It's Insane To Think You Can Have More Than 5 Close Relationships in Your Life
You spend 60% of your social time on 15 people.
5.
The number of important people in your life.
Why?
Time. You can’t produce more of it.
This means the most important people get most of your social time. That’s the only way to build meaningful connections.
And that’s why you can't please everyone. If you try, you’ll end up making loads of acquaintances. Which will never evolve into a friendship (you need quality time together for that to happen).
But that’s OK. Because according to science, you can have a network of ~150 people. The Dunbar’s number.
Some will be your best friends. Others will be people you hang out with once a year. And loads will be equivalent to your gym buddy you say hello to.
Here’s a breakdown of each group.
Your top 5 relationships
Most people focus on spending time with family and their significant other.
That’s why these will be your top 5 relationships. Your support group.
Friends are also part of the inner-5 circle. But as soon as a romantic partner enters the scene, this dynamic changes.
Back in high school, as soon as my friends and I started to get girlfriends, we all disappeared from each other’s lives. And that’s natural. More time with someone means less time with everyone else. Like a glass (your finite time) full of olive oil (your friends), when you add water (partner), oil spills out.
And given these are important people in your life, you’ll spend 40% of your social time with them.
And to keep someone in your top 5, you’ll need to reach out at least weekly. Otherwise they get demoted into the next group.
Your top 15 relationships
This category includes everyone from the previous group.
And the extra 10 people in your top 15 will likely be your best friends:
Your school friends
Your extended family
The people you hang out with
They get 20% of your social time.
And like most things in life, this follows a Pareto proportion. You’re going to interact with a handful of people most of the time.
60% of your time will be spent on 10% of your network (considering a network of 150 people). While the other 90% will only get 40% of your social time. So if you had 8 hours to socialize in a day, it would look like this:
~3 hours to your top 5
A little less than 2 hours for your next top 10
~ 3 hours for the next 135 people.
And if you want to keep people in your top 15, you need to interact with them at least once a month (remembering that your top 5 are in this group as well). Or they’ll get demoted.
Your top 50 and 150 relationships
The next 35 most important people in your network are the ones you like. But since there’s only 40% of your time for them, they get very little face time.
You have to see them at least every 6 months so they stay in this category.
And the following 100 people are the ones you rarely see or text.
But you don’t need to do much to keep them in this category. Texting once a year is fine.
Most people you know will fall into this category. It’s inevitable.
500 and beyond... Up to 1500
You probably have 500 acquaintances.
Coworkers, people at the gym, neighbors, etc.
Then there’s 1500. That’s the number of people you can associate a name with a face.
Actors, athletes, politicians, etc.
Keep in mind these numbers are averages.
This means you might be above or below these numbers.
I’ve seen people trying to be everything to everyone. They never succeed.
So avoid adding unnecessary stress to your life just because you think you can handle a bigger network.
Keep in mind who is important to you. Focus on them. The rest will get whatever time you have left for them.
But the main issue is finding time to build relationships
You don’t need hundreds of friends to have a great life.
You only need a handful.
But even that is hard to achieve (and keep).
Between endless scrolling on social media and on-demand entertainment with every possible TV show story you can get, your social time gets hammered.
Using my analogy, your top five friends are water, and the rest is olive oil. But when you add mindless entertainment to the mix, it’s like putting a huge metal ball in the glass.
Your top 5 get 40% of a very small time. And everyone else gets squeezed even more. Or cut out altogether.
And no… giving away likes on social media doesn’t substitute for real conversations.
But don’t despair. You still have time in your day
Even with 7 social media apps, 3 news apps, and 2 email apps trying to steal every second of attention you have, you still have a chance to build meaningful connections with people.
A conversation with someone will bring you more happiness long term than 15 minutes of mindless scrolling through social media.
You don’t need to dedicate time to connect with 150 people.
Only 5.
Being human is about building connections. Not trying to replace people with entertainment.