Live data from Hacker News

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

jakobgreenfeld.com

391–400 of 510 posts

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

#391
This is related to an idea I had for a "todo" app that I haven't found anywhere yet. Every task can implement some kind of flexible occurrence. It's for tasks that should be done but the exact date isn't very important and the recurrence interval starts again not the last time the task became "due" but the last time it was done.

It fits many kinds of tasks, watering plants, checking a furnace filter, ... but also staying in touch with people.

Does anyone know of a service or app like that?

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

#392

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…

Perhaps a 15-30 year old thing, but for those people in my B/C/D list (never thought about it that way before), one thing I do is if they are active on Instagram I will send a response to their story if it looks interesting. More casual than a text, but it opens the door to a quick conversation.

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

#393

This is related to an idea I had for a "todo" app that I haven't found anywhere yet. Every task can implement some kind of flexible occurrence. It's for tasks that should be done but the exact date isn't very important and the recurrence interval starts again not the last time the task became "due" but the last time it was done. It fits many kinds of tasks, watering plants, checking a furnace filter, ... but also sta…

Clickup does this very well-lets you decide if you want to create a new instance no matter what, or whether you want to create a relative recurrence when the task is complete.

So in the case of furnace filters: create quarterly, then push next one out x days once marked complete.

In the case of rent, it's always due the 1st of the month regardless of whether I pay on the 2nd or the 31st.

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

#394
post #210
post #205

Interesting way to approach it, my approach might be less technical, when someone comes to mind randomly, I just txt them with: Hey, you just popped into my mind, I hope all is well with you and yours! It's simple, lightweight, and you'd be shocked how often the other person pings back. My completely un-scientific view is that most people think of others once in a while. Perhaps we're too busy to reach out, or the gu…

Exactly. Agree with this. I think we come to terms at a certain point that its impossible to stay in touch with everyone. I actually kept a table with people to stay in touch with them every: - month - quarter - 6 months - a year (if its less then you remember anyways) I quickly killed that approach, because people who genuinely understand overwhelm also are always happy to catch-up once in a while and we hold no har…

I agree, but I also think it's also an issue (particularly with the popularity of social media) that people are often trying to keep in contact with many more people but also interacting a lot more than in the past.

For instance, I know people who were part of the greatest generation that would have decades long pen-pal type relationships with people they hadn't seen in person in years. It was pretty common for them to send several long hand written letters to several of these friends every year, for 30, 40, 50 years. But I don't think I've encountered anyone in younger generations who would do that.

15-20 years ago, I had a number of e-mail acquaintances who I'd send long e-mail to every few months, and they'd send another long e-mail in return. This went on for years, but with the increase in popularity of social media, these exchanges dwindled into nothingness.

Likewise, I remember when almost everyone I knew was on AIM. But that became old fashioned, for some reason. Not for any particular reason; people still can and do communicate with text messages, and it was no extra effort to keep an AIM client running in the background. But when something new comes along, there's usually an exodus from the old.

Up until recently it seemed that Facebook was the platform to communicate, and it had a very specific, shallow form of communication sent to everyone. Though now even that seems to be dying down.

Mst people are driven by social trends at large. If you sent a handwritten letter to an acquaintance at one point in time, you'd get one in return. Likewise with a friendly e-mail talking about your life. Nothing we have now is really a replacement for e-mail, but it's more trendy, so the old form of communication gets completely neglected.

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

#395
post #384

The biggest reason I don't maintain contact with people from my past is I was a much worse person in my past and I'm either embarrassed about my behavior or concerned that my shittiness is what led to our relationship in the first place. In any case, I find it's easier (and emotionally satisfying) to stay in touch with a couple people that I can have natural, unforced conversations with. Scheduling interactions on a…

This is me 100%. Although I've found that when I do talk to folks and apologize for some of the shittiest shittiness, more often than not they don't even remember what I'm talking about. The lesson here, for me at least, is that I blow things way out of proportion. (This is not surprising news.)

Or, alternatively, they're giving you a polite "out" and enabling mutual forgetting. I've been on the wrong side of this dynamic too many times and I think that when the other person claims not to remember, most of the time they're telling the truth - of course they didn't ruminate on that-thing-you-did as much as you did - but sometimes, I think it's intentional amnesia to avoid the social overhead of addressing the event head-on.

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

#396

This is related to an idea I had for a "todo" app that I haven't found anywhere yet. Every task can implement some kind of flexible occurrence. It's for tasks that should be done but the exact date isn't very important and the recurrence interval starts again not the last time the task became "due" but the last time it was done. It fits many kinds of tasks, watering plants, checking a furnace filter, ... but also sta…

Clickup does this very well-lets you decide if you want to create a new instance no matter what, or whether you want to create a relative recurrence when the task is complete. So in the case of furnace filters: create quarterly, then push next one out x days once marked complete. In the case of rent, it's always due the 1st of the month regardless of whether I pay on the 2nd or the 31st.

Thank you, I'll check it out.

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

#397
I like this. I've done something vaguely similar but more lightweight/ad-hoc, which is to just send an email to, eg, "every3months@followupthen.com" with the subject line "Get in touch with so-and-so".

A proper Airtable of contacts, or a tool like Monica, sounds great – just nervous that it'll fall out of date.

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

#398

This is a very helpful post. Over the pandemic, I fell into the habit of basically only socializing with my partner. When you have a comfortable relationship with such high availability it's too easy to neglect friendships. As things have opened back up, so far I've been basically relying on extrovert friends to do outreach. This means that a lot of my introvert friends, who are (like me) bad at reaching out, I haven…

Quite introverted myself, only that extroverted friends (?) do not reach out or initiate, so it all comes down to what I do. If I don't contact/initiate, then nothing happens, except with the friends I often talk with online anyway.

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

#399
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every couple of days I scroll through my text history to the bottom and see if there's anyone there I'd like to talk to. I call it "The Poor Man's CRM"

I like this. I'd like it a ton if I had a single feed that would aggregate my texts, whatsapp, my various email addresses, telegram, signal, skype, zoom, facebook messenger ...

Hey, me too! I've been building something like this for awhile, but it's a side project, and thus regularly de-prioritized beneath work projects.

Also, really a lot of effort to maintain, as each platform tends to frequently push breaking changes :(

Post reply on HN