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Comment by stephengillie | Hacker News Reader

‘You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.’ Jim Rohn

I see it backwardsly - the 5 people you spend time with are the ones most like my average. I'm not who I am because of my friends; they're my friends because of who I am. If I were willing to replace one of these 5 with another, I would still be me, but I would have a less-close friendship with that person.

This article seems to suggest we should all dump our current "go nowhere" friends and try to become PG's best friend (or friends with similarly accomplished humans). I counter with the Nash Equilibrium, that PG would exclude most of us, and we'd be stuck back at square one, having to be friends with plain-old each other.

The author himself whittled down his life to 2 other people. What a selfish and lonely life!

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I think the important thing to realize here is that it's just someone's opinion. It's not a scientific fact that you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.

The theory breaks down when you don't spend time with anyone, because you can't divide by zero!

A live human being is no more influential to me than a good book. If you really want to get a good "5" and you can't find enough talented people, consider replacing your unwanted friends with dead trees.

You need to take into account that your interaction with a book is usually short while the effects of your interactions with people accumulate over time.

It might be different for people with very strong personality but I think it is generally true that we are strongly affected by the people we surround ourselves with.

While I don't agree with the idea of "losing friends", I do agree with the quote. I recently experienced a huge change of environment (different country, different people I'm spending time with) and I can clearly see the impact it had on me.

Interesting thing, the effect is somewhat "laggy". I spent few months with a very hardworking person but I didn't really start following in his footsteps until after 3 months. When I stopped interacting with him, I kept my new-found diligence for 6 months before starting taking things easier again (though I can say I do work harder now than a year ago).

During my first few months here I also started paying more attention to punctuality. But when I started spending more time with my constantly-late friend I lost it somewhere along the way.

So yeah, people around you do affect you in many little ways. It's possible you don't see it, because the change is usually small and happens over time. Would I select my friends basing on their success? Hell no.

The notion of "life hacking" something as sacred as friendships will no doubt offend a lot of people, as evident by all the negative responses. But I do believe that your closest friends influence your goals, priorities, and outlooks on life. My social circle took a drastic change when I moved from Seattle to Palo Alto 5 years ago. The new friends I made were on average a lot more ambitious and driven. Collectively they've had a profound impact on who I am over the years.

This article unfortunately came out in a Tim-Ferris-four-hour-work-week-over-the-top-douhbagery sort of way, but I think the author means well. We shouldn't be sucking up to successful people in hopes of befriending them for profit, nor should we ditch our "go nowhere" friends for fear of drag. But we can always strive to put ourselves in environments that positively influence us.

I read an article a while ago which did some research on weight and social group, and found that overweight people tend to have other overweight people in their social group, and through social pressure, tend to stay overweight. This seems like a direct support of the author's point.

I think everybody oversimplifies the issue.

Are you overweight because your friends are overweight, are your friends overweight because you are overweight, or are all of you overweight because you live in the same unhealthy culture?

Could be that there is no causation at all - just meagre correlation: your friends have nothing to do with your weight, maybe it's just because all of you live close to McDonald's, your close proximity allowed for stronger friendships and bigger bellies.

My (German) hometown friends are all thin, maybe because there is no fast-food around, maybe because we have to walk more to get to places, maybe because of a different food-culture we all come from - in this case, it has nothing to do with what I do with them, but what the environment does with us as a group.

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