At least some of our most meaningful realtionships aren’t evenly distributed across our lives:

 …despite not being at the end of your life, you may very well be nearing the end of your time with some of the most important people in your life. If I lay out the total days I’ll ever spend with each…

It turns out that when I graduated from high school, I had already used up 93% of my in-person parent time. I’m now enjoying the last 5% of that time. We’re in the tail end.

It’s a similar story with my two sisters. After living in a house with them for 10 and 13 years respectively, I now live across the country from both of them and spend maybe 15 days with each of them a year. Hopefully, that leaves us with about 15% of our total hangout time left.

The same often goes for old friends. In high school, I sat around playing hearts with the same four guys about five days a week. In four years, we probably racked up 700 group hangouts. Now, scattered around the country with totally different lives and schedules, the five of us are in the same room at the same time probably 10 days each decade. The group is in its final 7%.

Great way to think through relationships. The takeaways that Tim Urban offers are the takeaways that should already be guiding our relationships: (1) quality time matters (2) priorities matter; intentionality (3) living nearby to your friends and loved ones matters.

The toughest things to get right in life often turn out to be the fundamentals.