, people split into three groups and they take it as 1. Gospel, 2. Nonsense, 3. Somewhere in the middle. I think you have to be in the third group for the books to be useful. You have to be able to pick out the truths and the nonsense. But also I think the nonsense is sometimes helpful to point out the truths. Me and you could read the same book, find it useful but what we took from it was quite different because what we needed was quite different. Even though we fundamentally had the same problem.

profstasiak 2y ago

I want to highlight this blog article which in my opinion gives more actionable advice than all of the books listed (I read 6/8 of those) on the topic of having good social life https://www.neelnanda.io/blog/mini-blog-post-23-taking-social-initiative https://www.neelnanda.io/blog/mini-blog-post-23-taking-socia... tldr; taking social initiative is like a cheat code. The easiest way to make friends is to start organizing. I started applying this approach to my social life and I created two new friends groups from scratch. 1. Me and my brother started organizing lasertag matches. Basically anyone is invited. We even post open invitation to all our friends. Right now we have 20 people in our group chat and we do lasertags + beers once a month. 2. I created a group of friends from highschool - like a reunion shit but once every month. When I reached out to people everyone was hyped. I had only one of these meetings atm but everyone was happy and said they want more. We will be having a second one soon. If I needed more friends that's what I would be focusing on. Organizing a cyclic get together of people. It's like a cheat code for having a lot of friends. Right now I am a bit of time constrained but I look forward to organizing something different in the future.

sitkack 2y ago
Yeah, when I was younger, I had a kickball mailing list running on my mail server early 2000s. It only had kickball traffic, anytime someone wanted to play a game they would post, their phone number and time and location of a game and people would just show up. Would organize larger games with more notice. Anyone who watched us for more than 15 seconds would be forced to play. If they had fun, we made them sign up.

nico 2y ago

When I first read “How to win friends …”, the advice in the book made sense, but I couldn’t take advantage of almost any of it, except maybe for written communication My social anxiety was so high, I couldn’t even get to the basic situations that are the base for all of Dale Carnegie’s book However, another book (and mainly the exercises in that book), that helped me a lot, was The Charisma Myth, by Olivia Fox-Cabane It has some excellent material on how to reduce social anxiety and be able to have better interactions Highly recommend it. And if you are curious, but don’t want to commit to a whole book, just find the intro somewhere online and follow the 3 tips in there

nvahalik 2y ago

Our men’s group has been reading “Side by Side” by Ed Welch. Great book.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

GlacierFox 2y ago

Tech does seem to be where I've met the most obliviously abrasive, socially inept people that would absolutely not gain a grain of insight from any book on this subject matter - purposefully.

disambiguation 2y ago

Autism, low social and emotional intelligence, weak theory of mind, inability to read and anticipate the emotional states of others. I suspect this is a major, yet unspoken, cognitive difference that separates the pro social from the anti social. Further im pessimistic that any amount of self help lists and techniques can make up for what is natural to many, yet deficient in others.