Helps if your friends are uncomplicated. We just chat, drink beer, make or order pizza, cook or bake something else, talk about work and family, sit in the sun, maybe play cards or just listen to music, talk about stories at recent events like concerts, rehash old stories, or updates about other friends, etc. There is no need to make a big deal about any of this.

But this is not a networking or new-friend-making style of party of course. Not even really a party, but fits "inviting people over for dinner".

I think a big problem is that people see this also as a thing where efficiency and productivity is important and they plan complicated activities etc. Similarly to how kids don't get much free time to just play and relax, adults also try to organize activities for themselves when just being together is often enough and the rest follows naturally.

I understand the feeling, what worked for me was "you know what, fuck it, I will just plan it more loosely, let's see what goes wrong or who is unhappy".

Most of the times, everybody is happy even if things are not perfectly planned, and then they thank me for the "effort" (which was minimal, and sometimes can introduce confusions, as I need to adjust the date or the style as more constraints become evident).

I sometimes think it's a problem of my education of engineering as well, because I want everything planned well, think of all exceptional cases, etc.

> It's so much easier to just think about the idea and say 'naaa fuck it' and open Youtube instead.

I think this gets at the heart of the concern—it’s always easier to find something else distracting to do, but what’s the real cost? I don’t really know how to measure that, other than to say that American society and culture are doing particularly poorly right now.

> but my brain is making it look big

100%

You can say naaa fuck it and open Youtube when your friends are over, as well as putting your kids to bed when they're there. It's fine!