People are as different from one another as are their fingerprints. Most people treat nearly all human interactions the same, and then wonder why interactions with others are such a stressful and taxing part of their lives.
Elsewhere in this book, the vast difference in the outcomes of different decisions is discussed with reference to the Pareto distribution. If human decisions yield Pareto differences in production, such that 20% of people produce 80% of results, why should you expect that the fruitfulness of your relationships with different people should produce uniform outcomes?
Understand that the usefulness of the people in your life will follow the Pareto distribution: 80% of the meaning will come from 20% of the people with whom you interact. If you don’t distribute your time accordingly—spending 80% of your time with 20% of the people who are truly most important—you will experience a massive deficit in both what you are able to accomplish in life and the joy you experience in doing so.
And the pattern isn’t limited to differences between people. It also holds in interactions with specific people. Of 100 interactions with a given person, you will find that 80% of the meaning and usefulness occurs in just 20 of them. To maximize the value of your relationship with any given person, you need to learn to recognize and make the most of the most valuable moments. If you treat the 20% most valuable interactions the same as the 80% less valuable interactions, you will absolutely miss out on almost all of the potential value in the relationship.
Remember the lessons from goals and tasks: the best things don’t compete with placeholders. If you fill your time and life with people and interactions that don’t matter, don’t expect someone or something better to interrupt you. You must actively curate who you spend your time with and how you spend it.
If you want to maximize meaning and utility in your life, you need to increase the number of twenty percent people in your life, and you need to concentrate your time on the twenty percent interactions with them. Doing both of these will geometrically increase the interpersonal meaning you experience in life.