Recently I started using an app called Timeleft. Timeleft is for having dinner with strangers. You sign up, tell them a bit about yourself (e.g. what city you’re in), and they match you with 5 other strangers to have dinner with.
They organize dinners in a bunch of cities (US and worldwide. I’m on a road trip currently, so I’ve had dinners in Durham NC, Atlanta GA, and Oklahoma City OK. In my experience they were definitely worth the time and dollars. Interesting conversations, and even made a couple solid connections.
The app doesn’t tell you which restaurant until ~the day off, and the after dinner drink location (oh, there are after dinner drinks with all the Timeleft diners in the city) gets posted when the dinner is ~mostly done. It’s a neat approach.
By far the biggest thing for me how it helps nudge me into better decisions. How?Knowing that I have a “dinner date” with 5 strangers ~soon. You want to make a great first impression with these people. It changes the decisions I make in the days before it.
Staying out late the night before? Maybe not, I actually want to have decent conversations with these folks tomorrow.
Getting that pricey dessert when I’m eating by myself? Eh, I’ll skip it. I’d rather have something nice with some new folks during the Timeleft dinner.
What’s especially helpful is that they penalize you (not sure how - I haven’t canceled any yet!) for cancelling with too short notice (a day or so IIRC?). The penalty and the commitment it causes really does nudge your behavior. That alone is so helpful for me.
I did a 6 month subscription. It was ~$63. So ~$10/month. For me, totally worth the cost.
I’m doing many more of these in the next couple months. Hopefully they’ll be as good as the first couple were!
