Hi, this is MPR's Life Kit and I'm Julia Frelon.

Look, I don't know you yet, but I bet that if you really looked at your friendships,

it wouldn't hurt to be a little bit more intentional about them.

But what would that actually look like in practice?

Does that mean like sending Google Calendar invites or is it like a regular mid-year review

conversation to check in on how things are going?

I mean, I don't know.

Maybe it would mean you'd try something I consider an absolute last resort, a spreadsheet.

I work in Excel every day for work, so it seemed to make sense that I would just utilize Excel

to keep track of my friends.

This is Vanessa Nunez and she's got a system for friendship.

It's her spreadsheet where she keeps track of all of the people that matter to her.

And then I just made columns for the different months of the year.

You color code or mark an X every time you see somebody in any given month.

And then as the months go by, you'll start to see trends.

Like, oh, I haven't seen my friend Tiffany since February.

Let me reach out to her and see what she's up to.

Anybody who had a top eight on my space might remember what it's like to prioritize this

way.

And if one of those folks on the spreadsheet isn't putting in the same effort, there's

a possibility that Vanessa might move them down on the list.

Burrutal.

...