Why do we hate networking events?

Ali

My name is Ali, I'm a doctor and YouTuber.

Taimur

I'm a Taimur, I'm a data scientist and writer.

Ali

And you're listening to Not Overthinking.

Taimur

The weekly podcast where we think about happiness, creativity and the human condition.

Ali

So this is very exciting, so this is Episode 3. And we've recently actually today we found out we were featured on the iTunes New and Noteworthy thing.

Taimur

Yeah, that was a really nice thing to wake up to, so thanks for all your reviews and stuff, I'm sure that helps a lot.

Ali

Yeah, most people have been giving five star reviews, which is awesome. We had like we had two one star review.

Taimur

Two?

Ali

Yeah, there was one that actually left a comment and one that didn't leave a comment at all. Was that comment was like, "Oh, I thought this was a podcast about anxiety but actually, it was these two rich kids talking"

Taimur

"Two rich boys chatting" and then question mark, question mark. It was quite a funny comment, to be honest.

Ali

Yeah.

Taimur

Yeah, I guess it's kind of misleading, because actually, when I told a lot of my friends about it, a lot of them thought, "Oh, yeah, I overthink things, so this will be really useful for me to like, help people stop overthinking."

Ali

Yeah. And actually, there's another podcast on the iTunes store called Not Overthinking It. That recently, like started around the same time as we did, I think maybe a few weeks prior, and they do the thing of actually, you know what it says on the tin not overthinking stuff.

Taimur

Okay.

Ali

Which is more kind of an anti anxiety podcast, but this is absolutely not an anti anxiety podcast.

Taimur

Yeah, this will not help. (laughter)

Ali

If you're looking for a CBT or something, you can probably find it with a professionally trained provider of cognitive behavioral therapy. Anyway, what are we gonna talk about this week?

Taimur

So, I have something I want to talk about. It's not super fleshed out yet, it's more of an idea that that feels, it feels like there's something there. So it'll be great to hash this out. So here it is. I feel like in lots of different social settings, I think the social setting itself kind of colors, the interactions that we have, right?

Ali

Yeah.

Taimur

And so like, you know, we have friends, friends who are just like family, friends, you know, like cousins and stuff. And I'm sure a lot of us are like quite good friends with family members. But we probably accept that if we were just at school with them together, we probably wouldn't be that close. We're basically just friends because we have to spend a lot of time with them through family things and that kind of stuff, right?

Ali

Sure, and I also think for housemates, and flatmates and you know, people that you happen to be on the same floor of your halls with while you're at university, while you might not necessarily be friends with them, if you were, you know, meeting completely randomly, the fact that you are in close proximity does make a difference to that interaction.

Taimur

Yeah, exactly. And so I think that there's sort of like a gradient of different levels of, let's call it optionality. Let's call it Social Optionality.

Ali

Social Optionality.

Taimur

Exactly.

Ali

Why don't you call it social options? Why optionality? That sounds so pretentious.

Taimur

Umm, social options, well, social options is.. optionality implies that it's sort of like a scale or something I don't know, it feels like options is, it's not meant to be that kind of noun. It's meant to be a different kind of noun, you know?

Ali

More pretentious noun.

Taimur

More pretentious noun, exactly.

Ali

Okay, fine.

Taimur

And so there's different scenarios in which we have a different level of like control over how much time we get to spend with someone. So I think I'm not a huge fan of like networking kind of events where it's like people standing around, sort of chatting over drinks and canapes and that kind of thing. That for example, would be like a very high optionality setting.

Ali

Can you explain what you mean by optionality?

Taimur

Okay, sorry. By optionality, I mean, the power to basically disengage from interacting with someone and just leave and start interacting with someone else. So for example, at a networking event or something, everyone's standing around talking over drinks. If you're talking to someone, you're not having a great time, you can very politely excuse yourself -- you don't really need an excuse actually -- and just go and talk to someone else. Whereas, for example, family gathering, you know, you got to do this, it's Christmas, whatever, you got to hang out with your family for the next four hours. You can't just say "no, sorry, guys, I'm leaving on Christmas" you know?

Ali

Okay, so it's sort of the optionality, I'm really trying to find another word for this that doesn't sound as weird as optionality. Basically, the ability to kind of having options in your in your social interaction. So for example, a lot of people might say that if you're a really attractive girl, then you have a lot of options in terms of people talking to you at a bar. Whereas if you're less attractive, if you're a guy, you have fewer options, is that kind of what you mean or not really?

Taimur

Less so, I think, yeah, this is I think what I'm talking about is less sort of..Okay, so let me tell you why I think there's something here. I think there's something here because I've actually found over the past sort of couple of years, that in settings where there's not much optionality, where I'm almost forced to spend time with a group of people, I actually think that leads to much more fruitful relationships and much sort of deeper connections. I think the issue with high optionality situations like networking events and things like that, is that we, I can only speak for myself here, but I think I tend to overweight the initial impression I have for someone. So for example, if I meet someone at this kind of event, and we don't hit it off immediately, maybe there's a couple of red red flags, then I will sort of mentally kind of disengage and find an excuse to leave. Whereas, in much low optionality settings, for example, if you're on holiday with a group of people, maybe you don't know them that well, the fact that you have to spend this extended period of time together, it means that even if your initial impression isn't that good, you're forced to, you know, you're forced to suck it up and carry on regardless. And I've actually found that in those settings, my initial impressions are very often wrong. And so, I've been thinking recently about how to get rid of this mindset in high optionality settings. So to stop having this mindset of oh, this initial impression isn't very good, I should just leave, and start thinking more with the mindset of optionality where it's like, you know, this is my fellow human being, there is some connection to be had here, let's figure it out.

Ali

Okay, yeah, this makes sense, I think I definitely agree with that in sort of, I might think of a high social optionality situation as, for example, we had our masters graduation stuff recently, and that was sort of we had, we had the drinks, the drinks reception, I've never been a fan of drink receptions because you get your shloer from the bin at the front, and you'd tr and kind of as you're on your way there you're looking around to spot people t at you already know and then you kind of having a chat, and then you kind of oin a group and sneak your way in there. But then it was it was quite nice, be ause I was able to speak to people that I've not seen for three years and we w re talking. But, I could sense and I think everyone will sort of knew that once you've gone past the initial "Oh, hey, what are you doing, where are you working?" blah, blah, then there's that moment of, okay, we could carry on this interaction, or we could both go and find our groups of friends that really we want to actually talk to?

Taimur

Exactly, there's a lull.

Ali

Yeah, that was that there was that lull, and in that lull I was really thinking that "okay, right, I need to leave that I need to, I need to disengage from the conversation, because it's not really going anywhere." I would love to sit down and talk to this person, if we had three hours on a desert island. But in this high social optionality event, I'm gonna go and find my medic friends and just chill with them really.

Taimur

Yeah, and I don't know if we're just terrible people to have these thoughts, I hope we're not. But that yeah, there's also like an element of FOMO, like, I'm sort of talking to this person maybe I could be having a better time talking to say, the people I already know, or this other person who seems cool at this event?

Ali

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Like, in a way, while, at least for me and I think this is the case for you as well, like, while interacting, there is somewhat of a calculation there as to what value you personally are deriving from this interaction, which sounds really, really, really bad.

Taimur

That sounds terrible.

Ali

That's absolutely terrible.

Taimur

It's not a conscious thing. It's not a deliberate thing.

Ali

Yeah, it's not a deliberate thing. It does happen. I think also there's an element of earlier, I think a few years ago, I was very much concerned about the value that I was providing to social interactions. I was speaking to my friend Callum about this and he said that he does the same thing and it was really nice having this conversation because you're like, "Oh, my God, you're weird in the same way."

Taimur

Yeah, and Callum's a great guy, so if he's doing it then it's fine.

Ali

Exactly, it must be totally legit. But what he was saying, and definitely what I do is that when I'm chatting with someone who I don't necessarily know very well, I sort of have in my, and if I'm saying stuff, I sort of have in the back of my mind that, "oh, I need to be entertaining here, I need to be providing value. And I want to exit this conversation before it gets to the point where I run out of things to say" because, you know, for some reason I was focused on, I was very kind of inwardly focused on trying to please the other person by something that I was doing. I don't know if you experienced

Taimur

Yeah, that's actually spot on, it's not like, it's not just this this at all. anxiety of like, "am I getting value out of it?" And actually, I think for me, it's more of the opposite of like, "oh, man, this doesn't feel like it's going well, the other person probably thinks I'm really boring, we've got to end this now."

Ali

That's why now I go to my friends and we'll just call it a day there.

Taimur

Yeah, so I think on one end of the spectrum, there's like standing around, meet and greets, to kind of drinks networking events. I think on the other end, is more something along the lines of a group holiday.

Ali

Yeah, so you've been on group holidays recently with some of my friends, who are more traditionally my friends but then you kind of tagged along with a group holiday. What was that? And for the record, you've not invited me to any of your friends holidays, I'll just have everyone know about this?

Taimur

Oh, I don't think that's true, I think I have made the invites, but you said no. But yeah, I've been quite lucky in that, you're very kind you've invited me on holiday with your friends a couple of times now.

Ali

Yeah, my friends are wonderful.

Taimur

And I've also had the chance to go on sort of a random group holiday with a bunch of strangers outside of that. And that is, those holidays are actually what got me thinking about all of this. So I remember about a year and a few months ago, it was around Christmas time 2017. You and your friends were going to the Cotswolds to rent a cottage for a few days. A little walking holiday..

Ali

That's so very wholesome.

Taimur

Maybe like there was 6, 7, 8, people, something like that. And so I tagged along to that. And I was a little bit anxious going in because I knew like a couple of people, but I didn't know most of them. I wasn't sure if I'd get on with them so there was this whole thing. Also I was like the only person on the trip that wasn't previously part of the friendship group. So I was like, the only new guy on the trip.

Ali

Also the only non-medic on that trip.

Taimur

Also the only non-medic on that trip, so on paper, there was a there was a lot to worry about. And yeah, one thing really struck me. And that was that one of the girls in the trip, my initial impression of her was that we just wouldn't get on at all. I remember, like when we met for the first time, I made some joke that she didn't quite get. And then and then just sort of by pattern matching, she was very different to the kinds of people I'm normally friends with,

Ali

Like white or Asian male nerds, is what you mean? (laughs)

Taimur

Yeah, she wasn't a..

She was female and she wasn't a mathematician. No, there was a

Ali

She was female for one. few other things, she was vegan, for example, I've got nothing against vegans, but just not many of my friends tended to be vegan, and so it almost seemed like a very different kind of person, And so there were like a few red flags that suggested "oh man, like we're not going to be friends." And so after this initial interaction, I was kind of dreading the rest of it, I was thinking, "Oh, man, we have to spend the next four days together. How on earth is this going to happen?" And the crazy thing was after like, one day or something, yeah, after we spent a bit of time together, it turned out we had like a ton of stuff in common that there's no way I would have been able to predict. And we just got on super well and she was amazing, and by the end of the trip, yeah. I think we were good friends. And yeah, I thought she was really, really cool, so my initial impression of her turned out to be like, completely wrong.

So is that where a high social optionality event, at a networking event, or a party, God forbid, you would have sort of lumped her in the category of these are people that I don't normally get along with, therefore, I'm not even gonna make an effort. But because you're forced to kind of make the effort because in a group holiday, when you're walking in the Cotswolds, and nothing else to do other than talk to each other, you're gonna end up talking to every individual in that group for an extended period of time. And then you realize, actually, wow we've got so much we can connect on.

Taimur

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think in a high optionality setting, I would have probably disengaged, I don't know what she thought about the initial interaction, that would actually be quite interesting.

Ali

Oh, we can message her and ask her. We can be like, "hey, you should listen to this bit of the podcast."

Taimur

Yeah, we're talking about you.

Ali

Yeah.

Taimur

So, that were interesting. There was also another holiday, this was when I went to North Korea with a group of complete strangers.

Ali

Oh, you went to North Korea? What? This is like literally everyone's reaction when you said North Korea, people are like "Wait, North Korea?" That's sounds tough.

Taimur

Yeah, I actually wasn't aware about all of this when I signed up, one of my friends, Mac, he's really into North Korea and stuff has been like a bunch of times. And so he was going again this year with like a group. And he invited me along, I didn't really know anything about the political situation, I thought, yeah, sounds like a nice place to go for holiday.

Ali

Okay.

Taimur

Anyway, so we were sort of in Beijing having like a briefing meeting, where we all met each other in a group. And we were kind of going over some various things before we cross the border into North Korea. And one of the guys he was sort of a year or two younger than me, he was still a student. And from the moment he opened his mouth, I started sort of prejudging him, prejudging what this person would be like.

Ali

You are the worst person.

Taimur

This sounds awful, I mean, I hope other people don't do this to the same extent that I used to, because I wonder..

Ali

Okay, hang on, wait. I just want to pick up at this point, when you say prejudging because, like, when I meet someone new, the judge, the "judgment" that I make of them tends to be more like, "Oh, I hope I'm entertaining enough to keep this person occupied", as opposed to this person sort of negatively judging that person. Is it? Is your judgment, sort of like that, where you're worried about the value you can add to them? Or is it more like a "Oh, that's the sort of person, oh, you know, that person's a jock." therefore, we're never gonna be friends.

Taimur

It's a bit of both actually, I don't think, honestly, I don't think any of it is like, "Oh, this person isn't going to provide enough value to me". I think maybe I'm just too, I don't know, self conscious or whatever to think that way. Maybe it's a self esteem thing. I think it's probably 50/50 between, "oh, this person's like a jock. And so just by pattern matching, I don't think we'll get on." And also like "Oh, this, maybe for the same reason, this person seems like a jock. I don't know what value I can provide to him." And so there was this one guy on the trip. Where right from the start, he just he said so many things that triggered the red flags in my head that there's no way he and I can have friends.

Ali

Which were?

Taimur

First of all, he was like..

Ali

He was vegan as well as? (laughs) He happened not to be vegan. Yeah.

Taimur

He was really into like sports and football and stuff, which is fine, which is fine.

Ali

In to sports in football. I bet he has supported football team as well, didn't he?

Taimur

He probably supported a football team, I'll be honest with you. But there's a certain kind of people who are like really into football and I find that there's a lot of them talk in a certain way. This sounds awful

Ali

Talk in a certain way. What do you mean? .. accent now.

Taimur

Sorry?

Ali

Are you gonna put an accent?

Taimur

I'm not gonna try to an impression, but there are, there's a certain kind of sporty guy. And there's a particular way they talk. Anyway, he came across as a classic like football lad. I remember in our first conversation, he mentioned something about beer as well. And so, on paper, he was like, this is not the kind of person I'm normally friends with.

Ali

He enjoys football, and he drinks beer. Yeah, that's not the sort of person you tend to know.

Taimur

Exactly, yeah. And so once again, I thought, "Oh, man, 10 days with this guy? How on earth are we got to do this?" But a few days in basically, like you said, everyone on the trip basically has to spend a bunch of time with one another because what else do you do? And we really got on, we had like the same sense of humor. We had a bunch of like, we didn't really have any shared tangible interests. But like a lot of the things we found funny in the ways that we thought were the same. And we'd sort of sit together on the coach every day on our coach journeys. Yeah, really cool guy. We're really, really close now. And we had a great time together, and I would not have been able to predict that. And if this were an event, a high optionality event, I definitely would have disengaged thinking there's no value I can provide to this person. Also, he's far too different from me, there's no way we can be friends, chances are, we won't even end up at the same high optionality event.

Ali

Because he drinks beer and enjoys football.

Taimur

Yeah, probably.

Ali

And therefore it's unlikely to be at your mathematical, mathematician meetings, or whatever you guys do in your spare time.

Taimur

Safe to say, he doesn't go to Hackathons.

Ali

Okay, what's that board game? Dungeons & Dragons? That's the sort of stuff that you guys play?

Taimur

Absolutely not.

Ali

In fairness, actually, I made some very good friends in my second year of university through playing Yu-Gi-Oh, which was really wonderful because in my, in first year, I wasn't really close with my college friends. I tended to hang out with mostly the Islamic Society or the Pakistan society. And then a second year, I started getting into playing Yu-Gi-Oh, with this like random group of people who I'd never really interacted with much before and it was it was really, really wonderful. So don't hate on Dungeon & Dragons, it's the moral of the story.

Taimur

Yeah, no beef on that, Yu-Gi-Oh's great.

Ali

Anyway, I know what you mean, I think this social optionality thing definitely has legs. One of the main sort of beauties of being a medical student, I'm going to keep on going on about this medical student thing, it's literally all I know about. One of the nice things about it is that after you do your preclinical years, you then have your clinical years and in your clinical years, you go on placements to random hospitals in the middle of nowhere. So I went to like Ipswich, Bedford, Kingsland, random towns in the English countryside, even some GP placements, where it's just me and one or two other people, and you're stuck there together for six weeks. And this is the absolute perfect example of low social optionality, when it's you and another girl sharing a cottage for six week on GP placement, you have no choice but to try and connect on some kind of deep, meaningful level. And actually, the low social optionality created by our very first placement in fourth year in Ipswich, this was in 2015, that group of people has become sort of have become some of my closest friends and that was the group that we ended up sort of forming this holiday to go to the Cotswolds that you then tagged along to.

Taimur

Oh, yeah..

Ali

And this wouldn't have happened, had it not been for the low social optionality. And equally, the one of the really nice things about Oxford and Cambridge is that you have the college system where you know, in most normal universities you might be hanging out with, you know, you'd be going to lectures with 300 medical students. Instead, you've got your college where it might be just 10 medical students, and therefore, again, you have this low social optionality where you pretty much have to be friends, and it forces these connections to form and I'm a massive fan of forced interaction. One of the main considerations for when I was deciding which hospital I was going to go to for my foundation years, was sort of based on this, but I didn't have the words to describe it.

Taimur

You didn't make up the word?

Ali

I didn't make up the words, they yeah, low social optionality, it was because when you're in a random, when you're in a random hospital, let's say Ipswich, where, you know, it's at least an hour away from London, it's miles away from civilization. It's really nice, because all of the doctors are living together in the hospital accommodation, and they have nothing to do other than interact with one another. And therefore, you have loads of board games night, you have movie nights, you have pizza nights, badminton, everyone does stuff together and that's a really, really nice. Whereas, what I've heard from London hospitals is because everyone lives in London, and you know, you might be traveling an hour by tube and everyone's got their existing social network in London. Doctors don't really hang out with each other after work, because you've got the option to hang out with your "real friends". And that was a big, a really big issue that I had at the top of my mind when deciding where to go and placements.

Taimur

Yeah, that actually sounds like the dream. I remember when you were sort of doing all this clinical school stuff and going on placements and things. I was super jealous of that because in my head that was like, low social optionality situation after low social optionality situation (laughter). Yeah, it was like, yeah, I don't know what more you could ask for.

Ali

Absolutely, it was sort of like going on a school trip with that with a group of four people. And you kind of get your like, get your accommodation keys, you discover your accommodation, you discover that "oh, my God, we're all living the same place" except the one girl in the group is a flat across the road. "Oh, that's okay, you can come visit us" and you go to your shopping trip to Aldi on the Tuesday evening, and then you get your poppadoms and eat them along the way and then you kind of watch Stranger Things in the doctor's mess play board games, it was super, super nice. And I think a big part of that was the low social optionality.

Taimur

I think I might go and study graduate medicine, just for that.

Ali

Purely for that experience, I think like, genuinely this is one of the main reasons why I preach to everyone how amazing it is to study medicine, that even if you don't want to be a doctor, don't say this at your interviews, even if you don't want to be a doctor, just having that experience of five or six years of med school where you have the opportunity to have these sorts of interactions and make these sorts of friends is something I don't really think you'd get with any other degree.

Taimur

Yeah, that sounds great actually, I'll send in my application this year.

Ali

Nice.

Taimur

So there's a couple of things I want to explore here. One is, one thing I may be worried about is, I worry that maybe I feel this way because deep down, I have really low self esteem, and don't think I can provide enough value to other people unless they're forced to spend time with me. And so I worry that maybe I'm more, maybe I like low optionality situations because, yeah, it kind of forces the other person to talk to me. And hopefully, eventually we'll get on. Whereas maybe I don't feel like I can convince other people of my value or something in a very short amount of time.

Ali

I know what you mean, I think I have a very similar feeling, this is sort of the feeling that Callum and I were talking about a few years ago, when you're at a party, and you want to cut the interaction short, because you don't want to give the other person an opportunity to get bored by that social interaction. I feel like this is a problem that a lot of people have, like, it's I remember, at one point a few years ago, I was reading this thing about how people in general get, like, hate going to networking events. I was like, "No way, other people hate networking events as well?" And then I started talking to a few friends about like, how do you really feel about house parties? And so many people had this thing of like, "Oh, actually, yeah, I kind of prefer it if it's just kind of four or five of us just having dinner and playing board games, because you know, it's just more comfortable" I think there's something inherently uncomfortable about the house party situation than networking situation where you have to, in a way, where you feel like you're having to sell your value in a very short amount of time.

Taimur

Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of the house party thing, I think I'm much I think, like the ideal sort of temporary like short time period, group setting would be like a dinner where everyone is at the same table, there's no running away. Crucially, they can't run away from you. And everyone has to you know, then, you know you have to spend the next four or five hours with these people. And so everyone sort of has to make an effort to connect with one another, I think that's really nice. Yeah, actually, I think I think meeting people in that context is actually, I find it to be really good. When I was living in San Francisco last year, we for a few weeks, we had this sort of tradition where every week, we'd sort of host a dinner party at our house. And each of us would have to invite someone new to the party that the rest of the people didn't know. And so there were three or four of us. And then we'd invite three or four guests. And the fact that there was already some existing connections, based on who invited whom. And that kind of laid the groundwork for the social fabric almost. And I think once you have a bit of like social fabric already, it's a really good starting point for other people to come and sort of sow themselves onto the fabric or whatever.

Ali

This sounds like a really solid thing. I remember the first time you told me about this, I was super jealous. I was like, "damn, why are me and my friends not doing this at Cambridge, because we just hang out with each other." And there are so few opportunities to get new people into the mix. And actually, this is something that I've started to recently do where I try and actively bring different groups of friends together. So earlier today, you and I were having dinner with, you know, we got Katherine over who's kind of one of one of my medic friends who you also know we had (unclear) from school, we had Sam who's part of my, like Pakistan society, friends from university, these are three groups that don't really have much overlap at all. And yet, you know, there were five of us. And actually, one of my friends Hassan from the Islamic side as well, you know, definitely has no overlap with my medic friends or, you know, it was nice and every everyone kind of got on. And I suppose if you know -- brings it back to me for a moment (laughter) -- if I'm friends with five different people from five different groups, and those people get to meet one another, chances are they're going to get on as well because, you know, if they're the sort of people who can tolerate me, then they'll have you know, then there'll be some kind of personality match between each other as well. So I think that's a really valuable thing that I at least want to try more of.

Taimur

Yeah, I think one of the other really good things about that kind of setup is that you're not sort of meeting people as a blank slate, you already have the social proof of being friends with one of their other friends. And so it's almost as if you're, I mean, it sounds terrible to have to say this, but it's almost as if you're inherently valuable as a human being in that setting. And this is awful, because obviously everyone is inherently valuable as human beings. And yeah, I don't like this mindset, but if I'm in a setting where, let's say I'm at a party with like, or dinner with, like eight people and I don't know any, I know just one of the people there, I will be less comfortable than if I know, like four or five of the people there, you know? So if I sort of know more people, it's almost like I have less to prove. And I can sort of quickly go into being comfortable and being myself and having like, really authentic interest.

Ali

Yeah, rather than coming to sell yourself or, you know, entertain or whatever, kind of metric of value adding to the social situation that you want.

Taimur

Yeah, exactly.

Ali

Yeah. Umm, that made me think of something. What it made me think of? Oh, yeah, so the point you made about social proof, I think that's really important as well to as almost a thing to keep in the back of our minds as to why we value certain types of social interaction. So for example, when I go to an Islamic Society event, or a, you know, a society with which I identify to whatever degree event. I feel inherently more comfortable, because everyone is there every we've got that social proof that we're all there because we have this thing in common.

Taimur

Yeah.

Ali

Sort of like being a dinner where you have friends equally. You went to church the other day for a quiz night. Can you talk a bit about what that was like? Because I think you had some interesting thoughts about that.

Taimur

Yeah, that was super nice actually, an old friend of mine for university invited us to a quiz night in his local church. This is some random church in London, and I've never really been there. It wasn't really a studenty thing. We had like a table of us, or like five, five or six people. And there was all sorts of people, there was like random people from the community, there was some like parents, there were their kids, a table of like, really old people, a table of like middle aged people yeah, all sorts of people. Not the kind of people I'd usually sort of spend time with. And obviously, like, I'm not a Christian, so a church isn't typically the kind of setting where I'd feel like, I mean, I wouldn't feel uncomfortable there, but like it's not the first place I go.

Ali

It's like being in a being in a church with people who drink a beer and like football.

Taimur

Yeah. Oh, my God.

Ali

Who might even be vegan. Imagine that.

Taimur

Yeah, I don't know what I'd do that situation. But I was there with this friend of mine, Christian guy and a few of our other friends who I knew quite well. And I felt super comfortable immediately, because like, I was really close to this guy, University, we spent two years sharing a room. And we're really good friends. And so I felt very comfortable in that situation, because I sort of had this social proof of like, almost like, " Ah, I'm with him" you know?

Ali

He's my guy.

Taimur

Which is strange, and I wish I didn't have to, have that, to be like really comfortable in a situation, because I find that once I'm like comfortable to be myself, then I haven't had that many situations where it's gone badly. I think like, yeah, I think usually when people are being sort of their authentic selves and are comfortable with one another, I don't really see how two people can't really get on once once you've reached that point. But I think breaking past the initial stage of like, being slightly uncomfortable, because you don't know this person, you're worried about, like, what value you're providing, etc, etc. In that stage, I think people don't act themselves and if any interaction turns sour, it's probably because of that: because they're not actually being comfortable being themselves.

Ali

On that note, I read something recently, which changed my view of the dating game. So I can't remember where I found this. I think it might have been in a "charisma on command" YouTube video. That's a really great channel, by the way, I've been following the guy Charlie Hooper, whatever the name is who runs it for absolutely, years and years now. And I bought his book back when it was called "Kickassary", which was in like, 2011 or something, because at the time, I was like, "you know what, I want to try and learn some social skills." And I made the mistake of mentioning this to some sort of some of my friends. And it tended to be the girls that I mentioned this to her like, Whoa, what the hell are you doing? You know, who needs to read about social skills? You know, you can just practice it's natural, blah, blah." Whereas my guy friends were a bit more like "Okay, cool. Fair enough." Yes, anyway, what was I talking about -- yeah, in this video he was talking about kind of tips for, tips for first dates or something along those lines, obviously, I clicked on it came up in my recommended in my subscription box dropped it a cheeky like, all that stuff. Tips for first dates, and his main point was that, like, often, we think of dating as a way of trying to convince someone to become interested in us, in a way, whereas his thing was more that if you consider dating instead, as just trying to work out whether you and this other person, you know, connect when you're fully being yourselves, then it takes so much pressure off it, it means you're not trying to be someone else. It means you're not trying to impress, you're literally being your weird, authentic And if they like it, then great and if they don't, then fantastic, you just self. saved everyone a lot of time. And that was something that even though I've read so much about dating and things like that I just hadn't really internalized that idea. I always in a way considered, you know, I tried going on a Tinder date once, just before Christmas -- I know, right? Check me out. And that was really fun. But I felt at least for the first half of it, I had this script running through my head of being like sort of actively tracking the various conversational topics. And being like okay, I could ask about this, this, this, this and this. And then after about, you know, half an hour an hour into it, I just kind of became much more comfortable and was fully okay with being my authentic weird self, because it was actually you know, what, I'm not trying to get this person to like me, I'm just trying to be myself. And that's fine.

Taimur

Yeah, yeah, I think having this sort of background thread in your mind of like, keeping track of all the possible avenues that you can leave the conversation and things like that, that's something I sort of tend to do as well at the start when I'm like, worried about how things are going. And once you're not thinking about it, it's almost like entering a flow state. Like people who do sports or do any kind of like creative work often describe this flow state, where you're just like doing stuff, you're not like actively thinking about it. I think once you enter that in a social interaction, once you don't have this, like background thread running, like analyzing what's going on and trying to optimize things, then that's a really nice place to be. And actually, I think there's something profound about the lull that you described earlier, like, when you meet someone new, you know, you're fine for like the first five minutes you talk about, like, you know, bookwork stuff, or "how's work, you know, how's school" this and that. And then there's the lull. And I think, I think facing the lull head on is actually the way to go. Because I think once you both face the lull together and get past it together.

Ali

Yeah.

Taimur

Then I feel like yeah, any discussion after the lull is just much more natural. And it's like, much more candid.

Ali

It's like, all right, we've got all the foreplay out of the way.

Taimur

Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right.

Ali

Let's get down to it.

Taimur

Let's get down to business, yeah.

Ali

And then you can just kind of be yourself and be comfortable or whatever.

Taimur

Yeah.

Ali

Yeah, okay. So, let's summarize what we talked about so far, so you introduce the idea of optionality as a concept defined as you know, having the, I don't know, how do you define?

Taimur

Yeah, having the ability to disengage from a particular social interaction. So there's high optionality when you can pretty much leave and go talk to someone else. And there's low optionality, when you're forced to stay in interact with someone.

Ali

So, somewhere, because it's a scale somewhere from kind of networking event where there whether 5000 other people that you can literally just walk away and never see someone ever again, to all the way to being stranded on desert island with someone where you literally they are the only human interaction you have for the next few months of your life.

Taimur

Yeah, exactly.

Ali

And we talked about how in a high social optionality situations, it's very easy to immediately pattern match people, for example, "this guy is a guy and he likes beer, and he played plays football, therefore, I'm never going to get on with him, cool, I'll go hang out with someone else." But actually, if you give it a bit more time, there's a lot of magic that can form out of this connection. And I suppose then the question is, how do we act in a way? How do we act in a low optionality way in high optionality settings.

Taimur

Exactly, that's the dilemma, that's it.

Ali

Okay. (laughs)

Taimur

Okay, part of the issue here I think, and part of what makes it difficult is, I'm not sure what rules other people are playing by. I'm not sure what their mental model for this is. Maybe they're not like me, maybe they don't think in terms of like, "Oh, am I providing enough value to this other person?" Maybe they're just having a candid interaction right from the start. And in that case, things are great. But it's like a two player game, right? Like, even if I have the mindset of like, "Oh, you know, we are two human beings on this planet, I'm sure there is something that we can connect on. I'm not interested in trying to optimize for finding the person at this event, who I will click the most quickly with, I'm not, I don't care about that. I want to connect with this person right in front of me." Even if I have that mindset, it doesn't guarantee that the other person does. And so there is still something to be worried about, which is that you're not giving them enough value, right?

Ali

Yeah..

Taimur

There's no winning!

Ali

I think that's the ultimate problem with this, with social interaction in general. That it's a two player game, but you have no idea what the other person is thinking.

Taimur

Yeah.

Ali

And you have to infer what the other person is thinking from all sorts of micro expressions, or whatever, or you just do it naturally, as my female friends would like to say and stop overthinking it really. I think I've heard that one tactic to not become paralyzed by this sort of thing is to loosen the filter, the inherent filter we have in our minds where we ask ourselves before saying anything, is what I have to say next currently interesting. And obviously, you know, have some sort of filter like don't like openly, you know, be inappropriate or mean or rude to someone. But beyond that, most of what we have to say that's interesting, is probably, would probably get filtered out by that filter, or like or maybe the other person won't be interested in this. So one thing that I've occasionally experimented with is like, you know, sometimes if I'm at a party or something where everyone is drunk, and I'm not drinking. And I'm thinking, "Okay, why don't I just act as if I were like one of these guys and not having any inhibitions" and I just kind of start chatting, whatever breeze I want to be spouting out of my urethra.

Taimur

Nice.

Ali

Thank you. And I find that that's actually really fun. And I feel more relaxed, I feel like it becomes sort of a game. So I wonder if maybe viewing the social interactions as a game in a way where you're just trying to, it's a game you're playing with yourself where you're trying, try not to let that filter get in the way of what you're going to say, and then just hope that the magic flows connecting you.

Taimur

Yeah, I think this is actually super related to what we were talking about in the last episode, about just caring less. So like, in the example you just gave, where everyone else is drunk. And you're sort of pretending that you're in the same kind of mode of thinking or whatever. It sounds like in that situation, you just care less, because you know, these people are slightly tipsy, they're not going to be like watching your every word and like analyzing it or anything, they might not even remember the interaction. And so you can sort of loosen up and know that there won't be, you know, any serious consequences, hopefully. And so, actually, when I think about it, there have been a few situations where it's a social interaction, but I do just care less, I think that's partly why I'm sort of more comfortable when I know more people at an event. Because it's the social proof almost, is like, it's almost like a safety net. Like, if you sort of have that social proof, then let's say you say something that could be interpreted in a negative way, the fact that the social proof is there means that chances are the person will interpret it in a much more charitable way. And so you can afford to care a bit less about what you're saying. Because you know, you're sort of, you know, you're all friends, you know, you're in good company. And so I think, yeah, a lot of it just comes down to caring less. And when I think about the people who I've met, who I found like really charismatic. Those people don't seem to care at all. Yeah, there was a guy, I went on a another random trip with a group of people from university once, and one of the guys, like super charismatic guy, everyone really likes him really funny, everyone really got on with him. He said a lot of stuff, he said a lot of stupid stuff, he just didn't really care what he said. And so he came across as like this really authentic guy. And immediately, I sort of felt very comfortable with him. And it was just great from the start. Whereas if it feels like the other person is sort of watching your -- it's probably in your head -- and if in your head, you think the other person is like watching your every move, then it sort of makes you care more.

Ali

So I suppose what we're saying is, this is, I've been thinking about this for a few weeks now. Because I write this weekly email where I give a sort of some sort of some snippets of life advice every week, it's on issue 50 now actually, you can find that email to the aliabdaal.com, quick plug. And I found that a lot of the things that I say tend to converge on a few cliches. And this sounds a lot like, you know the cliche of don't care what other people think. But also that has a quote of, "we'd care a lot less what other people think when we realize how seldom they actually think about us." Like, I imagine when we're interacting with people, no one is really analyzing our words. And no one really cares what we have to say that much. And yet we think that they do. And that is what holds us back in social interactions.

Taimur

Yeah. And chances are they're I mean, they're probably analyzing their own words and thinking, "Oh, how am I coming across in this scenario?" They're not really think about you at all.

Ali

So this is where we need the third party perspective, so if you have any thoughts on this matter, then please do write into us. We intend to, I think, put some of the responses up on the podcast website at notoverthinking.com and we might discuss some of them at a later episode. I think actually, it would be cool to do an episode where we just kind of chat through comments that people have sent in, in previous episodes, and maybe every multiple of five. We'll do like a quick review, kind of summarizing what we talked about. And then the things people have said, and our thoughts on those, I think that might be nice, but also I think this goes to show that having a third party here to double check our thinking on this will actually be quite helpful.

Taimur

Yeah, it feels like we reached this conclusion every single episode and yet here we are just the two of us.

Ali

Yeah, in fairness, you know, it's a random Thursday night. It's like, what is it half past 11 at night? You know, who we're gonna find you can just come and hang out with us at short notice.

Taimur

If only they had low optionality of the scenario.

Ali

Exactly, oh, I usually need to force people to do that. Yeah, do we have any more points?

Taimur

I'd like to make one one sort of final point.

Ali

Oh you would, would you?

Taimur

If you don't mind?

Ali

By all means, that's alright.

Taimur

Which is that I think random group holidays with people you don't really know are amazing.

Ali

Yeah 100% I was gonna say this as well, you make a point and then I'll make one.

Taimur

All right, thank you. So I think I've been super lucky over the past few years. I had it like a few situations like this, I had one at university, which was like 10 or 11 of us. None of us really knew each other well beforehand.

We went to the Bay Area, we went to Silicon Valley for about 10 d

Ali

Where did you go this time? ys, we sort of rented a big house there, visited a bunch of companies and things and just hung out and really bonded. And that was super nice and I ended up sor of meeting and hanging out with the people from around the university w o I probably wouldn't have met otherwise. And so quite different people, and hen I've been now been on like two holidays with you and your friends for lik Like there's loads of organizations as well as groups that organize group , a few days, again, not the kind of people I typically hang out with necessar ly, and then the trip to North Korea. And so I think, just by chance, I've een really lucky to do this. But it seems like there there are definitely people who do this deliberately in their li holidays for basically complete strangers to go and do some shared thing. I don't think it's really a mainstream thing right now. I think like, if you told someone "Oh, yeah, I'm going on a random holiday with a bunch of people I don't know, to North Korea" or wherever else. They probably think is a bit weird like, "why does this person need to go on holiday with random people? Don't you have any friends?" But I yeah, I think this should definitely be more of a mainstream thing, and actually, I think one thing I've noticed is that even with my own friends who I do know, well, I think spending time together on a holiday is far more meaningful than spending time together over dinner and stuff. So there are friends who I meet every one or two weeks for dinner for like a few hours, and it's good fun. But like going on ones that are long weekend, get away with these people, as I've done with in the past is far more meaningful and far more valuable I think than like you know, seven or eight, two to three hour dinners. I think a lot of it just comes down to the low social optionality like you're forced to spend time with them, you're forced to get past the lulls. And I think what, yeah, what once you're past the lulls, that's when the real magic happens. Once you're doing nothing together with other people, that's when the real magic happens. That's how connections are made.

Oh, man, that's actually profound. I've got a few points to comment on. Firstly, it's pretty solid signaling, so you know, that there was a group of friends, I went to the Bay Area Silicon Valley with and then I went to North Korea, then I went to the Cotswolds with your friends.

Taimur

All right, okay.

Ali

And then we complain, when we get these comments being like, it's just these two rich kids chatting. So well done for that signaling, point number one. Point number two is, yeah, I think this idea of group holidays were is just absolutely incredible. There was, there's a group of people on the internet, the financial independence, early retirement community that I recently well, not recently, a few years ago started to really get into people like mister money mustache. And there's loads of bloggers on the internet that talk about who have this shared vision of being able to save loads of money by being very frugal, and you know, investing in index funds of the stock market and making so much money by the time you're 30 that you can just retire. And then work becomes optional for you. Anyway, there's this whole community and what they started doing is that every year they run a couple of different retreats where they might go to Portugal for a week, or they might go to Spain for a week and people from all around the world, like 10 to 15 people get together for this thing where you're connecting with other like minded people who do the only thing you have in common is this shared interest of financial independence, and like I was looking through the reviews of these and then people have been saying that there's been life changing trips absolutely change their life, and they've made lifelong friends. And this is the prime example of low social optionality where you already have some thread that is tying you together. Because I imagine if you've got 15 random people from the world who just spoke English, for example, and come together, it might be less good than if you had one shared and shared thing.

Taimur

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Ali

And the third point was, given that we want to be more some more systematic with this thing. Why don't we do it? Like, how hard would it be if you and I just like posted on our Instagrams and said, hey, look, we're thinking of doing a trip to the Lake District, anyone from the UK over the age of 18. Crucially, over the age of 18, if you want to come on this trip, drop us a DM we'll get a random group of people from different parts of the UK together. We'll go to the bloody Lake District for like three days ,for a long weekend book out on Airbnb, it will cost I don't know a few 10s of pounds when we sort of maybe like 30-40 quid between you know, each once we've done all the costs, and we just go for a little hike during the day. Maybe exam time is coming up, we will have worked to be doing, do a little bit of revision in the afternoon, play some board games in the evening. I think I'll be really sick.

Taimur

This actually sounds incredible. I don't know why I haven't thought about this before. This would be really really cool.

Ali

Okay, so we're gonna do it.

Taimur

Let's try and do that.

Ali

Yeah, let's try and do that. So if you're listening to this right now, and you live in the UK/ you can travel to the UK and you over the age of 18. And you want to come with us to a group holiday, where random people get together and go to like the Lake District or Cornwall or something. drop us an email at hi@notoverthinking.com and say that you're interested. And we'll add all the emails to a list and we'll just send out an email when we have more information about this. I'll also post about it on my Instagram story and my email newsletter. You can do the same on your email newsletter. I think this idea has legs.

Taimur

Yeah, this this is really cool. I don't really know of it being done before in quite this kind of way.

Ali

Oh as in like two random rich kids? (laughs)

Taimur

Yeah two random kids inviting strangers on the internet to go on holiday. But yeah, it sounds really, really good. I think this is something we should definitely do. And like, this is quite a weird thing, chances are you don't want to come on holiday with us. I don't blame you. I think you should definitely try and organize group holidays with your own friends. It's yeah, money can be an issue sure, but sort of amongst like four or five people who want to spread the cost of like a long weekend thing. It's pretty doable to do it like once in a while, or definitely more often than most people do. And I think that's where like some of my fondest social interactions have come from.

Ali

Yeah, I agree and I think actually one of the best things that this group of friends who we went to the Cotswolds with, one of the greatest things that we've done is that every in each four month placement of all of us being doctors, we have systematically organized a group holiday where we're like, at the start of the placement we're like, "right, guys, everyone get out your rotors, let's fill out a doodle poll, let's find a weekend where you know, most of us can make it and we'll make something happen." And I think that's been a really valuable thing to do. So should we wrap this up?

Taimur

Let's do it. So we talked about this last episode, and I think in the first episode, it'll be nice to have like a finishing segment. So we don't just sort of tail off at the end after regurgitating a bunch of stuff about some random topic. We had a suggestion from a listener this week, of like an insight of the week. We talked a few weeks ago about maybe having like a funny thing that I saw this week. Let's go for a funny thing this week.

Ali

A funny thing this week?

Taimur

Let's go for a funny thing.

Ali

Okay, after you, while I think of it.

Taimur

I was hoping to pass that on to you while I thought of it.

Ali

Let me do insight of the week, because that's something that I actively think about because I have to write an email newsletter every Sunday and have to give people an insight. I was listening to the Neil Gaiman interview with Tim Ferriss on the Tim Ferriss Show podcast in the car with my mom today while we were going to IKEA. And he was talking about how he enjoys, he writes on a physical notebook when he's writing stuff with a fountain pen, for various reasons, but one of those reasons was that it makes him appreciate it, it makes him internalize the idea that the first draft is just a first draft that no one's gonna see, because no one's gonna see the fountain pen notes, and you can then just type it up into the computer. So this is something that I've personally been thinking of experimenting with, might just find a random notebook slash is a good excuse to then buy myself a fancy notebook and a pen. And in the mornings, with my cup of coffee, instead of getting out my iPad Pro and trying to type something up, instead, I'll just kind of write something with a fountain pen in this book, that's a random insight that I discovered this week. Hopefully, while I've been chatting breeze over there, you've been thinking of something funny you found out.

Taimur

Yeah, thanks for that. This is sort of funny, not in a maybe laugh out loud way. And it's very linked to social optionality. It's a short story. Last weekend, on Saturday, you and I were going to London, we were getting the train from St. Albans to London. It was super packed, there was loads of Brexit marches going on. And so loads of people were on this train. It was packed like sardines in a can, no one can move at all. And the vibe was really nice. Whereas not normally on the underground and stuff when it's packed the vibe is very negative. It's almost like people don't want extra people to get on the train. Everyone's like, uncomfortable with other people being in their space. But for some reason, maybe it was the weekend, maybe it was the Brexit March spirits, everyone was really happy with the vibe. And actually, even though I was sort of squished up against random people, that was one of the nicer train rides I've had. The best part was there were two people behind me who were talking throughout the whole thing they were talking about just like random stuff. I thought they were part of the same group. I thought, "Oh, these these guys are just like friends who are going to London together." It was a guy and a girl. And at the end of the journey, when we're getting off at St. Pancras International, the guy said to the girl, "oh, this has been really nice. What's your name, by the way?" And I realized that these guys, they've been talking for the whole train journey, like 20-25 minutes or something? And they didn't even know each other beforehand. It was a low social optionality situation, they were stuck in this tray and facing each other, they couldn't really move. And they just had like a really pleasant conversation I was listening in throughout the whole ride, obviously. And it was just about random stuff. It was none of the kind of stuff about signaling value, like oh, "What do you do? Where do you work?" this kind of thing. It was just like, they're just talking about basically nothing for 25 minutes. It was like the purest human connection I've had the chance to witness. It was amazing. Honestly, I was so so happy after seeing that. And I'd like to get better at sort of having those kind of pure human to human connections about nothing in particular.

Ali

Okay, so you'd like to get better at small talk is what you're saying?

Taimur

In a sense, but we should we should explore that.

Ali

I think we should explore that because I think small talk gets given a bad rep and everyone wants to move past small talk, but we'll talk about that in the next episode, not in the next episode, at some point, we'll make a list on a notion notebook. And do that. So yeah, please do feel free to write in to us. Please actively write into us a at hi@notoverthinking.com if you have any thoughts about this optionality stuff, what do you do when you're in a social interaction? Do you actively try and think about how you can add value? Or do you just not really overthink it and just kind of be yourself? Also, if you might be interested in the idea of going on holiday with us to do like, you know, a trip somewhere in the UK, let us know and we'll make it happen. Thanks for listening and we'll see you in the next episode.