“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
Like many Internet quotes, the above is popular in self-help circles, despite an iffy provenance.
It’s also loaded with confusing baggage: Is it mathematically possible to be the average of the five people we spend the most time with? What about our influence on them? Do family members count, or is this just for friends? What if I spend most of my time with my orange tabby cat?
There is some obvious wisdom here: Since the people we spend the most time with influence us most, we’d be wise to be careful who we allow those people to be. But there also lurks a pitfall.
This kind of glib mantra risks commodifying our friends by trying to “optimize” them. The clinical wording can easily be interpreted as, “How will this person help me be richer or happier?” instead of, “How can I be a better friend?”
I speak not of abusers, moochers, ingrates, or sociopathic family members you should run from as you would a deadly zoonotic disease. I speak of something more complicated: Choosing the people in your life based on what success and goodness mean to you. Take, for example, my uncle and his friend Jim.
An “Unlike-Minded” Friendship
My uncle has been friends with a man we’ll call Jim since they were both in kindergarten. They forged their bonds on the playground at school, like many boys in 1960s America. To say they’ve taken separate paths is an understatement.
My uncle went on to college and graduate school and enjoyed a long and rewarding teaching career. He gardens, golfs, bakes pies, builds furniture, goes fishing, and travels to Germany and Switzerland. He lives close to family and enjoys meaningful relationships with multiple people.
Jim, on the other hand, has no family support. He’s struggled with physical and mental challenges his entire life. He has the emotional capacity of a fourteen-year-old and needs medication, or he becomes paranoid and violent (we’ve learned this firsthand). His health issues eventually led to Jim’s kidney failure. He lives on dialysis in government-funded housing.
On paper, there is no benefit to my uncle being friends with Jim. I admit if I were in my uncle’s shoes, I would’ve cut ties years ago.
Yet almost every week, my uncle visits Jim in his dorm room equivalent, often with a pizza in hand (one of the few things in life Jim still enjoys besides listening to the Beach Boys). Does my uncle do it out of pity? Duty? A sense of personal fulfillment? He never talks about why he’s friends with Jim. His attitude is matter-of-fact; there’s no question of his doing otherwise.
We can’t meaningfully choose who to give our time to if we don’t know what our values are.
I know my uncle enough to know this is no stunt, no bid for attention. He’s done this for years. He seems to have a genuine concern for Jim, and I find it admirable despite my befuddlement. But still: Why would you spend so much time with someone so . . . pathetic?
You could point out, “Well, your uncle does have other friends,” and you’d be right. But he still spends a lot of time with Jim — time that he could spend with someone more interesting, or on a lucrative Etsy side hustle. Jim is more of a charity case than a real relationship, but my uncle seems to feel a personal sense of responsibility for him, thanks to their shared history.
Most of us don’t have friends like Jim. Nor do we need to. But my uncle’s kindness and sacrifice make me pause. He doesn’t calculate and ask, “What am I getting out of this?” He just lives, gives, and does his thing.
There is nothing wrong with seeking out friends who are smarter and more successful than we are — we all need models. It’s certainly wise to only spend time with people who have our best interests at heart. But an obvious platitude like, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with,” can become cold or self-serving if we have no moral compass to guide us.
We can’t meaningfully choose who to give our time to if we don’t know what our values are.
How Do We Determine Who to Give Our Precious Time To?
If you want to be mentally and, yes, financially successful in life, it pays to be careful about who you spend time with. That much is obvious.
If all of your friends are heroin addicts, good luck staying sober. The same is true of friends who are shoplifters or shut-ins. Even if we don’t choose the same habits or lifestyle as they do, the people we associate with still impact our physical health.
But what about a friend who is generous, loving, and loyal, and also makes poor life choices thanks to a legacy of abuse and bad parenting? I’ve been in this position more than once. Consider the slipperiness of the following statement:
[Y]ou are the average of the five people you associate with most, so do not underestimate the effects of your pessimistic, unambitious, or disorganized friends. If someone isn’t making you stronger, they’re making you weaker.
Harsh?
Maybe.
These are the words of popular author and podcaster Tim Ferriss. Ferriss struggled with suicidal depression when he was younger and worked hard to get to where he is today. When he wrote that line, he was probably thinking of his teenage self surrounded by deadbeat peers. We could assume he’s talking about toxic people, but since he doesn’t use that word, a gap opens for confusion to slip in.
For example, what does it mean to be “unambitious” or “disorganized”? Should we avoid close relationships with people who have unmedicated ADHD or other forms of neurodivergency? Should we pick the networking extroverted friend over the shy introvert?
What Ferriss doesn’t mention (although I think he would agree) is that no one is a perfect package, so we have to decide what we value most. Do we want to spend more time with someone ambitious or someone loyal? A friend who makes us financially stronger, or a friend who makes us ethically stronger?
Ideally, we don’t have to make too many trade-offs. Virtuous qualities tend to clump together. Healthy friends are usually happy friends, and so on. But if we have a self-interested attitude in who we choose to spend time with, we risk the following behavior that Cicero warns against:
But most people not only recognize nothing as good in our life unless it is profitable, but look upon friends as so much stock, caring most for those by whom they hope to make most profit. Accordingly, they never possess that most beautiful and most spontaneous friendship which must be sought solely for itself without any ulterior object.
My uncle could have chosen to spend more time with golf buddies while leaving Jim to rot in his dialysis center. I’m sure Jim is grateful he didn’t. My uncle will never profit off Jim’s friendship in a worldly sense, nor does he need to. He’s clear on what his values are.
The “five people you spend time with” mantra fails to make this important distinction: Cutting ties with harmful people is good. Choosing people based on how useful they’ll be to you or how much “ROI” they’ll generate may not be so good. And it’s not always easy to tell. Know what your values are and stick to them.
Sound Advice From Kant and Aristotle
I haven’t found a formula yet for choosing the right five people to spend most of your time with (other than knowing what your values are). But there is a wonderful formula for how to treat people in general, courtesy of Immanuel Kant:
So act that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.
Think of this as a guardrail to keep you from being a cold-hearted a-hole. Note that Kant doesn’t say it’s wrong to treat people as a means (think of bus drivers, bank tellers, and other people we pay to give us a service), only that it’s wrong to treat them merely as a means instead of as the sensitive human beings they are. I know what it’s like to be treated merely as a means, and it’s a skin-crawling sensation none of us deserves.
Kant’s wisdom is in line with Cicero’s warning about looking for “profitability” in relationships. Aristotle expands on this idea in his Nicomachean Ethics:
Friendship, says Aristotle, falls into these three categories: utility, pleasure, and virtue. Both utility and pleasure-based friendships are self-interested and transactional. “He [or she] who is loved in each case is not loved for himself but only insofar as he is useful or pleasant. These sorts of friendships, then, are easily dissolved when the people involved do not remain the same as they were. For if they are no longer pleasant or useful, those who love them will cease to do so.”
I think we’ve all had these types of “friends.” What most of us want is the deep-rooted kind we can feel secure in, what Aristotle calls friendships of virtue. In this type of relationship, both of you share the same values, encourage the best in each other, and want the best for each other. As Aristotle puts it: “Those who wish for the good things for their friends, for their friends’ sake, are friends most of all.”
What I think happens too often is that people confuse friendships of utility or pleasure with friendships of virtue. We think that to become successful and happy, we need to look for those with the most attractive and beneficial qualities. But this only works if we are also trying to be the best people we can.
Instead of asking, “Are these five people making me happier or more fulfilled?” Try asking, “Are these five people making me a better person?” It’s natural to optimize everything we can in life, including friends; in the long run, it can be a lonely way to live. Focus on your values, and the friendships will follow.
For more of her work, please visit eudaimoniac.com.
