Making Time for Friends

Today is the International Day of Friendship. Originally founded in Paraguay, the 30th of July was proclaimed by the UN in 2011 as a day to “share the human spirit through friendship”. While friendships are rewarding and wonderful, they also require a certain amount of work. There are several obstacles that can make it challenging to maintain friendships, like a packed schedule, long distances or mental illnesses. To celebrate this year’s Friendship Day, we will give you some ideas on how Structured can be used to keep up with friends.

Fulfilling commitments

A crucial part of every friendship is being there for each other and following through on promises. Whether you made plans to meet a friend for coffee or you agreed to help someone move. Showing up when you said you will, demonstrates that you care.

Use Structured to keep track of the commitments you have made with friends. Set a task for every date you’ve arranged and if you’re prone to forgetfulness, set a notification to remind you. And for those that are always the last ones to arrive: try setting an extra task for when you have to leave the house to arrive on time. This might help you to get rid of a bad habit.

Keeping in touch

Keeping in touch with friends can sometimes be a challenge. Most of us have experienced this at least once in life: Although you never had a falling out, a friendship slowly ends because one of you wasn’t adamant enough about keeping in touch. Often it’s not even a question of finding the time, but solely of remembering to check up on the other person every once in a while. Keeping track of friendships and finding the time to meet regularly can be especially tough for people who struggle with ADHD.

Inbox

Instead of only setting a task when you have made specific plans with a friend, you can use the inbox to remind you of making plans. Whenever you can set a time and date with that friend, you can simply drag & drop the task from the inbox to your timeline. This can be an easy way to remember to make time for friends.

Overcoming distance

Living in different cities or countries means that seeing your friends regularly is nearly impossible. This makes it all the more important to keep in touch via phone calls or messages. Use the inbox to remind you of calling or writing to a friend.

When a friend stays in a different time zone, connecting with each other becomes even more challenging. For this you can use the time zone function of Structured. When creating the task for a call, set the time zone to the location your friend is in. The task will still be displayed at your time on your timeline but you can also see what time it will be for your friend.

Remembering the important things

Nobody wants to be the person who forgets their friend’s birthday. Use the little calendar symbol in Structured to jump to any day in the future. Create an “All-Day” task for every event that is important to your friends and family. If you have Structured Pro, you can set these events as recurring tasks for every 12 months. That way, you can make sure to send a message on their special days.

Structured might not be able to remove all obstacles that can stand in the way of friendships, but hopefully this gave you a few ideas on how to keep in touch with your friends. Use this International Friendship Day to go out with your friends or send them a nice message!