Jason Buffington .com

Transcript

If you follow this podcast series, you probably noticed that I took a break … I’m back!

Several weeks ago, something happened in my world and my first reaction was to reach out to a few buddies for support.

And then, as I was sending them texts, I realized:

• I haven’t texted this person in a few months…
• Another one, there weren’t any texts yet in 2025 … (there was at Christmas)

Then, I started looking in my calendar and figured out I hadn’t had lunch or coffee with some of them in a very (way too) long time.  We’d had some short calls, but no real in-person, unfiltered, quality time.

So, in the first two weeks of my sabbatical, I had 8 coffees and 2 long lunches, with more scheduled moving forward.  Don’t be alarmed, we’re all healthy and fine – but I needed to rally my people.  And as others started hearing about my circumstance, they pinged me about some next steps.

You want to know my next steps?  More coffees … more lunches … and more Zooms, Teams, and Facetime calls.

I hadn’t realized how long it had been for the people that really matter in my world.

So, here’s your homework:

• Imagine a significant life event happens to you (good or bad)
• List the ten people that you would most want to spend 30m or more 1:1 with to celebrate, commiserate, brainstorm, whatever.
• Then, check your phone and figure out when was the last time that you actually spent 30m 1:1 with each of them.

Depending on what you discover, your next steps might be pretty obvious (they were for me).