Life gets busy. I want to drop a note to my distant family regularly, but between work and family and friends and hobbies, sometimes out of sight becomes out of mind. I like having a periodic nudge to ping that far-off person. Today I’m using Things for that, with repeating tasks to text so-and-so periodically. Something that integrates that with a record of what we talked about last time (so I can follow up with them) or alert me on special days would be nice.
I do all this because I care about those people and want to make a special effort to keep up with them. If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t be interested.
a) Lack the social skills or
b) Lack the time management skills
This is where we want to help.
The premise that one of the myriad of other tools that already exist to get a reminder to connect with someone you care about are somehow so insufficient, and that if only I had this new CRM app for personal relationships that I'd finally be able to cultivate those relationships like I've always wanted, is just so preposterous sounding to me that I felt I had to comment.
Technology can't give a person more than the set amount of time, energy, and attention they have by virtue of being human. We're cramming more and more into our lives, but I doubt that in general we feel more satisfied and fulfilled. You can add and add until you can't. At some point you need to subtract. In this community there's likely to be at least some stigma around not optimizing every last second of your life, and personally I think that attitude should be stigmatized. It's insulting to personal dignity.
Consider a clock. Why do you need to know what time is it, with minute accuracy? Because you need to synchronize in time with other people. Why do you need that? Because everyone else does that and it's now a basic part of how society functions. You owning a clock is a default expectation.
How did it came to be this way? The first clocks invented weren't very useful for this (they were for navigation at sea, though), because approximately no one had them. But then someone put clocks on church towers and someone else miniaturized them, and at some point we crossed from it being a convenience to it being necessity.
Same story with calendars, todo lists, having a phone at home, having a phone in your pocket, having a bank account. Emerging additions to this list include having credit/debit cards, having smartphones, having social media accounts. Individually, we can do little about it; at some point, resisting costs more than giving in.