Bengaluru Man Posts Excel Sheet To Track Time Spent On Relationships, With 6 Years Of Data

Do you remember how Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory tracked his friends, maintained a list of mortal enemies, and established a three-strikes system to govern his social groups? He and Amy even conducted a social experiment, scoring their friends to decide who would be invited to their wedding.

We all laughed at Sheldon, and the other characters called him quirky and narcissistic. Sheldon Cooper is a fictional character, but there is a real man in Bengaluru who tracks his relationships and friendships and even calculates return on investment (ROI). Yes, that's correct.

Bengaluru Man Shares How He Tracks Relationships 

Taking to X (formerly Twitter), Pankaj shared that he has been building a system called Ziya - a personal CRM for the people in his life. It helps him track context, patterns, interactions, and how he feels after conversations.

"I literally quantify friendships. If someone's ROI stays negative long enough, I stop engaging. Most people called it cold, dystopian, and accused me of treating humans like transactions. But I think pretending time is infinite is worse. So, here's the actual data from six years of tracking. I am not trying to convince anyone. I'm just showing what my numbers say about making new friends," he wrote.

How He Calculates ROI on Relationships

Pankaj creates a table for his potential partners and friends. He documents how they met, how many hours he spent, how many months they have been talking, how the relationship has progressed, its current status, and the ROI.

He shared his data on what it takes to build a meaningful relationship:

From first contact to real conversation, he has to invest 8-12 hours in small talk, sharing context, and finding common ground.
To establish a basic level of trust, he has to invest 45-60 hours over 3-6 months. He added that most people do not make it past this phase.
To reach a deeper level of vulnerability, he has to invest 80-120 hours over 12-18 months.

This brings the total "boot‑up cost" to 128-192 hours. He also shared annual maintenance numbers:

30-40 hours per year to maintain regular contact
12-15 hours for life events such as birthdays, celebrations, and support
7 hours for context updates, like new projects or phases of life

How He Calculates ROI on Friendships

Over six years, Pankaj spent 354 hours with friends. He realised that out of all the people he considered friends, only six actually know him. "I overestimated my emotional bandwidth," he wrote.

"After tracking this for six years, I've realised something I once hated hearing - constantly removing people from your life is mandatory," he noted. "Not because you hate them or because they did something wrong. It's because relationship capacity is fixed. I can maintain roughly 5-8 deep relationships and 10-12 meaningful ones. That's how humans work. Every new person either pushes someone out or dilutes everyone."

He shared that he has only four close friends he has known for 8-12 years, and he spends roughly 400 hours with them. He acknowledged that he could use those same 400 hours to maintain 6-8 new friendships, but they would stay shallow - with repetitive small talk, constant context‑setting, and little depth.

Based on his math, if you meet someone new at age 25:

128 hours are required to establish a baseline
50 hours per year are needed for maintenance
3-5 years are needed to match the depth of existing friendships

And even then, there is a 72-73% chance that the relationship will fail within two years.

"After 23, my friend roster is almost closed for new additions. My default is no. Someone has to be statistically exceptional to enter - not because I am antisocial, but because the math doesn't support it. Instead, I invest in existing close relationships, myself, my skills, health, and things that compound."

He added that while you can still build a network through work, shared interests, and what you create, those connections cannot be labelled as friendships. "Friendship is the (most) expensive and high‑touch relationship tier. Connections are scalable."

Social Media Reaction

One user wrote, "A very weird way to look at life if you calculate the time taken to talk to anyone on an ROI basis." They added that if his idea of connecting is about being "mutually fun for both," he shouldn't expect ROI from people.

Another user questioned, "Constantly removing people from your life is mandatory?" and asked whether he wakes up one day and simply decides to stop talking to someone.

A third called his insights interesting: "The math was brutal, but it is what it is. Thanks for writing this. It's understandable that it felt disturbing to read. The takeaway for those who have good friends is to double down, and for those who don't, to be wiser."

Would you apply the ROI concept to relationships? His approach may seem robotic on the surface, but the underlying message remains: maintaining quality relationships requires consistent effort - so choose your friends and partners wisely.

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