Month: November 2025

Every year, my martial arts team and I do a food drive to support our local food shelter.

One of the most effective initiatives is going door-to-door in our local neighborhoods, dropping off flyers that ask neighbors to leave a bag of food on their porch that Sunday at noon, and then go back and pick up whatever is donated.

The dropping off the flyers door-to-door part can be tedious. Especially in a world where so many of us are used to reaching thousands and thousands with just the push of a button. Going door-to-door lets you reach about one family per minute—and that’s if the flyer even makes it into their hand(s). So after two hours of walking around in the cold, maybe 120ish families will have been reached out to—a number many people would consider inefficient given the digital alternatives.

But I think in a lot of ways, it’s a refreshing perspective resetter.

On social media, people aren’t people—not really at least—they’re numbers, they’re analytics, they’re a part of a glorified game.

When walking house to house—they’re very much people. And the scale of what 100 people really looks like and feels like burns slowly back into perspective. Especially when it involves a lot of walking, in the cold, up and down stairs, one house to the next, one conversation at a time, over the duration of few hours…

I share this in hope that we all—myself included—can continue human-ify our outreach/connection efforts. Pushing a button to reach thousands can certainly work… but face-to-face and in-person might be more of what we need.

Maybe one way to measure relationship importance is to measure it against willingness to be inconvenienced.

In other words: who are you willing to bend over backwards for when you’re busy? Who are you changing plans for in a moment’s notice because they asked? Who are you going out of your way for even when you’re exhausted and don’t feel like it?

The more inconveniences you’re willing to bear for a person, the greater the relationship’s importance. And vice versa.

Does this mean we live our life on another person’s schedule? Or obey another person’s every command like a servant? Or give somebody full access to our energy?

No.

It simply means that certain people have earned time into your schedule—even when it’s packed… that they have earned the right to be served your attention—even when it’s being pulled in a million directions… that they have earned energy access—even when you’re low on stores.

And maybe remembering this can help when people are “inconveniencing you” and you are “inconveniencing” other people.