You’ve been Managing your Relationships Wrongly
Too many ties, too little time.
Are you an ‘E’ or an ‘I’? I’ve long pondered about this longstanding binary division of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). In this paradigm, ‘E’ for Extroversion and ‘I’ for Introversion. I could never agreeably classify myself on any end of this spectrum.
Essentially, I’m an extrovert till my social battery is exhausted. On great days I can tackle five meetings. Thereafter, I’m an introvert, preferring to withdraw to quieter places for conversations with those I feel safe confiding. I am not a socialite, but I love interacting with new people. And there is an associated opportunity cost with each interaction, with emotional energy expanded.
ALLOCATING SCARCE RESOURCES
In maintaining our relationships, we are constantly balancing two finite resources — time and energy. These limits are ever-present; thus mastery is ever so needful — Doctors triage. CEOs carefully plan their working schedules. Governments have tiered responses towards crises. These professionals are experts at identifying noise and distraction, then allocating scarce resources to areas that require it most. What about relationship management?
We’ve come to think that relationships shouldn’t be imposed and must be left natural. That holds with a small circle of friends until we’re overwhelmed by the sheer number of people we get to interact with within this lifetime. We are then helplessly lost, trying to answer questions like: Whom shall I meet during this coveted slot of time on my schedule? Which message should I reply to first? Whom should I share certain information with?
Research shows that it takes about 200 hours to form a close friendship. These relationships are proportionate to the amount of time and effort invested in them. Given that time is finite, we should strive to build strong relationships with others. Moreover, as Jim Rohn states: “We are the average of the five people we spend the most time with.” Our prime interest should be in selectively choosing the relationships we maintain.
FINDING A FRAMEWORK FOR RELATIONSHIPS
Two years ago, I drafted up something which altered the way I organised my free time. Purely based on instinct and amassed impressions, I arbitrarily drew up seven concentric circles to classify my relationships with all the people I’ve ever known. They are divided into 7 tiers, with tier 1 being the closest and tier 7 the most distant. I wanted to have a system that prioritised certain relationships, gave space to develop promising ones, and did spend unnecessary time on engagements that weren’t too consequential.
Tier 1 — for five persons. Confidantes, you’re not shy to share crushing moments with and are first to know of personal, sensitive, critical news. Tier 2 — up to 15 persons. People who would drop anything to be with you or hang with you on a whim. Tier 3 — up to 50 persons. People you’d talk to at least once a month over text and on your green close-friends list. Tier 4 — up to 150 persons. People you’d stop for a conversation with if you saw them. Tier 5 — up to 500 persons. People you’d nod at when bumping into them. Tier 6 — every other person you’ve interacted with within this life. People you have messaged/said something to at least once before. Tier 7 — people you haven’t interacted with, but they know you exist, and you know they do.
I used this system for a few years. Personal information to share? Tier 2. Some minor perk of the day you wanted to tell someone? Tier 3. A mass appeal request? Tier 7. For my friends, it seemed peculiar to classify them according to this methodology. On the other hand, they recognised that their relationships were already somewhat tiered but without discrete classes that helped frame their suitable courses of action.
CONFIRMATION WITH DUNBAR’S NUMBER
It worked so beautifully for me, at least. I was now able to proportion pleasant meetups to be of the apt length and the right time. I was contented and did not read anything particularly resonant with this idea. Until I came across the work of Robert Dunbar, who made headlines in 2019 with his eponymous numeral: “Dunbar’s number: Why we can only maintain 150 relationships.”
Very much like what I had discovered for myself, Dunbar saw meaningful human relationships to have a rough quota of 150. Thereafter, the sheer limits of time would not allow deeper-than-acquaintance ties to forge. Relationships need maintenance; they drift without which.
Dunbar illustrates his framework succinctly: “Each layer is three times the size of the layer directly preceding it: 5; 15; 50; 150; 500; 1,500; 5,000…” and each outer layer includes “everybody in the inner layer”. The layers came “about primarily because the time we have for social interaction is not infinite”. He continues to posit that we “have to decide how to invest that time” wisely.
In Dunbar’s words again: “The innermost layer of 1.5 (clearly) has to do with your romantic relationships.” The 5 layer “is your shoulders-to-cry-on friendships — (ones) who will drop everything to support us when our world falls apart.” The 15 layer “is your main social companions, so they provide the context for having fun times.” The 50 layer “is your big weekend-barbecue people.” And the 150 layers “would come to your once-in-a-lifetime events”.
Though it may seem rigid, there’s a wealth of flexibility as the quotas of each layer aren’t necessarily fixed. It’s perfectly fine to have people you can’t decisively divide between, say, the second or third layer. To have general sensing of where they stand in your life at that particular point in time is enough. Relationships are constantly in a state of flux. Some persons advance up exclusive tiers, while others showered with lesser time fall behind.
CULTIVATING RELATIONSHIPS INTENTIONALLY
Few things thrive without cultivation; left to themselves, all things tend toward entropy. In horticulture, the seemingly contradictory concept of pruning is almost magical: To maximise growth, a gardener needs to cut away certain parts of a plant decisively. Less the damaged segments, plants can devote their resources to their most promising parts for optimal development.
Similarly, we must prune our relationships regularly to allow promising ones to flourish and reprioritise unfruitful ones. In some sense, I do expect reciprocity proportional to the amount of effort I invest in a relationship. It’s tough to keep up passionately with someone without feeling that the other party values your commitment equally; conversely, it’ll be draining to entertain an overzealous friend you have little affinity for.
INSIGHT
Time is finite, and knowing how to proportion it unlocks productivity.
Having no reference to guide us through leaves us lost, and at times defeated. Dunbar’s number provides us with an idea of what’s possible; acknowledging our limits in interaction can help us focus on the needful. It’s not a definitive rule but a framework we could use to shape our lives towards more meaning.
