juntos

Date/time/locationTBA

Considering Sundays at 6pm/1800

context and purpose

I am borrowing the term `juntos` as used by Cliff Weitzman, while also taking my own artistic liberty and flexible interpretation - essentially periodic gatherings of interesting people with, broadly, these intents:

Cliff discussed the origin of his take on this idea with Ali Abdaal, on podcast NotOverthinking's Episode 68 "Friendships and Relationships ft. Valentin and Cliff":

Juntos - together in Spanish - are groups of people brought together to have discussions about matters of particular interest or intellect. Cliff came across this idea in Benjamin Franklin's autobiography as the American statesman made a junto with the idea of bringing all the most ambitious and intellectual people together at the time and have them sit together once a week and talk about the matters of the world. The ideal size is around 12 to 15 people with only one main rule which is that there is only one single thread of conversation. With the same set of people every week, the junto creates more connections and can build on ideas from previous discussions.

I'm still searching for the reference, but (sheesh, finally found it) Ali Abdaal covered his own similar concept and idea to mitigate the diminishing presence of 3rd Places (or simple lack of consistency, attendance, and participation from people at these locations):

When reflecting on my relationships, I realised that I'd want to see groups of friends more often than I currently do. So one of my Quarterly Quests is to set up a "Supper Club" of sorts, where on the same day each week, I host people at my house for dinner. This would be a standing invite, where whoever's free is welcome to rock up on the day.

I've been reading a bunch of stuff recently about how to make and maintain friendships as an adult, and one of the tips that often comes up is to create these 'social rituals' of sorts. Trying to get people organised and calendars to line up is a total nightmare for individually organising events, but setting up a standing social event with an open-ish invite policy seems to be a high ROI move. I'll give it a go and report back :)

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Last updated 2025-01-05T16:37