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STEP THE F*CK UP

How to Audit Your Circle: You're the Average, So Do the Math

By Joshua S. Brogley · September 5, 2026

Part of the series Month Eight: 31 Days of Auditing Who Sharpens You, Who Drains You, Who Stays

You have heard it: you become the average of the people you spend the most time with. You nodded along, the book's Day 213 page says, and never once actually ran the numbers, which is the entire reason it stayed a saying instead of becoming information. So run them. The five people who get most of your hours are voting on your standards, your habits, your ceiling and your idea of normal, every single day, whether or not you invited the vote. They are not doing it deliberately and most would be surprised to hear it. An audit is just looking at the ballot.

Step one: name the five by hours, not by love

The list is not your five closest people. It is the five who actually get the most of your waking time, which often includes a colleague you did not choose, a group chat, a relative, and a friend from 2009 who still has 2026 access by default. Write them down by hours. Most people are surprised by at least one name, and the surprise is the first finding: someone is casting a large daily vote on your life who was never appointed to the position.

Step two: what is each one voting for

One line each. What does time with this person normalize: ambition or complaint, training or drinking, building or reviewing other people's lives, reading or scrolling. Not a character judgment; a description of the average you are being pulled toward. The book's rule for the drainers is diagnostic rather than moral: check your energy after they leave, not your opinion while they are there. Some names will show up as sharpeners you have been under-investing in. Some as neutral. One or two as votes you would not have cast yourself.

Step three: rebalance the hours, not the people

The audit rarely ends in cutting anyone. It ends in hours moved: the sharpener gets the standing weekly slot, the drainer gets less frequency and a boundary stated plainly, the person ahead of you on the road gets a specific respectful ask, and the empty seat stays empty until someone who meets the written standard appears, because empty seats beat wrong people. The Circle Standards on Day 220 are the entry requirements, signed, and the Corner Oath on Day 242 binds you to them too, because standards without reciprocity are just a throne.

Where this sits

Day 213, the first page of Month Eight, People, the math the rest of the month works from. Spotting the drainers is step two in detail; boundaries is what rebalancing looks like out loud; making friends as an adult is how the empty seat gets filled; the Relationships rubric scores the result in the slow book. Five names, by hours, in a certain book that finally runs the numbers.

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How do you evaluate the people in your life?

List the five who get most of your waking hours, not the five you love most, then write one line on what time with each normalizes. Check your energy after they leave, not your opinion while they are there.

Should you cut off friends who hold you back?

Usually not. The audit ends in hours moved: more to the sharpeners, less to the drainers with a plain boundary, a specific ask to someone ahead of you, and an empty seat kept empty until someone meets the written standard.

written by the author, at the kitchen table, after work.