Lifeboat: Weight Watchers for Friendship
March 1, 2013 11:54 AM   Subscribe

Lifeboat: Weight Watchers for Friendship
I helped my friends and colleagues recently launch Lifeboat, "a movement of people rediscovering great friendships. We’re exploring the uncharted art and science of friendships — academic research, philosophy, expert advice and our own heads and hearts—for a better path forward." It's a powerful idea, I think, and it seems to resonate with nearly everybody I talk to about it. I'm very leery of anything that’s remotely woo-woo or overly self-helpy, but this work is built on a foundation of solid research.
Role: strategist
posted by dbarefoot (4 comments total) 3 users marked this as a favorite

A couple of years ago a friend and I tried to create something similar but just couldn't find scientific research to guide us in doing design or creating a theoretical framework/model of what constitutes good friendship. Needless to say, I am very interested in seeing the research behind the idea...
posted by Foci for Analysis at 5:04 AM on March 2, 2013


I particularly enjoyed the Lifeboat Practices list on the Getting Started Guide page.

I'd love to see a little more content on the front page of the site, because it took some clicking around to understand what the site is trying to do, but I'm glad I stuck with it because I can really use something like this that gives me nudges to initiate activities and take my friendships more seriously.
posted by jessypie at 1:53 PM on March 4, 2013


Interesting and probably important.

Initially I expected the site to actually do something other than dispense advice and let you request a speaker. The FAQ didn't help to clear this up either.
posted by Harald74 at 3:22 AM on March 19, 2013


Have you considered taking the Weight Watchers paradigm to the next level and forming meet up groups? The problem with being a lonely bowler is that you don't have any momentum to start out with. Safe spaces make it easier to practice skills, create mastery experiences and to build self-efficacy.
posted by Skwirl at 11:45 AM on April 6, 2013


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