The Power of Choosing Fewer, Better People

I’ll say something that always surprises people: my wife and I don’t get invited to a ton of social stuff. And before anyone gets offended, it’s not because my wife isn’t amazing. She is. She’s fun, smart, has a great personality. People like her. People want to be around her. I’d like to think they feel the same way about me too. And I genuinely appreciate the invites.

I just usually don’t go.

Not because I don’t like people. Not because I think I wouldn’t have fun. I probably would. But at some point, I realized that a complicated social life is expensive. Expensive in time. Expensive in energy. Expensive in focus.

A lot of my heroes are artists and thinkers who all say some version of the same thing: simplicity isn’t boring. It’s beautiful. And it works. I learned that lesson the hard way in business. The more successful we got, the more I realized that excess was killing efficiency. Too many meetings. Too many projects. Too many “good ideas” that didn’t actually matter. The fix wasn’t doing more. The fix was cutting shit out.

Turns out that applies to life too.

So yeah, I’m pretty ruthless about simplifying our social circle. Not in a weird, antisocial way. Just intentional. We go deep with a small group of people (usually family and business partners) we genuinely like, trust, and share values with. We don’t try to keep up with everyone. We don’t juggle twenty half-relationships. We don’t go out with a group of people “just because”. We don’t have a packed calendar just so we can say we’re busy.

And before someone jumps in with, “That sounds selfish,” one of my business partners, who’s a former pastor, reminded me of something that most of us probably miss. Jesus Christ served crowds, sure. But he invested in twelve people. And within those twelve, he was tight with three. Apparently even changing the world didn’t require a massive social calendar.

Simplicity isn’t antisocial. It’s just not chaotic.

If you want more peace, more focus, and more margin in your life, the answer usually isn’t adding more people, more plans, or more noise. It’s having the balls to simplify and being okay with missing a few parties.