Ask HN: How do you make productive friendships?

[diminium]

I'm hitting a wall here.

I tend to find friendships based on relaxation or wasting time easy to make. I also find friendships based on conversation (especially negative ones) also easy to make. However, the friendship I want to make is a profitable one. I'm stumped on how to do this.

I find people tend to bail faster than I can count to 3 if I suggest an activity which requires tedious work. I would love to one day say "look, this charity needs a website, how about we create a small site to help them?" to my friends and seeing us make it happen instead of seeing a everyone's jaw drop in horror to completely change the conversation to involve only fun things.

[anujkk]

Most of us are self-oriented to such an extent that we can say that everything we do is for some selfish reason. It's natural. You and your prospective friends both have their own selfish reasons to be friends. You want their friendship so that you get a partner in doing things that you value(creating a website for a charity) and they do the same (watching a movie or hanging out together for fun).

So, you need to meet with people who have values/interests similar to yours. Now, most people want to do fun things so it is easy to find such friends. Not many want to WASTE their time in things such as building a site for charity, so it is difficult to find such friends.

Personally, I have different groups of friends - friends to hang out with, friends to discuss ideas with, friends who are always available when needed in emergency, etc.

My suggestion : meet with people having similar interests. Attend meetups, events etc.

[tonyjwang]

Hang out at top universities. People there are ambitious and always looking to work on stuff - and there's usually an event or club or two that you can attend where you can meet like-minded, action-biased individuals, even of you're not a student.

Hack-a-thons are also good.

[diminium]

I'm beginning to think a lot of my problems will be solved if I just moved ;)

Top universities are few and far in this area. There's a major regional university nearby but......

[Joeboy]

Try finding friends among like-minded people, rather than turning existing friends into like-minded people? Join a group that does something productive, then cunningly manipulate people into forming lasting and meaningful friendships with you.

[imagination]

You;ve typed out the story of my life. Looking forward to great answers

I found myself with a different set of friends for my multiple personalites

party people girl chasers volunteer motocycle riders