Your Life is Driven by Network Effects

When six to eight people are conversing at a dinner party, it is easy to focus on one conversation, but if the number is higher (say 15), then two-way conversations are more likely.

When groups get larger, the change is exponential, not linear, affecting one's social experience.

The Six Degrees Of Separation theory states that there are a maximum of six degrees (or layers) of separation between any two people in the world. This is now verified by social media connections (like Facebook).

We all are interacting with our layers of connections, and five conditions (catalysts) contribute to forming our network:

• Frequent and repeated interactions withing new groups of people
• A high degree of overlapping of relationships in new groups
• When people are changing and evolving their identity
• A high density of people (Network Proximity)
• Handling a difficult challenge or situation together

There are three major Network Levels:

• Physical Network: Our core network.
• The People Network: Our school, college, company, and social get-together network.
• The Digital People Network: LinkedIn, Facebook

Dunbar's Law, which is based on the brains 'node' structure, states that humans tend to interact most with 5 family members, 15 intimates, 50 acquaintances, and 150 total familiar people that we see on a regular basis.

We don't get to choose this fundamental layer of our network topology.

Families and extended families are uniquely influential in shaping our networks, and we tend to adopt our cosmological views, dietary preferences, religious, linguistic dialect, and worldview from them.

Our high school isn't usually one's choice, and are the first peer network that one has to deal with.

High Schools work on popularity and status, and a constant game of winning and losing is played among teenagers, shaping their future life. Certain other factors like school size, locality, diversity, and the level of academic success determine our network.

Your college network can have an exponential impact on your life and opens up ideas, relationships, jobs, aspirations, attitudes, and resources, setting a virtuous circle in motion.

College also influences where you live, and who you end up dating (or marrying). The four years spend with people your age, result in repeated interactions forming lasting bonds.

Our professional relationships during our first years of work are the seed of our professional network, influencing the arc of our career.

Normally we pick the highest paying job, but if we think of networks as a form of wealth, our first job should be with people whose career path we want to follow.  As high achievement is communicable through word of mouth in the network, and innovation is contagious, it pays to be with the right people.

Choosing a life partner is one of the most important decisions one makes and can be one's joy or suffering. When we are marrying we are adding a whole new network to our existing network, and it affects not only us but our future generations.

Extremely close friends are poor network nodes for marriage due to a network overlap effect, making your weaker ties more vital. Acquaintances become a bridge between two network clusters, exposing people to new ideas, beliefs, and lifestyles.

Cities and our neighborhood are our most readily available, fully functioning networks, both physically and socially. Everything flows out of our city: our job, spouse, income, friends, and new opportunities.

Cities naturally have a higher rate of social interactions, and human networks within the city are formed using offline 'clubs' and social events and also online tools that facilitate offline networking.

At any point in time, one can forcibly make a change. Changing one's surroundings and the resulting network has a big effect on one's self-transformation and lives.

Our networks, build of people we care about and those who care for us, are our most valuable resource, making us express our lives.