A whimsical, pastel-colored fantasy map viewed from above, featuring charming landmarks like cozy mushroom houses, gentle mountains, lush forests, serene lakes, winding pathways, and inviting villages

I've been "connected" to the internet for sometime, and like a boiling frog, I failed to notice that I had hundreds of LinkedIn connections, a full contact list on my phone, and was in endless Slack channels—yet I felt strangely disconnected from most of these people. I knew their job titles. I knew which department they worked in. But did I know them? Not really.

This hit me hardest during the pandemic. As I started a new role at a major organization, I found myself on Zoom calls with faces in boxes, each neatly labeled with names and titles. We'd talk deliverables and timelines, share screens and action items, but at the end of the day, I still felt like I was working with strangers. There were forced networking events, you've probably endured many such events, but most of the time they relied on their being a good facilitator, or someone that gave enough of a shit to not make it yet another exercise in corporote dronehood.

It's not that I wanted to be best friends with everyone. I just wanted some human context. Who were these people beyond their function? What shaped them? What mattered to them?

One problem was time. Nobody had time for long, meandering get-to-know-you conversations. We were all drowning in meetings already. The other problem was context, how do you learn about someone in the context of frequent short 30 minute meetings.

So I made up a game. I called it "Life in 5."

The rules were simple: You get 5 minutes to tell your life story, but you can't use the words "work," "school," or "job." I'd go first to model it, then they'd go. Going rapidly through present, past and future. At the end, I'd ask: "How do you typically ask for help? And how do you prefer to receive it?"

The first time I tried it, I worried it would feel forced or awkward. But something surprising happened. The person I was talking with—let's call him Mark—visibly shifted. His shoulders relaxed. He smiled more genuinely. And he told me about growing up on a farm in Minnesota, about his grandfather teaching him to fix engines, about how he approaches problems by taking things apart and putting them back together.

In five minutes, I learned more about how Mark's mind worked than I would have in months of project meetings.

I started doing this with everyone I worked closely with. Sometimes before a big project kicked off. Sometimes just as a way to break the ice. The patterns I noticed were fascinating:

People almost always defaulted to talking about family. Their parents, their grandparents, their kids. These relationships had shaped them far more than any professional experience ever could.

People lit up when talking about childhood interests that they'd carried into adulthood. The woman who collected rocks as a kid and still found peace in nature. The guy who built elaborate LEGO cities and now thought about systems in the same methodical way.

People revealed their values without explicitly naming them. The way someone talked about their community involvement or their approach to friendships told me volumes about what they prioritized.

And the final question about help helped me understand that some people struggle to ask directly but drop hints. Others said they prefer written requests so they can process. Some wanted to be checked on, others preferred space to figure things out.

All this information made working together infinitely easier. I could adapt my style. I could understand where they were coming from. I could see them as whole humans with lives and stories and quirks.

I kept thinking about how different this felt from the way we typically "network" or "connect" professionally. We're trained to collect people like Pokémon cards—the more senior, the more valuable. We store them in our digital rolodexes, occasionally extracting value through an intro or a favor.

It's all so... transactional.

One day, while procrastinating on a presentation, I found myself staring at illustrations of fantasy maps—you know the kind, with tiny mushroom houses and mountains and lakes. Think 2D sprite maps for Middle Earth. Anyway, something clicked. What if, instead of a contact list, I thought about people as inhabitants of a village.

Some would live in mushroom houses (the creative types, the ones who thought differently). Some would dwell in the mountains (the visionaries, the big-picture thinkers). Others would be by the lake (the reflective ones, the listeners).

Each time I played "Life in 5" with someone, they'd move into my mental village. Each subsequent conversation would be like watering a plant—helping that connection grow, seeing how they developed and changed. I wanted to see people spatially, relationally, as part of an ecosystem rather than entries in a database.

I started sketching out my village. It wasn't literal—I wasn't actually drawing people as little figures (though that would be cool). It was more a way of thinking, of remembering people by their stories and qualities rather than their functions.

When I needed help solving a complex problem, I no longer thought, "Who has the right title for this?" Instead, I'd wander through my mental village. "Who thinks in systems? Who's good at spotting patterns? Who brings calm to chaos?"

When I introduced people to each other, I could do it with context that went beyond the professional. "You should talk to Jamie—you both have this amazing ability to find beauty in small details."

The village became a way of honoring the humanity in my connections. Of remembering the things that actually matter about people, not just what they can do for me. It also helped me see what relationships need watering, folks I haven't been in touch with for a while, I'd dedicate a Friday afternoon once a month, and reach out to them.

I've used "Life in 5" with executives before tense negotiations, with new team members feeling isolated, with longtime colleagues I realized I didn't really know. It works almost every time. (There's occasionally resistance from highly analytical folks who find the personal sharing uncomfortable, but even they usually come around when they see the practical benefits.)

The beautiful thing about this approach is that it doesn't require any special tools or platforms. No apps, no subscriptions, no algorithms. It just requires a willingness to see people differently and twenty minutes of genuine attention.

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How to Play "Life in 5"

1. Invite someone to play: "Do you have 15 minutes to connect next week? Great, we can play a game called 'Life in 5.'"

2. Explain the rules: "We'll each take 5 minutes to share our life stories without using three words—work, school, or job."

3. Go first to model the structure:

• Start with your present situation: "I'm [name], I live in [place] with [brief mention of family/living situation]"

• Share something from your past: "My earliest memory is... What it makes me feel is... The values that came from this are..."

• Connect to your future: "The values I'm trying to practice are... The ways I do that are..."

1. Listen to their story: Give them your full attention. Notice what stands out.

2. Close with connection questions: "In what ways do you find yourself asking for help? In what ways do you appreciate receiving help?"

3. Remember what you learned: Notice how this person might fit into your "village" of connections. What makes them unique? What values drive them? How do they prefer to communicate?

4. Water the relationship: Follow up with specific references to what they shared. "I was thinking about what you said about growing up near the ocean..."

5. Repeat with others: Watch your village grow.

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Let me know if you try it!

Here's a Claude Mockup for your journal

https://claude.site/artifacts/7fb46b5e-dd2f-48e3-99a3-ad294c5511a3