I used to be extremely flaky.
The impulse to be flaky still exists in me, but I’ve learned to rarely engage with it.
By this I don’t mean to label flakiness as a bad quality per sé. But the reason I chose to tone it down is that flakiness comes at high cost for everyone involved (including the flake though they will rarely perceive it as such).
The main way I would act flaky was keeping my options open in terms of planning. This wasn’t because I didn’t care for other people, but because my primary value was freedom.
I perceived committing to future plans as the opposite of that.
So I’d usually say things like “I’ll probably be there.”, allowing me to keep my freedom to do whatever I wanted in that moment (with or without my phone on hand).
This is how you can spot many flakes in advance btw. People who want the option to flake without being held accountable unknowingly tend to use ambiguous language and speak in possibilities rather than certainties:
- “Sure, I can do that”
- “I should be there by 2PM”
- “I want to take things to the next level with you”
Such phrases sound like a commitment, but they don’t actually say “yes” to anything.
I think this wasn’t really an issue in my teenage years or early-twenties because adolescents are on average already more flaky, and those who aren’t don’t have a full calendar the way adults do.
So choosing not to show up meant I could probably hang out with that person the next day.
That said, this is, of course, only when viewing things from a perspective that my flakiness didn’t have impact on other people. I’m sure I rubbed a lot of people the wrong way by disrespecting their time commitments.
Some of them accepted it as “that’s just Pep” and stayed friends, others likely decided to simply not make plans with me anymore.
(I’m speculating here, no one ever actually told me this. )
In my 30s, I stopped being flaky by necessity.
My professional life is usually more busy and chaotic than that of many of my friends. And my social calendar tends to fill up 2-3 months in advance with plans that often require travel. Being flaky on those tends to mean paying a higher price for transportation or not being able to go.
Interestingly, living a more calendared life like that has also shown me the other side of the equation:
I generally feel quite okay with other people being flaky. And unless there are serious consequences, I don’t even mind when people cancel on commitments.
“Yes, I was looking forward to seeing you. And yes, I am delighted with this surprise extra time I can spend in any way I want!”
…but what I did learn from becoming the non-flaky friend is this:
An adult friendship is only as strong as the flakiest friend.
Why is this?
Well, functional adults all have various commitments. Work. A spouse or long-term relationship. Running the household.
To nourish a relationship throughout requires keeping conscious time open for each other.
While spontaneity is definitely possible (and an important part of life), a certain degree of constancy is required for keeping the friendship alive.
What that can look like depends on the friendship.
It can mean “whenever I visit your country, we spend some quality time together”.
It can mean “we hop on calls every few months” or “we practically live in each other’s house”.
This is what contains the friendship and keeps you a presence in each other’s lives. But that container is stretched a little bit each time plans are initiated and not followed through on—precisely because adult relationships require some degree of commitment.
If one friend is flaky, and the last 5 times you were to see each other, they flaked, chances are you will find yourself initiating less. Because keeping that time free for them meant saying no to other friends who would’ve shown up.
There is a solution to this, to some degree, and that is replacing flakiness with flexibility.
For example:
Openly saying “let’s hang out next month, but not commit to a specific time”.
But what most people miss about this is that flexibility actually requires an even stronger sense of commitment than locking in a date in advance.
Here’s why:
If you lock in the date and commit to it, it’s on your schedule and nothing will take its place.
If you keep it flexible, that means that any other, less-flexible or less-flaky friend can take its space. Any professional or personal emergency can take its space. And they likely will, unless you keep your flexible, un-scheduled hangout with your friend on top-of-mind. Which isn’t always easy in the middle of all that life happening.
One thing that illustrates this pretty well is the difference between working “office hours” and working and being in control of your own schedule.
Many people who work office hours dream of the freedom of deciding your own schedule.
But what I’ve seen over and over is that the vast majority of people, upon receiving it, have no clue how to handle it.
They fail to deliver on hourly commitments. Because flexible planning requires a lot more discipline and accountability than being locked inside a pre-existing structure.
Funnily enough, many end up eventually deciding to follow a 9 to 5 structure to prevent this.
Still flexible planning, when we can handle it, offers opportunities to get the best of both worlds (the freedom of the flake and the strength of the commitment):
For example, some of my friends and I keep calls on the calendar which we don’t commit to but keep as a reminder to check-in with each other:
We keep it tentatively free and let each other know if there’s something else we feel more committed to. But in a meta-sense, we remain committed to calling each other once a month. And because we both are, a call does happen.
This is not flakiness though. It’s a pre-negotiated context that resembles it, while the friendship is protected by the commitment underneath.
You could say this type of flexibility is the conscious, matured counterpart of flakiness. And flakiness is what this looks like when we practice it in unconscious or shadowy ways.
I think what’s underneath flakiness is mild fear of commitment, which likely comes from misunderstanding the nature of commitment itself.
What we fear when we fear commitment isn’t commitment itself.
It’s fear of being trapped or controlled, coupled with the illusion that commitment would rob us of our freedom.
But that can’t be true. Because it’s impossible to commit yourself to anything unless you’re free.
I used to fear commitment in many more ways than flaking, and ironically, this made me less free. Because how free are you really when you can’t do anything that requires committing to it?
And in the end, who’s most free:
The person who can allow themselves to flow within whatever constraints (or even bondage) they’re faced with, or the person who has to neurotically constrain their choices to ensure they maximize freedom?