

How do you manage to have a life? - cautious

I moved cities to work on an start-up and after more than a year I still can&#x27;t say I have made friends here besides my colleagues (and that&#x27;s mostly a during work hours thing). I love my job but I fear that I&#x27;m letting life pass by.<p>Has anyone here been through this? Do you have any advice?
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adamzerner
1) I think socializing is overrated, and doing work that is meaningful to you
is underrated.

2) It's really all about balance. You probably need a good mixture of the
following to be happy: socializing, exercise, work, alone time. A lot of times
situations occur where you have to sacrifice one area for another. Like with a
startup, you probably have to work a lot more and won' have time for other
things. For this reason, I think startup life is unsustainable (because it'll
probably make you sacrifice too much socializing/alone time/exercise).
However, the upsides of startups are still great, and I think worthwhile, so I
think it'd make sense to make a ton of money from a startup after working for
a few years, and then rebalance your life afterwards and benefit from the
money.

3) Friendships seem to be a function of repeated, unplanned interactions, and
of situations that encourage you to let your guard down.
[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/fashion/the-challenge-
of-m...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/fashion/the-challenge-of-making-
friends-as-an-
adult.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1362981828-IFeaWGqBlRzRM6qmewLA6g).
I'd suggest doing something you love, or starting a new hobby. I meet a lot of
people playing basketball. You could take a kickboxing class, or a guitar
class, or a dancing class. But maybe you don't want to pay money. Maybe theres
a ton of people like you. Maybe there's an opportunity to organize a group of
people together, each an expert in something, and you guys take turns teaching
each other something new and fun...

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watershawl
Pick one habit to change such as your drive home. Here are some variations to
your drive home:

A) Instead of driving straight home, stop at a park and walk around. B) If you
are the first person to leave, be the last person to leave. C) If you always
take the same streets home, purposefully take a different path.

Here's another habit you could change: the ride to work:

A) Instead of driving to work, see if there is a way to carpool, walk, or ride
a bike to work. B) Wake up one hour earlier than normal and be the first
person in a local coffee shop in the morning. C) Instead of listening to the
radio or music, find a podcast or sit in silence.

The idea behind making slight changes to your daily habit actions is that they
can cause unknown, unintended, changes (like the butterfly effect) that will
lead you down a different path than the one you're on now. In addition to
small changes in your habit actions, here are some pretty standard things you
can do to "have a life" and "make friends."

1) Be thankful for the life you already have. 2) When someone asks you to do
something you wouldn't normally do, consider doing it this time. 3) Join a
local church. 4) Find a local meetup on meetup.com. 5) Start a new habit and
do something consistently to see who else is doing that same thing
consistently. Talk to that person. 6) Help someone younger than you or older
than you without expecting to get paid. 7) Look for ways to volunteer. 8) Join
a coworking facility. 9) Consistently visit a bar or coffee shop at a certain
time. 10) Be the friend you want to have - invite other people to lunch with
you, tell other people what you are doing and invite them to join you, throw a
party at your house or apartment, rent out a gym and play some dodgeball, join
a softball or kickball league, play a pick-up basketball game at the local
park.

To do the things you're not doing now, you're going to have to do the things
you're not doing now. That means taking a different path through life, doing
things a little bit differently, going places you normally don't go, doing
things you normally don't do - and being consistent about it.

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AtTheLast
Talk to everyone. The person that makes your coffee, the person in line at the
grocery store, your next door neighbor and so on. Get in the habit of talking
with everyone you meet. This could help you become more connected and could
possibly lead to some new friendships.

~~~
watershawl
I agree with this wholeheartedly. It's how you build your own personal
community made up of all of your stops throughout the day. It can be
incredibly rewarding for both you and the people who get to know you.

------
warcher
Nobody works more than fifty hours in software. Tops. Few can work for fifty
hours a week, really. You'll start lagging, or doing what a charitably call
'fake work', where you are around the office but not really being productive.
(There are a thousand ways to do this.)

When you find yourself doing this, go home. You think you're doing something
bad, but you are not. Your output will get better, in fact. You are not at
some fortune 500 company where you need to play politics by appearing busy.
You are at a startup where you need to DO GOOD WORK OR YOU WILL BE OUT OF
WORK. Go. Home. Let your product do the talking.

------
meerita
I came to the city of Barcelona without having friends. Being Latin I had no
trouble socializing with Europeans, the trick is don't give a ____about
trying. I made friends quickly and still making friends until today (11 and a
half years have passed).

The main tactic I've took was to make friends with people from work. This
introduced me to the social circle of several people, especially second tier,
friends of my coworkers. This had good crop of friends but not enough nor
quality.

The second tactic I've took was dating women. Every woman I met in person I
was proposing stuff, to do things, practically, this was my shameless attitude
and gave many fruits, especially because Europeans love the active attitude to
the passive one. Dating out with girls I met more friendly people, but the bad
thing was that leaving the girl i was losing also mostly of their friends.

The third tactic was going to conferences and meetups small issues where I met
people who liked the same thing to me, basically, is where most friends did
and where I had more sexual adventures too :). Basically, after meetups I
invited everyone to party at my flat, or dinner, the usual stuff europeans do.

After 11 years I can not complain, I feel supported by my friends.

What I learned is: learn more languages to speak the the most possible people
and be open, relaxed and careless. Life came a bit easier this way. I don't
know if this can apply perfectly at USA but in Europe isn't so easy as in
Latinamerica.

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bliti
I would look for meetups to attend. You could start by attending the local
tech/startup meetups. From there you may try other types and keep moving as
you meet people. One thing to do is smile, shake hands, and listen to what
others have to say. Buy a beer or two to those whose conversation you enjoy.

~~~
watershawl
One thing I've learned about meetups is that to make the lasting friendships
there, you can't just show up and leave. You have to close the meetup down and
see who's still around, then ask them to go get a beer afterwards. In that
way, you'll create a much deeper, longer lasting relationship with someone
that could become a friendship.

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digitalzombie
I have a good resume and a chill work place (kinda). So I work 8 hours mostly.
If I fear that they'll get mad that I'm not working hard enough then fuck it,
I'm finding another job. My career is not going to take over and force me to
sacrifice my life.

But I chose to live nearby a university so I go to Starbuck and stuff and talk
to students there, mostly women.

On Friday and Sat I go out and hit on women at clubs. Shrug. I'm also going to
go to the University gym twice a week and take some improv and probably vocal
coach. I also chose to stay in touch and live nearby an area where my friends
are within a 50 miles radius.

Spend those money on hobbies and building your life.

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YuriNiyazov
I guess it is unclear to me what the problem is. You haven't met anyone
because you work 100 hours a week and don't do anything else, or you haven't
met anyone because after a day of work you go home and watch TV and browse
Hacker News?

~~~
cautious
The latter I guess. I do work long hours but not always. It's hard to go out
alone though.

~~~
YuriNiyazov
meetup.com

~~~
cautious
I visit it from time to time but it seems to be limited to entrepreneurial
meetups around here (Chile).

~~~
andrewcooke
you could go to the dynlang meetings and chat to people there, or signup for
the startup digest and see if there's something to get involved with there, or
try out hackerspace (something i am planning to do).

[http://www.meetup.com/dynlangchile/](http://www.meetup.com/dynlangchile/)
[https://www.startupdigest.com/digests/chile](https://www.startupdigest.com/digests/chile)
(email carlos - he's the kind of guy who's always happy to chat to anyone!)
[http://stgomakerspace.com/](http://stgomakerspace.com/)

they're all kind of nerdy, but once you know people you can branch out...

if you're already into something, like climbing or mountain biking, or skiing,
i bet there are groups you can join. i went mountain biking a couple of times
out east and met people just because we were getting injured together... or
how about the local music scene? you could try going to concerts (look in la
tercera or el ciudadano or the clinic something). there are courses at cine
hoyts la reina (easy to get to on metro) where you go watch films and chat
about them (my partner just signed up for one, but she's taken and probably
twice your age anyway). the craze last summer (i think, maybe the year before
- i am old and out of touch) was doing circus tricks. you could pay to learn.
seemed like a way to meet people. or dancing lessons. do you play football?
many people here play once a week for fun - try your local sports centre and
see if they have a noticeboard.

what nationality / colour are you? if you're white here, getting a date should
not be so hard! don't any co-workers have sisters? if you don't speak spanish
well, offer english lessons to cute natives (how can that possibly fail? just
stick some fliers up... you can even get paid at the same time! this is such a
good idea i want to be single again)

oh, and get invited to a barbecue on the 18th. you must work with some
chileans? i'd guess someone would be happy to invite you to a barbecue. you
can meet people there. everyone will be at a barbecue that day.

or if violence is more your thing, well, a week before...

another idea - get involved with the elections. i bet they're looking for
volunteers.

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ep103
Yeah, same problem here really. You just have to find a niche, some activity
that you enjoy as much as your job. Then you'll find you're always finding
free time to do that as well. Hopefully the nice / activity you choose is
something that can be done with other people too, and then that's how friends
appear.

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tbirdz
I wouldn't really say I have friends or a life (or at least a "social" one)
outside of work. But I wouldn't really say that's a bad thing. I mean you get
used to it after a while. If your work is rewarding, then you hopefully you
won't feel like your "life is passing you by".

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shire
You kind of hinted at your problem here well technically not a problem more of
a barrier. Have you tried dating sites? Okcupid.com is a popular one surf that
thing. Plenty of busy people look online to meet people if the bar or club
doesn't work out for you.

~~~
cautious
I guess that could work but okcupid has no presence here.

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SJALLEN
sometimes we can experience a sense of "something missing" \- it could be a
small voice or internal sense that something awaits us - Joseph Campbell
called this the "call to adventure"...if we do not respond by stepping out of
our comfort zone, life will usually conspire to force us out into new,
challenging, unknown realms.

What might be calling you?

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cudawas
Try out to host people on couchsurfing or go to cs meetups. It's a very good
way of meeting people!

