Sunday Suppers: How I Started Seeing My Friends Again

We started by identifying a regular set of times where we as a family are available. For us, Sunday evenings were consistently the best times for us. These approximately every-3-weeks slots live on our calendar as open calendar events that either of us can edit. It creates a default date and time where we’re available. Then, to solve the guest issue, we created a running list of people who we would love to see. This became our invite list.

Rather than solving for the individual, we were now solving for filling the slots.

With Schedule Tetris out of the way, I asked myself, what does a great event look like? To me, the characteristics are:

• Intentional guest list, small group

• Opportunity to have interesting, genuine conversation

• Kids are there but not the center of attention

To structure our events, we landed on 4–6 adults, us included. With this size, you can have a shared conversation and there’s less effort to prepare food for a big meal. When it’s larger, I’ve noticed that the group integrity begins to fall apart and there are lots of side conversations. Not what I was designing for. It starts to feel like a party, rather than an intimate gathering.

Our intuition lines up with the book The Art of Gathering, which identifies the ideal group size as 6 for intimacy, 12–15 for a balance of trust and diverse opinion, and 30 for a lively, party-like atmosphere.

In the spirit of the friends who inspired us, we try to keep our events simple. What’s made it easier is repetition; we almost always serve the same menu every time.

eflecting back, I don’t think logistics was ever the problem. It was in realizing that I had some control over the situation. I perceived Schedule Tetris to be so much friction that I was more reluctant to reach out, and more reactive about how we spent our times. Structuring Sunday Suppers gave us more control. We say no to more birthday parties now, and see close friends more frequently. And we’ve gotten the opportunity to know people who were friendly acquaintances much better as friends, including one memorable dinner where my husband invited an Internet friend he’d met off X to meet in real life.

The system isn’t perfect. The house prep can be a lot of work. Sometimes we get over our skis on the schedule, and it feels like a burden rather than an exciting event. More times than not, it’s been worth it.

The underlying principle works: systematic beats ad-hoc. Instead of individually scheduling each hangout with heroic effort, this is a system that facilitates spending my time the way I want. Whether that’s a standing Sunday dinner, a monthly walk, or a rotating restaurant reservation, the format matters less than the intention.