social circle, important?

In the past few days I have started to realize how important an individual’s social circle is in influencing his/her opinions, work culture, general interests, weekend pastime, etc. It is really essential that one keeps oneself in a circle of friends/colleagues that would help them actively advance towards their desired state in life.

Few months back, I was watching a video by Tibees titled “if you get bad grades, you need better friends” and well, the title of the video really speaks for itself. It is a video of about 8 mins where she shares her experience in college and uni life where hanging out with students who excelled academically helped her improve her performance. Although I feel that applying this rule too early in life like say, middle school is not a good idea but yeah, in higher studies this is going to be a very important factor in helping with academic performance and overall growth. Also i think this not only applies in academics but also in learning almost any skill (maybe there are some exceptions but i can’t think of any right now).

Another instance that made me further believe in this idea is when I watched this TED talk by Shimon Schocken (the co-creator of the popular nand2tetris MOOC) where he talked about his grandfather Salman Schocken who was forced to drop out of school when he was 14 years old due to poor financial condition but at this prime he became a successful businessman by establishing a chain of departmental stores in pre-WWII Germany. Shimon stated that “[Salman] surrounded himself with an entourage of young, unknown scholars like Martin Buber and Shai Agnon and Franz Kafka, and he paid each one of them a monthly salary so that they could write in peace”. I find it interesting how Salman who did not have much formal education realized how important a social circle is, and priortized spending time with scholars and even build a kind of symbiotic relationship with them.

I find this trait common in with many successful businessman, they want to hang out and socialize with scholars, philosophers, scientists, in general people who excel in their domain of study/work. I recall another TED talk by Leonard Susskind, where he mentions how Richard Feynman, Sidney Coleman and he would be frequently invited to dinners hosted by billionaires where the other guests would be philosophers and they would debate on metaphysics, philosophy of the mind, artificial life, etc. Although their debates had no conclusion and generally, Mr. Feynman would have upper hand but that is a whole different tangent. Anyways, my point is that I sense a pattern and it is possible that in the future, I will find more such examples but I guess that I have made my point.

“git gud friends!”