What is People

People is your relationships and your sense of belonging: partner, family, friends, community. It is the pillar that asks who you are doing this life with, and is important because we are social beings who deserve to do life with people we love.

How we define People

When a palliative care nurse, Bronnie Ware, wrote down the regrets she heard most often from people in their final weeks, one of the five was "I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends." The Harvard Study of Adult Development, which has followed the same families for more than eighty years, puts it in one sentence: the quality of your relationships is the strongest predictor of your health and happiness across your life. At optml, we aim to do life with people we love, on purpose, rather than only when we feel lonely.

We break People down into: partner, family, friends, and community.

Partner

Your partner is the single relationship with the largest effect on your happiness and health.

Married and partnered people report higher life satisfaction — a satisfaction multiplied for people who say their spouse is also their best friend, or a "super-friend." In a Harvard study of older couples, a good marriage softened the effect of poorer health on mood, and the people most satisfied in their relationships at fifty were the healthiest at eighty.

But it is the quality of the marriage, not the fact that you are married, that tracks health: better marriages went with lower mortality, and a strained one is worse for health than none.

Your partner also shapes your habits more than anyone else. In a large English study of older couples, when one partner quit smoking, started exercising, or lost weight, the other was far more likely to do the same than if their partner had never changed.

We recommend one date a week (at least): a Thursday dinner with phones away, a Saturday morning farmers market, a Sunday evening movie night. We also recommend alternating who plans it, to keep it fresh an exciting. And protect this time like it's a meeting with your boss and not your partner. They deserve to be treated with as much love and respect.

Family

Family is the relationship you did not choose, and the one with the most seasons: parents get older, siblings move away, children grow up while you are in meetings.

In a review of what people regret most across their lives, parenting and romance were two of the six areas where regret ran deepest, and regret was most intense where people could still see the opportunity. The things you can still affect are the ones that hurt most.

Some ways to be intentional about this include:

• a standing call with your parents on the walk home one day a week
• a family dinner that is on the calendar rather than assumed
• writing a handwritten note to your parents thanking them for all they've done for you

Friends

Friends are the relationships that go quiet without anyone deciding they should, and they are the ones with the strongest evidence behind them.

A 2010 meta-analysis found that those with stronger social relationships had a 50 percent greater likelihood of survival over the study periods, an effect the researchers compared with smoking and drinking. Five years later the same team found that social isolation, loneliness, and living alone were each linked to higher mortality, by around a quarter to a third. And when researchers studied the happiest ten percent of a group of students, they found no single thing that was sufficient for very high happiness, but one thing that was necessary: good relationships. Nobody in the top ten percent had gotten there alone.

Some ways to be intentional about this include:

• messaging a new friend a week to grab coffee or a meal
• scheduling a quarterly FaceTime with college friends who are dear to you but you don't see often
• booking a standing dinner a month with a group of friends

Community

Community is belonging to something bigger than your own household: a church, a team, a choir, a running club, the parents at the school gate, the neighbors you actually know.

Loneliness is not just a feeling; the studies above would indicate that it's a health condition. Community is the cheapest protection against it, because it does not depend on any one person being free. The group meets whether or not you feel like it — you just have to show up.

Find a group you can commit to weekly or monthly, whether that's a team sport or church on Sundays. Then commit to going whether you feel like it or not.

How we prioritize People

Here is how People gets planned in optml, following one example the whole way through.

The rating. On a Sunday in June, Sam, two years into a new city, rates his Optml Six. People is rated a 3: he hasn't spoken to his old friends in years, the new ones are still acquaintances, his parents hear from him about once a month, and he and his partner haven't had an evening to themselves since the move.

The vision and the year-long goal. On People's card in optml he writes the vision, three to five years out and in his own words: "I have three friends here I see without needing an occasion, my parents hear from me every week, and Sunday evenings are for me and my love." Under it, the goal for the year, written so he could check it in December: "Three friends I see monthly, a weekly call home, and a standing date night that brought me joy."

The quarter. For every pillar, optml supports multiple quarterly goals, so the year's goal breaks down into this quarter's: "By September 30, seen one friend every week for twelve weeks; called Mom every Sunday; kept two date nights a month." From now on the card shows whether the quarter is on pace.

The first Sunday Check-In. In Weekly Capture he empties his head: text John about Thursday, book the dinner with the college friends before they scatter for the summer, call Mom, look up a new restaurant for date night. Each of these items falls under People. He stars two must-dos, the text to John and the call home, then drags everything into the week beside his existing calendar events, in People's color: the call as a recurring block on Sunday at 5pm, dinner with John on Thursday at 6pm, date night as Friday 6pm, and a fifteen-minute block Wednesday at 12:15 to find a date the college friends can all make.

Following the day. On Sunday at 5pm, the Today tab shows the call first and he makes it. On Tuesday, a friend from the old city texts that she's in town and can only do coffee at 2pm; the block that was at 2pm moves to Thursday morning so it still gets done, and the coffee happens. Wednesday's fifteen minutes turns into a dinner for six on June 19, which goes on the calendar in People's color.

The next Sunday. The Weekly Overview shows People: three hours planned, two hours twenty completed. The call happened, Thursday dinner happened, date night got moved to Saturday but still happened. He rates People again: a 4. The call and the Thursday dinner with another friend stay, and he schedules new time to plan his next date.

The end of the quarter. In the quarterly reflection he scores the goal. Ten of the twelve weeks had a friend in them. Eleven Sundays had a call. Date night held most fortnights. Call it 80 percent, and two acquaintances are now people he texts without a reason. Next quarter's goal builds on it: the weekly dinner with a friend and call with mom stay. The year goal is on track, and People is a 6.

The year. In the annual review, he asks whether People still deserves the most effort or whether it is now maintenance while another pillar takes the lead, and notices that his parents are getting older, which is its own answer. That is the whole loop: rate, name, plan the quarter, plan the week, follow the day, look back on Sunday, adjust.

People is the second of The Optml Six, between Power and Potential. Spend more time reflecting on it during the annual review.