SALT LAKE CITY — Just over a month ago, I was feeling a little bit stuck. Typically, I went out to lunch at the same few favorite spots with my boss, Josh Furlong. Those lunches were great, but eventually got a little bit repetitive: doing even fun things repeatedly can start to drag a little bit. (Yes, I realize what a first-world problem this is.)

So I tried changing up my lunch hour. What if I tried to do more? Here's what I laid out, in a campaign I called the #AugustOfLunches: Every day, I would have lunch with a different person (or group of people) at a different lunch place. In August, 31 days of different lunches with different people. How did it go? Let's break it down.

Scheduling

Obviously, I had to find people to have lunch with. For me, there were a bunch of people that I haven't seen in a long time, but wanted to reconnect with; basically high school and college friends. I sent some texts and a few Facebook messages letting people know what I was doing, and those old friends were very receptive. Everyone is busy, yeah, but pretty much all of the people I talked to could schedule out an hour a few weeks away.

As a sportswriter, I spend a lot of time online, especially on Twitter. I wanted to bring some of my online conversations offline, and hopefully develop some friendships with people who I know share similar interests. So I posted these tweets:

I have 5,000 or so followers, so I expected some response, but I didn't expect to see how many people who I've never met wanted to just have lunch. From random Jazz fans, to college students, to even the lieutenant governor of Utah, Spencer Cox. In the end, we had nearly all of the dates scheduled out in a few hours.

Now, yeah, most people aren't sportswriters and don't have that many Twitter followers. I get it. Had Twitter not done the trick, my next step would have been to post the request on Facebook. The average Facebook user has about 338 Facebook friends, according to a 2014 study. Generally, those are people you know in real life, so a lunch isn't too much to ask.

In retrospect, there were some people with which I should have made more of an effort to schedule. There's a real opportunity to open up new doors with face-to-face meetings, and it would have been great to try to eat with potential mentors and experts who I look up to and could learn something from. I put too much of an emphasis on "let's have lunch with someone different every day!" over "let's have lunch with the right people every day." Next time.

Food

One other aspect I was really looking forward to was trying some new and different lunch spots. I was stuck in a rut, going to the same few places for lunch every day: Pizza Studio, Chunga's, My Thai, Michelangelo's and Crown Burger. Those are all delicious places, and I recommend them all. But I was just going to each of them too frequently.

So when I asked each of the people to schedule the lunch, I asked them about their favorite lunch spots. In the end, I tried a bunch of new places, and here are the ones I liked best:

• Takashi. I had heard good things, but never went or even considered it for lunch. That has changed. It was some of the best sushi I've ever had. I also expected it to be more expensive, but its specialty rolls range from $7 to $14. We did one roll per person, shared and swapped, and felt more than full at the end of the lunch.
• The Annex. Went here for Sunday lunch/brunch, and it was really enjoyable to be out on the patio in the morning with friends. Its Swedish pancakes were delicious, as was the jam on top.
• Tosh's Ramen. We got here right as it opened at 11:30 a.m., and there was still a line to get in. But the short wait was worth it thanks to some delicious ramen, which I noisily slurped down.

Other concerns

There are a number of other things I was worried about, but ended up not being too much of an issue.

The first was cost: obviously, eating out every day is expensive. I was already going out for lunch with coworkers on most days, so my additional marginal cost wasn't too bad. Your experience may vary. I also made a conscious effort to save money by ordering water and skipping the most expensive menu items.

Usually, at my lunches, each person paid for themselves. I'll admit that I was worried that this may have seemed rude, but no one seemed offended at the suggestion. Maybe they were being nice.

I was also worried that I may eat much more as a result, trying to try new things. That wasn't the case: I ended up at the same weight as when I started the month.

Finally, there were a few instances where last minute cancellations could have ruined the scheme. I was lucky to have immediate coworkers and best friends to fill those spots quickly. If you try this, it might be best to develop a bench to fill those spots if you need to.

Conclusion

In the end, the #AugustOfLunches was a success. I had a chance to experience a bunch of different lunch spots and see a bunch of people I wouldn't have seen otherwise. The conversations were really fun, and I learned a lot.

Was it a life-changing experience? No, probably not. The experience didn't fundamentally change who I am, lead to different life circumstances or anything like that. But I do think it was worthwhile and fun, and I'd like to do it again sometime soon.

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