Dunbar's Number: 150 people is enough?...or is it too many!?

Transcript

today's video is about an interesting Concept in the realm of social sciences dunbar's number we'll explore how it affects us as we build relationships and coordinate towards a common purpose [Music] hello all JT here communities play a vital role in various aspects of our lives and dunbar's number helps us understand that dynamic and the beauty of this concept lies in its simplicity [Music] 150. that's the upper limit to the amount of people you can hold a meaningful relationship with the people you know and care about we see examples

of organizations who follow this structure all around us for instance the average military company the Tactical sized unit for operations is made up of roughly 150 people the number of Super Bowl rings given out to the winning team 150 the average number of wedding invites sent out just under 150 even Amish communities will split when their congregation gets much above 150 and when you know to look for it you'll see this number come up again and again in Social Circles when you start getting much above dunbar's number the group starts to lose bonding trust and the ability to follow the other members that

make it up they're just strangers do I know you this was the discovery made by the British Anthropologist Robin Dunbar our cognitive limits of meaningful connections but the concept behind dunbar's number doesn't in there as it can be subdivided into smaller Circles of intimacy as well 150 people in a tribe the people you know can be broken down into 50 people or a clan of your real friends 15 of those people make up your super family those are your good friends and five people make up your most intimate

relationships your immediate family and best friends each step into these smaller groups gain significantly more interaction and investment the majority of which is spent with those five close friends or family the majority of what's left is spread amongst your 15 good friends and the majority of what's left from that across to your 50 friends you quickly see how by the time we get to 150 people at dunbar's limit many of them are people you interact or associate with on rare occasions the quote I didn't know they had a baby or quote Oh yeah how's his new job working out

understanding that it's no coin incidents that many teams consist of groups of five like five players played for a basketball team or soccer generally has five or six on defense and five or six on offense the smallest unit in the military a fire team typically consists of five soldiers these are the most intimate groups for close coordination and are the most productive when your success closely relies on the team working together toward a goal the big takeaway is as we grow it is important at a psychological level to keep things small have you ever felt as part of a large community that you don't matter or that everyone is lost in the

noise or how about being overwhelmed trying to keep track of who's doing what I have eight different bosses right now a big pun eight bosses eight eight Bob so that means that when I make a mistake I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it rather than try to to interact is a community of a thousand strangers it's important to identify groups that can exist below 150 individuals to have healthier interactions and most importantly when it comes to building lasting and productive relationships being able to have specific goals within groups of five will work more effectively to break out and work those issues these small

and focused teams can then rejoin the larger team with clearer results this helps fight large group paralysis by analysis how can you use the dunbar's number to better organize the people you are working with how can it change how you relay information or interact with a community have you experienced failure of too many people trying to fix a problem let us know in the comments Below on behalf of green pill my name is JT cheers and big hugs from Kansas City hey that was fun I'm glad you watched all the way to the end make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel and check out all of these amazing videos and be sure to hit some likes and leave

us some comments we want to hear what you're thinking better yet join our Discord find us at greenpill.network and let's get coordinated foreign [Music]