Your Life is Driven by Network Effects
NOTES
Network Force: The Unseen Hand
The unseen hand in them all is the networks that surround us and the powerful math they exert on us.
In short, the networks of human connections in your life create a force that guides you down a path not always fully of your intention, through the mechanism of 100s of small interactions. Further, this “network force” compounds over time. The longer your relationships, cliques, and communities persist, the more they shape your destiny.
90% of those network forces are established in just 7 crossroads or pivotal life events.
Zipf’s Law and You
This mathematical pattern is a Power Law known as Zipf’s Law. It was first noticed as a principle of language. About 100 years ago, physicists and linguists discovered that the second most commonly used word in English is used one half as much as the most used word. The third most used word is used one third as much as the most used word, so forth down through all the words in a given language. This law turns out to hold not just in languages, but in many other cases.
The underlying mechanism for Zipf’s law is not yet agreed on but the main hypothesis is that it’s an outgrowth of the Principle of Least Effort. systems that survive and operate at steady state optimize for efficiency. When they do, things tend to look like Zipf Distribution.
Your Body and Cities Have Predictable Mathematical Patterns
Systemic efficiency also drives other mathematical laws that govern how our lives look.
2017 book Scale. The cells and energy systems of living things scale up in predictable patterns. A mammal that is 200% the size of another will only consume 150% of the energy.
How do nodes on a human network work?
Nodes, which in this case are people, exchange a host of things. The most important ones for our discussions here are ideas, capital, connections, jobs, status, aspirations, language, requests, standards, expectations, affirmation, criticism, belonging, and physical space.
In Networks, The Rich Nodes Get Richer
These are called preferential attachment processes which happen when something (such as money, status, fame, punishment) is distributed based on how much is already possessed.
most famously in Matthew: “For to everyone who has will more be given…” Now called Matthew Effect.
The math behind why dinner parties behave the way they do
They want you to validate them and support them.
As Obi-Wan says about The Force in the original Star Wars movie: Kenobi: A Jedi can feel the Force flowing through him. Luke Skywalker: You mean it controls your actions? Kenobi: Partially, but it also obeys your commands.
How Networks Form
All humanity is, after all, connected.
like asteroids colliding in space to form larger asteroids, at each crossroads we pick up greater “network mass”, increasing our network gravity and exponentially heightening the energy costs of changing course. NOTE: The one who has more followers on Twitter got greater network mass, it’s kinda like gravity.
The Network Topology of Your Life
three levels of networks you’re a part of.
Crossroad #1 – What Family You’re Born Into
In all of these measures, few of our other networks in life can rival family:
- Since you usually live in the same house with your family for a large part of your life, geographical proximity makes frequency of interaction extremely high and friction to interact low.
- Your individual relationship with one family member — usually a strong tie — is reinforced by all the other family members you share in common.
- We expect family relationships to persist throughout our entire lives, an expectation formalized in most human cultures as a deeply-embedded social norm.
- Family ties have higher bandwidth than others because we see labels like “mother” or “son” as identity-defining.
- Future relationships outside the family network, e.g. friends, dates, etc., will be impacted and reinforced by your family.
- All of the powerful factors above are superimposed by, and reinforced with, our biological drive to connect with others who share our genes.
Your family is a low-friction, high-impact network.
Crossroad #2 – High School Network
Nodes of all types want to associate with high-status nodes because it will improve their own status.
When navigating the question of which high school to attend ask yourself the following questions:
- How big is the high school? The bigger the high school, the bigger the alumni network
- How diverse is the school so you can find nodes and sub-networks that fit you best? With more options, there is a higher probability you can find a high achieving sub-network
- How strong is the affinity of school graduates? Higher affinity indicates stronger network links between nodes in the network, that the network is more valuable to the graduates.
- How important is academic success to high-status students in this high school? The more that popularity / status positively correlates with academic success
Crossroad #3 – College Network
Likelihood of forming a relationship = Mutual affinity * frequency of interaction * duration of interaction * geographical proximity * network proximity * number of shared connections * etc…
if you are choosing between colleges, or know someone who is, consider the following questions:
- Where do most of the alumni of this college end up living?
- Now think about how the math continues to cascade through the network.
- What kind of career or industry do alumni of this college typically work in?
- Do you relate to the other students naturally?
- How big is the college?
- How strong is the affinity between graduates?
- Is it clear what it says about the graduates that they went to that college?
Crossroad #4 – First Job
It’s the math of the networks. He made the correct choice based on the options presented on his life dashboard by his networks.
All that network force will be pushing on you to then take the mathematically obvious path from there, one which will feel like the “right decision”.
In almost every field — from theoretical physics to growth marketing — top performers were mentored, influenced by, or otherwise connected to other top performers.
when making a decision about where you want to work Do yourself a favor and ignore all of it. Focus on these questions instead:
- Is this job in the right city? The city I want to live in long term?
- Will I like and respect my co-workers? Will they like and respect me?
- Do I want to be like my bosses someday?
- Do my co-workers career aspirations match mine?
- Am I going to be working with the best?
- Is there a strong culture and camaraderie?
- Will I have opportunities to prove myself to others at my company to build my network bonds?
- Are employees proud of their company and their brand? Do they enthusiastically recruit? Do they seek each other out when outside of work? This indicates strong network bonds are forming.
- Are there politics in the office that could threaten the building of strong network bonds?
- Lastly, because top performers tend to congregate in rising companies, if it’s a startup, ask if it has strong potential defensibility against competitors, especially network effects, and whether it has the 9 habits of world-class startups.
Crossroad #5 – Marriage/Choosing a Life Partner
the most successful marriages were ones where 1) the two people were the most similar, and 2) they had shared network connections. What this means is that when you’re dating someone, you’re not just dating them. You’re dating their networks — their friends, family, and colleagues. And vice versa.
“The stronger the tie between [two individuals], the larger the proportion of individuals to whom they will both be tied.” - Mark Granovetter
your closest friends are usually poor nodes in your network
- (More likely) Your closest friends won’t be able to introduce you to anyone new.
- (More unlikely) Your close friends introduce you to a close friend of theirs that you didn’t previously know. You end up dating, and in the high percentage of cases where things don’t work out, the blowback from the ruined relationship wreaks havoc in your network cluster, forcing your friends to choose.
Smart questions to ask yourself when you’re single and looking to meet someone:
- Which acquaintance is most likely to know a lot of people that you’re compatible with?
- Do you get along with their friends?
- Do you get along with their family? The importance of in-laws isn’t to be underestimated. It’s easy to dismiss this in a culture that preaches that true love is all you need, but network theory tells us differently. Your in-laws are the core network of the person you’ll be closest with in life. What may seem like minor issues at first can grow into powerful problems over the long course of a lifetime.
- Are you in the same geographic network?
- Could there be blowback if it doesn’t work out?
Crossroad #6 – Where You Live
As the great Saar Gur — Partner at CRV and investor in Doordash, Classpass, Patreon, Bird and many other well-known companies — said to me recently, “Staying in the SF Bay Area after business school was the most impactful decision I’ve ever made. Everything else was noise.”
when deciding where to live, here are some questions to ask yourself:
- Are the people in this city like me?
- How long can you see yourself staying there?
- How important is your career to you?
- How much do you enjoy a fast pace of life?
- How much do you enjoy or value meeting new people?
- Are the core parts of your network topology filled in?
Crossroad #7 – Reassessments
Our networks are our most valuable resource. They are the way our lives express themselves. Those networks are made up of all the people you care about, the people you, inspire, move, and help to live their best lives.