In life, there are many factors we continually strive to optimize: happiness, love, money, success, and power are a few. Each of the factors I listed have the ability to be improved drastically by culling, cutting back, or cultivating our relationships. Optimizing relationships is not easy but I believe it is quite necessary given the potential life long benefits.
Applying the 80-20 rule, a.k.a the Pareto Principle, to relationships boils down to choosing which sets of causes and effects we want to limit or maximize. The 80-20 rule restated with respect to relationships goes something like this:
Roughly 80% of the effects, given a cause, come from 20% of your relationships.
My personal corollary to that statement is:
Constantly contribute 80% of your energy to the 20% of your relationships generating the effects you want to optimize for.
The concept is simple but very hard to apply. The personal thought process behind my constant relationship introspection would be:
- Accomplishing goals with doing takes time, however, life is short
- 6,782,989,098 people currently inhabit this planet (U.S. Census Bureau)
- Dunbar’s Number tells me I can personally support around ~150 relationships
- I want to leave a noticeable mark on Des Moines and the WORLD
- My current 150 may help me leave a mark on Des Moines
- My current 150, statistically speaking, will need to be adjusted to have an impact on the WORLD
- Making choices is a natural part of life
- You are defined by the hard choices you make
Selfish? Ambitious? Crazy? Right on? … I’ll let you make that call in the comments 
Also, what factors do you optimize for in YOUR life?
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