A simple system I’m using to stay in touch with hundreds of people
jakobgreenfeld.com
jakobgreenfeld.com
Hey, you just popped into my mind, I hope all is well with you and yours!
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.
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.
https://www.healthline.com/health-news/mental-tylenol-ingred...
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.
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.
Did you actually read your posted source? It does not mention Tylenol, nor is it on Sci Hub. I can tell you what is in it, I can not read it for you however.
It is likely Google Scholar selected it because it cites another study which does discuss Tylenol, however that study does not support the claim being made and instead makes a different specific claim.
> all about how physical pain and mental pain is basically physiologically identical
That is not what your linked study says. I would encourage you to read it slowly. The study you linked is making a very specific, very narrow claim regarding the neural circuitry of social pain observed in some conditions.
I did a paper on this subject some years ago, so I know the info is legit. I didn't expend a ton of effort because information on human beings in hacker news is almost always shockingly lacking and so if I bother to write a high quality post it almost always gets either ignored or downvoted - because the "experts" here don't have the knowledge base to recognize what is true.
And as for scholar, if you type in the right terms, 99% of the time it gives good results. So in this case obviously "tylenol" is not a good search term because that's a brand name. What you want is the active ingredient, which in this case is Acetaminophen. If you type "Acetaminophen rejection" into scholar what are the results?
I just did and there's a wealth of highly cited studies backing up OP's claim, including the very first result.
But here is a good tip, people who want to stay in touch, will be in touch.
People who want to stay in touch and are busy will respond, are happy that you reached out and will suggest a catch-up
Rest is well, not worth your effort.
You can easily feel the vibe and if you would be a person I knew or met at some point I would be: "Wow so great to hear from you!"
I had this case last year when I reached out to an acquaintance, whom I helped back in the days and suggested a "catch-up over a zoom". To which he said he can't allocate time right now as he is busy. Had the same happened on Twitter. It felt a bit painful at first but then people are just living a busy life these days. Its a weird world that nobody experienced before...
So don't worry about these feelings, just do it anyways and worst case scenario you have a great catch-up and happy memories.
This flies in the face of the whole point of OP's post. It's hard to stay in touch. Even when you want to. I have at least 2-3 friends who were very good friends at one point and who I'd like to be good friends with again but we just don't keep in regular contact. When we do talk its great but for some reason or another we don't talk often.
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.
Randomness you said?
ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1
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.
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.
I call it "The Poor Man's CRM"
Also, really a lot of effort to maintain, as each platform tends to frequently push breaking changes :(
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.
Is it only for text? Will the fact that I video-chatted someone appear in Beeper, even if I have to use a different app to video-chat? It doesn't include email, right?
but... maybe that's what you have to do when you get older, busier and more forgetful and maybe it's not icky at all, as you still maintain who goes on the lists.
Most people don't know I organize my relationships. Of those that do, maybe 20% think it's icky.
"Would you rather we fell out of touch?"
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.
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
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.
Please don't let those experiences discourage you from continuing to reach out though.
Years ago I read the book, "How to Practice" by the Dalai Lama. Like any book, there were a few parts that stuck with me. Paraphrasing, one of them was:
"If you are in the right frame of mind, your worst enemy cannot hurt you. If you are in the wrong frame of mind, your best friend visiting can seem like a horrific chore."
100% for me. Holidays, with non-immediate family coming over, are a nightmare. I would be happy to meet at a restaurant or bar. Prepping the house and a menu of meals, snacks, drinks, etc. is not somthing I ever enjoy. It's stress from beginning to end. I've been known to feign illness to avoid these visits.
Can you tell me the connection to what I said?
Best friends don't send me these little text messages.
These are the extremes. At the extreme with the "wrong" (bad word, for mine) frame of mind even your best friend is horrible to talk to. You are very unusually at that extreme. Half way between the wrong frame of mind and the opposite point on that spectrum you probably want to talk to your best friend but not someone further down your ordered list of friends. How far down is the cutoff where you don't want to talk to that person at all? That tells you how far away you from the (not so much worst, but probably most introverted) frame of mind you are.
Remember your very, very best friend in the world wasn't that at some point and you had this whole journey of incidental and deliberate contact over time for them to get to be there.
Someone thinking of you and braving the reach-out rejection vibe to send you a message asking how you are, well they might not be being totally manipulative and selfish and horrible. At least mentally give them that chance, and yourself that you are worth it.
2c, ymmv, everything said may not apply to you in any way at all.
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.
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.
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.
- 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.
> 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?"
You, obviously, SHOULD try to read blog/twitter/whatever BEFORE contacting that person, try to find something interesting there and talk about it. Or check notes about person's interests and bring up something you recently saw/heard, that is related to their interests. I doubt that nothing interesting happened to person in three months that you hadn't spoke with them, so you have something to talk about. And some people don't use social media, and asking about their wellbeing is completely normal.
Well, the issue is that baseline level of commitment is extremely low, to the point where I don't think it's an actual relationship if you only talk once a year. Once a year and zero are practically the same.
> You, obviously, SHOULD try to read blog/twitter/whatever BEFORE contacting that person, try to find something interesting there and talk about it. Or check notes about person's interests and bring up something you recently saw/heard, that is related to their interests. And some people don't use social media, and asking about their wellbeing is completely normal.
I know what the author is saying. That's why I say it would get weird. First time that you say "I just read your update from a month ago" or "two weeks ago I read something about DnD and now I remembered you like DnD" you can make it seem organic. Second, maybe still. Third one, fourth one? At some point the other person is going to notice that the triggers are never connected to the actual contacts. That's what I mean. If you have all these sources of information for this person and things that remind you of their interests, you probably don't need a reminder system on top of that (scheduling is a different issue, but I don't think a daily email is the best tool to solve schedule issues).
If your interactions sum up to a baseline level for a few times, you should lower frequency with which you contact a person. If it is already at the lowest level, you should stop talking. You are just making sure that you don't loose contact with anyone who you don't want to loose contact with, that's all.
If I may, it seems like you’re assuming “if I only talk to this person once a year, it’s not worth it. Especially if I have to contrive some basis for reaching out.” If it’s that difficult, and that low value, sure, don’t bother.
But the other lens to apply here is “how at risk am I of never talking to this person again if I don’t manage to say something, however simple, at least <once a year>?” There may be folks in your life with whom your relationship is threatened if you don’t consciously make an effort, or if you don’t have a system like this to help you.
But do you really need to build a system to talk to people once a year? Just reviewing your contact list on Christmas is going to achieve the same thing, and I bet it doesn't give off as weird vibes.
Another issue is that, if after 20 years, you've only managed to contact people once a year, I don't think any system is going to save that relationship.
I send all my former clients and coworkers an email every year to wish a happy new year and ask them how things are going/how the latest projects I knew they were working on is going.
It’s very different to having no contact at all. It’s always nice when you end up working with them again. They know you are not only a mercenary and view the relationship as something which will exist in time.
And yes, "relationship" technically includes any kind of relation between two persons, but I think the context makes it clear that I'm talking mostly about friendships. And I really don't think one can call a relationship a friendship when consistently the contact happens once a year because of a scheduled reminder.
Well, no, a relationship is a relationship and a friendship is a friendship. Both the original post and the discussion are about maintaining contacts with people which is broader than strictly friendship.
> To me a business relationship is a business where you don't really care about the person but about the business/work potential. Of course you can make personal relationships in business, but those are different things.
I don’t see things this way. Business relationships remain interpersonal relationships. While these relationships keep a level of formality and distance they remain meaningful. I will send a card for meaningful events in the life of the customers and coworkers I have known for a long time. It is never strictly economical.
And like I said in a previous post, I don't manage my friendships in a rational way. This just happens. So I can definitely see it being a category if I'd manage my friendships in a more formal/rational way.
Look at it this way. Let’s say you reach out to 100 people once a year. Well there are 7.7 billion people on Earth. You’re putting those 100 people into your 99.999999 percentile for that year!
And I don’t know of any meaningful relationship that is maintained just by that bare minimum.
I'm friends with someone in college. We graduate and move to separate cities. We go from regular contact to every few months. By 2 or 3 years from graduation its just a text on birthdays. That last for a year or two. We both get married and then reconnect because of X. We become closer friends again.
That same situation is less likely to happen without the yearly contact. At the very least the friendship is maintained, even if the maintaining can only last a few years before deteriorating, and it gives the relationship a higher chance to pick back up at a later date.
Seems both fair and reasonable, but IME it's wrong.
It's wrong in a way that is stable as well, and that is why it takes effort to fight: people easily get anxious about rejection, and they easily get it in their heads that the other person doesn't want to hear from them. Anything from "we had a bad interaction" to "they didn't reply last time" seems to be an excuse to cut contact.
According to (probably dubious) tests, I'm not especially extroverted or introverted. But I make conscious effort to keep contacts alive, because I just like the human contact and keeping updated on people's stories.
It's also the case that people like to help, and will do so readily if you reach out to them, which is another weird hold-up in people's minds (can I ask this person that I kinda know about this thing? 90% of the time, yes). Just this week I reached out to people who were my primary school teachers for some advice, I kid you not. Now do I talk much to these ladies that I knew 30 years ago? No. Now and again I'll send out a short piece about how my family is doing, and that's it. But even if they read it and don't reply, chances are they appreciate it. Kinda like TCP, you can have an open connection even though nothing is sent over it.
Another case is that friend who sucks at staying in touch. I have a number of friends who are super warm and chummy when I'm near them, but they never take it upon themselves to initiate anything. Think about when you were a kid, how many people did you hang out with, vs how many people bothered to organize parties? It's like 50 and 4. So a lot of people will just wait for an invite, and they'll get enough that they don't need to do anything.
As for the logistics, I don't have a custom program to do it for me, it's just a Trello, plus FB and LinkedIn that I scan from time to time. FB tells me birthdays, so that is a good time to write a DM. LinkedIn tells me when they changed jobs, which is also a good time to update. And then Trello because not everyone is active on the other two. I'll also do a quick scan if I'm travelling, in case someone I know is at the destination, and I'll send out some emails at Christmas/NY.
I get that can happen with some relationships. But with all of them? I think that even accounting for some relationships where contact is one-sided, maintaining the "last contact" column is going to be a real hassle, and I find it weird it's not even mentioned.
> Kinda like TCP, you can have an open connection even though nothing is sent over it.
I honestly don't think so. A consistent lack of response usually indicates the other person doesn't care.
> I have a number of friends who are super warm and chummy when I'm near them, but they never take it upon themselves to initiate anything.
And I do think that the best thing to do in that case is to tell them that they should make an effort to initiate contact. I don't need them to be on a schedule, but I'd like to think that my friends won't forget about me completely if I stop contacting them.
Again, I get that some relationships can be one-sided. But not all. That's why I find it weird that the system doesn't really plan for that.
This is one thing I thought about doing, but it seems like there's a lot of APIs that are now closed. But also, relationships are not like a tennis match, it's ok to write twice.
> I honestly don't think so. A consistent lack of response usually indicates the other person doesn't care.
I send out a load of mails over New Year's almost each year, and each year someone writes in April or July saying "OMG I forgot to write back" and then picks up the thread. There's no reason the people who never write back have decided not to, except in very obvious circumstances of relationship breakdown.
> I'd like to think that my friends won't forget about me completely if I stop contacting them
They won't forget you but they also won't contact you. A lot of people just feel weird about it.
Mostly I guess I'm default-positive. Very few people have ever let it be known, directly or indirectly, not to write to them anymore.
Or lazy, or forgetful, or they never thought this was a "thing" (basically 0 initiative). All three apply to me, and I need to change it. IMO, the system outlined by the author seems worth trying (or any other systems that I'm picking up in the comments).
I know, but if the tool stops being synced with reality, it loses value and in the end you can end up ignoring it because it's not up to date and then because it's not up to date it has even less value.
> I send out a load of mails over New Year's almost each year, and each year someone writes in April or July saying "OMG I forgot to write back" and then picks up the thread. There's no reason the people who never write back have decided not to, except in very obvious circumstances of relationship breakdown.
But that's not a consistent lack of response, it's just someone missing one interaction. I imagine that if you write someone on new years and they never answer, at some point you stop sending them messages, right?
> They won't forget you but they also won't contact you. A lot of people just feel weird about it.
I do not agree, people might get used to the other person contacting and not think about sending a message, but I don't think feeling weird is common. Of course this is personal experience, so I can't know the universal experience.
The reasons are simple:
1. I don't want to wake up one day 20 or so years from now and realize that I'm old and lonely.
2. It's possible to lose friends/acquaintances if you don't talk to them for some amount of time
3. I am generally happy when people I've had positive interactions with in the past contact me out of the blue
4. However I am bad at doing this myself
5. It is reasonable to assume that the above also applies to many other people, so why not take the initiative?
Of course you could use this system to spam and annoy people, do unsavory marketing stuff, etc. but that doesn't mean it's not a useful framework for staying in touch with people who would be happy that someone is staying in touch with them.
Lately, Facebook doesn't do a very good job of this, so I've been thinking of better ways of doing it. Something like an email reminder might work.
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 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:
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.
In 25+ years of keeping people in my database, and writing plain text all day, I'd never once considered keeping my list of people in plain text files.
Thanks for the description and inspiration.
>> If digital, use only plain text. It’s a standard format not owned by any company.
This is fine for anything where you don't care about the computer processing your data (e.g. a journal where you don't care about tagging or sorting by date or whatever), but it sounds like you do (based on "Based off of that structure I can do a bunch of cool things with simple scripts"), so:
"Plain text" is mutually exclusive with machine-parsing, because "plain text" is not a format. If I create a text file for each of my friends, and somewhere in each file is an English-language description of my friend's name, then that is both (a) plain-text and (b) not machine-parseable at all.
A "format" is necessarily structured - something like "each line of this file represents a "row", which is divided into "fields" by commas". But then you don't have a plain-text file - you have CSV, or JSON, or something that's a subset of "plain text file", but is still a structured, machine-parseable format.
Even if you do what I did and create your own ad-hoc format like "text files are broken into "blobs", where each blob is separated from others by a blank line, and has a header consisting of the blob name..." - that's still not plain text. You've still invented your own structured-object-embedded-in-text format - except that because you aren't using JSON or XML or CSV, you're incompatible with every tool in existence, and have to write tools to parse, lint, generate, and process these files yourself.
(and, hence, it's not a "standard format" - each ad-hoc plain-text-embedded format is different, except for the ones that are either accidentally exactly the same, or the ones that are standardized and have names - at which point plain-text purists claim that they're no longer plain-text)
You use Markdown - which means that you have all of the problems above, because Markdown encodes formatting, not structure. You even alluded to it yourself - you say that "...I can do a bunch of cool things with simple scripts" because you had to write those scripts to handle your own custom format, instead of just using JSON and writing data["first-name"] in Python.
It's your system, so you can do what you want - just don't fool yourself (or others) into believing that you're saving effort, because you're not - you're just reinventing a wheel that has been reinvented millions of times before.
(this isn't meant to be a random rant - I'm currently in the middle of rewriting my own system from using my own custom, ad-hoc structured text format to using s-expressions and typed objects. there's hundreds of thousands of objects spanning thousands of files, and the process is absolutely miserable - I want to save as many other people from having to go through this as I can)
"Plain text" is like a carrier wave that can hold a format like CSV or markdown, or loosely conventioned prose that the right kind of parser can make reasonable guesses about.
Your semi structured blob format and mine are still plain text. They are comprised of the basic set of characters from 32 to 126 maybe and 13 and 10, and maybe multi byte things these days. Plain text just ain't what it used to be anymore!
They may not be standard formats, but they can be read and learned about in standard tools.
But your cautions still ring true, as I have created several such formats and have yet to hit on something that is easy to write, and somewhat easy to process, and ticks all the other boxes.
Good luck with your upgrade!
https://www.gnu.org/software/recutils/
I mention it because it doesn't get the attention that it deserves, as a format midway between relational data in database and plain-old-text.
I thought/hoped visidata would solve the problem. It has decent support for recfiles display - just being able to get a tabular view of the data is very useful - but the editing support is pretty unintuitive and full of footguns.
The repetition is genuinely useful if editing or adding one or two entries by hand, but tools for ingesting data into recfiles format, working with it in bulk and so on, I agree with you, they're primitive.
My daydream is a tool like jq for recfiles, with something in front of it like pandoc for structured data, so that I can put my choice of JSON/TOML/YAML/TSV/CSV through the filter and work with it in recfile format.
The real prize would be a solid library for importing and exporting SQLite data in recfiles form. The mapping is obvious and the metadata would allow for preservation of more of the underlying schema than the standard outputs, which are CSV and a collection of literal SQLite commands which you can execute to insert the data.
I think pairing SQLite with a standard recfiles protocol would be exceptionally powerful, a workflow where SQLite reads a collection of recfiles into an in-memory database, slices and dices at leisure, and exports the changeset as patches over the recfiles? Yes please.
It'll eventually be up on gosayhito.com. I'll try to remind you when it's done, but you can also probably put the website in as a monthly thing to check on.
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).
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.
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.
The next Ask HN thread will be: "How to deflect all these people who suddenly want to stay in touch or keep texting me every 3 weeks on the dot"
Honestly most of the bosses I've had that I actually liked are because I knew something they care about and we could talk about that. The ones I didnt like that much were just like blobs of work stress who never brought anything else up except on rare rare occasion so it was difficult to relate to them.
Friends are the same way. I have a buddy where we mostly talk about movies. We do that enough that we end up talking about shit other than movies too.
Good point about the Boss thing - I had a boss who was super into cars and I've dabbled in working on my own. It was at least something for us to chat about.
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.
Perfect summary. The people I'm still in contact with are those that grew into better people together with me.
Everyone else is someone who can come and go. How long are they around for? Who knows, it's just a temporary crossing of paths that feels nice while it lasts. I couldn't maintain a connect with hundreds of people unless fate crossed our paths again.
But, you know, even those deep connections might be temporary, just on a longer timeframe. If one connection faded then perhaps there'd be room for a new one.
The obvious explanation would be fear of rejection.
Another story you could tell is fear of connection due to opportunity cost -- what if, among all the people you could connect with, this one isn't a great choice but will end up consuming a lot of your time?
But I think it's probably the first.
No, forcing isn't weird if you have an introverted personality. I work with many people who have a strongly introverted personality. (I am a mixed bag!) They have taught me lots of social skills about how to interactive with people who have a different type of personality.
I am happy that the GP made the effort to make contact with "old friends". I hope the other side understood it was a big leap for you and made a good effort to be a friendly contact. I with GP luck in their effort to maintain contact while being an introverted person!
Nothing prevents you from talking to these people more frequently, this system seems more like a way to nudge you to remind you about conversations you forgot.
What I've learned in the last five years is contacting people has more upside than not contacting them.
The worst thing that can happen after contact is a return to disconnection and the other person maintaining the same opinion.
I feel the same. In fact, I intentionally avoid interacting with people from my past since they may have bad memories involving me that I'd be resurfacing by contacting them. I've considered reaching out to certain people to apologize, but I stopped when I realized I was mostly just looking for absolution rather than actually trying to make them feel better. To me, the kindest thing I can do is stay out of their lives.
I consider this to be a bad trait, because finding new friends isn't easy and I'm trying to get rid of this habit.
I've resumed chatting with some people this way (even though they didn't feel there was a need)
Something I need to get back into. Interacting, at least casually, on a routine basis with a wide amount of people has lead to every job I have ever held - they came to me based on my reputation or past interactions. It's definitely the best way to get a new (and better) job rather than blindly fishing for them.
That's the real power of systems like this. Not to develop personal friendships, but to remain relevant in the eyes of a large number of people so that if they have a future opportunity you will be top of mind for how they can get it addressed.
I think it's why he stresses making the contacts personal and with meaning/value specific to that person. These aren't soulless automated computer generated emails, but a system to prompt him to write relevant and sincere contact messages.
Is it a lot of work? Sure. But building up a network of people who see you as contributing value is priceless.
Well I definitely heard that. I have a thing the voices in my head periodically inflict on me that I call Embarrassment Day, where I spend the day remembering past incidents that I'm embarrassed about. Lots of fun.
The silver lining of course is that if you're embarrassed about things in the past, it means you've grown enough since then to be embarrassed about them. If all you want to do is double down on everything you did, either you were already perfect or you haven't grown at all since then.
> 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.
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.
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 :)
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.
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.
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.
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.
"You may call it cheating but considering my poor memory, I call it caring."
I'd love to hear of others who are successfully using it, because I'm always game to try twice.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
I hope I didn't say anything inconvenient. I sincerely appreciate you even if we've never met.
And thank you for the clarification, of course.
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.
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.
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.
Life gets busy and it helps to have something more than just a stock contacts app.
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.
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.
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.
/e: I also wonder if this could be done with notion instead.
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.
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.
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.)
- 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".
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.
I see this system as a way of preventing backsliding into rarer and rarer interactions when they aren't pushed by common activities.
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.
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.
Personally, I use Monica and regularly make lists of people that I want to stay in touch with, and then periodically go through those lists and reach out to them. It doesn't have to be a huge personal missive, just a text or an email that says something like "Hey! I was just thinking of you. How are you/you and the family doing?" If something more deliberate triggered the desire, I include that. And it frequently triggers conversations that, like you experienced, were a lot of fun, and end up actually feeling energizing, rather than draining.
It can seem awkward or stilted, but eh, I'll take that feeling over the loneliness any day of the week.
If they utilize the same philosophy then you will never contact each other.
Solve the problem by only contacting 50% of them.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It’s a system of personal reminders, not a Jira backlog to burn down.
It's a good problem to have, too many friends.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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..?
Keeping social interactions this way is kind of sad and gray, just keep less people around but with some quality time invested for them.
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.
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)
Mate. It takes seconds to send a simple text message/mail "Hey, how're you doing?" while sitting on the toilet.
Everyone sits on the toilet, quite regularly.
I have friends I've known for decades, some of whom have moved to different cities, different countries, different continents even. I don't talk to them regularly - we all have our lives and it's easy to get caught up. It's not that these people don't matter, just that we're not as close - physically or otherwise - as we used to be. Many of these people, if we did meet again in person, we could pick up exactly where we were as if I'd only seen them yesterday.
I don't use a system like this. But it's bizarre to say that just because someone hasn't spoken in a while that they don't actually matter
I've watched this happen with a lot of older adults I know, which is one of the reasons I've deliberately made some efforts to keep a pool of shallow friendships. Some of them have already deepened into actual friends, some fall off and that's ok, because that's kind of the point. Casting a wider net is part of a strategy to not end up in my later years with 0-2 total friends in my life.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.ugglynoodl... )
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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!
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?
I find that having something to say is just as hard as remembering to reach out.
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.
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!
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.
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.
I’m thinking an SQLite db with a separate open source data viewer/editor
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.
It's better to just go to a bar and meet new people instead of trying to return to the past.
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.
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.
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.
Why would one force their interaction with people if it's not genuine.
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.
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.
EDIT: Yeah, I saw it here on HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25270001).
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.
A proper Airtable of contacts, or a tool like Monica, sounds great – just nervous that it'll fall out of date.
* Contacts
* Alissa p hacker
SCHEDULED: <2022-03-14 Mon .+3m>Does having a list of friends on a spreadsheet make you a data controller?
https://amicu.app/ is a great example of this idea in action.
So built a computer
And programmed ourselves not to see
The truth and the lying
The dead and the dying
A silent majority"
/s
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.
"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.
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.
Some people have busy lives but still have many friends (especially ones spread around geographically as you get older). It’s normal adult behavior to forget to contact them for months.
> When there's no bond reminding me, then they're not friends.
This sounds like some obsessive behavior. I think you may have a much higher bar for friendship than most people do.
I have 20-30 people I would consider strong enough friends to have them stay in my house for a weekend on short notice (to give you an idea of trust level here). I contact many of them no more than once every couple of months only when a shared interest reminds me of them.
> One cares about friends. When you forget about them, then you're not actually caring.
That’s not how that works. At least it doesn’t match the definition of “caring”. It sounds more like “obsessing”.
Unless you are in college and have little to no obligations, it gets hard to stay in touch with all your friends and keep track of what is happening to them. It’s not treating people like assets. He is putting efforts on his side towards keeping connections and to do that he needs tools to help.
What does it change that he uses reminder to think about reaching out? In the end he is still the one doing work towards fostering relationships.
> 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.
You might've read that:
> So unless you have a solid system, chances are high that you won’t reach out to people regularly and miss out on a ton of fun and opportunities.
but intentionally miss the fun part and treat "opportunities" only in thebusiness context and do not allow for alternative interpretations like intellectual or personal development.
If your problem is that you're busy doing things, an email in the morning (probably not the only one you have) is not going to help too much. Contacts will still get delayed in favor of other things. To me, the OP system reads like a system that doesn't help with scheduling, but with triggering the thoughts.
For example, say that a friend tells me they're going through a rough time and I want to spend some time talking to them, but I'm busy and don't have that much time. The system doesn't have a "contact NOW" trigger, for example.
I also find it weird that there's a "three week contact" category. I'd guess that for close contacts, something reminds you of them every once in a while, you probably don't need anything more than "hey what's up" in a message so you can send it whenever, and they probably also contact you frequently. I don't think the system would be helpful in those cases (mainly because the DB and the actual contacts would quickly desync and the reminders would not be on time and appropriate) so I'm left wondering what's happening there.
glad you have this experience, i dont think all of us do. i care deeply but seem to forget people exist and that makes me sad and dislike myself. i wish i could just remember. id still have so many friends if i did.
Just managing your own home requires a lot of organisation, and even if you do care, you will have a hard time to cope for long without some tools to help you (calendars, notes, schedules, only to name those). Unless someone does it for you. Or unless you live a very simple life that can fit in your head all the time, of course.
Likewise, seeing your friends fading away, not responding to you might be because they've just forgotten you, or don't want to see you anymore, or they are just drowning in their own life. And maybe with time they will cope/react differently, maybe not.
Considering that friendship/care only can be spontaneous and not prepared/provisional, this is disingenuous and borderline toxic (to both you and others).
There are many people in this thread who clearly do care and have trouble doing/remembering, so I'm not sure why you'd choose to respond this way to someone you're more likely to hurt.
Also, I see what you did there. :)
Most of the time, life pushes us towards the urgent & important, and even urgent & not-important. When you have a busy life (full time job building a side business with a family with kids), it's just very hard to put the non-urgent & important on the agenda.
Not all things that are important are urgent.
I really should call XY is such a common thought that fades away a second later. Even if it's someone I am really fond of. If they're not in my immediate circle, it's going to be additional work to keep that relationship alive.
Putting it on my calendar or as a reminder actually makes me reach out to that person. Win-win. If anything, this shows me _caring_ about someone. Many of these conversations with the people I have in mind often start where we left off too - no matter how many weeks or months in between - which makes me think this all is not about a lack of connection.
This is exactly right. I am constantly thinking of people that I should get in touch with, but never at a time that would actually be appropriate to do so. It'll be the random work-day thought that disappears by the time I'm done, or it will be sometime unreasonably late.
I've lost touch with friends because I failed to do this sort of thing, it's easy to not keep up with people when there is no immediate driver or common interest (perhaps I'm atypical or neurodivergent) this is multiplied when you leave a country and no longer see some people on a regular basis.
A system like this would ensure my forgetful nature doesn't kick in and give me that reason I need just to check in on someone I actually care about but haven't had the opportunity to speak to in a while.
If you did, why didn't you contact them?
If you didn't, why do you care?
One can not forget about friends, one can only stop caring.
I'm just saying I could make MORE effort, and I don't see a prompt to do so as being harmful.
I'm sure most have the best of intentions that they will reach out to friends and keep in touch, but the best laid plans of mice and men...I don't see why having a system to do this so bad?
You seem to use forgetting in a sense that is akin to erasing a person from your past, as if they never existed. That’s very drastic. People do forget to reach out not necessarily because they don’t care but because things slip their mind. Life happens. Stress happens. The proximity isn’t that close anymore. And so on. Isn’t setting up a system like this not a good effort on their part? An example of them caring enough to make sure their relationship stays alive? “Don’t be a stranger” sometimes takes a bit of work. So why not use tools that can help with that?
Also all my family is overseas.
As a kid I would try so hard to stay in touch and it never worked. The harder I tried the more it hurt for those attempts to fail.
But I'd see family once a year or so and we'd catch up and it was always wonderful.
I think about people all the time, but it doesn't trigger my reaching out.
It's like a really deeply ingrained learned helplessness or generalized relational despair.
Some people for a variety of reasons, some cognitive, some environmental, don't have their internal desires intrinsically tied to the psychological pressure to take action.
Due to surgeries and anesthesia I also developed aphantasia, so anything short of in person interactions feels quite hollow.
Be glad your experience in life is healthy and normative, for some of us it takes effort.
Well yes you can not miss your friend for long period of time because they are far away and a large enough social circle keeps you so busy locally that your mind do not get the opportunity to feel it.
Anyone who has been living in different areas/countries lost track to some real friends. There is always a moment when you feel you might want to reach out to them again but sometimes it is too late.
- Did you not miss them? 'Missing' someone is an interesting way of thinking about it. When should you 'start' missing someone? I find that often I miss people intensely soon after we meet. This can be difficult, because it may not be possible or practical to meet or communicate with someone immediately, but then that 'missing' starts to wane. By the time it starts to become stronger again, a significant period of time might have passed.
- If you did, why didn't you contact them? Missing someone is fairly subjective as mentioned above, but for me, contact alone is not enough to stop me missing someone. Meeting in person is. If I contact someone, it does not stop me missing them we are unable to meet in person, and in fact in some cases, makes me miss them more. Many of my friends don't live in the same city (or even the same country) as me.
- If you didn't, why do you care? Because friendships take work, like any other type of human relationship. Someone who currently is an 'acquaintance', who I wouldn't really be too upset about not seeing frequently could develop into a friend.
> 'One can not forget about friends, one can only stop caring.' - I think here you're using a very literal definition of forgetting. I think most people don't actually forget about friends, they just use the word forget as a shorthand for 'not actively thinking about all the time'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorde...
This guy is probably at most ADHD or Aspergers, and simply forgets to contact people he doesn't physically come across on a regular basis.
If I'm more charitable than you have been, I'll grant that you simply haven't carried the burden that I have, and that is unfair for me to expect everyone to have moderate levels of empathy, or to actively try to understand their fellow humans.
A fair proportion of the people who pushed OP to the top of HN are probably just looking to live a life in accordance with healthy social values. Try not to be a cunt, would you?
No, things just slip your mind, especially if there are a lot of other things going on in life.
People forget to take medications that when not taken lead to psychotic breaks. It isn't because they don't care about being sane.
People forget their kids in cars. They didn't casually want them dead of overheating.
I have friends that when time allows, we speak to each other for hours every day. When time allows. Plenty of times one or the other has forgotten that the other existed for a few weeks.
Things get forgotten.
I think this is something that's being glossed over completely: friendships are two-way, and also flexible. It's not a medication that needs to be taken on a schedule, and it's not a kid that completely depends on you to do things. I don't think a relationship that's only alive because of scheduled contacts can be called a friendship.
I'd be absolutely fine with someone I appreciated reaching out to me and asking how things are going, even knowing they are using a prompt, as long as the contact was sincere.
I'm wondering what the difference here is compared to these: a close family member / friend who is really good at keeping in touch with people, and prompts you as well; a birthday calendar; a rolodex [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolodex]; Facebook / Instagram as a primary way of keeping in touch with people
For me, the difference is only in the specific technology being used, but the intent and effect is indistinguishable.
Some people legitimately can't remember to contact friends without any external prompting.
My days are long and full. And as a somewhat introverted person it takes additional energy to remember to keep in touch with people. Even those that I like very, very much.
So it helps to have a reminder and something that actively pushes one to do so. Not every person in the world is wired the way you are.
Jakobs approach is basically a more automated calendar. Plus, he is actively making an effort to keep in touch with people he deems important enough to be in his life. Its not as if he is sending automated messages to them.
On the other hand while local friends can be easy to reach, invite or bump into randomly maintaining long distance friendship is a lot harder to do and require actively looking for that relation to not die. It is ok not to talk to friends every month when they are living far away nor does it diminish your feeling towards them and the pleasure you would have to meet them even if it takes 10y to do so. However if you are not actively maintaining a relation, and that requires some additionnal efforts as it is not natural to reach for people you aren't bumping into every other week/month, you might simply lose trail. It is relatively easy to reach to someone who has social media accounts under his own name and never changed phone number. It requires a lot more of detective work to reach out to people who aren't active on social medias. I have lived in several countries and I had to resort to use linkedin to get back in touch with some of my friends and it can took months for them to reply as most people don't even log on linkedin on a regular basis unless they are actually looking for a job. Some of them I lost complete trail as I couldn't find any social media account either.
So automatising your own reminders and force yourself to talk to people you might not reach out on a regular basis, because your local social circle already keeps you busy a lot, is not necessarily a bad thing, even if it feels forced.
Interesting! It looks like you are indirectly articulating something about your personal value system and how you express and/or receive caring. Are you familiar with the Five Love Languages [0] idea? The bosic concept (and book) are tailored for couples and couples counseling, but it generalizes in obvious ways to platonic relationships.
Essentially, it posits that everyone expresses caring and seeks expressions of caring in specific ways, so called "languages". It's entirely possible---probable in fact!---that the ways in which you personally express caring don't match up with the kinds of expressions that make your friend (or lover) feel most cared for.
YMMV, but I've personally found this idea to difuse a lot of "judgemental" feelings towards others, especially in close relationships.
Everyone is different. What comes naturally to some doesn't come naturally to others.
For a lot of people (me included) keeping in touch with others doesn't come "naturally". We miss contact, and yet we sheldom establish it. There are many reasons for this: poor time management skills, low self-esteem, simple lack of practice, etc. In any case, it takes effort to break out of it.
Try to think about something that others do, and that you would like to do, but is difficult for you. Exercise, learn a new language, go to bed earlier, eat more healthily... whatever. This might give you a perspective of what it is like to have this "friction".
I see what this person is doing as a way to remove the friction and create a new habit. I have no doubt that when "they gets the thing rolling" with someone it will gradually easy to keep engaged without the machine "dictating" anything.
You are absolutely right that people are different, but this person comes across a little transactional and an exemplar of the Zuckerborg meme.
Do note that he has different "frequency" categories (which don't have to map to "type of friendship" same way even in that one database!).
Some are just people he is interested in meeting, maybe keeping in light contact over time. Some more often. Some so often that he actually pushes his schedule to ensure regular time for meetings, something that can be ridiculously hard even without crippling anxiety.
I think it's ok to just partition our lives into friends we value -- and largely ignore others. We'd be insane otherwise. So long as we remember to keep a general humanistic value for the man (or woman or trans or define-it-yourself) on the street...
As I get older I find it hard to even KEEP UP with normal friends flung far away and separated by the distance of time. Not everyone will agree with the OP, but I'm always impressed with old friends from 20 years ago that still keep contact.
Something to consider.
That said, the system I guess shows dual-use case of CRM technology ;)
This is the actual sentence you are referring to and it seems omitting the "ton of fun" part is a bit disingenuous as it clearly stands against this perceived technocratic and opportunistic use of people. The word "opportunity" is not used any other time in the article, by the way.
I'm in the same boats, both of them: the author's, failing to keep in touch and being aware of it, and yours, being intuitively revulsed by the systematic approach. I even refuse taking part in that weird ritual of Facebook birthday wishes, because I consider it somewhat dishonest to congratulate when I didn't remember myself.
> Staying in touch [...] require[s] little effort, time and resources but has an unlimited upside
In this case the "unlimited upside" is set in contraposition to the amount of effort it requires. It might not exactly true (it's not "unlimited") but it's "big".
> Unfortunately, for most people (me included) this isn’t something that happens naturally. So unless you have a solid system, chances are high that you won’t reach out to people regularly and miss out on a ton of fun and opportunities.
What puts it in context for me is that first one in the second quote: this article is addressing people with difficulties keeping in touch. If you're not that, the article is not for you, and at's ok.
Once that's clear, the other phrases read to me like motivational speech - for others and for the author themselves.
If the article was about weight lifting, it would start by talking about the health benefits it can bring.
A lot of friendships are (mutually) beneficial. Others are more neutral, and yes, some are pernicious. But you are not going to get people motivated to maintain them or make new ones if you lead with that. That'd be starting the weight lifting article by listing all the different injuries you can get.
> Zuckerborg meme.
I think you might be showing a lack of empathy here.
That's me.
that's why my friends are the ones who contact me.
they are my reminder.
if I start contacting them now, they would think I am going to die soon.
> I see what this person is doing as a way to remove the friction and create a new habit
It doesn't work like that though.
It's not like using an alarm to wake up at a certain hour and suddenly you realize your sleep cycle has adapted, what this person is doing is more like a grocery list, you'll never stop needing one, if you needed one in the first place.
Moreover, the simple fact that people are in different lists and lists have to be maintained and updated, it makes it more like a job than a habit.
These days I try to override the feeling and initiate first, because I know that she really does want to hang out, but the feeling is deeply ingrained and hard to shake.
What I'm basically saying is that maybe you should try a bit more, because this way has certainly lost you a few friends over the years. Maybe it works for you, though, no judgment.
I guess you are not completely aware that you just said that my friends are stupid because they accept to be mistreated by someone who's selfish an lazy.
But guess what, friendship in not only a two way street, it's also usually a non overlapping set of different personalities.
A friend is that person that has those qualities you miss, that kinda completes you, and vice versa.
And is that person that accepts you for being you, exactly you, not some imaginary version of you.
What I miss in something, I compensate with something else that my friends miss.
Easy as that.
Rest assured that if they wanted me to call them more, they'd tell me.
p.s. If you don't accept as a friend someone who doesn't call you as often as you do, you have a simple choice: find people like you.
My friends don't mind and after almost 30 years, I don't think they will suddenly start.
I decided to do it. It didn't come naturally.
He was happy I called.
I don't know next time we'll call because none of us are the kind who does call for no good reason (maybe a reason why we like each other ; - )
I don't miss them as assets as you say. I believe that if I suddenly needed their help and asked for it, they would help me - and it goes the other way as well ofc. I'm not concerned by that.
But how do you start talking to someone after years and years of radio silence? Even more importantly, how do you make sure you won't slip out of touch again, other than using a system?
My grandmother knew hundreds of people. Her little black book was massive. She had a system as well for reaching out.
Your emotions are good for regulating your relationships with 5-10 people, that's about it.
It is more similar to a birthday calendar reminder.
Regardless whether Dunbar's number is real or not, one cannot have "hundreds" of actual friends. So we're not really talking about friendships here, but about maintaining a network of contacts - or acquaintances at best - and that type of relationship is usually mutually based on the premise that "One might some day need them", there's nothing wrong about approaching it that way. And even though you're not super close, keeping in touch regularly is very important aspect of keeping your social ring alive. I'm too lazy and disorganized to approach it the way the author describes, but I totally see how it can be a beneficial socializing strategy in long terms.
You've basically described every single family relationship ever.
You don't like catching up with them, and they don't like catching up with you, but you do it anyway because one day you might need a kidney or a ticket out of Warsaw.
I keep fond memories of nearly all people I know. I'd help them on the spot and have a pleasent conversarion if they contacted me.
Yet I never miss contacting people I know.
It's really great your life didn't mess you up to a point where contacting people you would normally call friends induces anxiety.
Really, congratulations to your great and happy life.
Others have to rely on shitty tricks like these.
What are YOUR weaknesses then? What can YOU not handle without the help of technology? Please share so somebody can make fun of you too :D
OP: thanks for posting.
Try having a child and see how close your ability to execute is with your principles!
I've kept a spreadsheet for about 5 years of people I know from my hometown, from uni, past jobs, in other countries, family of friends, etc... ranked roughly by how frequently to contact them, and it has been so helpful and fun for me (and them!) to use it. This might not be helpful for everyone, depending on what you care about and the size of your network, but it seems more "sad" to me that people let chance and social media control their patterns of interaction.
No, you would miss contacting them. But he is not you.
Your comment can be read in two ways. Perhaps you think everyone should be like you and those who are different are "sad". I hope I don't need to explain why this is wrong. Or perhaps you think someone who isn't like you doesn't deserve to have any human contact and should be alone. What a horrible thing to think.
Just because your built-in OS lacks a scheduler and notifications to remind you to keep a connection with friends doesn't mean you don't care about them.
Sometimes the person might even receive the notification but fails to act on it because of poor social conditioning.
Makes sense for networking though. Which I think is what he's actually getting at.
As someone who needs a separate text file for remembering important dates (from where i stand, calendars are just weird, the months names arbitrary, the amounts of days in each also an example of some odd legacy system), i disagree.
If my brain refuses to work well for dates for a few dozen people, why would someone else remember to contact more people, especially given how busy the lives of many are? Is it a bit nonconventional to develop an automation system for that? Maybe, but then again, people don't even bat an eye when putting down events in their Google Calendar or whatever.
"If those events mattered, you wouldn't need to be reminded of them." doesn't sound like a reasonable argument to my brain, even though it might to someone else's.
> It's incredibly sad that his social life, or rather: the illusion of a social life, is being dictated by a machine.
It's not sad (to me and probably others), please don't downplay someone putting in the effort to address what would otherwise be a shortcoming. Even though a bit odd, if it works for them, props to that person!
For further reading, have a look at Dunbar's number: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
Why wouldn't we expand past the limitations of our brains, if that is beneficial to both ourselves and others, especially when extending that reasoning to a professional setting?
"I should send a Christmas greeting to that cool boss i had years ago." probably doesn't occur to people that often, but is still a nice thing to do!
Personally, without that text file of mine (or reminders from Facebook or whatever for others), i wouldn't remember most birthdays (of friends or acquaintances) or other celebration days, which would be bad for everyone - to me, because of feeling bad after forgetting about those days, and for others because of not receiving greetings or gifts.
Just because your brain is able to keep track of your friends and actively remember to interact with them, doesn't mean everyone is like you. People who are not neurotypical can have very close friends and family and not realize that 3 months have passed since they last called home or checked in with a friend. It's so easy to forget that other people's brains don't work exactly like ours; remembering that is an extremely important habit to exercise.
Yep, that summed it up for me in 6 words.
That would also apply to most social media as well.
That sounds rather strong. It's not unusual to keep a Christmas card list, which is pretty much the same idea.
Personally I don't see a problem unless it's automatically sending messages giving the impression they're not automated. The blog post makes it clear that all the messages he sends are written by him, the system only prompts him to write+send them. I don't see an issue in using a system to send reminders.
Incidentally this topic has been discussed before in a thread 7 months back. [0]
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.
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.
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.
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.
And they've been seen as greasy, superficial, fakers for just as long.
Not because they kept a rolodex or used manual or computerised CRMs.
Personally I can recall both tropes of "well connected person" having all kinds of tools to keep track of contact details and thus being able to "get things done" (which was somewhat neutral on nature of the relationships) and the sleazyball salesman who happened to use similar tools.
However, I can frequently tell when somebody uses CRM-like software or methods in our interactions — and it usually isn't a bonus point in my book. It tends to make me a little bit wary of that person.
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/, 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.
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.
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?
I ended the article with "hmm, a system like this could be directly useful to me, especially at work."
Unsubscribe, please
I empathise why the OP would do this.
People are so different in our attitudes to life. It reminds me of the Calendly snafu from earlier.