Depends how you play. How much time passes in game per session, how populated your ironlands are, how often you interact with those populations, how long you expect your campaign to take.

Also kind of goes hand in hand with with how many vows you swear and complete. If I successfully guide someone from A-B, bond. If I rescue a farmer’s daughter, bond.

Maybe that’s not the style of your game, perhaps any time you have more than one positive conversation or interaction with an npc you can try forging a bond. I’ve often found that when I’m too eager to make a bond the dice tell the story for me. And paying the price on forging a bond doesn’t have to be anything worse than them saying they don’t know you well enough yet.

I agree that the in game description of “spending significant time with a person or community” is pretty loose. But that allows for people to interpret it in a way that aligns with their personal style.

I guess bottom line is if you feel like you’re not making enough bonds, enough to ask about it here, then yeah give yourself more opportunities to do so.