March 5, 2021, 8:39 a.m.

🀠 The Friendship Experiment

swap's musings

Swapnil Agarwal πŸš€
@SwapAgarwal

It’s hard to make new friends after college. This comes up as a recurring theme in our @DX_club_ meetups. So @naman_desu and I have set up a cohort to meet people who get you. We want a diverse bunch and have 4 folks already in (INTP, ENFJ, INFP, ESFJ)!



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Feb. 4, 2021, 4:10 a.m.

People can talk for hours if they vibe. We set out to run an experiment to find people who get you. We selected a diverse bunch of folks and paired them based on their MBTI personality types every week.

We took feedbacks after every session. Here are some of them (verbatim):

  • It was good to know a completely stranger who became a good friend in just one hour of interaction, and realised that we can find something in common with any person. It’s just we have to take a step forward and try interacting. And this initiative by you guys is just perfect for socialising other than insta or whatsapp. I have a little suggestion that as we are interacting with one person, but it would be great if we get to interact personally with everyone. This will be even bigger adventure :P
  • I am happy to talk to someone after my whole stressful day. I have lots of things going on, and talking to someone freely with no worries of judgement is a good feeling.
  • Would be better if the topics are more lighter and fun.
  • The prompts were open ended and facilitated some very good conversations.

If you’re wondering about the prompts, here are a few we used:

  • If money were no object, what would you do all day and why?
  • If you were to die tomorrow, what would you do?
  • What do you think about when you’re alone?

In the age of indecision, providing some structure (any structure really) helps you get out of analysis-paralysis. This was something that worked out great in this experiment. We selected the partner. We selected the time. We selected the ice-breaker topic. Just show up and you’d have a good time. The next time, we’ll keep prompts a bit lighter. Maybe we’ll try baking-in some outcome as well to see if it helps in stronger bonds. Make new friends by wasting time together.

Until We Meet Again…
πŸ–– swap

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