I have yet another concept to share from the Not Overthinking podcast: social optionality. Social optionality describes the freedom to move from one social interaction to another. For example, a networking event has a high degree of optionality because there are many people to talk to and it is relatively easy to abandon a conversation if you feel it isn't going anywhere. In contrast, being stranded on an island with someone has a low degree of optionality.
What's so interesting about this? Even though high optionality situations (parties, networking events, conventions, orientations) are considered good opportunities for making friends, it is more difficult to forge meaningful and authentic connections in high optionality gatherings.
Low optionality situations force you to endure lulls in conversation and dig deep to connect with the other person. Instead of searching for a better potential friend, the lack of options necessitates opening up and becoming vulnerable.
Personally, most friendships I've had came out of nowhere. Sitting next to someone in a boring class, working with them at a job, etc. So many of my friendships have grown for low optionality situations that I don't think I know how to actively make friends anymore—relationships just seem to happen.
Proximity principle
Social optionality is similar to the proximity principle–the idea that we form relationships not based on who is most compatible, but based on who is nearby. For instance, your childhood best friend might have been the person you sat next to on the bus or lived across the street from.
Studies have shown that people who interact and live close to each other are more likely to become close. Similar to how repeated exposure to an idea makes us more receptive, repeated exposure to a person fosters friendship.
We can connect with anyone
I think social optionality and the proximity principle show that we can form connections with almost anyone. Personality type, culture, and past experiences play less of a role than we think when it comes to making friends.
For me, this is incredibly comforting. If compatibility is a myth, I don't need to worry about saying the right things or making the right impressions. Instead of stressing over conversation starters and anecdotes for parties, putting myself in low optionality events is a much more effective method of making friends.
Value in conversations
Another interesting concept that was discussed in the podcast is the idea of providing value in conversations. I think a common experience is when a conversation fizzles and there is an awkward silence.
For me, these have always been super stressful but I didn't know why until hearing Ali and Taimur talk about it. In a conversation, my primary worry is if I am providing sufficient value to the other person. If I feel I don't have anything "valuable" to say, I stop talking. However, Ali and Taimur argue that pauses are natural and we should learn to become more comfortable with silences in conversation. Instead of providing value, we should attempt to connect emotionally with the other person. If we think about conversations that way, silences aren't bad at all.
Interestingly, how "awkward" a silence is depends on the context of the conversation. Silences tend to be more awkward in high optionality scenarios like talking to someone at a party, but less awkward in low optionality scenarios like being stuck in a car on a road trip.
Making friends
Moving forward, I'm going to try applying these concepts to my social interactions. One interesting trick from the podcast is to have a shared activity before a social gathering. For example: playing sports before going out to dinner. The low optionality sports game will help people bond—even if it's surface level bonding through coordinating game strategy or calling out to a teammate. The idea is that after a shared activity, all subsequent social interactions will be easier because people have a shared experience and exposure to each other.
I'm also now thinking of all the potential friends I've missed because of high optionality. I don't need to connect with someone immediately for a friendship to be worth pursuing. The breadth of options afforded in high optionality social gatherings encourages us to get to know many names but few people and I think that's a shame.
Taimur sums it up nicely in his blog post:
Wanting to connect for no other reason than because you’re two human beings on the same floating rock — this is the intention with which I’d like to approach all social interactions. Low optionality situations make this significantly easier, and I’ve started prioritising them when choosing how to spend my time.