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A simple system I’m using to stay in touch with hundreds of people

• arisAlexis 5y ago
  Integration with Google contacts would be awesome because I already have them all there in groups and with notes.
• harry8 5y ago
  This was the selling point of facebook and why people clicked away their privacy to the great surveillance machine. Note how ridiculous facebook seems as a solution to this problem now? Facebook has to go, delete it. Regulate it hard. Burn it to the ground if that's the only way. The bait and switch /must/ have consequences for ethical reasons IMHO.
• jugglerjer 5y ago
  I love the tips on what to write. I make a Personal CRM called Queue (https://queue.community https://queue.community) and the biggest reason people stop using it is that they just don't know what to say when it's time to reach out. The truth is people on the receiving end of catch up requests are almost always happy to chat, and it's often enough just to say hi.
• tau5210 5y ago
  It depends on the type of relationship to some extent e.g. friends, acquaintances, business relations, etc. But in general, I feel like we are too self-conscious about staying in touch. And often because we have experiences where something happens in our lives and we find ourselves regretting "I wish I had stayed in touch with ----". But when that happens, maybe we can ask ourselves: even if I had stayed in touch, would it really have turned out as I am fantasizing now in my regret? If we think about it carefully, I think the answer is probably no. A meaningful relationship is not that simple nor easy. As others have mentioned, a relationship is two-ways so it takes both sides. And it only takes one to remember occasionally to stay in touch, so if we both were interested in each other, most likely we would have remained in touch already. And even if we had not, it's never too late. With such relations, I find that I can just reach out now and resume the same relationship no matter how much time passes in between. Even in the worst case where I don't have the contact anymore, if I were truly determined, I will do everything I can to find a way to reach that person. On the other hand, a shallow relation is bound to not get too far: it will fail (or break, or be lost, etc) at some point in one way or another anyway. So it most likely wouldn't have turned out as my regret is fantasizing anyway.
• patwater10 5y ago
  I too live for the honor of being a line in someone's spreadsheet
• tekknik 5y ago
  My approach is I don’t have hundreds of people I need to contact regularly. It works very well. This very procedural method of communication reeks of compassion. /s
• lord-bazooka 5y ago
  I had built a free app to automate periodic tasks like this: https://tododock.com https://tododock.com
• mannykoum 5y ago
  This is pretty cool! You can even add a birthday reminder; or even a name-day reminder if you're greek and my father who's kinda obsessive with these things.
• TheSisko 5y ago
• mro_name 5y ago
  would have expected a plain text aproach.
• tomdekan 5y ago
  A great system!
• degosuke 5y ago
  What I tried some time ago, was putting people as projects in my trello board (I had it set up as a GTD board with a separate column for Projects). And each time I did a review I wrote a comment like: "Didn't do anything recently" or "Seen last weekend, X and Y was lot of fun". And when I felt it was time to reach out I did - if not it waited for the next review.
• ggm 5y ago
  Hi %famous-person% have my free %upvote-or-acknowledgement% for implementing a %faux-human-response%. Do I now have to do traffic analysis on my received mails to detect which ones have suspicious periodicity to measure my A,B or C-dom? D I know: its the Christmas form letter.
• MrYellowP 5y ago
  So he's treating people like assets, not friends, and these assets need to be checked on on a regular basis. If there were friends, he'd not need to be reminded of contacting them. He'd miss contacting them. So instead he needs a tool to remind him of that "friend" he needs to contact, because pretending to care is beneficial. One might some day need them. It's incredibly sad that his social life, or rather: the illusion of a social life, is being dictated by a machine.
  • batushka3 5y ago
    For so long we were (and still are) called a human resource, whole departments and studies devoted for human resource management. Treating people like assest fits here.
    • MrYellowP 5y ago
      Doesn't make it okay. At all. "Human resources" is dehumanizing. Treating people like assets is dehumanizing. If I told my friends that I had software reminding me of contacting them, they'd consider that we're not actually friends, because friends don't need to be reminded of friends. When there's no bond reminding me, then they're not friends. One cares about friends. When you forget about them, then you're not actually caring.
      • Aeolos 5y ago
        It appears that you feel strongly about this and that is ok. I would only ask you to please be kind to people who do not share your experiences, social skills or background, e.g. introverts, people suffering from social anxiety, people who are on the spectrum or have ADHD... Hundreds of millions of people, who are fully cable of caring, loving and having close friends, yet have trouble maintaining friendships not because they are bad friends, but because their brains and emotions work differently through no choice or fault of their own. If such a tool can help someone maintain a close friendship that would otherwise have fizzled, then that tool has made the world a slightly better place. I don't expect this to change your opinion, but it might be useful to hear a different perspective.
• lelandfe 5y ago
  If I read a post on my friend’s blog exposing that their occasional texts had genesis in an automation and not genuine interest I would try very hard to not talk to that person Unsubscribe, please
  • admjs 5y ago
    I’d say that the genesis is a genuine interest in keeping in touch, automation is managing the process. I get behind on messages with my closest friends/family, and then I have a large network of professional/semi-personal relationships to maintain. I empathise why the OP would do this.
  • H8crilA 5y ago
    I trust you don't use a calendar to keep track of birthdays, otherwise people will try very hard not to talk to you.
    • MrYellowP 5y ago
      Implying that forgetting a date and forgetting a person are equivalent.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • watwut 5y ago
        The system is not solving the "I forgot this person exists" issue. It is solving the "nothing prompts me to contact this person without having reason to" issue.
        • p_l 5y ago
          Or "nothing overcomes issues that say do not contact, you're not worth their time"
      • thrav 5y ago
        When you have ADHD, things often only come to mind via triggers, and many people in the tech community have ADHD.
• gostsamo 5y ago
  Let me just point that the messages must be genuine and thoughtful. It is written in the article, but it seems that some people failed to notice it and accuse the author of objectivization and hypocrisy.
  • MrYellowP 5y ago
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • gostsamo 5y ago
      Original meaning of genuine is that is original and truthful and not "looks original and truthful". Also, you just make assumptions about the person and his motivations which speaks more about you than about him. From the article: > Most importantly, I always send the kind of messages I’d like to receive. They’re short, genuine, and (ideally) helpful. I never try to sell anything and there’s no agenda other than to keep in touch.
    • inopinatus 5y ago
      You’re gatekeeping the authenticity of someone else’s relationships. This tells us more about you, than it does about them.
  • smilespray 5y ago
    They would be genuine and thoughtful if the system didn't rely on previously prepared notes such as "He publishes incredible posts on his blog". This system is more akin to how a politician or salesperson manages personal interaction for maximum effect — there's a lof of method but little sincerity involved. I'm not saying the system isn't useful to some degree, but this is a bit much for me.
    • gostsamo 5y ago
      The prepared notes are for people of interest and not someone considered a contact. The goal is not to extract something, but to maintain and expand. Again, from the article: > Most importantly, I always send the kind of messages I’d like to receive. They’re short, genuine, and (ideally) helpful. I never try to sell anything and there’s no agenda other than to keep in touch.
• ferran_r 5y ago
  Actually this is sad
  • greyman 5y ago
    As I understand this, it shouldn't be primarily for close friends, but for other people. For example, some journalist wrote a very interesting article, so I sent him an email, he answered, maybe we exchanged one more email, and that was it. Now with this system I would get a reminder 6 months later to reach him again. Why not? It can develop into online friendship or something good can happen out of it. If I don't do it, just nothing happens with that person anymore. And if I tell myself that I don't need to contact this journalist anymore, then ok, I will not put him into the system. Still, I would be curious to learn how many people he has in his system.
• Paul_S 5y ago
  The next logical step is to have AI (GPT-3?) read the social posts of the contact and produce an email based on that and the last email. I hope the poor people on the other end of the author's networking scheme also have AI to read this and reply.
  • toxik 5y ago
    People definitely do this on matchmaking sites!
    • keithalewis 5y ago
      Just ask Eric Schmidt. Oh, wait. Whacky parsed as ad making sites. Nevermind. Didn't that guy write something about AI with another guy named Henry? Is AI trying to get us mad or get us laid? Somebody needs to write a program to figure that out and turn it into DoggyDuJourCoin. I heard you can make easy money doing that. It's all good. Who wants to bother with thinking when computers can do that for us now. I'm sure nobody is trying to take advantage of people who don't do that. #PTBarnum
  • gardaani 5y ago
    Silicon Valley had an episode about a similar idea and it didn't end well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEzvFiR_Dts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEzvFiR_Dts
  • avgcorrection 5y ago
    That’s a logical leap. No part of the interaction is automated.
    • jbuhbjlnjbn 5y ago
      The timing is automated.
      • avgcorrection 5y ago
        The timing of birthdays is “automated”. Irrelevant.
• admjs 5y ago
  I have a similar system, not for friends, but for acquaintances, business connections etc. I have a google sheet and a google script, the script runs once per day and checks the last time I emailed them or they emailed me. If it’s too long ago it adds a reminder to my calendar for that day. It’s simple and means I don’t have to remember to use the system.
  • p8pPaTH6AiDdGxi 5y ago
    I'm also trying to build my own in a quick easy way. Could you share with me your sheet (with private info removed) so I can work from that?
  • MrYellowP 5y ago
    • ant6n 5y ago
      What's the point of networking. I used to not care for decades, now I wish I'd spent more time and effort on it.
      • cpach 5y ago
        Networking can be very valuable. And some people definitely suffer because they have done too little of it and therefore missed out on valuable opportunities. With that said, I haven’t used any system for keeping in touch with people.
• fpopa 5y ago
  I resonate so much with this, it felt very easy to fall out of touch with people that I had closer some time ago. I've actually started building a more niche version of cal.com|calendly that focuses exactly on this but with a twist for coffee :) the main differentiator being setting a "time limit" that reminds you to meet X. Very similar to this A,B,C or D system. It feels robotic, but if it helps someone that's enough for me.
• zephyr9 5y ago
  Something that really freaks me out about the world is how much power tech people have and that their sociopathic behaviour, like treating all your personal relationships as transactional data, is considered a "simple system".
  • WastingMyTime89 5y ago
    It’s not a tech thing and is not sociopathic. Sells have been keeping cards on their customers for centuries and a whole category of software exists for that, CRMs. I personally can’t remember the names and ages of all the children of all the people I interact with. I still take the time to take notes about it when I can and review them before seeing someone. I still think it’s better than not caring at all. Reading the comments on this discussion it seems that a significant part of HN is suddenly discovering that fostering relationships and keeping a network alive actually requires work.
    • lmm 5y ago
      > Sells have been keeping cards on their customers for centuries And they've been seen as greasy, superficial, fakers for just as long.
      • p_l 5y ago
        Because unlike someone trying to keep in touch, you always knew they were just angling to sell something to you. Not because they kept a rolodex or used manual or computerised CRMs.
        • lmm 5y ago
          The point is that maybe it's more than coincidence that rolodexes or CRMs are used primarily by people who are pretending to be friendly in the hopes of getting something out of it.
          • p_l 5y ago
• 3qz 5y ago
  I would immediately block someone if I found out they were doing this to me. Disgusting behaviour.
• alexb_ 5y ago
  It's completely and utterly superficial. You just cannot stay in touch with hundreds of people - it's not possible, unless you are doing so superficially and treating "friends" as "things I need to check up on so I don't lose a node to a network of people that might be helpful to me". Completely maxed out, humans can only have about 150 friends[1]. Trying to have more is just not being genuine. And think about the other side of this - what if you learned someone you thought actually cared about you, or that you actually considered a friend, was using a fucking automated system to "stay in touch". It's sociopath behavior. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
  • kzisme 5y ago
    Thanks for that link! I was trying to remember what the number/theory was called.
  • throwit1q2e3r 5y ago
    I would be happy that they valued me enough to add to their automation, and I would probably set up some automation to remind me to talk to them, and we would be automation buddies. Sounds a lot more fun than the likely alternative, that we never talk to each other again.
  • mlatu 5y ago
    > It's sociopath behavior. You say that out of the privilege of neurotypicallity. "Sociopaths" (as you seem to call people who use this or similar approaches for keeping in touch) also need to live their lives. Alternatively, is it your opinion they should be all locked up and put away with?
• ar_imani 5y ago
  Actually, it is a helpful system to be in touch with ex-coworker or colleagues or even some old classmates, but a sad one for friends and relatives.
• robtherobber 5y ago
  Sounds like the system could be created using https://www.monicahq.com/ https://www.monicahq.com/ Personally, I never had the discipline to turn this into a useful tool, but I definitely see the value in it from the perspective suggested by the author.
• nanna 5y ago
  Could imagine you could do something like this in Emacs org mode just by keeping a repeated SCHEDULED: datestamp under someone's name, say in a file called contacts.org? Using airtables seems a bit overengineered * Contacts * Alissa p hacker SCHEDULED: <2022-03-14 Mon .+3m>
• camillomiller 5y ago
  "We needed a tutor So built a computer And programmed ourselves not to see The truth and the lying The dead and the dying A silent majority"
• jkirsteins 5y ago
  There seems to be a non-fringe sentiment that "this is pretending to care" or "you can't automate friendship", etc. I see where it's coming from, and I agree to some extent - I wouldn't want to be contacted "for the sake of it". Feeling like it's a chore for the other person that they have to get through, in the hopes of some (maybe financial?) reward at the end of it. However, I think this approach warrants some defense against the "I would purposefully avoid people like this" reaction. Using myself as an example - I have considered doing something similar, and I liked the article a lot. And it's not because I "want to hack some serendipity", but because I genuinly have a hard time finding enough time for all the things that matter in life. Having a system in place doesn't mean it's fake, it means you are prioritizing this aspect of your life (i.e. you care enough) and are finding ways to fit it into everything else you have going on. In a normal workday I spend ~9 hours in "work mode". I want to fit in ~1-2h of running every day to counteract my sedentary lifestyle. I need to spend some quality time with the immediate family (wife and kids) - let's say ~2 hours. And there are additional little everyday tasks that need to happen every day - shopping, helping kids with their homework, doing the dishes, etc. How much time does this leave to socialize? I will occasionally think of some friend or another, and miss them. But I won't have time to reach out in the moment. And then - e.g. when the weekend comes - who do I reach out to? Do I spend every saturday just calling everybody in a row? I enjoy catching up with my friends, but it takes a lot of energy for me. I can't feasibly reach out to everybody in a given weekend - it would leave me completely drained, and exhausted. So I prioritize. I try to reach out to people I haven't spoken to in a longer time period. Or people I know have had some life event happen recently, etc. I try to find a way to keep in touch with most people, instead of just a few of them. But here's my issue - it's hard to remember how to schedule who to get in touch with, and when. "Did I last talk to X 1 week or 2 weeks ago? Should I get in touch with Y instead?" etc. Now, I could start taking paper notes, or look at my calendar, etc. But at this point I'm setting up some mental system to help me with the scheduling. Which is basically just a different (possibly less efficient) flavor of what's described in the article. Now, maybe I'm projecting, and this doesn't apply to many others. But please consider - if you feel someone in your life is reaching out through automated means - that they might really care, and just have a hard time figuring out how to do it otherwise. If scheduling catch ups comes naturally to you, it might not to others. (and I know the article mentions "serendipity" and is not necessarily about catching up with close friends. I think it works well for both)
• horstmeyer 5y ago
  Someone made a tool for this purpose: https://github.com/monicahq/monica https://github.com/monicahq/monica "You may call it cheating but considering my poor memory, I call it caring."
  • eddieroger 5y ago
    I tried Monica for the reason in the quote - I don't try to be a bad friend, but I'm forgetful, and I was hoping it would make my life a little easier by being a digital memory in the absence of a good meat-based one. I found the learning curve and the way they viewed capturing data to be just a little too opposed to how I wanted to use it, unfortunately. Particularly, I was invested in the idea of moving all of my contacts in to it and letting it be the source of truth on my phone, but the friction to import my contacts was high, and once I did, the way to log interactions with people, specifically colleagues from work, was very challenging. I'd love to hear of others who are successfully using it, because I'm always game to try twice.
    • ksun 5y ago
      This is the reason I started Dex (YC S19) -- tried Monica and while it solved the right problem I found it a heavy -- it felt like to much work. To be a single source of truth I wanted to import from Facebook / LinkedIn etc, and I didn't find it possible with Monica. (plug: Dex does)
• leathersoft 5y ago
  Interesting. I’ve got to say, a bit cold, but I agree that is definitely better than no reach outs at all.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• kzisme 5y ago
  At least for me when friendships/relationships become transactional it loses a lot of the value. This method of staying in touch feels _very_ transactional, and I just imagine sending some random person you spoke to a few times in high school/university a message every 6 months - 1 year. Some people aren't meant to be in your life forever, and that's okay! However, there the people you choose to make time for will stick around.
• jb1991 5y ago
  Oh good god. The things people do, like every aspect of life can be automated with code.
  • TuLithu 5y ago
    I know, right? This is kind of how I feel about org mode (in Emacs).
• dan-robertson 5y ago
  I’m a bit surprised by the negative reactions here. I don’t think the post is saying “I use a tool to remind me to talk to my spouse/close/friends/family” so much as “having weak social connections is more useful for both sides than not having them at all and I have a tool to help me do the work of maintaining them”. Two things which I think are acceptable and similar are: 1. Contacts who mostly just exchange Christmas cards (but what a bad way of staying in touch! One year my dad decided he was sick of Christmas cards and he would just call his acquaintances and talk to them instead, which seemed a better way to do things) 2. Maintaining business relationships. E.g. maybe you meet someone from some other company at a conference and then email a bit and decide there isn’t some business you currently want to do with them (eg their product is unsuitable) but you may still want to keep in touch in case they offer something new or may remember you and mention your services to someone else or vice versa. I don’t think people would be so upset to hear that someone they worked with had some reminder system to help maintain such relationships.
  • butwhywhyoh 5y ago
    Sorry, under no circumstances would I EVER want to be a part of someone's automated list of "weak connections". And it sounds like I'm not alone.
• lars512 5y ago
  Many people have mentioned Monica, which is what I use for this. I live overseas from loved ones and old friends, meaning there are few natural cues to encourage communication. Without very regular chats my memory doesn't let me be as in context with the major things happening in their lives as I need to be to have meaningful conversations with them. Monica helps with both of these things. Getting reminders only really helps if the interactions themselves are also rewarding when you do them. If, say, calling an elderly family member feels more like a chore, it's easy to end up skipping the reminders more than you'd like.
  • iamkroot 5y ago
    Do you have a link to this? Every search query I try produces results for the character Monica from Friends. Seems like exceptionally poor SEO, heh.
    • trowawee 5y ago
      https://www.monicahq.com/ https://www.monicahq.com/
      • iamkroot 5y ago
        Grazie!
  • banana_maker 5y ago
    Chiming to say that I also use a self-hosted instance of Monica. I hop between a lot of projects and hobbies so I tend to be a bit scatterbrained. Having a central store of my contacts, past events, their likes/dislikes is extremely useful for me.
• inter_netuser 5y ago
  This should be SaaSified and sold for $5/15/25 per month, with AI-generated trivial empty messages. Also, you could sign-up for the antipode service, for only $50 a month, which will reply on your behalf to such AI-generated postcards. Soon, we'll just have chatbots congratulating each other on birthdays and such. Isn't life wonderful? /s
• genezeta 5y ago
  Derek Sivers seems kinda cool. I mean, I used to read him back in the times of CDBaby and he seemed like a nice person. Of course, I can only say he seems so because I haven't really met him. I don't know him. Later, I would receive some of his emails and while they always did feel honest and thoughtful, I always understood we'd never even talked to each other. Sometimes I could think it was "just a commercial email" to present this book or whatever. Other times he would just sort of talk, about things in his life, "without anything to sell". But whatever the case it was clear I was "on a list". ---- I keep very few contacts. Probably too few. There's only a handful of people I talk to regularly. There is a woman I love quite dearly and we talk on the phone maybe once a week, sometimes less, sometimes more. Some other very close friends, less than I can count on my fingers, and again we talk occasionally, randomly. Maybe every few days, maybe once a month or less. I have been postponing visiting them because of other personal circumstances, but we know that's just how things are at the moment and that we'll see each other "soon". Those friendships will not disappear even if, for whatever reason, we don't get a chance to talk or see each other for a couple of months or longer. There's also a larger number of acquaintances. Friends, but less close. Ex-coworkers or ex-colleagues. There's this group that likes, say, comic books and I'm giving away my collection. So I might just throw an email in their direction because I remember they liked that. Someone may be interested. We'll meet and talk about whatever past and present we may have in common -or not-, maybe have a drink or a tea or maybe not, I'll give them the comics and then maybe I won't see them again for years. Maybe forever, because life is that way and you never know. ---- I've always felt Derek's approach to keeping in contact... interesting. I mean, if that works for him, then great. But I think that the system is a lot more for his benefit than for the benefit of the relationships themselves. And again, great for him. I mean it. But I don't feel the need for such a system for myself and I feel like not many people do.
  • sivers 5y ago
    Thanks for this feedback. For what it's worth, the “keep in touch with hundreds” system I describe in this post is not the one you've encountered me using. It sounds like you're just on my list, as you said. The “keep in touch” approach is more for the people you meet in-person, say if you go to conferences and meet 50 people in a weekend, or are out working as a musician constantly meeting fellow music industry people while on the road. It's different than the “broadcast → follow” relationship.
• adnmcq999 5y ago
  • smilespray 5y ago
    That was my first thought, too. Then I thought, I should probably make more of an effort to stay in touch with people. Just not this way.
    • jakobgreenfeld 5y ago
      What could be a good alternative?
      • smilespray 5y ago
        I'm going to set aside an hour every couple of weeks and do it manually. Any automation beyond that would feel a little fake or forced to me, personally.
        • terafo 5y ago
          I don't think that's a good idea. If you set aside some time every few weeks to do that it won't fell good. You will be contacting many people in the little span of time and won't be able to have a conversation with all of them. On the other side, if you have your contact reminders distributed so you have just a couple of them per day, that way you can really care about each and every time you contact a person.
          • smilespray 5y ago
            Well, what I had in mind was just to set aside some time to think about friends and contacts and get in touch with people I haven't spoken to in a while, then follow up organically from there. In fact I just called up two people today to see what was going on in their lives. You do your thing, and I'll do mine. :)
• yokoprime 5y ago
  This is terrible. If this is in a professional setting, use a CRM. If you put your friends in a "CRM" with SLAs a and reminders to "touch base" ... you don't have friends.
• mb_72 5y ago
  Hmmm, I would never use such a system as for one thing - if people aren't contacting me, why should I care about contacting them? I have several 'best friends', maybe twice that 'friends', and then a bunch more I interact with sometimes, and I feel this is relatively normal. Also, I don't care actually if it's not normal, and don't feel I'm missing out on anything. That said, I'm quite the introvert and generally value time by myself over time with others. Still, if this is what works for the author, and they feel they need to 'keep in touch', and that describing such a system helps other people, then good for them. Someone else using this system doesn't hurt me in any way, in fact if I was contacted by someone AND found out about the system behind it, my curiosity about how it worked might lead to a new deeper friendship.
  • p_l 5y ago
    I often have a mismatch between communication styles leading to problems with such reciprocal expectation about contact like you describe - especially since I try to be conscientous about other people's time. In fact, the more I care, the harder it is to possibly interrupt someone who might be in middle of something important to them. I see this system as a way of preventing backsliding into rarer and rarer interactions when they aren't pushed by common activities.
  • pjerem 5y ago
    > if people aren't contacting me, why should I care about contacting them? That’s my current main interrogation in life and honestly, I have not found the answer. I feel alone, but I have a fair number of "old friends" I barely contact anymore. I want to keep in touch but don’t know what to say. And they don’t spontaneously contact me, neither do I. It’s a chicken and egg problem. Maybe people don’t care about me. But they could feel the same about me. Am I strange or is everyone just bad at keeping in touch ? The few times I did spontaneously contact old friends, it was pretty cool. We had some drink and updates, and enjoyed it. So I think it’s just we are all bad. But it’s exhausting.
    • alisonatwork 5y ago
      This. I tend to move countries every few years, which means I leave many of my friends behind. For a while, social media was a good way to keep in touch, but nowadays nobody I know regularly logs in to social media any more (me included), so that route is gone. About a year ago I decided to start doing a 3-6 month email blast, like those family holiday letters people used to send in the snail mail days. About half my friends I wasn't able to find their email addresses, and when I contacted them on social media they didn't reply. The other half received the email blast, but only two or three have ever responded. You'd think this means none of my friends are "real friends". But I have since then run into a few of those people in person and it was like nothing changed, our friendship continued how it was years ago for an afternoon or an evening. So I don't think it's that other people don't want to maintain the friendship, it's more that we have kinda lost the knowledge of how to keep in touch. And I'm not sure how to fix it.
• TuLithu 5y ago
  It never ceases to amaze me how computer programmers can take the simplest things and make them mind-numbingly complex. Oy ve (and yes, I'm a programmer)! But if it makes him happy, more power to him.
  • p_l 5y ago
    Some things are simple to some people - and cripplingly hard to others :/
• verytrivial 5y ago
  Jakob is clearly the bottleneck here. Surely GPT3 or something could write these mundane "messages" for him? So inefficient. With a bit of luck and some elbow grease he could sell this as a service. To his friends. Then they'd never have to think about each other ever again.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• mettamage 5y ago
  Some comments here claim that he is treating people not as friends. IMO these comments are not charitable a interpretation. While it is a plausible interpretation, I have strongly learned from HN to be charitable and optimistic when reading someone else's point of view. I know with topics like this that perspectives vary more wildly among people, so let me show you why I can be more optimistic in my interpretation. I think it's perfectly fine to separate emotions and reason like this. The reason: I am on the other side when it comes to managing my friends: I am not separating reason and emotion. Because of that, I am failing hard at staying in touch with people that I would like to stay in touch with (I am noticing it with certain friends of my as well). I am succeeding to stay in touch with a few people, but if I'd have a system like this I might be able to stay in touch with many more people that I'd like to stay in touch with anyway but for some unknown reason have some sort of blockade or friction. Other than that I think the interpretation is not charitable enough, I also have personal experience that it might be wrong. For example, I view the dating markets strictly from a market perspective that is heavily inspired by micro-economics and "common sense". Initially, such a perspective is detached from emotion, but there are certain points where it is attached (e.g. with supply/demand questions like: "what do I want/need from a partner" or "What can I offer? What do I want to offer? What do I need to offer?"). Moreover, upon meeting people there is empathy, sympathy and human intuition involved. Sometimes the emotions will be so strong that I have a compulsion towards meeting a person again (e.g. falling in love). Those emotions are not helping! Sometimes I feel the right amount that is also in line with my other needs and in other cases I don't feel enough about a certain person when I don't see them (but when I do see them, I am delighted to catch up). Management of personal life != how people are on a moment by moment basis in personal life I think by having a system like this, you can put Dunbar's number to shame.
  • gjulianm 5y ago
    I get thinking about a system like this. I have given some thought about building something similar, but always ended up abandoning it for the exact same reasons this post strikes me as extremely weird: - It feels weird classifying people in boxes of desired contact frequency. How do you decide that? Does the author think "I honestly don't care enough about this person to contact them more than once a year" ? Then why are these people still "friends"? - Lack of flexibility. Organic relationships will have different contact frequencies over time. For example, I might have inconsistent contacts with a friend that I've known for a long time because of reasons, but if they're having a rough time I will probably be more attentive and want to contact them more frequently. - Relationships are two-way, so you'd expect that the other part initiates contact a significant amount of the times. Given the myriad of ways that contact can happen, updating the database for hundreds of people can be a real hassle. The fact that this is not mentioned at all indicates that a lot of these might be one-way relationships, not actual friendships. - I find it really really hard to write non-artificial messages when contacting on a schedule. Maybe the first one can be believable, but the second or third time you contact someone without any obvious trigger, it starts to feel weird. I think most people would catch wind that the other person is not contacting organically but on some kind of schedule, and I guess it could make them feel really weird about it: "This person doesn't really think of me, doesn't see any of my social media/blog/whatever updates... why are they contacting me?" I understand what other people are saying in the comments about forgetting to contact people or being too busy, and needing reminders. But I don't think that's the same problem the author is solving.
• unkulunkulu 5y ago
  I see this easily implementable in Obsidian with Dataview plugin, with random notes about ppl to boot. Like gift ideas etc. I have notes for important people in my life anyway cause I have terrible memory :/
• scotty79 5y ago
  > Of course, not everyone publishes content or updates regularly. In that case, I usually just ask what they’ve been up to lately. > You’d be surprised how many people are really happy to get these kinds of messages and they often spark all kinds of deeper conversations. I had an acquaintance I barely had any common interests with that every few weeks out of the blue would ask me "what's up?". Not once did it lead to any value for me or him and just mildly annoyed me and made me less likely to cooperate if he ever needed help. I'd still help him, because I'm a helpful person but I'd have more mixed feelings about it than if he was just memory of last pleasant interaction from few years prior than fresh memory of scheduled networking/nagging. I think if you can't personalize approach to provide value to that person with your interactions you should skip keeping in touch because you might be worse off.
  • soapdog 5y ago
    An important aspect of this kind of workflow — one that is kinda glossed over in the convo here — is that the relationship one have with a contact is fluid. If the convo with a contact is cool, and you're both having fun, you're probably gonna bump to more frequent exchanges, while if the contact never seems to engage, you're probably going to bump them down or even remove them from the workflow. There is no point in annoying people. Clearly, this acquaintance of yours is not taking your lack of response into account. Or, they're just trying to get closer to you and you might be reading their message as inpersonal when it is actually genuine. Anyway, I can't see myself sending multiple messages per month to someone who never answers back.
  • nlh 5y ago
    You know it's funny - I read your comment earlier today and it stuck out because I have one old acquaintance who does the same thing -- we really weren't that close when we lived in the same city but he still pings me every once in a while just to say "what's up?". For some reason I find it exceedingly annoying, although I generally really like staying in touch with people. Anyway, as if his ears were burning, he actually sent me a "what's up?" text about 5 minutes ago (first time in a year). So I had to come back here and comment because the timing was just too perfect :)
• bencollier49 5y ago
  Just use a spreadsheet? Does having a list of friends on a spreadsheet make you a data controller?
• brthsim 5y ago
  [flagged]
  • dang 5y ago
    Could you please read and follow the site guidelines when posting here? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Note these: "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
    • brthsim 5y ago
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• globular-toast 5y ago
  The bad reactions here make me wonder what is an acceptable way to stay in contact with your friends. Consider the enormous popularity of social networking. What is that for if not to help you to stay in contact with people? Why is that OK but this isn't? People used to (some still do) write Christmas cards to everybody in their address book. Many of these would be people they had made zero contact with over the year. Again, why is that OK but this isn't? I wonder if it's because this makes it too obvious what is going on. It fits a pattern I've noticed in general. People need plausible deniability. When things are made explicit like this, people don't like it. Remember how long it took online dating to become popular? Part of that was how explicit it was. You were basically shouting "I am lonely and wish I had a partner". That was too much for many. Even now the popular online dating apps nurture plausible deniability (only on there for a laugh, to "meet people", to "make friends" etc.)
  • codesforhugs 5y ago
    For me personally the difference is that with social networking I'm reacting to something someone else posted or vice versa, which makes it organic. Being cold contacted on the other hand generally results in exchanges that feel stilted and weird to me.
• RamblingCTO 5y ago
  I don't understand the problems with this approach and I might adapt it. I have a bunch of business connections, but refrain from contacting them because A) social anxiety and B) not thinking about them because I'm drowning in daily business and life is hectic af sometimes. It would actually be very helpful to get reminded once in a while to do some "relationships" stuff (which I'm not good at). Of course you should be very mindful about using this. If you think of a person, write them, if you don't want to write them because you feel like you don't add any value for them, don't. Sounds easy to me. /e: I also wonder if this could be done with notion instead.
• jakub_g 5y ago
  My main issue with keeping in touch with people is that texting someone you only vaguely know is kinda weird. You don't see the other person, you don't hear them, you can't know what's in their mind. Those exchanges often just hang in a weird void after a few texts and it's unsure when/how to continue from there. On the other hand, calling someone you don't know well (even someone you do know!) feels even weirder and more invasive those days. I don't remember when I last called someone else than my close family (and very close friends upon first fixing a date/time for the call).
  • adwww 5y ago
    Yeah I tried giving up social media for a while and just texting my actual friends etc instead. It works for the groups of friends that we have active WhatsApp groups with. But especially texting friends of the opposite sex - now that we're grown up, married, etc - just feels invasive, unless it's asking a specific question, or to arrange something.
    • endymi0n 5y ago
      I feel exactly the same, and honestly, it keeps me from approaching some people I‘d like to. If anyone has figured out a pretext or mental framework for warming up conversations that have effectively died long ago, I would be delighted to know about it.
      • stackbutterflow 5y ago
        I make sure to end each conversation properly. Something like "I have to go, I have something to do, that was nice talking to you". That way you can start a new conversation 6 months later and it doesn't feel awkward.
        • goostavos 5y ago
          To muddy the waters, I'd find this super duper weird. I've never had a chain of texts end with a formal "close" to the conversation. Doubly so since texting is async. I'd finally look at your "I have to go" message hours after you sent it and be confused at the update.
• pitouli 5y ago
  With my brother, we recently created a small app dedicated to this task: https://app.kipinto.ch https://app.kipinto.ch It's available on the web, on Android and on iOS, under the name Kipinto This app is not specifically targeted to follow your friends, which happens quite naturally, but more to keep in touch with those persons that you consider important but with whom you have no "natural" occasion to interact: an old colleague or client for example. You can see screenshots on the website https://kipinto.ch https://kipinto.ch or on the app stores, but description is in French (even if the app is available in English) An interesting observation we have done, is that by making the effort of taking notes of what you talked about, you remember better --even without reading the notes-- next time you see the person. It can feel "disgusting", but in fact the effort of keeping contact with a person when it is not easy to do so should be seen as a positive sign of your intention to strengthen this relationship.
  • ship3x 5y ago
    I'd like to test it. Can you make it available to download in the UK? Currently seems to be unavailable. Thanks!
    • pitouli 5y ago
      :O My bad, I completely forgot that the beta has been opened only to French speaking countries, but I can correct that. In the meantime, you can test it with the webapp if you want: if you are satisfied, your account will be synced across all your devices so you will not lose anything. (Obviously, if you test with an anonymous account, you will have to "upgrade" it to an "identified" account to be able to connect to it on another device) Feel free to share feedback!
• viach 5y ago
  If these other people have similar systems you could even authomate it via shared API so that they are just doing ping-pong of howareyou-imfine. Win-win!
• VBprogrammer 5y ago
  My first reaction to this was it feels a little bit icky. However, on reflection, there are a number of people who I'd consider my closest friends who, partially due to the pandemic, I've not seen in a few years and we haven't ever been in the habit of talking regularly. I think having a systematic way of remembering to reach out to some of these people would definitely have been a net positive.
• giords 5y ago
  "simple system" -> requires engineering skills and a full article to explain it. Keeping social interactions this way is kind of sad and gray, just keep less people around but with some quality time invested for them.
  • terafo 5y ago
    But if you have those skills, it's pretty simple. And most people here do have them.
  • avgcorrection 5y ago
    Is scheduling social events through a personal calendar also sad and grey?
• jakobov 5y ago
  I also do this and it's really nice. But use a recurring Google calendar event. Way more simple
• wccrawford 5y ago
  Reading this, I also came up with a simple system. It call it an "address book". Write people's names in it, along with their contact info. Feel free to use paper or digital. Once in a while, look at the list. If you see someone's name and think, "I wonder how they're doing?", contact them. It's a lot more organic than scheduling the contacts, and it'll feel more organic to the recipients, too.
  • josefrichter 5y ago
    Sir, is a bitter comment like this necessary?
    • wccrawford 5y ago
      I was aiming for "helpful" to people who think they need hundreds of contacts and are looking to maintain actual relationships with them, and not just fulfill quotas. I am far from social, but it's pretty obvious to me that scheduling contacts with people is not normal and is likely to feel stilted, and not providing the desired result in the end.
      • josefrichter 5y ago
        I beg to differ. There may be millions of reasons why you grew disconnected from someone. Don't you have situations where you think I wish I had more regular contact with this person, because he/she seemed like a genuine good egg? What's wrong with making the extra effort and actually create a reminder for yourself to at least say hi once in a while? And vice versa - would you feel bad getting contacted by someone whom you worked with years ago, just asking how you're doing, and not actually wanting anything from you?
  • iamben 5y ago
    I get the point you're making. That said there are definitely people in my life that are (very obviously) better and worse at reaching out, and I assume it's similar for most people? I have friends who are phenomenal at reaching out frequently, saying "whatcha up to, shall we get a drink?" I also have friends who (because of family, work, location, whatever) will never do this, but absolutely jump at the chance to meet if you offer them one. I'm not suggesting those who are good at contacting people use some sort of scheduling tool - it's probably just that their personality type suits doing it and they're usually the middle of a social group. Some people are naturally better at this kind of thing than others, right? So I absolutely see the advantage of giving yourself a mental nudge to call, message or email people. I don't think it's in the slightest in-organic and I doubt a single person would think "oh, it's 6 months to the day I last spoke to this person" - more so they'd probably just think "oh, it was nice to hear from X". I have an alert to call my mum / dad every week or so. I don't always do it, but I appreciate the reminder and they appreciate the call. I'll probably give this kind of set up a go at some point.
• kanonieer 5y ago
  My immediate reaction to this: this is a form of sociopathic behavior. Then, I read the comments and saw that every person who came to the same conclusion is downvoted to hell. So I'm just adding this comment in solidarity with people who possess some sort of emotional intuition / "yikes radar". You're not alone.
  • scatters 5y ago
    Have you considered that your emotional intuition might be wrong? Does your "yikes radar" fire when you see people using mobility or sensory aids to overcome disabilities?
  • p_l 5y ago
    Thing is, sociopathic would be if they lacked empathy for other person, not that they automated reminders and notes to regularly connect with other people (at various degrees of acquaintance&friendship). Do we put the same kind "yikes value" on couples that schedule weekly outing to cinema? If no, why not? It's essentially the same base mode of operation, setting up a regular reminder to make time for each other. Or a group of friends. Is it really "more genuine" just because you don't know one of them has 20 overlapping calendar appointments with reminders in order to ensure that the weekly meet works out? And honestly, a lot of those reactions were downvoted to hell because apparently there's quite a lot of us who don't find it easy to "message someone on the toilet" and don't accept pithy, empathy impaired message that if we have issues communicating then we don't care.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• paradite 5y ago
  This looks really nice. I don't use airtable, but I use Notion and the formulas in the post seems similar to those in Notion database. I wonder if it is possible to do something similar in Notion.
• k__ 5y ago
  a friend of mine would send all people he knew new years wishes via regular mail. It was hundreds of letters he would all print out and sign manually. Most people would ignore it, a few even found it offiensive fo receive a mass letter. But every year dozens answered with a happy reply.
  • cpach 5y ago
    Very nice gesture from him IMHO.
• kator 5y ago
  Interesting way to approach it, my approach might be less technical, when someone comes to mind randomly, I just txt them with: Hey, you just popped into my mind, I hope all is well with you and yours! It's simple, lightweight, and you'd be shocked how often the other person pings back. My completely un-scientific view is that most people think of others once in a while. Perhaps we're too busy to reach out, or the guilt of getting out of touch makes it hard to push through that resistance. I just push through it.
  • d0m3 5y ago
    It sounds like good advice. Heck I don't wanna automate my life, especially not up that point. Imagine if the people the author contacted knew why, I wouldn't be too happy about it. Slightly related, I try to remember my closest friends birthdays, means more to me if I can remember it rather than a generic reminder...
  • bauerd 5y ago
    What's the channel you use to get the message across I wonder? Email? LinkedIn?
  • kirso 5y ago
    Exactly. Agree with this. I think we come to terms at a certain point that its impossible to stay in touch with everyone. I actually kept a table with people to stay in touch with them every: - month - quarter - 6 months - a year (if its less then you remember anyways) I quickly killed that approach, because people who genuinely understand overwhelm also are always happy to catch-up once in a while and we hold no hard feelings if we don't speak for another year. Serendipity and randomness wins.
    • brnt 5y ago
      I don't know what it is in me or how it got there, but I seem to be thoroughly convinced that I'll only be bothering people. When I rationally think about it, even emotionally, I disagree, yet I cannot shake the instinctual feeling.
• mda 5y ago
  I find it very odd that someone categorizes people / friends into buckets and have a schedule to communicate with them. If o knew someone is writing me because of a schedule it would put me off immediately.
• notreallyserio 5y ago
  The biggest reason I don't maintain contact with people from my past is I was a much worse person in my past and I'm either embarrassed about my behavior or concerned that my shittiness is what led to our relationship in the first place. In any case, I find it's easier (and emotionally satisfying) to stay in touch with a couple people that I can have natural, unforced conversations with. Scheduling interactions on a calendar feels odd. It makes me think of those emails you get "from" somebody after signing up for a service, and after a few you notice their time stamps all end in 00:00.
  • _moof 5y ago
    This is me 100%. Although I've found that when I do talk to folks and apologize for some of the shittiest shittiness, more often than not they don't even remember what I'm talking about. The lesson here, for me at least, is that I blow things way out of proportion. (This is not surprising news.)
    • skhm 5y ago
      Or, alternatively, they're giving you a polite "out" and enabling mutual forgetting. I've been on the wrong side of this dynamic too many times and I think that when the other person claims not to remember, most of the time they're telling the truth - of course they didn't ruminate on that-thing-you-did as much as you did - but sometimes, I think it's intentional amnesia to avoid the social overhead of addressing the event head-on.
  • irrational 5y ago
    I don't want my wife to every meet my friends from my teenage and early 20s for exactly this reason.
  • cyborgx7 5y ago
    > The biggest reason I don't maintain contact with people from my past is I was a much worse person in my past and I'm either embarrassed about my behavior or concerned that my shittiness is what led to our relationship in the first place. Perfect summary. The people I'm still in contact with are those that grew into better people together with me.
• smithloe 5y ago
  [dead]
• jacobrussell 5y ago
  I have an extremely similar system hacked together myself. It has definitely been a game changer for my relationships. I created it because I decided about a year ago I wanted to be a better friend, and the best friends I had were extremely intentional. I wasn't going to just get more intentional naturally, so this system helped me get there. Being able to reflect on what we talked about last time and get reminded to reach out after on a predefined interval is extremely helpful!
• sublimefire 5y ago
  If this system is used as a gateway to schedule a meeting or ask for a favor then might be all right! Like, if you're honest and say "hey I did even setup a reminder to make sure we agree on our next meetup that we talked about earlier". And then remove it from the reminders and make sure to follow up as with a normal friend if they want to. A reminder has to have a specific reason, and "say hi" is not specific enough. Otherwise, nobody wants (downvoted posts at the bottom) to get a message from a person who did it because a CRON job sent a reminder to their email, this is how sales people work. Furthermore classification should not be that explicit, yes we have our favorite acquaintances, but not with labels in the lists. Labels have a weird side effect, what if you follow up and have a convo and them meet a person, do you go back to the list and elevate their status?
• ThinkBeat 5y ago
  Sometimes a blogpost can seem a lot like marketing of a product with a story spun around it.
• xlii 5y ago
  I can see how it's polarizing especially since it feels like CRM for some. I'm, however, going to try this approach myself. Reason for that is that I'm all-or-nothing kind of person. I can nag you daily and overshare but then if our roads split (different job, environment etc.) I forget to reach out - simply because what's off my eyes is off my mind. It's not like I don't care for people, sometimes I find myself thinking about some colleagues couple months later. I don't reach out though cause it would be weird and it feels like cold e-mail. Done this few time and people would drop some bomb (like, oh yeah, our life changed 180, why didn't you call?) which would - instead of keeping relation, chill it even further, as we both feel weird about not caring. That reminds me that my grandma didn't get a call from me for past month or so (sigh).
• kaioelfke 5y ago
  Spreadsheets can work quite well for this. I made an iOS app as side project inspired by this post from Derek Sivers. https://amicu.app https://amicu.app
  • sivers 5y ago
    Kai Oelfke! So glad you posted this here. https://amicu.app/ https://amicu.app/ is a great example of this idea in action.
• bncy 5y ago
  It sounds good for business contacts or people that you might want to interact with for specific reason, but for anyone else? Why would one force their interaction with people if it's not genuine.
• a1445c8b 5y ago
  I also have a database I created with Airtable! Although I’m rather weary of using “free” 3rd-party systems and considering using one I have better control over. I’m thinking an SQLite db with a separate open source data viewer/editor
• telesilla 5y ago
  I keep a birthday calendar, also for my friend's kids. I stay in touch over the years this way really well, along with the occasional 'something popped up that reminded me of you'. For closer friends, it ebbs and flows naturally or as we travel. How do you get someone's birthday? Ask them! Everyone is delighted to tell you, even if they are shy. The possibility of a future greeting is very meaningful.
• jjice 5y ago
  I have a similar system, but mine is just a Python script and a text file. I hardcode people in the file in different categories and the file stores the recently contacted people. Once the file is the same length as the hardcoded people, the script clears it and we start anew. It emails me an idea of an opening line that I can expand upon so I can streamline the contacting, since I could sit down for 5 minutes without thinking how to open a conversation. I really like systems like this. Some of my favorite things on HN are about automating life, but without removing the "you" part of it, just making it easier to manage. PS: if anyone has any examples, I'd love to hear.
• da39a3ee 5y ago
  Perhaps the people that should be at the absolute top of our list to contact are the ones that have bothered contacting us over the years? Other than that I don’t have much to add — I’m absolutely terrible at this and my life suffers as a result. If probably enjoy building a tool like this but the problem is I don’t enjoy reaching out to people. Although I would enjoy the consequences of having reached out.
• bsaul 5y ago
  This post has to be one of the most archetypal one on HN. Rationalizing human interactions with friends through the use of planification tools.
  • sweetheart 5y ago
    Normally I'd totally agree with you and cringe at what feels like ridiculous over-engineering of what should be a natural and effortless process... but I was just thinking last night how hard it's been for me to live hours from all my closest friends, and how covid has made it so much harder for me to get my extroverted needs met. My closest friends are, for the most part, our highschool friend group of 15 or so people who live across many states and a couple countries. Juggling all those incredibly important friendships gets hard without a nudge and a reminder to call or text them. It's a good problem to have, too many friends.
    • avgcorrection 5y ago
      > Normally I'd totally agree with you and cringe at what feels like ridiculous over-engineering of what should be a natural and effortless process... To some people (like myself) human interaction does not come that natural.[1] The “naturals” then scoff (or even cringe) at the deliberate steps we have to take, as if we should just curl up in the corner and whither away. (That’s what I’ve done but that’s besides the point.) [1] It might come natural to the OP of course. Maybe they just like to be structured in this particular area of life.
      • sweetheart 5y ago
        Yeah, I agree with you. I think that invalidating tools and procedures like this is just being a little less than empathetic to folks who struggle a bit more with social interactions. It's worth pushing back on the narrative that there is a correct way to have your friendships.
    • alecbz 5y ago
      +1, my gut reaction is definitely to cringe at stuff like this but I can't deny that I think it's actually really helpful. Like I wish I was good enough at being social naturally that I wouldn't need something like this, but I'm not. I've tried something similar but a bit lighter-weight once, just a sheet with people and the last time I hung out with them, with conditional formatting to highlight the ones with dates further back. I think honestly more than reminding me when to initiate contact with whom, the real benefit is a forcing function for initiating contact with someone I've not talked to in a while. I can feel awkward about it, but if there's a spreadsheet telling me to do it, I find it's easier to get over that.
• KptMarchewa 5y ago
  If you're doing something remotely similar to this, please, just add unsubscribe button.
• jeffrallen 5y ago
  Man, I hope I never get on that guy's list...
• city17 5y ago
  I could see this being helpful with staying in touch with people you don't want to be friends but you want to keep up to date with professionally. Using this for your personal life is just sad.
• dvh1990 5y ago
  I get why someone may need tools like this, especially if they are in sales or a similar profession, but I can't help thinking how disingenuous this is. Moreover, it's easy for me to sniff out and block people who try to keep me "engaged" with systems like this. If you want to engaged me, I hope you have a specific reason to do so. If I want to engage you I will just do it and you can bet that I won't waste your time on idle chit-chat. Otherwise, I have friends and family that don't get enough of my time as it is.
  • jjice 5y ago
    I could see this being useful for friends that I haven't seen or don't have the opportunity to see. When I was in school, I interned in a few different states over the Summers, working with and meeting a ton of great people. We aren't best friends by any means, but I'd like to know how Chris is doing, ya know? We both know we're just acquaintances at this point, but I like catching up with them once and a while, and it's easy to forget otherwise. > If I want to engage you I will just do it and you can bet that I won't waste your time on idle chit-chat. Probably a difference in personality between us, since I find the idle chit-chat kind of nice, but I can absolutely understand being on the other end.
  • avgcorrection 5y ago
    Sales wants to sell you something. This guy wants to get in contact with people for its own sake. One could imagine a salesperson just thinking about a potential customer and then calling them immediately. No CMS involved. Just like how you could randomly think of a friend and call them. The respective motivations are still the same. The “just do it” distinction is meaningless w.r.t. intent. You’re just being uncharitable.
• theltrj 5y ago
  effectively you've created your own personal Sales/Marketing DRIP campaign, neat, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drip_marketing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drip_marketing
• eatbitseveryday 5y ago
  > I typically spend a few minutes researching what they’ve been up to recently. So this process isn’t for friends? I find this behavior personally strange. I’d rather get the information on what they’ve been up to from them directly, and the way I do that is to video call them on a weekend to catch up. It really is impersonal in my opinion to learn about a friend via broadcast messages posted to social media. As for the technique in the post, I do agree. Some regularity is needed. Every few weeks I call people via video and talk. Others I share photos about what I’ve done via Signal and ask how they’re doing.
  • trowawee 5y ago
    I mean, I have a lot of friends who I don't live near who will periodically post pictures on Instagram or updates about their lives on FB. Scanning their feed for a few minutes if they're active on social media is a good way to make sure you're at least a little up-to-date on what's going on in their life, and will frequently give you a good hook for a conversation (i.e. how is little So-and-So?, or I saw your trip pictures, how was Wherever?). Also can help you avoid a faux pas. It's never fun to ask someone who just got divorced how their spouse is doing.
    • eatbitseveryday 5y ago
      > It's never fun to ask someone who just got divorced how their spouse is doing. Right, same for a lost pregnancy, but that’s not a subject to post to social media. Personally I would not advertise a divorce there either. It’s only natural to expect someone to ask about such things because they’re not up to date, and I find that okay. The fact they’re asking even if I hadn’t told them is expected and makes me feel better they even asked. I was in such a situation where I had to think about expecting “how is xyz” questions. Friends are genuinely asking. I don’t fault them not knowing what I didn’t tell them. Edit: Remember before social media? No similar method other than perhaps a website or email (90s) or simple telephone calls.
      • trowawee 5y ago
        Or gossip! Gossip gets a bad rap, and it can certainly be toxic, but it was the only semi-reliable way to get info about some of this stuff back in the day. I know everyone moans about social media and the mediated self and whatnot, but I kinda like that you can tell people what's going on in your life in a broadcast form and they can follow you and it doesn't always have to be high-touch.
• stevecat 5y ago
  I think the people I'd put in "Group D" would be the ones that respond immediately and expect an ongoing conversation. I can't imagine reaching out once a year to confirm we're both still alive!
• zerop 5y ago
  I think touching base with people should be more spontaneous, real and relevant.
• tillcarlos 5y ago
  I started a year ago to shoot random videos throughout my week and then edit them on sunday (takes 1h with luma fusion). I limited each video to 3 minutes and added voice over. Then I sent the videos out via whatsapp and to 100 friends in a telegram channel. The effects of this were really great. People said it’s now part of their Sunday. And they get to know me quite well, without scheduling calls or such.
  • vm 5y ago
    This is what makes Stories so powerful on Instagram, WhatsApp, FB, etc
• awkward 5y ago
  The OP's system seems good, but the initial system, where the guy lists everyone he knows by A, B, C and D seems like he's creating informational toxic waste, IE something that causes damage if it gets out. Even if all it means is they get less emails, who the hell wants to find themselves categorized as acquaintance level D.
  • claaams 5y ago
    But if you grind out friendship rep points you can pretty easily get to B tier. A tier takes finesse and finding their favorite gift.
    • awkward 5y ago
      Going to take a page from gaming and classify friends as Unobtanium, platinum, gold, silver.
  • hallway_monitor 5y ago
    It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone - if you talk to someone twice a year you wouldn't expect to be in their closest friends group. I can't imagine someone being offended by this as a mature adult.
  • TameAntelope 5y ago
    You could just remove the ranking system and store the intervals directly. Saying “this is someone I talk to annually” is not nearly as offensive as, “this is a rank D person.”
  • avgcorrection 5y ago
    > Even if all it means is they get less emails, who the hell wants to find themselves categorized as acquaintance level D. If the feeling is mutual then that’s completely fine. The only problem is when there’s a mismatch. There might be people who get hurt when they find out that Peter, who they consider to be barely a friend, does in fact not consider them to be a best friend. But that sounds pathological.
• vlokshin 5y ago
  Simple and authentic feel like they're the magic formula here. Deceptively difficult to balance. For personal, I'm trying my best to text people when they come to mind. I always appreciate when someone does that to me. For business, I'm trying https://www.strata.cc/ https://www.strata.cc/, which uses your email history to nudge you to reconnect with people. I'm just starting to use it but has already made some spot on recommendations in the first couple of weeks.
• Mikho 5y ago
  It's not clear why would anybody try to force a communication when there is no common interest, project, or actually any reason to communicate. It always looks fake and inevitably ends with discomfort. It's worth staying in touch if there is a topic to discuss, or mutual interest. If the whole routine is just for your own mental comfort that you are a "good" socialite, it's worth thinking twice before contacting yet another person out of the blue. It's better to just go to a bar and meet new people instead of trying to return to the past.
  • TuringNYC 5y ago
    I would totally disagree. I can think of two dozen folks I would love to catch up with (and I'm sure they would agree) but between work projects, kids, family you keep losing track of time. The real proof of this is when I run into them on the commuter train, we sit together and have vibrant conversations. Or you run into them on the street, and next thing you know you've got an active SMS thread going...until the kids have some issue at school and now you're distracted.
  • avgcorrection 5y ago
    Look at these assumptions that you just inserted: 1. No “common interest, project ...” 2. You just want to be a “"good" socialite” 3. “Forced”: A lot of social interactions are “forced” in the sense that the conversation does not flow completely effortlessly so this applies generally As to (1): one can have common interests etc. even though one does not see each other regularly. As to (2): this is just a contentless insult towards people who like to socialize, similar to the “loner” insult which is aimed towards people who prefer to be more solitary, so this can be disregarded. Really dumbfounding to see so many people in this thread who think it’s unnatural to keep in touch with people by way of things like the telephone.
• pdr94 5y ago
  This is very well constructed but this is like a full time job in itself! I also worry that such a systematic method won't result in meaningful connections and could actually result in annoying your contacts or wasting their time..?
  • avgcorrection 5y ago
    Birthdays occur slavishly on the same date every year. Is going to the same person’s birthdays too systematic?
• architexture 5y ago
  Why do we need to optimize everything?
• OgAstorga 5y ago
  I don't think this is "spammy" nor "unnatural". There are important persons in our life that are worth keeping contact with for the sake of keeping contact with. If you create this list and it's only filled with people that could be helpful to you in the future (agents?). Maybe it's time to recall that we the people are ends rather than means to themselves. Second, Mental memory is lossy. Sometimes you move for a while to another city. It's easy to get distracted and forget to keep in touch with the people you love.
• micromacrofoot 5y ago
  I haven't talked to anyone outside of my family since the beginning of the pandemic and I assume the fact that no one's contacted me means I shouldn't bother? Not really sure how this kind of thing works.
• andersonmvd 5y ago
  The problem is when you know someone contacted you because of their 'system'. I feel less compelled to reply. It feels more that the person is doing their chores and you are just helping them to get the task done. Somewhat similar because people only reminded of you because facebook displayed on their timeline that it was your birthday. No right or wrong here, but when it's not genuine it's not genuine and period.
  • DamnInteresting 5y ago
    Another way to look at it: This hypothetical person created their 'system' because they valued their connections enough to establish a way to maintain them. And they specifically added you to the finite list of people they don't want to lose touch with. So it is genuine—it's just a reminder, we all need reminders once in a while. Now, if the person isn't actually your friend, but a professional contact (e.g., recruiter) who just hopes to extract value from you someday, then those guys can go jump in a lake.
• domenicd 5y ago
  This is a very helpful post. Over the pandemic, I fell into the habit of basically only socializing with my partner. When you have a comfortable relationship with such high availability it's too easy to neglect friendships. As things have opened back up, so far I've been basically relying on extrovert friends to do outreach. This means that a lot of my introvert friends, who are (like me) bad at reaching out, I haven't seen in months. A system like this would probably give me the nudge I need to take the initiative myself.
  • zelphirkalt 5y ago
    Quite introverted myself, only that extroverted friends (?) do not reach out or initiate, so it all comes down to what I do. If I don't contact/initiate, then nothing happens, except with the friends I often talk with online anyway.
• rlewkov 5y ago
  I keep a spreadsheet with name in first col and one col for every month and in cells I put day of month for birthday. I also use this as my Christmas card list and my keep in touch list
• surfsvammel 5y ago
  I have a very similar system. I use Trello. I have one column called 1M, one called 3M, one called 6M (representing how often I want to reach out to them). Each card is one person and the cards have a field on them that is called: Last Contact. Every week, or so, I have a look at the Trello board. I look at the top cards in each column and if it’s time to reach out, I do so, update the Last Contact field, and move that card to the bottom of that column. Sometimes I add notes to the cards. That’s it! Edit; The reason I don’t have one big list, is that I’ve gotten a sense of how long each list can be for it to be manageable.
• sivers 5y ago
  (I'm the guy he refers to in that post.) If anyone reading this builds software like this, and releases it publicly, whether free or for sale, please let me know. I'd be happy to send people your way. Because of https://sive.rs/dbt https://sive.rs/dbt I get a few emails a week from strangers, asking if my software is public yet, or if not, what else I would recommend. (And I might never make my software public. It's too tied-in to my now-complex PostgreSQL system of everything.) I'm definitely going to send people to Jakob's post here now. But if interested in this subject, please email me here: https://sive.rs/contact https://sive.rs/contact
  • runjake 5y ago
    Glad to see you back -- at least for a couple comments, Derek!
    • sivers 5y ago
      Thanks Jake! I read HN every day, but almost never log in to post.
  • christiangenco 5y ago
    Hi Derek! My implementation of your system is just a bunch of markdown files. The title of the file is a friend's name, the frontmatter at the top keeps info about them that doesn't change too often (ex: birthday, address, kids names), and each time I chat with them I add a section with an H1 title that's the date we chatted (ex: "# 2022-02-14\n"). My notes about the chat go under that heading. Based off of that structure I can do a bunch of cool things with simple scripts: - print out a list of upcoming birthdays, half birthdays, birthdays on Jupiter, etc. of all my friends - print out a list of friends I haven't contacted within my desired `frequency` (the subject of this post) - create or open the friend file containing a particular name from the command line (ex: `,people Sarah` prints out all the Sarah files I have and asks me which I'd like to open) I think plain text is the way to go with something as personal as a system for keeping track of your friends. I was inspired to go this route by your post on journaling[1]: > If digital, use only plain text. It’s a standard format not owned by any company. It will be readable in 50 years on devices we haven’t even imagined yet. Don’t use formats that can only be read by one program, because that program won’t be around in 50 years. Don’t use the cloud, unless you’re also going to download it weekly and back it up in plain text outside that cloud. (Companies shut down. Clouds disappear. Think long-term.) I've been chewing on how to make this system something that might be used by other people who don't know how to use the command line. Something like the way Obsidian[2] works might make sense. 1. https://sive.rs/dj https://sive.rs/dj 2. https://obsidian.md/ https://obsidian.md/
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• runjake 5y ago
  My initial thought as I read the first paragraph was: this seems kind of sociopathic (in a non-dramatic way). I ended the article with "hmm, a system like this could be directly useful to me, especially at work."
• streamofdigits 5y ago
  The dawn of "digitally augmented relationship management"? - Dave, I noticed you haven't spoken to X in a while. Do you want me to sent them a short generic message to keep the relationship warm? - Aaw, thanks HAL. I love how you are taking good care of me. On the other hand, we have finite and overburdened memories. Surely there is a way to get them triggered that doesn't feel mechanical and "fake".
  • pishpash 5y ago
    Pretty soon all you'll be building is relationship between two bots. Then we can cut to the chase and be totally transactional. So serendipitous!
• PhantomBKB 5y ago
  When I was in school, I'd get home and call at least 2-3 friends on a daily basis on the landline, just to chat or ask what all homeworks we were supposed to do for the next day. We lost touch after we graduated and went our separate ways. But what I miss the most from those times was how interconnected our lives were. We'd hang out together all the time in school, then come home and talk on the telephone. After exams, we'd meet up at someone's house for a sleepover, play video games and gossip about school all night long. I have tried implementing a similar lifestyle with my new friends as I grew older, but it just didn't work. I realized then, that the kind of bond we shared was a rarity and others had not had such an experience. I barely call anyone now. And more importantly, I feel uncomfortable calling people. Like I'm disturbing them. However, back in school days it was the telephoning that made us the great friends we were because we got to have 1 on 1 conversations with each other very often. In recent times, texting has destroyed the telephoning culture. I absolutely detest texting, but all of my peers are doing it. I wish times were a little simpler.
• keiferski 5y ago
  I don't think this is fake or forced at all. It's just a necessary counteraction to the way the modern world is constructed. In the past, you'd maintain all of these weak social connections automatically, simply by going about your daily life. You'd talk to your coworkers daily, the baker/grocer/butcher a few times a week, neighbors weekly at the church, other citizens monthly at a town hall, and so on. You didn't need a system because it just happened naturally. These days, most of these situations have been removed. Workers change jobs every couple years (and can work remotely), most people barely speak to their neighbors, grocery stores are either huge and faceless or just have items delivered by an anonymous gig worker, town halls don't really exist, etc. If you think that social connections have value (and they almost always do), this is the rational move.
• dbodin11 5y ago
  [dead]
• jjfoooo4 5y ago
  I’ve found it very helpful to take a bit more “forced” approach in maintaining relationships, especially as I am very poor at remembering names and biographical details. I just have a notion doc called “people.” At first people have just a name and a physical description, along with where I met them. That just helps me remember names. But with my partner, different subsections have emerged, with gift ideas, movies to watch, fun things we could do. The approach outlined in this doc seems to focus on scaling the number of people you can keep in touch with. I struggle to see how this is different than traditional social media - eg the impersonal happy birthdays we’ve all come to ignore in Facebook.
• rattray 5y ago
  Has anyone used the Google Contacts / Airtable integration? https://www.airtable.com/integrations/googlecontacts https://www.airtable.com/integrations/googlecontacts
• p0d 5y ago
  I don't want to keep in touch with more people than I have digits. I would call the desire to do so marketing; that is marketing yourself or your business. Which is fine if this is your motivation. Friendship is your partner who sticks by you. It is the person you go for walks with and just talk. It is the person you meet for lunch and you argue about who pays. It is the person who knows what is going on in your life. It is the person whose floor you have slept on. It is the person who listens to you and then takes action.
• smm11 5y ago
  Wow. I don't know enough people even begin something like this, but impressive!
• bendouglas 5y ago
  I built a system like this, and loved it enough that I built an app to do what the author describes: http://parsnipapp.com/ http://parsnipapp.com/ Totally free, with no plans to monetize it. Having an easy system like this adds enough value to me and my friends who use it to continue to develop and maintain it. I love the author's automation for sending an email digest, I think that's a great feature that I'll add to the roadmap. Up next for development I'd like to add reminders for specific days (eg., birthdays, trip reminders, w/e). If anyone gives the app a shot, I'd love to hear from you. Feedback is appreciated!
  • warunsl 5y ago
    Not a feedback on the app. But I clicked through the link on my mac (Monterey) and was pleasantly surprised I could install this iPhone app on my mac. Is this new? Can we install iPhone apps on mac now?
• AlwaysRock 5y ago
  I have a semifinished website that does something similar. It lets you schedule reminders to reach out to people you care about at set intervals. The difference is that it texts you the reminder and will add in suggestions of what to reach out to them about. I find that having something to say is just as hard as remembering to reach out.
• barbazoo 5y ago
  This is related to an idea I had for a "todo" app that I haven't found anywhere yet. Every task can implement some kind of flexible occurrence. It's for tasks that should be done but the exact date isn't very important and the recurrence interval starts again not the last time the task became "due" but the last time it was done. It fits many kinds of tasks, watering plants, checking a furnace filter, ... but also staying in touch with people. Does anyone know of a service or app like that?
  • nllewellyn 5y ago
    There is an Android app I found called Regularly. I don't use it any more, but it might suit your needs... [Check out "Regularly"](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ugglynoodle.regularly https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ugglynoodl... )
  • melindajb 5y ago
    Clickup does this very well-lets you decide if you want to create a new instance no matter what, or whether you want to create a relative recurrence when the task is complete. So in the case of furnace filters: create quarterly, then push next one out x days once marked complete. In the case of rent, it's always due the 1st of the month regardless of whether I pay on the 2nd or the 31st.
    • barbazoo 5y ago
      Thank you, I'll check it out.
• rattray 5y ago
  I like this. I've done something vaguely similar but more lightweight/ad-hoc, which is to just send an email to, eg, "every3months@followupthen.com" with the subject line "Get in touch with so-and-so". A proper Airtable of contacts, or a tool like Monica, sounds great – just nervous that it'll fall out of date.
• binbag 5y ago
• pishpash 5y ago
  Asymmetric? Ok, it take somebody else's time, too. Reaching out is no work for people with no real work.
• lkrubner 5y ago
  I've mentioned this a few times on Hacker News, and I've gotten some great turnout, so I'll mention this again: I host a once-a-month party in New York City, mostly tech people, especially during the warmer months. See photos here: http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/everyone-was-amazing-and-youre-awesome http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/everyone-was-amazing-... If you live in New York City and you want to expand your circle of tech people (and also some theater people and artists), feel free to reach out to me. Phone number in bio.
• jdlyga 5y ago
  This is exactly what I need. I'm so bad at keeping in contact with friends, extended family, ex-coworkers. I try to make an effort for a few weeks / months, but I end up getting distracted by a stressful new work project, school, new stuff going on at home, etc.
• ddubski 5y ago
  One of my mom’s friends has a great method for keeping in touch with people. He keeps one of those daily tear-off calendars (filled with cat/dad jokes) on his desk. Each day he looks at the joke and decides who it reminds him, then just tears that page off and mails it to the person, along with his business card. No further explanation or note involved. I guess he just needs a lot of stamps.
• nagarjun 5y ago
  I'm curious to hear your results from using this system. How long have you been running it for and what did you get out of it? I understand that the point of doing this is to not expect anything in return but, that's a little misleading because it's hard to have honest conversations in regular frequencies with people you barely know (B, C, D list). What do you do when people don't respond? Do you take them off the list?
• syndacks 5y ago
  I find this pretty sad to be honest. How would you feel if you were on a B or C list and got some kind of shallow, automated message like this? For me it would probably do the opposite by showing me that you don’t actually value me or our friendship, just the outcome. Like an SEO guru type or something, full of shallow words. Friendships, like any relationship, require work. And, given we are human, nuance and authenticity too. I text people when I think about them. Occasionally I’ll scroll through my text message history to see if someone I care about hasn’t heard from me or viceversa in a while. Sometimes it leads to a text-convo, a phone convo, or IRL plans. If you struggle with friendships and see an article like this as a way to “hack” the system, I caution you to think twice. Less is more. Cultivate your tender friend garden with intention, not automation.
  • DataGata 5y ago
    I was just reading a blog complaining about commenters not reading the article, and the next comment I read on a completely different article did not RTFQ. > got some kind of shallow, automated message like this? Jakob describes how after he is reminded of the person in the morning, he researches what has happened to them since he last spoke and finds some genuine content/connection to send to that person.
    • syndacks 5y ago
      Actually I did RTFA (not sure what your Q means) as indicated by my direct reference of groups A-D, but stopped once I saw the JQL style query as that really sealed the deal for me.
• laurex 5y ago
  I don't think there's a problem with the formula here in terms of maintaining professional contacts, but it does seem like an interesting--and quite recent--phenomenon that staying in touch with hundreds of people is even desirable unless you are doing sales. There's certainly utility and yet, it's staggering just how few people do the more rewarding and impactful (with lots of research to back it up) work of daily connection with one or two people. I would venture to say that it's even more 'socially acceptable' to put effort into cultivating weak ties that stay weak than to do the work to transform non-romantic relationships into close friendships.
• mebreuer 5y ago
  This is awesome to see - I built myself an incredibly similar version of it using Airtable as well. I send myself 3 names per week, and found that's the right number for me to send outreach to. To me, it doesn't feel forced at all - it's up to me whether I want to contact the suggestions, or ignore. Often times I get a suggestion for someone who I've spoken to recently, and I can happily ignore the reminder! The biggest issue I have with it is keeping the contact list up to date. I would love if someone built software that did exactly this, but also let me sync my Linkedin / Instagram / Gmail accounts and suggested new people to add to my list, based on who I've newly connected with recently. Or if there's a way to do it in Airtable, even better.
• pdimitar 5y ago
  Oh yeah, great. More beeping from my calendar. Sure. :( I know networking is important but many people don't evoke the "I want to keep in touch with this person!" response instinctively and naturally in me. And I am not at all introverted, quite sociable in fact -- but not the proverbial extrovert that feeds on communication either; I am one of these people that needs time to recharge the social battery, however it does recharge rather quickly (I know I can have social events with people outside two times a week; sometimes three). I mean, squint hard enough and almost every problem can be reduced to "let's use machines to poke us in the butt because we forgot to do this or that". No thanks. Good cause and I agree we need to keep in touch but I'll keep searching for other, less stressful and schedule-oriented, methods.
• chrischen 5y ago
  Would be a great if there was an app that helped you do social like this. Sort of like a Facebook that works for you instead of against you.
• justinlloyd 5y ago
  I have a system I use to communicate with about 14,000 connections on LinkedIn. It takes me about six months to work my way through the list, at which point, I start again. I spend about 15 to 20 minutes per day on the outreach. 30 minutes at the outside. I tend to build little side projects, about once every four months or so, side projects that I can show off to people that are interesting in some way, then use that as my launching point for reaching out. "Hey, I built this interesting thing, it uses the following technologies. This isn't a pitch, I'm not trying to sell you a service, I just thought you might be interested. What are you up to these days? Building anything interesting?" Leads to an awful lot of potential work, job interviews, availability checks, and coffee meetings. A lot of people ping back, many never respond. This technique has gotten me jobs and work for the past 15+ years, ever since LinkedIn was launched.
• andreyk 5y ago
  There is actually at least one app for this - https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/10/a-new-app-called-garden-helps-you-stay-in-touch-with-friends-and-family-without-facebook/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/10/a-new-app-called-garden-he... Pretty sure there are a couple of other ones. I don't get the backlash to this on here, life gets busy and it's nice to have some reminders set to not forget to make time to reach out to people. Personally I've gotten a lot more into getting in touch with people I have not caught up with in weeks / months / year over the course of COVID, and think it's a super valuable practice. Most people would not reach out themselves, but are totally down to catch up when messaged, and the worst case is you just don't end up meeting to chat.
  • deleted 5y ago
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  • s4i 5y ago
    Explicitly dividing people into groups of decreasing priority is the one thing that feels the most uncomfortable. But I also understand there is an implicit hierarchy in your head anyway. We've started planning a wedding recently and started drafting a guest list, which basically means making that hierarchy explicit on a spreadsheet (to filter out guests), only for two people at once instead. To my brain, which always wants to please everybody, it's a painful process.
  • svachalek 5y ago
    That article’s old app link doesn’t work so fyi: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/garden-stay-in-touch/id1230466454 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/garden-stay-in-touch/id1230466...
  • brianmartinek 5y ago
    +1 to this. I use Dex https://getdex.com/ https://getdex.com/ and I see a few other apps in the feed too. There is clearly some market demand. Life gets busy and it helps to have something more than just a stock contacts app.
• jedberg 5y ago
  I have a pretty simple system. It starts with social media -- a bunch of my friends are still there (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc). For the ones that aren't there, I put a recurring item in my calendar to remind me of their birthday. Then I text them on their birthday. The last step is going through my text message history, which is conveniently ordered by last contact. I skip down about two months, and then work my way down the list pinging people I still want to keep in touch with, either with something relevant (how's the new job, how's school) or generic (hey it's been a while how are you?). That pretty much gets me everyone. I usually do a deeper review of my other contact methods (email, niche chat apps, etc) once a year around Christmas to make sure I didn't miss anyone and wish them a happy new year and try to get their number so they are in my text list instead.
• tbirdz 5y ago
  I love this idea! I can't tell you how many friendships I've lost in the past (or ones that could've taken off but prematurely died) from getting stuck in the "I think they don't want to talk to me"/"They think I don't want to talk to them" cycle. Then you end up with neither person initiating contact, and the whole thing just kind of ends. Many if not most people these days don't want to initiate, including me, so if you wait on them to reach out to you, they simply never will, even if they want to talk to you, or would enjoy a conversation. I've been making steps toward being the person who initiates all contact, and so far it seems to work better than my previous strategies of "never initiating contact", and "initiating 50% of contacts and assuming they're not interested if they don't initiate". The only problem is I'm really not a natural at reaching out, so if left to my own devices I wouldn't do it often enough to maintain the relationship. I like OP's idea of externalizing it with a tool, that makes it a lot easier to maintain the kind of consistency needed to grow a relationship. To all those saying this is forced or inhuman or robotic or whatever... Listen it would be great to have some kind of easy natural friendship where both people would do half the work, think of each other regularly and reach out in an easy non forced manner, but in my life experience that kind of relationship seems to be very hard to find, if not impossible. In the real world it seems to me like the choices are be lonely and alone, or to do all the work (especially in initiating). In the past I chose to be lonely and alone, maybe holding out for that kind of unicorn, ideal friendship that people in this thread are talking about. I don't think it was a good choice. I switched, I'm doing the other approach and now I have people I can talk to. I do feel kind of resentful for having to put in way more effort initiating than the other person in these relationships, but it beats being alone and lonely, so I'd still say it's a net positive overall.
• Extropy_ 5y ago
  This reminded me of something I believe I saw on here some time ago: https://github.com/monicahq/monica https://github.com/monicahq/monica EDIT: Yeah, I saw it here on HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25270001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25270001).
• slt2021 5y ago
  CRM for friendships, is it really a friendship after that or a customer/lead/prospect?
• samsolomon 5y ago
  For those of you who are trying to leave social media—this is an excellent way to keep in touch. When you're on Twitter or Instagram, it's easy to see a picture or comment and message them about it. Or when you see someone's birthday on Facebook. When either you or your friends/family/acquaintances leave that social network, it's easy to lose track of one another. I built something similar to this in Notion last year. It's a great way to keep contact with individuals—wherever they are—and not just a social profile.