There’s a limit to how well you can get to know someone if you only ever see them in one setting. If you only ever see someone one-on-one, then you may have some of the best, deepest conversations, but there’s a limit to how well you know them, simply because you aren’t seeing a side of them that comes out around other people.

It’s not even that people try and hide parts of themselves in specific settings (though often that is the case), it’s simply that we genuinely react in different ways depending on the setting and who we are around.

When you see a friend playing a sport that they don’t know well, you see a side of them that is learning and perhaps frustrated because they don’t know or aren’t as good as some of the others playing that sport. A completely different side may come out if you hung around them while they’re doing the work that they do for a living Something they’ve spent hours working on and feel confident in.

Or maybe you see them in one setting at a fancy reception dinner, but then everyone goes to the house afterward to play board games. Two vastly different sides are bound to come out.

Traveling is a sure-fire way to learn a lot of those things quickly. You go through several of those settings very quickly. People who are hangry, people who are excited, people who are tired, people who are ready for adventure, the timidity, the carefree (or some might call carelessness).

Not for the faint of heart though. This accelerated friend growth program can often have side-effects such as: Loss of friendship desire, annoyance, hate, disappointment, and in some rare cases, murder.

Spontaneous trips with friends is a great way to get to know how you ma match up with them in personality and adventure. When you say “let’s do this!” What do they say? Are they down? Do they come up with ideas or wait for you to do it? Do they come on the spontaneous trip in the first place?

At the end of the day though, when you find the right people to do this with, there’s nothing quite like it. People who share your sense of adventure and excitement over little and big things. Having an experience together in a place outside where you normally are interacting together.

Whether planned or spontaneous, I challenge you to get a trip together with friends. They can be new friends or old friends, but go to a place at least an hour or two away from where you live and do some stuff you don’t normally do.

See how many people you might connect with to doing that. You might be surprised who you end up meshing well with!