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

jakobgreenfeld.com

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

#171

Post by psd1 »

zephyr9 wrote: post #22
MrYellowP wrote: post #5

So he's treating people like assets, not friends, and these assets need to be checked on on a regular basis. If there were friends, he'd not need to be reminded of contacting them. He'd miss contacting them. So instead he needs a tool to remind him of that "friend" he needs to contact, because pretending to care is beneficial. One might some day need them. It's incredibly sad that his social life, or rather: the illu…

Yep. The author is a legit sociopath. This should in no way be considered acceptable human behaviour.

Wow. Awareness of the lived experience of others: nil points.

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?

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

#173

Post by dskloet »

l33tbro wrote: post #149
dskloet wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Happiness and valuable shared experiences are also gains.

What about my alcoholic friend I've known for 20 years that is destroying his life and lashing out at me right now because he is sick? Or my heavily depressed friend of 30 years who I sat with on the weekend? Not everything is about extracting maximum personal happiness. Friendship can also be about service.

If you care about these people then presumably it does make you happier in the long term to let them know that you care about them. Especially if it's not that pleasant in the moment I imagine having a system to remind you could be helpful.

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

#174

Post by adwww »

jakub_g wrote: post #169

My main issue with keeping in touch with people is that texting someone you only vaguely know is kinda weird. You don't see the other person, you don't hear them, you can't know what's in their mind. Those exchanges often just hang in a weird void after a few texts and it's unsure when/how to continue from there. On the other hand, calling someone you don't know well (even someone you do know!) feels even weirder and…

Yeah I tried giving up social media for a while and just texting my actual friends etc instead.

It works for the groups of friends that we have active WhatsApp groups with. But especially texting friends of the opposite sex - now that we're grown up, married, etc - just feels invasive, unless it's asking a specific question, or to arrange something.

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

#175

Post by VBprogrammer »

My first reaction to this was it feels a little bit icky. However, on reflection, there are a number of people who I'd consider my closest friends who, partially due to the pandemic, I've not seen in a few years and we haven't ever been in the habit of talking regularly. I think having a systematic way of remembering to reach out to some of these people would definitely have been a net positive.

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

#177

Post by terafo »

gjulianm wrote: post #160
mettamage wrote: post #119

Some comments here claim that he is treating people not as friends. IMO these comments are not charitable a interpretation. While it is a plausible interpretation, I have strongly learned from HN to be charitable and optimistic when reading someone else's point of view. I know with topics like this that perspectives vary more wildly among people, so let me show you why I can be more optimistic in my interpretation. I…

I get thinking about a system like this. I have given some thought about building something similar, but always ended up abandoning it for the exact same reasons this post strikes me as extremely weird: - It feels weird classifying people in boxes of desired contact frequency. How do you decide that? Does the author think "I honestly don't care enough about this person to contact them more than once a year" ? Then wh…

Think of it as the lowest common denominator. It isn't "this person is not important, so I will contact them only once a year", it is "this person is important enough for me to contact them AT LEAST once per year". Flexibility isn't lost, but you have baseline level of commitment to every relationship. If you don't want to contact that person anymore - it's a conscious choice, not "just lost touch", but if you want to contact them, you have prompt "you are about to loose contact, do you REALLY want to do that?".

> 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.

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

#178

Post by gjulianm »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #11
MrYellowP wrote: post #5

So he's treating people like assets, not friends, and these assets need to be checked on on a regular basis. If there were friends, he'd not need to be reminded of contacting them. He'd miss contacting them. So instead he needs a tool to remind him of that "friend" he needs to contact, because pretending to care is beneficial. One might some day need them. It's incredibly sad that his social life, or rather: the illu…

He didn’t talk about friends you are. Still you can safely assume most of the people in the three weeks category are close contacts. 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…

I think there are two sides to this: scheduling the contact and triggering the thought to contact. The first one is ok, we schedule things we care about all the time. The second one is the weird one, and to me the OP is more about the second part.

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.

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

#179

Post by cehrlich »

mettamage wrote: post #119

Some comments here claim that he is treating people not as friends. IMO these comments are not charitable a interpretation. While it is a plausible interpretation, I have strongly learned from HN to be charitable and optimistic when reading someone else's point of view. I know with topics like this that perspectives vary more wildly among people, so let me show you why I can be more optimistic in my interpretation. I…

I have a similarly non-cynical view of this and am considering to implement something similar for myself.

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.

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