Weekly Challenge — Catch Up With An Old Friend. You’ve Been Meaning To For A While Now, So Here Are 5 Easy Ways To Do It.

Keeping up with old friends is hard. Really hard. I’ll be the first to say I’m horrible at it; I even struggle to stay in touch with good friends who live in the same town as me.

Excuses aside, there is something sweet and refreshing about reconnecting with old friends. It brings life to our souls. No one knows this more than 28-year-old Matt Kulesza of Australia. He was scouring through his Facebook friends list one day hoping to delete a bunch of people when he had a better idea–why not reconnect over coffee with all 1,008 of his Facebook friends.

Well, 48 coffee hangouts later, Kulesza is off to a great start! He blogs about his experiences with old friends at 1000+ COFFEES on Tumblr, which he calls “an exercise in remembering to socialize with and get to know people outside of the ‘book [Facebook] and a celebration of the individual humans I’ve had the pleasure of meeting throughout my life so far.”

Kulesza’s is an extremely ambitious mission, and it’s not something I’m suggesting we all start doing. But, there’s one thing I think we can all learn from the core of his efforts–to do anything worthwhile in life requires time, effort and sacrifice.

For the practical people out there, check out these simple ways to re-live the glory days with an old friend:

5 Easy Ways To Catch Up With Old Friends

 1. Take advantage of your business trips

Whether it’s a business trip, wedding or vacation, take time to figure out which friends live in the town you’re visiting and set up a 30 minute coffee hang out. It’ll be well worth your time.

2. Try out a new coffee shop… follow Kulesza’s lead

Get caffeinated and reconnect! If you’ve got a new place you’ve been wanting to check out, call up an old friend and tell them you need a partner to explore the uncharted territories (and get wired).

3. Use your time stuck in traffic to make some calls

You’re not going anywhere, and T-Swift won’t make your time go by any faster. Call a friend or two and catch up!

4. Go to your high school reunions. Seriously.

They’re only once in a blue moon and you can connect with more than one friend at once. You can also re-live the high school glory days (or not so glorious days). I was skeptical of my 5 year high school reunion, but it ended up being one of my favorite nights of the year.

5. Just make time to do it

Okay, this may seem obvious. But we all need to hear it! You’re never going to have any free time magically open up; you’ve got to be disciplined and schedule time to make it happen!