My overall experience is that both happiness and productivity as a function of incidental daily human contact are inverted U curves. The peak of the happiness curve involves more incidental human contact than the peak of the productivity curve. Being on the under-socializing side of both peaks is a widespread issue for many people, including those who define themselves as "introverted". I'm guessing that the friend - family distinction varies depending on each person's individual relationships with those parties.
That is a good summary of how I view this too.
It doesn't touch the issue of "whom you live with" though.
What I want to get people to discuss here is obvious given the title. What has been their experience regarding who and specially how many people they live with, and how that impacted their motivation and happiness.
I don't want to peruse papers on happiness and productivity, because I'm particularly interested in anecdotal tales coming from a Lesswrong sample.
Three pieces of information seem relevant, so if that is okay with whoever comments, I'd ask people to tell us if they consider themselves introverts (recharge batteries by being alone) extroverts, or both. As well as their age and hometown.
The reason I want to have a fuller understanding of this is that I've slowly come to have a strong belief that the main problem with people I know who are suffering, or failing to achieve their goals, is living with fewer tribal affiliates than they "need". And that belief could very well be false or biased.
I'm equally interested in what people think in general about their friends' living situation: "Most of my friends who live with friends experience such and such emotion, but the ones who live with family experience such and such problems with motivation"
as I am in personal experiences.
Following a suggestion about creating topics like this before, I'll put my own case in the comments.