Fishing has never really been my thing.

If the goal is to catch fish, I haven’t had much luck over the years. Mostly it’s felt like long, boring hours that test a patience I don’t have. Ice fishing sounded even worse. Driving out onto a frozen lake, sitting in a small shack in the cold, waiting for something to happen.

Hard pass.

Then a friend of mine, who also has a cabin up on our lake, flipped it on me without trying.

He said fishing isn’t really about catching fish. It’s about sitting next to a buddy with a couple of beers, talking about whatever comes up, and if a fish bites, that’s a bonus.

The fish is the excuse. The point is the friend in the chair next to you.

That reframe made me realize that I’d been gauging the value of fishing, and other activities just like it, based on the wrong metrics for most of my life.

Richard Reeves, President of the American Institute for Boys and Men, shared an insight that I keep coming back to:

We’re not really going fishing. We’re not really doing a road trip. We’re not really playing golf. What we’re really doing is investing in our friendships. But we need the wrapper.

The wrapper. The activity that gives two adults permission to spend several hours next to each other without it being weird.

Most of us, especially men, don’t show up at a friend’s door and say, “Hey, I want to spend six hours with you today because I miss you.” We show up with a fishing rod, or a tee time, or a reason to be in the truck together.

A pattern worth noticing

The activity is the cover story. The real thing is the time. If you don’t see the wrapper for what it is, you might turn down a lot of friendship without realizing it.

I’ve passed on fishing trips for years because I told myself I didn’t enjoy fishing. And that’s technically true. But what I was actually saying no to wasn’t the fishing. It was the eight hours of unstructured time with a friend. The conversations that surface when you’re stuck in a boat together with nothing else to do. The way silence between two friends stops feeling awkward around hour three.

I was optimizing for the wrong outcome. I wanted to catch fish. I wasn’t catching fish. So I concluded fishing wasn’t for me, and I missed the actual offer underneath it.

The same thing happens with golf. With watching a game you don’t care about. With the long drive to nowhere in particular. If you measure these things by their surface activity, a lot of them look like a poor use of time. If you measure them by what they actually deliver, they might be some of the most valuable hours you have.

A way forward

When a friend invites you to do something you wouldn’t normally choose, it might help to ask a different question. Not “do I want to do this activity,” but “do I want eight hours with this person.”

Those are very different questions. And they often have very different answers.

The boredom I used to feel on a boat wasn’t really boredom. It was unfilled time. Time that, in the right company, turns into something else entirely. The hours I wrote off as wasted were actually the most generous version of time a friendship can ask for: slow, unstructured, with nowhere else to be.

I did this once on purpose last fall. A group of guys I respect, sharp entrepreneurs, the kind of people you learn from just by being in the room, invited me on a pheasant hunting trip. I'd never been pheasant hunting. On its own merits, it wouldn't have made my list. But I went, because the wrapper wasn't really the point. The point was a long weekend with that group. And it turned out to be one of the better weekends I had all year.

I’m still working on this. I’ll probably still turn down the next fishing trip out of habit. But I’m trying to catch myself when I do, and ask whether I’m saying no to the activity or to the friend.

A challenge for you

Think of one invitation you’ve turned down, maybe more than once, because the activity didn’t appeal. Fishing. Golf. The long drive. Watching a sport you don’t follow.

Make a pact with yourself to say yes to the next one. You’re not signing up for the activity. You’re signing up for the hours next to them.