Children and teenagers find themselves in environments with people their age and with similar interests. Those are three steps to help you get out there and start meeting more people. And I want you to notice something – none of what I shared addresses what you do, and that is on purpose. Because here’s what I’ve found, when you focus on making genuine connections with other humans, the “what you do part,” that tends to unfold naturally when the time is right. And you’re gonna wind up describing your work in the context of the human that’s in front of you.
However, in order to make new friends, you need to be out and about. Now, if you feel comfortable introducing yourself to, let’s say, one person a day, then set a stretch goal and introduce yourself to five. And do this for a week or three weeks and watch how quickly you grow. Making friends in your 20s, 30s, 40s, and beyond isn’t an easy task, but as long as you don’t expect any miracles and stick to these tips, you should find a person with common interests.
How to Make Friends Outside Work
Working from home can no longer be your go-to excuse for not going out on the weekends. While it may be harder to meet new people and make new friends if you work from home, it is not impossible. If you’re a manager, for example, your direct reports may not feel comfortable connecting with you on social media. And some people intentionally keep their networks on social platforms small—or separate from their professional life.
- Try calling your colleagues when you have a work-related question instead of shooting them an email.
- Connecting with other people from other teams isn’t just practically important for company progress.
- “In business, I’m comfortable being vulnerable online, but I realized that I’m not at all comfortable talking to people in person about what I do.
- After the meeting, send her a message telling her you know exactly how that feels – you just dropped your three-year-old off at her first day of daycare.
I actually really miss this part of working from an office. Having lunch and goofing around with my coworkers was awesome for me, and it was a bit lonely to eat at home every day. Many different circumstances lead us to want to find and build new friendships. Moving to a new city or country, a big break-up, or as is common in the last couple of years, switching to remote work. Any of these are bound to make us feel the need to get out there and make new friends. Nothing says that you need to go out into the real world necessarily to learn how to make friends when you work from home.
Make Friends, Find Dates, and Be More Social When You Work Remotely Like This
Being single and working from home means meeting romantic partners might require more than usual time and effort. It might sound cheesy, but ultimately you have to put yourself out there. Making new friends is not as straightforward or easy as it looks in 90s movies. Being an adult in today’s world comes with its own set of complications. Not only do Millennials and Gen Z (Zennials) have to find and make friends, but they also have to deal with the added pressure of social media and maintaining an online persona. This is probably one of the best ways to make new friends when working from home, as it means connecting with people all over the world.
Six months into the pandemic, it’s clear that virtual offices and classrooms have become the “new normal” for many of us — at least for the foreseeable future. Joining Virtual Vocations grants you access how to make friends when you work from home to our hand-picked remote jobs database. Resume assessments and writing, LinkedIn profile enhancement, and cover letter writing are available to maximize the success of your remote job applications.
Follow up on chat
Another one of the best tips for making friends when you work from home is volunteering. For starters, you are sure to find plenty of organizations right in your own backyard. Many of these organizations are almost always looking for helping hands. From building houses to assisting the elderly, and everything in between.
To branch back out and meet some friendly faces, you can easily venture outside the office using the office friends you’ve already made. You can surely make friends while working from home if you follow the tips we shared above. We hope that now you have a complete idea of how to make friends when you work from home. So, befriending your virtual teammates will now become a simple task for you.
At Atlassian, some teams even have a virtual messy-desk faceoff in Slack every week. You can learn about someone by seeing what objects they have sitting in front of them all day. Let’s say you heard a coworker Megan mention in the all-staff meeting that she was late because she was putting her kindergarten son on the school bus for the first time. After the meeting, send her a message telling her you know exactly how that feels – you just dropped your three-year-old off at her first day of daycare. A quick follow-up message is the perfect way to transition that random comment from a meeting into a long-term conversation (and maybe friendship). Because it turns out that connecting with other people at work is not only good for your mental health, it’s good for your job performance.
Balancing personal and professional roles can be tricky sometimes. If you do find one or two people who seem more authentic than others, don’t hesitate to reach out (in an appropriately contemporary way, of course). It’s entirely possible that you’re spending up to five hours a day on your work’s Slack or Teams chat, but you’re feeling more disconnected than ever. Imagine if you couldn’t drop by a co-worker’s desk during your very first job, or go out for drinks after work with your colleagues. For some, an entirely remote job can be devastatingly isolating, and sadly, there’s no clear return to work in sight. When you work remotely, you usually communicate with each other on slack.