Spending a Friday night doing your taxes probably isn’t the most appealing way to start the weekend… but what if you added drinks, delicious takeout, and a couple of friends to also take care of all the annoying little tasks you’ve been avoiding?
That’s the idea behind “admin nights,” a new trend that’s proliferating on TikTok. The conceit is simple: friends get together, pull out their laptops, and start checking their to-do lists. Think girls’ night out, but… inside and focused on tedious tasks instead of cocktails and clubbing.
“It’s the perfect combination of both,” Brie Ever, a Birmingham, Alabama-based content creator who hosts weekly “management nights,” told Vox. “There are times when I know I need to concentrate and I just put on my headphones. But for the most part, everyone is talking, working and having a glass of wine at the same time.”
While it may seem strange that people opt to run errands or chores instead of happy hour, task-themed gatherings have become a popular way to pass the time. Other examples you’ll see online include “freeze food parties,” where friends make microwave-ready dinners, and “vision board nights,” where groups make collages of their life goals.
These gatherings represent experimental, less obvious ways in which people prioritize friendship while addressing the struggles of modern life. Everything has the potential to be a party now.
Going out has become more complicated
Naturally, spending time with friends can become more difficult as we get older. Work, romantic relationships, children, and other caregiving responsibilities can completely drain your social battery and reduce the time that was previously reserved for your friends. But even younger adults, who theoretically have fewer things to do, are not free from the exhaustion that accompanies modern life.
Anna Goldfarb, author of Modern Friendship: How to Nurture Our Most Valuable ConnectionsHe told Vox that many friend groups have become decentralized, as people move and change jobs more frequently. “Our grandparents may have stayed in the same town most of their lives,” Goldfarb said. “They could have stayed in the same job. They didn’t have to work as hard to keep these connections afloat.”
Life has also become more expensive for many people due to inflation and tariffs. Going to the movies, restaurants, or going out for drinks regularly may seem like a luxury to many consumers and may not seem worth it. (YouGov’s Dining Out 2025 report found that 37 percent of American diners say they are dining out less frequently than a year ago, with 69 percent citing “a perceived increase in cost.” And a 2025 CivicScience survey found that 27 percent of respondents are abandoning multiplexes and staying home because of movie ticket prices.)
With all of these obstacles in mind, it’s no surprise that social gatherings are starting to look very different.
The meeting now has to do with the intention
In recent years, social activities have started to seem much more productive and intentional. Running clubs, for example, became a more visible trend during the first two years of the pandemic, and book club events have been on the rise, according to data from Eventbrite. There is also the phenomenon of “soft clubbing,” first reported last summer, in which typical nightlife activities are replaced by sober, wellness-focused gatherings. (Think cold plunge parties and saunas with DJ sets.) Stewardship nights are a natural evolution of this optimization of social activities, or at least simply a collective desire to avoid hangovers.
Vision board nights and meal prep parties are welcome places for organized, goal-oriented friends. In other cases, friends get together to clean each other’s houses, bake, and even learn about each other’s lives. Many of these meetings are based on a psychological concept called “body mirroring,” which is often used by people with ADHD. (Ever, the content creator, used the term when talking about the appeal of management nights.) It simply means having other people present while you complete tasks to help you stay focused.
Irene S. Levine, psychologist and author of the book. Best Friends Forever: Surviving a Breakup with Your Best FriendHe sees a lot of value in running errands with your friends, although it doesn’t have to be as structured as a planned party. “That could extend to going to the gym together or shopping together,” he told Vox. “When you’re short on time, doing things simultaneously with your friends kills two birds with one stone. You take care of business, so there’s less guilt associated with it.”
But, Levine clarified, there’s nothing self-indulgent about spending quality time with your friends. “It’s actually very important for our health and emotional well-being,” he said.
There have been many reports and casual lamentations about the idea that people party less today and that Generation Z is not having as much fun as their peers of the same age. At first glance, these new ways of hanging out may not look like a young person’s stereotypical idea of a good time. Presumably there are no hard drugs, no sex, no coming home at 4 in the morning in the middle of administrative nights. But it makes sense that meetings would be a little different when the world seems dramatically different. As life becomes harder to manage and relationships become harder to maintain, the hottest club in town might be your friend’s couch, laptop open and finally setting up automatic bill pay.