When you only have five minutes for a friend, make it count

livemint.com:

Feel like you don’t spend enough time with your friends? You’re not alone. Too often, busy schedules prevent us from having long, meaningful phone chats or meandering, split-the-bottle dinner conversations. Instead, we shoot each other quick how-are-you texts, forward articles or memes, and promise that we’ll find time to talk later.

These short bursts of communication can feel totally unsatisfying. And they don’t really help us bond because we’re not connecting emotionally. Yet our friendships can benefit from quick exchanges—call them friendship snacks—if we do them right, relationship experts say.

Bite-size communications should be nutritious, not filled with empty calories. The key is to make an emotional connection. Try speaking rather than texting—a voice memo or five-minute phone chat is warmer and more personal.

Bonus points if you share a funny memory or inside joke. Humor helps people bond. “A healthy friendship snack is nourishing," says Natalie Pennington, an assistant professor of communication studies at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colo., who studies how we connect with our friends.

“It’s fruit and veggies, not potato chips." It’s important for friends to spend time together, of course. It takes 200 hours together for two people to move from acquaintances to close friends, research shows. But a friendship needs steady upkeep, as well.

Soon-to-be published research from Pennington and others shows that the routine tech-driven check-ins between meetups—the texts, emails and calls—keep friendships from declining. Psychologists call this “mundane maintenance." Plus, our friends like hearing from us more than we realize, research shows. And the greater the surprise, the greater the appreciation