Almost certainly , 80 percent of the satisfaction from our relationships flows from 20 percent or fewer of the relationships.
Good news: We can focus attention on a few key relationships; we don t have to worry about the unimportant relationships.
Action to hike happiness: Put most time, energy, attention, creativity, and imagination into our few most important relationships.
Ask what proportion of that effort goes into your most important relationships, the few that deliver most of your satisfaction. Probably, these 20 percent of key relationships take more than 20 percent of the energy you devote to relationships. How much more? 40 percent? 60 percent? Unless you are devoting at least 80 percent of your relationship energy to the 20 percent of key relationships, you can increase your happiness by doing so.
Good news: Satisfaction can soar even without increasing the total amount of relationship energy, simply by focusing energy on key relationships.
Action to hike happiness: Redirect energy so that at least 80 percent of relationship energy goes into your few key relationships.
Why do telephone companies everywhere around the globe give us seven- digit phone numbers? Because we can remember a sequence of seven numbers , but not eight or nine.
We can only care deeply about a few people. Unless we limit the number of people who are central to our lives, nobody will be.
The ultimate tradeoff between quantity and quality comes with the one relationship that can be central to our happiness.