放下你的无效社交

Drop Your Useless Socializing

> By Li Xiaolai · 2015-04-12 · [Original link](https://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_5df32d900102vove.html) (Chinese)
> Our translation from the Chinese original.

Once, when I was giving a lecture at Peking University, I met a student who asked me: "Teacher, which do you say is more important, studying seriously or managing your network of connections?" Looking at the hodgepodge expression on his face, I first took out my notebook and wrote down this question, then said to him that this is a rather big topic, and I'd carefully write an article and put it online, and then gave him the address of my weblog. Finally, I added one more line: "Believe me, so-called connections, even if they're important, aren't anywhere near as important as they say."

Go take a look in a bookstore! In some counter or section, how many books have the word "connections" (人脉) in their titles? Far too many. Connections: The Power of Key Relationships, Connection Circles: Connections Decide Winning and Losing, Connections Decide Fate, Connections Are Designed, Winning with Connections, Building Golden Connections, Building Workplace Connections in 90 Seconds... and there are even more with "interpersonal relationships" in the title. When I wrote this passage, searching "connections" on Dangdang (当当网) found 521 results, searching "interpersonal relationships" found 4949 results, and searching "success" found 53879 results...

The nonsense you see everywhere is basically all the same; it's all nonsense anyway. The following text, excerpted from a certain book, isn't even the most outrageous:

> In China, the most peculiar practical issue is "face." Typical examples of this are not only often seen in politics, but are even more common in business. For instance, when you want to sell goods to a client, another company is competing in the same way, and you estimate the odds of winning and losing at four to six, unfavorable to our side; in this situation, if you have a supporter whose "face" can reach the client's top management, then a single word from this person is all it takes to turn defeat into victory. Let's take another example: suppose you want to propose a plan to the company; whether the idea can be adopted depends on how many people in the company are willing to help you and support you, and from that the result can be roughly estimated. This is the practical side of human society. Seen this way, the saying "by the number of one's supporters one can judge whether he is a capable businessman" is no exaggeration. In fact, people called "masters at getting things done" or "capable" all share one condition: they have many personnel "channels" inside and outside the company; that is, their connections are very wide and their "face" very big.
> [Translator's note: quoted from another author's book, not Li Xiaolai's words.]

And managing to make one error after another in a short passage of text is actually not that easy.

> ...if you have a supporter whose "face" can reach the client's top management, then a single word from this person is all it takes to turn defeat into victory.
> [Translator's note: quoted again from the same book, not Li Xiaolai's words.]

Apart from "corruption," in the normal world, could this kind of situation happen?

> ...suppose you want to propose a plan to the company; whether the idea can be adopted depends on how many people in the company are willing to help you and support you, and from that the result can be roughly estimated.
> [Translator's note: quoted again from the same book, not Li Xiaolai's words.]

Whether an idea will be adopted: in the normal world, the focus should be on the reasoning of the idea itself! If the idea has been thought through very thoroughly and has obvious benefits, would so many people oppose it?

Getting everything by "face"—dream on!

Let's go through it in detail from the beginning. First use your brain and think: what kind of people are we willing to become friends with?

Starting from kindergarten, everyone already has certain principles for choosing friends—even though they aren't aware of them. In fact, the uneven distribution of resources inevitably creates a certain relationship of dependence between people. Observe a little and you'll find: in kindergarten, children with many toys are more easily taken as friends by other children. So, does the child with the most toys have the most friends? The answer isn't necessarily yes.

I once had the chance, and also happened to be willing, to put a bit more thought into talking with the "child with the most toys" whom I met. Before long I discovered that in his mind, as with all adults, "friends" were divided into "true friends" and "ordinary friends."

For convenience of writing, below I'll provisionally call the child with the most toys "Xiaoqiang."

After I asked, I was very curious, but also patiently waited for Xiaoqiang to tell me who his "true friends" were. In the end he told me he had only two true friends. One was a boy and one was a girl. Then I asked him: "Why do you think that boy is your true friend?" Xiaoqiang didn't hesitate for a second: "He never grabs my toys; he trades with me." I asked him again: "Then why do you think that girl is your true friend?" This time Xiaoqiang hesitated for quite a while, and after making sure I'd keep it secret for him, stammered: "She's pretty. I give her all my new toys first..." I laughed. After a while I asked him: "Does she think you're good-looking?" Xiaoqiang was taken aback, his eyes full of innocence: "Don't know..." I asked again: "Then whose are the toys she has in her hands now?" Xiaoqiang suddenly looked very nervous: "Not mine." I decided not to go and ask that little girl any questions.

For all sorts of reasons, the people who are widely popular in life are always a minority. But likewise for all sorts of reasons, most people don't know how that minority understands their behavior, as one glimpse from this example of Xiaoqiang shows. Just now Xiaoqiang said that his "true friend" never "grabs" his toys but "trades" with him. Note these two words.

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Let's set aside so-called "scheming" for now. There really are some people who are deeply calculating; they can use means that ordinary people can't think of, or that ordinary people couldn't carry out even if they could think of them, to achieve their goals. Here we'll discuss only the most common situation.

Everyone likes, values and even favors one kind of exchange—fair exchange. Xiaoqiang may not have realized that the number of toys he owned made it, in terms of probability, very hard for him to meet people who could make a "fair exchange" with him, because the vast majority of children don't have many toys, or even have no toys at all; those children in fact had neither the opportunity nor the ability to make a "fair exchange" with him. For him, an unfair exchange is the same as "grabbing," and nobody likes "being grabbed from." And the boy who traded toys with him let Xiaoqiang feel fairness. Xiaoqiang also had toys he wanted but didn't have in hand, so he too was willing to "trade" rather than "grab," because he himself didn't like "being grabbed from"—and then gave all the newest toys to that girl to play with first...

Although the vast majority of people are unwilling to admit it, their so-called "friendships" are actually nothing more than "exchange relationships" in a certain sense. But if someone's own resources aren't plentiful enough or good enough, then he's more likely to become the "taking party," unable to make a "fair exchange," and ultimately becomes a burden on others. At that point, the so-called "friendship" slowly comes to an end without any fuss. Of course there are cases where it continues, but rather than saying this is because the other party treasures the friendship, it's better to say the other party is patiently waiting for the next exchange in order to achieve "fairness." The film The Godfather has just such a scene: when the undertaker Amerigo Bonasera resolves to go to the Godfather Corleone to avenge him and get justice for his daughter, Amerigo is the "taking party." Many years later, the Godfather Corleone finally knocks on Amerigo's door late one night...

You can imagine that people with many resources prefer, and are more likely, to exchange with another person whose resources are equal in quantity or quality, because in this situation a "fair trade" arises more easily. Examples like this are everywhere in life; even on campus, where the nature of "exchange" isn't so evident, behavior of the same nature isn't rare. For example, the acknowledged prodigy of one department will "by chance" run into another acknowledged prodigy of another department and become "best buddies"; what the saying calls "great minds think alike" may be why they hit it off at first meeting. And so, their conversations and any other activities often make them feel very "in tune" with each other. Just one example:

> At the first National Middle School Computer Competition in 1982, Shen Nanpeng and Liang Jianzhang, two "math prodigies," won prizes at the same time. When they first met, these two naive teenagers would never have realized that 17 years later they would join hands to create a miracle of China's internet industry.
> [Translator's note: quoted from another source, not Li Xiaolai's words.]

It's not that they each became excellent because they were close; it's that they were close because they were both excellent, and then struck brilliant sparks.

Conversely, these people acknowledged as excellent are often not "low-key," nor "approachable." They don't do this on purpose. They have no intention of annoying the people around them who seem "mediocre" to them; it's just that they have this sense without realizing it: communicating with these people costs too much. The rare ones among them who are even-tempered generally only realized after going through setbacks that they should protect themselves. They discovered that some misunderstandings simply have no chance of being explained. And so they began to be "modest," they learned to be "low-key," they appeared "approachable."

Many years ago I noticed a phenomenon: when others asked me for help and I actually resisted it strongly inside, because I was afraid people would say I was "someone who doesn't do right by his friends," I'd force myself to do things I didn't want to do. Once, when I felt deeply hurt, a thought flashed through my mind: so this awkwardness didn't come from my lacking the character of "being glad to help others"; the reason was that my energy wasn't abundant enough to keep my own affairs in good order while also taking out loads of time and energy to do things for others—in fact, I myself was already a "clay bodhisattva" "crossing the river." After thinking about it more, I even began to suspect that Lei Feng's leader was too much of an idiot, because he didn't assign his subordinate enough work—this was a very pleasant surprise for me that night—I discovered I was thinking independently.

Admitting that one's ability is limited is the precondition for maintaining mental health. From the day I rethought "Lei Feng's leader," I actively struggled to learn how to do things within my capacity. It's funny to say, but my own IQ really is limited, so limited that in the past I never even thought that "acting within one's capacity" is such a difficult pattern of behavior: first, admit that your ability is limited; second, don't be afraid of showing your ignorance in front of others; third, dare not to prove you're a "good person"...

At this level, it's indeed often only excellent people who have effective connections. Moreover, precisely because these people may at any time and any place need to avoid attempts at "unfair exchange," they pay more attention to their own quality and know that "not creating trouble for others" and "keeping oneself in good order" are virtues, which also reflects the common saying "too many troubles and old friends leave." And those who aren't excellent often don't know such seemingly simple principles; they don't even realize that their situation only allows them to play the role of "taker," and so turn every "exchange" into an "unfair exchange," and in the end it's very likely to result in the exchange falling through, because nobody likes "unfair exchange." Each failed exchange causes them further loss, so that the resources they have either decrease in quantity or decline in quality, which in turn makes them even more likely to sink into being a "taker"—a vicious circle.

There are also some people who are overly eager to build so-called connections, completely disregarding their actual situation. People often use some special words to describe such people, such as "fawning," "currying favor," "bullying those below and flattering those above," and even "forming cliques for private gain." Such people often aren't deliberately determined to be like this either; they just vaguely realize that one person's strength is too small, and so they hope to borrow other strength. And the smaller a person's ability, the stronger his desires appear. These people's characteristics are very obvious; one of them is: in life they often, intentionally or not, mention figures everyone looks up to in an intimate way, whether or not they really have any personal friendship with these "big shots." In the Chinese context, they'll say only the given name and not the surname: Kai-Fu Lee isn't called "Li Kaifu," in their mouths he's "Kaifu"; Robin Li isn't called "Li Yanhong," in their mouths he's "Yanhong"; Shen Nanpeng isn't called "Shen Nanpeng," in their mouths he's "Nanpeng"; what I've heard recently that's even more terrifying, even more hair-raising, is "Little Yu" (Yu Minhong), "Little Deng" (Deng Feng), "Big Xiang" (Li Xiang)...

Overall, connections are of course very important. However, for any given individual, what's more important than connections is the resources he has. Some resources are hard to obtain starting from nothing, such as money, status, reputation. However, some resources can easily be accumulated from zero, such as a person's talent and learning. Talent and learning can certainly be obtained through effort. Once a person's mental faculties are properly switched on, he'll find that in this world where information is at your fingertips, as long as he makes a normal effort and has patience and makes time his friend, he can easily become an expert in at least one field. Effort isn't as hard as legend has it; put into words, it's only—concentrating on study and work for at least 6 hours a day. But the patience effort requires is far greater than most people imagine: "you must keep company with time for at least 5 years, and as long as 20 years."

After long observation, I discovered another thing that I, with my average IQ many years ago, couldn't easily have figured out or easily foreseen: if everyone around a person is excellent, the situation often arises where nobody asks him for help, because excellent people almost without exception are ashamed of wasting other people's time, and at the same time these people are regarded by others as excellent precisely because they can solve the problems they encounter independently.

If one day someone, after long accumulation, truly becomes an expert in some field, he will surely be pleasantly surprised that connections in the true sense—valuable, so-called "efficient" connections—come bursting through the door. The people he meets will come from levels completely different from before and from unexpected directions, and he himself will no longer be the good-for-nothing "taker" of the past; the role he plays will be that of "being glad to help others"—few people dislike well-meant help, especially when this person has been sought out by us to provide help.

What's more, these excellent people will receive unexpected help. An excellent and valuable person will naturally draw many other excellent and valuable people to offer him help on their own initiative, and help at such times is often "selfless." Just as no doctor, after healing the wounded and rescuing the dying, would fly into a rage merely because the pay was too small, those whose character has been honed to a certain degree and whose outlook is broad to a certain level can often truly "do kindness without seeking repayment," because for them, having the chance to "test their own ideas" is already important enough and can make them happy in body and mind. At the same time, the party being helped, precisely because they're no ordinary person, will certainly understand the principle "a drop of kindness is repaid with a gushing spring," and the final result is naturally that everyone is happy; and because "the cost of communication is almost zero," the overall effect is naturally that "the gains of exchange are relatively magnified without limit"—a virtuous circle. The life wisdom in this is: concentrate your energy on changing the things you can change, and temporarily ignore the things you can't change. Concentrating on building yourself, making yourself an excellent person, a useful person, an independent person, is more important than anything. Building yourself is the same as building your connections—if connections really are as important as legend has it. Actually, I always feel the legend that connections lead to success is illusory, nothing but a phantom fabricated by people who don't know the truth.

To clarify especially: I'm not saying that from now on we don't need to care about anyone around us, or that from now on there's no need to deal with anyone. Dealing with people is also a skill that has to be learned and that also takes a great deal of time to practice. I only want to remind readers: don't overestimate yourself and mistakenly think you have enough time to properly handle your relationships with everyone around you. Browse the names in your phone's contact list! How many people have we not contacted in a long time? To this day I've heard only two or three people answer me like this: "Even the one I've gone longest without contacting, it's no more than two weeks." And one of these people is especially stubborn and special—there are only 22 names in total in his phone's contact list.

In the author's preface to her novel The Woman Psychotherapist (《女心理师》), Bi Shumin once mentioned:

> ...My taking psychology courses was pure chance. My friend XX broke a lumbar vertebra, was put in plaster trousers, and lay paralyzed in bed for three months. On the hanging calendar on my wall at home I wrote a line: "Phone XX every week." Having started out as a doctor, I knew that bedridden patients are very lonely and hope to be able to chat while lying down. Later, following the reminder on the calendar, I phoned this person every week, chatting idly about this and that. Although I was very busy, I'd still linger a little longer to make her happy. Then once, she mentioned in passing that Lin Mengping, professor of psychology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, was coming to Beijing Normal University to teach students... I asked, can I study with her? My friend said, that I don't know. Later I thanked that friend, saying: that I could study psychology, I owe it to your breaking your back.
> [Translator's note: quoted from Bi Shumin, not Li Xiaolai's words.]

From this I realized that true caring in the end has only one expression: willingly spending time on someone or something, even "wasting" time.

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This is also easy to understand. When we spend time on a person, it's equivalent to pouring a stretch of our own life into him—whatever the final result, that person and that matter have already become part of our life. Everyone's time is limited, so anyone has only a few "really good friends."

This really is a topic big enough to write two books on. Constrained by space, I can only offer two suggestions that are simple but not so easy to put into practice:

> ▷Concentrate on doing things that can improve yourself, learn and possess more and better skills, and become a person worth others' associating with.
>
> ▷Learn to keep yourself in good order, take not creating trouble for others as a virtue, and win respect through your own independence.

Excerpted from Make Time Your Friend, Chapter 7: Application, Section 6: Connections

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