Morgan Housel, author of The Psychology of Money, was on the My First Million podcast talking about a close friend of his. This friend earns the least in their group.
Morgan said the guy is “nine-and-a-half out of 10 as a human being.” Kind, dependable, fun to be around. The kind of person who makes you glad they’re in your life.
Then Morgan did the math. If this friend became a wildly successful entrepreneur? Maybe he’d move from a 9.5 to a 9.7 - barely a shift.
The friend is bothered by it though. By his lack of “success” in terms of income and wealth. He’s objectively crushing it as a human being but feels inadequate because the thing he can measure doesn’t reflect that.
Income and wealth are easy to measure. The traits that make someone a great friend aren’t.
What gets measured gets managed. What doesn’t, drifts.
Career has a scoreboard. Salary, title, promotions, net worth. You know when you’re winning.
Friendship doesn’t. No performance reviews. No raises. No dashboard telling you your connection score dropped.
So it drifts. A postponed hangout here, a missed text there. Then you realize you haven’t had a real conversation with your closest friends in months.
You optimized your career because you could see the results. Friendship never had a chance.
Friendship is one of the strongest predictors of health and happiness. Stronger than income after a certain point. But we treat it like something we’ll get to later.
We’re chasing incremental wealth gains while 9.5 friendships drift to a 6 because there’s no alarm bell.
What if you brought the same intentionality to friendship that you bring to your career?
