The great as friends are for great occasions. One should not make use of great confidence for little things: for that is to waste a favour. The sheet anchor should be reserved for the last extremity... Nothing is more valuable than a protector, and nothing costs more nowadays than a favour.
Baltasar Gracián, 1647 (tr. Joseph Jacobs, 1892)
Influence is a finite balance, and every ask draws it down. The powerful patron, the senior who will vouch for you, the favour a strong relationship can bear, all of these are limited, and the common error is spending them on small conveniences that leave nothing for the one moment that truly needs them. A sheet anchor is the heavy anchor a ship drops only in the worst storm; the maxim's counsel is to treat your best influence the same way. Use ordinary means for ordinary needs, and hold the great favour for the great occasion. The person who calls in a major favour to skip a queue has nothing left when the real crisis arrives.
Practice
- Rank your asks before making them; solve small problems with small means and reserve the powerful favour for what only it can fix.
- Track the balance with each important relationship; every favour drawn needs a deposit, or the account empties (maxim 236 makes obligations in advance).
- Do the ordinary favours yourself and route the big asks sparingly; a patron over-used becomes a patron avoided.
Use this when
- Use this managing relationships with anyone whose help is powerful and finite: mentors, seniors, well-placed friends.
- Use it planning a campaign; sequence your asks so the biggest favour lands when it decides the outcome (maxim 170's reserve, applied to people).
Ignore this when
- Don't hoard influence so completely you never use it; a favour never called and a friendship never drawn on both lapse on their own.
- Don't treat every relationship as a favour-bank; the friends of yourself are not a resource to be metered (maxim 156 keeps that distinction).
A picture of it
The junior has exactly one genuinely powerful mentor, a name that opens doors, and the temptation is to invoke it often, for a reference here, an introduction there. He resists, handles the small things himself, and keeps the mentor's weight unspent for two years. When the one moment comes, a role that would change his career and hangs on a single credible word, the favour is fully charged and the mentor spends it gladly, because it has never been wasted on trifles. The colleague who used his own mentor for every small thing found the account empty on exactly the day it mattered.
Solve small things with small means. Save the sheet anchor for the storm that only it can hold.