Friendship takes time. Research suggests that it can take 50 hours to develop a casual friendship and double for a close friendship. 

Unfortunately, I suck at time math. If you ask me how long it’s been since I’ve done something or seen someone, I tend to blurt out two weeks or a year, and I’m wrong a lot.

Adult friendship is complicated but most productivity frameworks and tools are about getting better at work, not friendships, and romantic love dominates our focus.

In a 2015 article for the Atlantic, How Friendships Change in Adulthood, Julie Beck explains the one reason friendships are more complicated in adulthood, especially during mid-life, because friendship is subject to ups and downs we face in our adult lives.

In our early years, we make friends with those who are part of our everyday lives.  

I’m friends to this day with a childhood classmate because our last names and honor class schedule meant that we were often seated together. We forged a friendship once we both discovered our love of ice cream.

The following 43 years have been hit and miss and has taken us to different colleges, cities, and professions while managing additional family-related responsibilities.

Even with the best of efforts, we haven’t seen each other in four years. Beck explains that friendships are voluntary and lack a formal structure, which explains why it’s easy to ignore despite the health benefits and their role in shaping who we become. 

Fortunately, many tools and frameworks we use to be more productive at work can help us do the same in our friendships. The following few articles will dig deeper into this topic, especially the one thing that gets me the most side-eye responses.