Why is it called the 4 buckets?

Because relationships are like gardening; you reap what you sow. To be a good gardener you need to make sure that the soil is healthy and the conditions are right for life to flourish, to select the right plants to nurture, to ensure that new seedlings are planted and the weeds are plucked consistently.

You need an overview of how much land you have to work with, how fertile the soil is accordingly to the year, what fertilizers to use, when to water, what types of plants you have in your garden, and the type of care they need to flourish. You do this so that you better understand how to allocate your time and energy to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

Bucket 1 — Evergreen 🌵

This is the bucket where your closest and dearest should go into. They are the most meaningful and enriching relationships in your life, however you define that. Together, the people here form the core of your social circle. They are the people who you can expect to lean on in hard times, and hopefully, people whom you’d do the same for in return.

Evergreen relationships, like evergreen trees, maintain their foliage and cover throughout the year, and can reduce chilling winds in the winter and provide shade in the summer. Evergreen relationships are deep and lasting, defensible and weatherproof, and this is an bucket that you should be investing the bulk of your time and effort.

Bucket 2 — Grow 🌿

This bucket serves to grow under developed relationships, both existing and new. Ideally, in every relationship the give-and-take ratio is somewhat balanced. In reality, however, there is usually an imbalance at any given time or phase; there’ll be a party who is giving more, and sometimes that person who needs to step up is you.

Those that go into this bucket could be people who you are interested in developing a deeper relationship with, or it can also be people whom you have neglected and would like to repair and restore your relationships with them. By hanging onto deadweight or relationships that are underserved, you are doing both yourself and the other person a disservice.

Bucket 3 — Plant 🌱

This is the bucket where you seed new relationships. These are people whom you think might have potential to blossom into something meaningful. Maybe it’s the cute guy/girl you met at the party, or the new colleague at your at your new job.

Interestingly, this is the bucket where it can deliver the biggest payoff. Since you’re in exploration mode here, the chances of surprises are inherently built-in. For example, some of my closest friends and collaborators in recent years have seemingly popped out of nowhere, serendipitously. Spending time in this bucket, even though not always comfortable, can be hugely rewarding.

Bucket 4 — Prune ✂️

This is a highly important bucket. It’s where you give yourself permission to let go of relationships, or to free yourself yourself from negative ones that are pulling you back. By frequently removing negative and stale relationships, you keep your social circle fresh and vibrant, and are able to create new opportunities for new ones to develop, by redirecting time and energy into the first three buckets, the ones that deserve it.

Why prune and how to choose which relationships to prune.

Life is too short to constantly invest in relationships that don’t make us happy. Identifying these relationships is the first step in liberating yourself from them.

“A friend to all is a friend to none.” — Aristotle.

3 criteria I use for pruning relationships

I use a rule of three for every relationship: I will invest in taking three initiatives on my part to explore the relationship. If nothing comes out of those exploration efforts or if I’m disappointed thrice then this is a rule for giving myself permission to de-prioritize those relationships so I can focus on those that matters.

Flaky, unresponsive, no initiated effort. These are the people whom you feel are not / have not been giving back to the relationship. Maybe they are flaky, maybe they are unresponsive, or maybe they are just in general not taking an active role in developing your relationship. Toxic and negative. These are the people I find draining to be around. Maybe they’re always complaining, maybe they’re always hating, maybe they are transactional and manipulative. It depends on how you define toxic and negative. A lack of space, energy, or desire from your part. We need to stop saying “Let’s meet up sometime!” if we don’t have intention of actually following through. These “open-commitment loops” are insidiously draining. Imagine running multiple tabs simultaneously on your Internet browser. Individually, these tabs may not seem like much but cumulatively, they really add up have a huge impact on your processing power.

It’s funny because it’s true @scbchbum

If you’re not burning for it, don’t do it. Read this excellent piece by @Derek Sivers: HELL Yeah Or No

How The 4 Buckets Can Help You

Some of us are better in building long term relationships, some at keeping in touch and maintaining relationships, and the rest of us at meeting at new people. Whatever your strengths and weaknesses are, you probably already have a good sense of it. What the 4 Buckets help you to do is to see more clearly how you might negotiate a more sustainable balance between them.

For example, most people I know (including myself) find it easier to hang out with familiar faces (Bucket 1) than to be out there meeting new people consistently (Bucket 3). As tempting as it is to only do the things that we love and which come most naturally and easily to us, a full life is a varied and diverse one and not some narrow experience of a single element.

Our Need For Consistency

Just like our in-built sense of fairness and the need to be connected with others, psychologists say that it’s a human characteristic that we are driven to be consistent in all areas of life; our attitudes, values, habits, and promises. We want to be consistent ourselves and we want others to be consistent. It’s an essential fundamental quality to cultivate across all aspects of our life.

If you think about it, what are regrets if not the accumulation of missed opportunities; where we consistently failed to do what we really should have done. Regrets such as “I wish that I had let myself be happier” is not so much as being happy once or a few times, but more about being happier consistently over the course of their lives.

This dovetails perfectly with one of my biggest insights in the last few years: I feel happiest and most at peace when I’m focusing my time and energy on what truly matters to me. In other words, I feel best when what I do is consistent with what I believe.

Choose Well To Live Well

Imagine a reality with less guilt and regret because you’re secured in the comfort that your actions are aligned with your most deeply cherished values and beliefs.

A reality where you strike a better balance between exploring new relationships and enjoying the familiar ones, where you no longer worry about somewhere else you could be or someone better to be with, because you know you are exactly where you need to be. A reality where you experience tranquility and happiness more consistently.

Doesn’t that sound nice? And to think, all you have to do is to begin by imagining your friends as plants and then compulsively ordering them into lists :D

Free, Downloadable Worksheet

Interested in doing this for yourself? Download the worksheet here to try the 4 buckets method.