The Weekend Free Time Paradox

Generally, people don’t work on Saturday and Sunday. So you would think these are the days that, if you try to make plans with other people, would actually yield the highest success, right?

In my experience, the reality is a bit counterintuitive. Because everyone is free those days, everyone decides plan for them, leading to a weird networking effect where it’s actually very hard to find someone who isn’t already booked. If you’re a lone organizer trying to get a critical mass of people to do something, you typically have to do it weeks in advance.

You know when people don’t make plans? Wednesday evenings. My house has been having recurring Wednesday dinners with other groups of friends in Palo Alto for the past 6 months, and they’ve been a resounding success. Average attendance is around a ten or so people a night, which is pretty awesome. There are obviously other factors at play here (like having multiple houses of similarly aged people in close proximity), but it’s refreshing to have so much engagement from the group, especially in the cacophony of media reports about “young people not being social anymore”.

I’ll admit I was initially skeptical we’d be able to keep it up as long as we have. The cadence of every week seemed way too high to me, but that turns out to be right around the sweet spot of building a pattern in people’s behaviors while not dominating their time. Luckily, I was wrong, and this has become a consistent and enjoyable part of my week.

I’d definitely recommend trying a weekday outing for the next time you’re trying to get a group of friends together. It might even become your next recurring thing.