This should be a crucial realization for anyone out there trying to establish worthwhile intimacy with friends or anyone else as an adult. If you use the idea of scaling in a more abstract sense, you don't get to relentlessly pursue your personal career ambitions AND come out with substantial personal intimate relationships for free. It takes deliberate time and attention to cultivate a worthwhile connection with someone, whether it's your kids, or your parents, or your friends, and that's going to come from the few hours you get after work or on the weekend, or it just simply won't.

This is already very apparent to anyone who still has friends and family back home, wherever you went to school or went to grade school. If when you visit, you tell everyone you're available, you're going to give everyone a small scheduled fraction of time and then hurry yourself off somewhere else, making no more than a shallow appearance. But if you only tell the people you know you can for sure spend a good uninterrupted chunk of time with, then it'll be wildly better