Mel Robbins shares a 5-3-1 formula for loneliness: talk to five different people each week, maintain three close relationships, and get one hour of genuine social connection daily through voice-based interactions. The hour can be built from short moments like chatting with a barista or calling a friend, and texting doesn't count.
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You should aim to interact with 5 different people each week, to keep at least 3 close relationships, and to spend 1 hour a day connecting.
1 hour a day?
Does that sound like a lot or a little to you?
It sounds like a lot. Okay.
So what I love about that is that that reveals something about your personal preferences, right? To some people, 1 hour seems like not a lot at all because they're actually getting a lot more than that.
Is it 1 hour with 1 person?
Not necessarily.
It could be 2 minutes. Okay, so I can say hello to the barista for a minute. There's a minute. I can hang out with colleagues for 5 minutes. There's 6 minutes.
Exactly.
I can spend 20 minutes with my husband. Okay.
Exactly.
Yes, an hour a day, I'm in. I thought you meant like deep thoughts.
No, no, no.
Eye contact, hour long, every day. No, an hour total.
A day to have those different moments where you're connecting with people.
Gotcha.
And a work meeting doesn't count, right? If you spend some of that work meeting catching up personally, that counts. But we're talking about total time where you're connecting and socializing and hanging out.
Okay. And it can be with strangers that you're chit-chatting with and complimenting. It can be with people that you're close to. It can be lunch with colleagues. It could be chatting after or before a meeting, something that's a little bit more— it's a phone call with a friend. It could be a phone call, absolutely. What about texting back and forth with somebody?
I mean—
You said no. I literally, she like kind of rolled her eyes at me, everybody.
So cumulatively, you wanna spend an hour with other people, even if it's over the phone or virtually.
Okay, so voice is important. So either you need to be speaking or the other people need to be speaking for this to count.
Right, and ideally it's in person, but that's not always realistic, right? We all have friends and family who are spread out. So 1 hour a day total with a variety of different people. Keep 3 relationships close. So there's a lot of research kind of showing the, the minimum amount of close relationships that we need and the minimum amount of, of socializing that we need, right?
Okay.
And that we thrive on. The 5 in particular, so interact with 5 different people each week, that's based on the fact that we are more socially healthy when we have diverse ties. So if the only person you socialize with is your husband, that's not healthy. It's good to also talk to your friends, to have family members, to have coworkers who you're connecting with, right? To have a variety, not just in the kinds of relationships, but also in the people themselves. So are you interacting with people who are different from you, right? Who have different beliefs, who have different interests, who come from different backgrounds? That is actually also really socially healthy. So aim for 5 different people each week who you're interacting with, 3 close relationships, and 1 hour a day.
