10 ms·

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

• 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.
    • nefitty 5y ago
      One of the most powerful life hacks I've discovered is management of rejection sensitivity/expectation of rejection. CBT can help. Also, surprisingly, Tylenol... https://www.healthline.com/health-news/mental-tylenol-ingredient-may-treat-psychological-stress-041813 https://www.healthline.com/health-news/mental-tylenol-ingred...
      • vorpalhex 5y ago
        Be very skeptical of healthline and treat them like an actively malicious source. They have supported batshit insane nonsense in the past. In this case they did not even link to the study! They literally only have a link to the magazine's description. Several searches haven't yielded the study they are referencing either, only more content farms running the same story.
        • thelettere 5y ago
          I agree about healthline but this is an established finding in psychology. Not sure how you're searching, but this is a review that mentions it: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0963721411429455 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/096372141142945...
          • vorpalhex 5y ago
            They don't mention NSAIDs in the abstract, I will see if I can pull the full article. I would hope to see better evidence if this is genuinely established. That doesn't mean it's wrong, but "established finding" is a high bar.
            • hillacious 5y ago
              Is it because Tylenol isn't an NSAID?
              • vorpalhex 5y ago
  • nefitty 5y ago
    I think both approaches work. Like, most people survive with a to-do loop just in their brains, stochastically prioritizing and picking tasks to do as circumstances change. The difficulty comes in when a person either doesn't have the capacity for multiple threads in their mind (ie mental disorder, creative loop dominance, overwhelm, unreliable memory, etc) or when a person wants to focus their mind completely on some personal endeavor. It's likely that most traditionally successful people have some sort of task system in their life. Who's to say that the most socially "successful" people don't have similar systems as well? It reminds me of the show Veep, where the main character's entourage whispers in her ear the name and info about a person she's about to shake hands with. The whole persona of a politician is based on making and juggling and keeping connections open. Biden is still in regular contact with people from decades ago from the beginning of his career, for example. I told a friend once that I was using the Habitica game to help me stay productive. He was incredulous, "You really need a piece of software to tell you what to do?!" He manages and co-owns several ice cream stores, so I know the stochastic method is feasible in more complex lifestyles. That's just not the case for my brain. I admit that I am hesitant to build a social system because of the expectation of perception of cynicism or even sociopathy. I have my friend's birthdays on my calendar. Why shouldn't I also have a little blurb about what they like, what they're up to and a log of our contact? I think I would be floored and honored if I found out a friend lovingly kept little journal entries about me, I mean, after the intial weirded-outness I guess.
  • vincentmarle 5y ago
    > Serendipity and randomness wins. Randomness you said? ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1
    • CRConrad 5y ago
      ORDER BY RAND_AL_THOR I'm sorry, but programming languages need to call that function either RND() or RANDOM(). Ever since I read The Wheel of Time in the nineties and early aughts, I can't associate that word with anything else.
  • bnralt 5y ago
    I agree, but I also think it's also an issue (particularly with the popularity of social media) that people are often trying to keep in contact with many more people but also interacting a lot more than in the past. For instance, I know people who were part of the greatest generation that would have decades long pen-pal type relationships with people they hadn't seen in person in years. It was pretty common for them to send several long hand written letters to several of these friends every year, for 30, 40, 50 years. But I don't think I've encountered anyone in younger generations who would do that. 15-20 years ago, I had a number of e-mail acquaintances who I'd send long e-mail to every few months, and they'd send another long e-mail in return. This went on for years, but with the increase in popularity of social media, these exchanges dwindled into nothingness. Likewise, I remember when almost everyone I knew was on AIM. But that became old fashioned, for some reason. Not for any particular reason; people still can and do communicate with text messages, and it was no extra effort to keep an AIM client running in the background. But when something new comes along, there's usually an exodus from the old. Up until recently it seemed that Facebook was the platform to communicate, and it had a very specific, shallow form of communication sent to everyone. Though now even that seems to be dying down. Mst people are driven by social trends at large. If you sent a handwritten letter to an acquaintance at one point in time, you'd get one in return. Likewise with a friendly e-mail talking about your life. Nothing we have now is really a replacement for e-mail, but it's more trendy, so the old form of communication gets completely neglected.
    • abnercoimbre 5y ago
      Are you saying even e-mail completely died down in your life? I still get a lot of value from e-mail exchanges with old friends -- I agree it's not super common though.
      • bnralt 5y ago
        Long form casual social e-mail have just about disappeared for me. The kind where someone writes you several paragraphs about their life or their thoughts for no particular purpose than to chat with you. I used to have a lot of people I kept up correspondence with for several years, but when social media became popular, those mostly stopped. Which is a shame, because social media is much worse for forming actual relationships, in my experience.
• mads 5y ago
  If I got a message like that, I would wonder which kind of sausage app or Like-Facebook-for-X development project, you wanted to peddle on me this time.
  • endisneigh 5y ago
    that would say much more about your friends than the message, though.
    • dotancohen 5y ago
      There's a message in there about if you want to know who a person is, look at his friends.
• bgroat 5y ago
  Every couple of days I scroll through my text history to the bottom and see if there's anyone there I'd like to talk to. I call it "The Poor Man's CRM"
  • arisAlexis 5y ago
    Sometimes I browse my fb friend list and start sending out messages
  • Jeff_Brown 5y ago
    I like this. I'd like it a ton if I had a single feed that would aggregate my texts, whatsapp, my various email addresses, telegram, signal, skype, zoom, facebook messenger ...
    • bgroat 5y ago
      Sounds like the Rich Man's CRM to me
    • awiesenhofer 5y ago
      One can only dream, but some kind of Adium/Trillian for social media would be amazing.
    • 58x14 5y ago
      Hey, me too! I've been building something like this for awhile, but it's a side project, and thus regularly de-prioritized beneath work projects. Also, really a lot of effort to maintain, as each platform tends to frequently push breaking changes :(
      • Jeff_Brown 5y ago
        Good on you! I can imagine -- a solid feed with reply capabilities sounds like a maintenance nightmare. But a smaller feature set could cover the queuing need described here -- something that just extracts a simple .csv file listing contacts and when they were last contacted.
    • 5y ago
• binkHN 5y ago
  I do something similar, and actually wrote an app to help recently. It goes one step further by allowing you to specify different messages that it can use at random. The landing page for the app is at http://communiqai.com http://communiqai.com.
  • YPCrumble 5y ago
    The flopping in animations on this are really annoying in my opinion. It makes me think the product will be equally annoying to my friends so I didn't sign up even though the concept interests me.
    • binkHN 5y ago
      I will work on that! Thank you for the feedback!
• vondro 5y ago
  Thanks for this. I started to write too long comment about how I feel scheduling my life would not work for me, but that doesn't add anything to the discussion. I've just texted an old friend. And I think I'll set up some yearly reminder to reach my few friends that don't respond anymore, but that I care about anyway.
• daveed 5y ago
  I do the same thing. I keep a text file with friends' names and from time to time check it too.
  • mguerville 5y ago
    That’s been my approach too (with a spreadsheet though) and at first I just jotted down names but once i reach out to someone I update the spreadsheet with a durable contact info (not a work email) I think phone numbers and social profiles are probably the most future proof, as I see a pattern of people moving away from personal email for anything other than spam and shopping related receipts
• eatbitseveryday 5y ago
  Hm interesting. I’ve actually gotten these types of messages before, and now they seem strange. My replies were enthusiastic but did not lead to anymore than a shallow interaction, so I felt it was a waste of my time. Perhaps my cynical view, but I don’t want to be used for someone else’s need to feel like they’re connecting with someone when they’re not interested in more than a hello and hope you’re well. Those are small talk and are taxing on me :-(
  • throwawayboise 5y ago
    They're text messages. They are the very epitome of shallow interaction. I agree with your sentiment completely.
  • vorpalhex 5y ago
    Sometimes shallow interactions are fine. Like bread in your diet, there's nothing wrong with it so long as it isn't the only interaction. It's an opportunity for engagement. Sometimes nobody wants to take the opportunity but it's valuable to have. If you want it to be more engaging, make it so. Ask questions in return, share good responses. "How are you?" can be answered in one word or several paragraphs.
    • binkHN 5y ago
      I concur with this. In my experience, more often than not, something unexpected comes up in the reply. This leads to significantly greater interaction and, sometimes, a follow up phone call to further the connection.
    • kixiQu 5y ago
      Yeah, but it sucks when someone reaches out, you go for the paragraphs, and then you get a sentence or two back. You can try and make it engaging, but that doesn't mean both parties are looking to be engaged.
      • vorpalhex 5y ago
        Agreed, it takes two to converse. I usually will give people a few shots at engagement before I write them off, but eventually you just need to be a realist about it. Please don't let those experiences discourage you from continuing to reach out though.
• hobo_mark 5y ago
  If I ever received a message like that I would be completely weirded out, is this a thing people actually do?
  • vorpalhex 5y ago
    Yup. I started doing it after some friends disappeared out of my life not due to any reason, just.. social entropy. So I started reaching out. Sometimes conversations don't go anywhere, just the "How are you?" "Fine" kind of stuff. Never had a negative experience. Have had a fair amount of positive ones - news about friends having kids, finding partners, new jobs, etc. A few people who had left my life are now back in my orbit. At the cost of a few minutes, it's potentially high gain.
• weka 5y ago
  Yeah this works great until you realize you're the one _always_ initiating and they say "Wow thanks for getting in touch" and you don't talk to them for another 3 years.
  • overvale 5y ago
    Yeah, this happens to me a lot. But I’ve accepted that’s the price to be paid for keeping in touch with certain people. Of course, there are plenty of times when I decide it’s not worth it to be the only one who reaches out.
    • arisAlexis 5y ago
      When do you stop ? After you teach out twice and it's now their turn for example?
      • olivertaylor 5y ago
        No, many more times than that. Maybe 6 months or a year of reaching out. I try to be very generous in this regard. Often times it takes many "investments" for the tactic to pay off.
  • atrus 5y ago
    Sure, but that just all it is though, a short two second message exchange. Everyone feels good for a bit, and that's that. What's the downside?
    • throwaway2037 5y ago
      This feels like the friend/emotional equivalent of a "Help Vampire" -- someone at work who is constantly asking for help. A /very/ distant friend/contact who is pinging you once every 1/2/6/12 months (thank you crontab!) are doing nothing other than "keeping a contact list"... while sucking blood from your neck. If they are an extrovert and you are a introvert, the exchange is not zero sum!
• Cd00d 5y ago
  I started doing this with covid lockdowns, and it's been wonderful. I've had days-long text chains with people that naturally drop off again for a few months, but got us both caught up. I've had meaningful connections with past colleagues that made us both realize how much friendship was formed at work. I've even had it pivot to zoom and a couple of times turn into not just a friendly catch up but learning about opportunities at someone's new company (I'm actively job searching too). At the end of the day, just catching up with people that I used to see and talk to on a daily/weekly cadence has been a significant emotional boon, and I don't see any downsides. Some of the reaching out didn't go anywhere, and that's fine - most were very worth my time.