How do you make recurring plans with friends?

The easiest way to make recurring plans with friends is to remove as much of the repeated organising as possible.

For some groups, that means having a standing plan: dinner on the first Thursday of every month, a Sunday morning walk or drinks every other Friday.

But recurring plans don't have to mean doing the exact same thing at the exact same time every week.

Sometimes the useful thing to repeat is simply the group of people.

A standing plan works when everyone's routine allows it

If you have friends you want to see regularly, choosing a predictable time can save a lot of effort.

Instead of starting another conversation every few weeks about when everyone is free, you already know that the first Sunday of the month is brunch or Wednesday evening is five-a-side.

It works particularly well when people's schedules are relatively predictable and everyone wants to make the activity a regular part of their routine.

But plenty of friendships don't work like that.

People travel. Work changes. Someone can't do Thursdays anymore. Or perhaps you don't actually want to do the same thing every month.

You can still make it easier to keep getting together.

Repeat the group, not necessarily the plan

Sometimes you have a really good night with a group of people and immediately think: we should do this again.

Maybe you knew five of them already. Your friend brought someone from work. Someone else brought two friends from their flat. You got on brilliantly with people you hadn't met before.

The next plan doesn't need to be the same activity.

Dinner could become drinks. Drinks could become a Sunday roast. Someone else might suggest a gig.

What's worth keeping is the group that had a good time together.

On Loopt, a previous plan can help create the next one

Loopt makes it easier to bring people you've spent time with through previous plans into future ones.

That matters when a group has grown through friends of friends.

You might really get on with someone your friend added to the last plan, without ever exchanging numbers with them. If their connection and privacy settings allow it, you can still add them to another plan later.

So you don't necessarily need to ask your friend for their number, rebuild the original group chat or rely on the same person to organise everyone again.

Someone can simply make the next plan and bring that group together again.

Let different people start the next plan

Recurring social plans become harder to maintain when one person is responsible for making every single one happen.

If nobody does anything until that person sends another message, eventually there may just be no next plan.

The next plan doesn't have to come from the person who made the last one.

If someone else in the group has an idea, they can put up the next plan and bring people together again.

That can make a social circle feel less dependent on one person constantly doing the organising.

You don't need everyone every time

Keeping a group going also doesn't mean recreating exactly the same group for every plan.

Six people might make dinner. Four of them might go for drinks the next week. Someone who missed both might make the next plan.

What matters is creating enough opportunities for people to keep spending time together.

If you require the exact same group to be available every time, recurring plans can quickly become another scheduling problem.

Make the next plan easy to make

Regularly seeing friends doesn't always require a perfectly maintained recurring event.

A standing plan can be brilliant when it suits the group. But sometimes friendships are messier and more spontaneous than that.

If you've found a group of people who enjoy spending time together, make it easy for someone to start the next plan, bring those people together again and let whoever's free come along.

The activity can change. The person making the plan can change. Not everyone has to make every one.

The important bit is that there keeps being a next time.