Many people want a better social life. Like a lot of things, they want it immediately. Is there any fast-track, shortcut or magic bullet to having a fulfilling social life?
The Effort Involved in a Social Life
A social life is a thing of great complexity, risk and advantage. This is an immediate gratification culture, but a healthy and active social life isn’t created overnight. A social life takes a great deal of deliberate planning. Time and money must be invested. Diligence and near manic energy are absolute necessities to see your social life make a profoundly positive turn. Perhaps above all, patience must be in great supply if a far gone social life is to be resuscitated.
An Average Week
Are you up for a little math? Let’s take a look at some figures pertaining to my social life.
So let’s say on weekdays that I put three deliberate hours into my social life.
Multiply those daily three hours by the five days of the week, and I’m investing 15 hours.
I put in another seven or eight hours each day on weekends; that’s another 15 hours. So I’m looking at 30 hours of social time per week. Are you still with me?
For easy figuring, there are approximately 50 weeks in the year. That puts me at around 1,500 hours per year.
1,500 hours multiplied by, at the very least, 12 years worth of this high caliber socializing puts my time investment at approximately 18,000 hours.
Socializing as a Boy: Tally it Up
By the time I was 18, I had already invested many, many hours into my social life. I interacted with people on multiple levels, such as:
after-school extracurricular activities
social skills
people
partying
making out with girls
playing spin the bottle and truth or dare
You get the idea.
When I was 10 years old, I was on the phone from 8 p.m. until 11 p.m. every single night with girls – just talking on the phone. It seems kind of silly in retrospect. What did we talk about? We would all call each other, gossip and talk about who likes whom and who liked what. I’d do homework on the phone with different girls. That was my routine. So if you add that in to my above calculations, you can throw in another few thousand hours for my time investment efforts.
Socializing as a Man: More Tallies
I’d estimate that I was somewhere around 20,000 hours going into my 18th birthday. I was primarily single or in relationships throughout this time. As a single man, I’m raging and going full throttle. There’s about 12 years between my 18th and 30th birthdays. I was single at least six of those years. When I’m single, I’m probably going out at least six nights a week.
What am I doing? The question is, what am I not doing? I’m going out to meet and hit on girls. Talking to girls is a high priority, and so is hanging out with friends. I’m attending events and going to parties. I’m going out on dates. I’m putting a serious time investment into my social life, is what I’m doing.
Back to my time investment calculations. I’ve got six years of single life. Let’s say I’m going out at least five nights a week, but usually six.
Multiply six nights per week times fifty weeks in a year. You get 300 nights of socializing.
300 nights multiplied by six single years is equivalent to 1,800 nights that I went out during that time period.
1,800 nights times at least four hours, that’s another 7,200 hours. That puts me at 25,000 hours.
My Final Social Tally
25,000 hours: that’s a lot of time investment. That doesn’t even take into consideration the years that I was involved in relationships. Even when I am in a relationship, I’m still investing time into my social life. I’m going out and hanging out with people. I maintain friendships. I keep partying and getting bottles. In all reality, I’m probably 30,000 hours in with no problem. That isn’t even including one-on-one time with my girlfriend, which would add thousands more hours to my time investment calculations.
Investing in your social life is non-negotiable. Time is precious, and if you want your social life to thrive, you have to dedicate a huge portion of that commodity towards it. I guarantee that I’ve got 30,000 hours plus invested directly into my social life. I have put in the time, and I have reaped the rewards of my efforts. Look at it this way. I’ve got a 30,000 hour head start on you, my friend. Are you ready to play catch up?
Assessment
How much time do you spend actively sharing time with potential dates?
Make a list of all the ways in which you do put yourself into the company of other people, people of romantic possibilities, then calculate how many hours a week you spend doing those things.
Double that total for one week, and check the results.
Triple it the next week, and chart your progress over that three-week period.
