Balancing work with meeting people? Is there a golden mean?

As someone who's doing the whole full-time startup thing in SV now, I have to try to balance between putting work into the project, and building relationships with folks in the startup community. I'm still in very early customer discovery phase, definitely not in the "running a business" phase, and so I can often kill two birds with one stone.

I was wondering if you folks in a similar situation have found a good balance between meeting people and putting work into your startups. With meetups, mixers, hackathons, gatherings 24/7 around SF and SV, it's really easy to get lost and never put any hours into your project. At the same time, it's hard to tell how far you can take a product if you don't know the right people (be it VCs, mentors, potential colleagues etc.), who you might be connecting with at these events.

How much time do you dedicate to "socializing"? Do you consider it "work"? If so, do you value it more or less than say, development?

Thanks!