Natalie Feng

Harvard University spent 85 years tracking the lives of 724 individuals. It is the longest-running study of adult development in history. Its conclusion can be summed up in one sentence:

What determines whether a person lives well is beyond income, status, look, and IQ — the quality of their relationships.

Notice: quality, not quantity.

It’s not about how many people you know or refer as friends, or how many contacts sit in your social media list. That single distinction — quality versus quantity—completely overturns how we understand “fitting in.”

So what exactly do people gain from fitting in?

There’s some data worth looking at. A LinkedIn survey found that over 80% of job opportunities are obtained through referrals, not through cold applications. Gallup also discovered that employees who have a best friend at work are seven times more engaged than others.

From the perspective of accessing resources, social networks are undeniably valuable.But what most people call fitting in has little to do with that kind of meaningful connection.

Think about the situations where you tried to keep transactional relations:
You wanted to stay home over the weekend, but went to the dinner anyway.
You weren’t interested in the group’s conversation, but forced yourself to join in.
You didn’t find the joke funny, but laughed along.

These posing actions consume your time and energy. What do you get in return?
A reputation for being easygoing?
Admiration from people more junior than you?
A few photos you post once with hundreds of likes but never look at again?
Or relationships that dissolve the moment the gathering ends?

In 1951, Solomon Asch conducted a famous conformity experiment. Participants were asked to judge the length of lines while others in the room—actors—deliberately gave wrong answers. The result: 75% of participants went along with the clearly incorrect choice at least once.

This experiment has been repeated countless times, with consistent results:
in a group, people unconsciously give up independent thinking. Seen from another angle, the hidden cost of transactional socialization is not just your time—you may also be giving away your judgment.

So what actually builds meaningful relationships?

In the 1970s, sociologist Mark Granovetter proposed the Weak Ties theory. He found that people who help you find new jobs are often not your close friends—they’re acquaintances who bring new information from outside your usual circle.

But later research added an important nuance:
weak ties may bring you opportunities, but when you truly struggle, it’s strong ties that support you. And how are strong ties formed? Not through attending endless gatherings and chit chats, but through authentic experiences, aligned values, trust and loyalty built over time.

Raising a glass together a hundred times may not compare to facing a single deadline together.

In the 1990s, psychologist Elaine Aron found that about 15–20% of people are highly sensitive. For them, solitude actually enhances creativity and focus.

Steve Wozniak once wrote that Apple’s first circuit board was built alone in a garage — not in a brainstorming meeting. When Newton developed the theory of gravity, London was in the grip of the plague. Isolated in the countryside, he produced some of the most important work of his life.

People who know what they are doing tend to do well.

I once worked on a project that ran into serious issues. I spent three straight days debugging. At around 2 am, I posted a complaint online. Someone I had met through an online forum—strictly speaking, we had never even met in person — saw it and called me immediately to help think through the problem.

At that moment, among the hundreds of connections I had accumulated, not one would help me debug at 2 am. But someone I met in a way that didn’t involve fitting-in would.

In the end, we only need to keep a very small number of valid relationships — and the ones we keep will be far more solid.