One of the many things I love about Barcelona is my daily interactions with strangers.
Growing up in the suburbs of America, I never really experienced this. In the US, most people drive from one destination to the next in their climate-controlled bubble.
This leaves little room for serendipity.
But when you live in a walkable city, these unplanned encounters happen all the time.
Not all of them are complete strangers. They can be acquaintances, friends of friends, or people I see often around the barrio. We might not even know each other’s names, but we still give a smile or subtle head nod when we see each other.
In my last article, I wrote about how socializing boosts happiness and increases overall life satisfaction.
Now let’s go a level deeper and explore the different types of socializing.
Not all relationships are created equal
As we navigate our way through life, we build relationships with those around us.
Some of these relationships turn into real friendships, while others don’t progress past a certain point.
Mark Granovetter, a sociology professor at Stanford University categorizes these relationships into two buckets: “strong ties” and “weak ties”.
Strong ties are people in our life who we have shared history with - childhood friends, family, work colleagues.
Weak ties are casual connections and loose acquaintances, the people you don’t hang out with on a regular basis.
If life were a movie, these people wouldn’t even be supporting actors. They would be extras in the background, but they play a more significant role than you might think.
He argues that for new information and ideas, weak ties are more important than strong ones.
Weak ties are a gateway to novelty.
They bring surprise and unpredictability to your life. They get us access to new kinds of information that’s sometimes harder to get from our strong ties.
The impact on our personal & professional life
We’ve all heard the advice: “It’s not what you know, but who you know.”
In one experiment, Granovetter surveyed 282 workers and found that most of them got their jobs through someone they knew. But only a minority got the job through a close friend; 84% got their job through weak ties.
With the rise of automation, he sees the importance of weak ties being increasingly relevant.
“No matter what kind of big data or artificial intelligence or machine learning that employers are able to draw on, they will never know as much about a person as someone who actually knows them and has worked with them and knows their personality and knows what they do in their spare time and how they approach problems. There will always be more knowledge to be gotten from personal contacts than you can get from any kind of informatics.”
Thinking back to many of the jobs I’ve held throughout my life, almost all came through weak ties.
I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather find a job through a personal connection rather than submitting hundreds of applications to random companies and then hoping for a reply.
Aside from professional opportunities, weak ties also increase our levels of happiness.
Gillian Sandstrom, a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Essex, found that participants with a larger network of weak ties tended to be happier overall.
To prove this point, she conducted an experiment where she gave the participants two clickers - one for interactions with weak ties and one for interactions with strong ties.
On days when a participant had a greater number of casual interactions with weak ties - (a barista in a local coffee shop, a neighbor, a member of a yoga class, or a fellow dog walker) – they experienced more happiness and a greater sense of belonging.
It makes sense, after all, we are social beings that crave community.
Conclusion
We tend to give precedence to our strong ties, but it’s just as important that we cultivate and nurture our weak ties.
Those seemingly trivial social encounters — chatting up a person in the elevator, making small talk with the barista, or even smiling at a passerby — can have a massive impact on both your mood and your career.
I’m not suggesting you walk around your neighborhood with a massive grin on your face waving to all your neighbors hoping that someone can get you a job interview.
But I am suggesting that a friendly conversation with the right person can go a long way.
Small talk doesn’t have to be empty talk.
Until next time my friends
<3 B
Weak ties are also what helps society forge a sense of common humanity. Just think if all our social interactions were only algorithmically selected for us, what a weaker understanding we'd have of differences and diversity. It makes you wonder, are weak ties truly weak?
i have been so surprised by weak ties so many times that it has humbled me. Get ready for a small little deeeeeep rant here.
While at times, close friends enter a relationship, a change of skin, have a kid, they immediately let go of any strong ties that they may have. This has always baffled me because as soon as something goes wrong in their life, they immediately think about who has always been there.
Nonetheless, when i think some weak ties are going to be like that, they shine through. They demonstrate a different light in your life that perhaps you never counted on.
that's the amazing thing about being friendly to everybody. Guiding yourself through the cool and sweet vibes that you can connect to.
Sometimes it doesnt even matter if you speak the same language. You see the other person and you both know that there is a connection of two good people.
that's the beauty of travelling and experiencing these amazing things in life.