Here’s my big ‘ol opinion:

Sometime between 11am and 2pm everybody you work with is going to leave the desk for a meal. Whether they go to a fridge and get the lunch they brought or they leave the office for 30-60 minutes…

For the next 6 months or so, make it your goal is to lunch with someone once every two weeks. You see, what you’re doing 60 months from now – where you work, how much money you have in your savings account, what vacations you take, restaurants you eat in, movies you see, books you ready…just about EVERYthing will in some part be influenced by who you talk with more (or less!).


Open your calendar and review the past 2 months. Identify the lunches you met a coworker, a mentor or a friend. For each lunch (aka: person), answer the following questions:

  1. What did we talk about?
  2. What did I complain about?
  3. What ideas did we discuss?
  4. What did I learn? (About them, about myself…etc)

Notice ALL those questions start with WHAT. You can easily make notes of these answers in your journal, just make sure that over the NEXT few months you continue to review ALL your journal entries looking for patterns, plusses and minuses.

Want to change what you have?

Change what you talk about!


Once you’ve done that work, Re-view your calendar for the NEXT 2 months.

Identify 4 days (a day every two weeks) you could meet someone for a mid-day meal.

Next, build a list of 5-10 people you COULD invite to lunch. (Not everyone will be able to meet on this time-table).

THEN, for each person on that list (maybe on separate pages in your notebook, or even a set of Note Cards!) start collecting:

  • Some questions you’d like to ask them.
  • Advice you’re willing to hear from them.
  • An idea you’d like to ask for help thinking through some more.
  • A story you’d like them to tell you.

The good news…everyone’s gonna eat! Just make sure that you’re not ALWAYS eating alone!

Hey, for a deeper-dive into building meaningful relationships, here’s a great blog post on “The Network and My Future.”