NPR

Want Stronger Friendships? Pull Out Your Notepad

It's easy to let your friendships run on autopilot. If you really want to maintain connections with people you care about, it helps to get organized. Here's how.
Even a little bit of organization — lists of things you talked about, calendar birthday reminders — helps keep your friendships from running on autopilot.

Vanessa Nuñez was craving close friendship.

"I had a lot of surface-level relationships with different people but it never really went deeper than that," says Nuñez, "and I wanted deeper, meaningful relationships."

In search of better connections, she started a spreadsheet. After all, she worked in the financial industry and uses Microsoft Excel all the time at her job in Charlotte, N.C. Why not use it for her personal life?

"It seemed to make sense that I would just utilize Excel to keepNuñez says.

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