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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

#481
post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this works great until you realize you're the one _always_ initiating and they say "Wow thanks for getting in touch" and you don't talk to them for another 3 years.

Yeah, this happens to me a lot. But I’ve accepted that’s the price to be paid for keeping in touch with certain people. Of course, there are plenty of times when I decide it’s not worth it to be the only one who reaches out.

When do you stop ? After you teach out twice and it's now their turn for example?

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

#482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it because Tylenol isn't an NSAID?

Did you see Tylenol mentioned either?

I don't understand - have you never used Google scholar? Type in the relevant terms and there are a million relevant results. I just pasted the top one, which is all about how physical pain and mental pain is basically physiologically identical and specifically mentions Tylenol in relation tto its effect on social pain. Full text shod be on sci-hub.

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

#483

There is actually at least one app for this - https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/10/a-new-app-called-garden-he... 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 / y…

Explicitly dividing people into groups of decreasing priority is the one thing that feels the most uncomfortable. But I also understand there is an implicit hierarchy in your head anyway.

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.

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

#484
post #475
post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because unlike someone trying to keep in touch, you always knew they were just angling to sell something to you. Not because they kept a rolodex or used manual or computerised CRMs.

The point is that maybe it's more than coincidence that rolodexes or CRMs are used primarily by people who are pretending to be friendly in the hopes of getting something out of it.

And I think it's the other way around - aggressive, sleazy sales culture coincided with western world use of business cards (and thus rolodexes), tainting somewhat accepted earlier "paper relationship management tools" - visiting cards, address books, etc. - which also had the issue of being more accessible only to the wealthier classes.

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.

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

#486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I agree with your take here, it's rather uncharitable. 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 doe…

How do you manage to lose touch with friends? Did you not miss them? 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.

Question 1 I think is packaged in your follow-up questions:

- 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'.

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

#488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it because Tylenol isn't an NSAID?

Did you see Tylenol mentioned either?

Sorry, I wasn't trying to be antagonistic. I can see how my comment could have come off that way though. I honestly didn't even read the linked study. I was just providing a possible reason for why a search for "NSAID" may not have yielded any results.

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

#489
post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's funny you say that. i've had thoughts about getting more organized like this, but then have come to realize "wait a minute, this means i'm industrializing my personal life with actual crm techniques. how do i feel about this? ick!" 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.

The other way to look at it is you value your relationships enough that you want to invest more into growing them.

This is the stance that I take.

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?"

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

#490
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Serendipity and randomness wins. Randomness you said? ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1

ORDER BY RAND_AL_THOR

I'm sorry, but programming languages need to call that function either RND() or RANDOM(). Ever since I read The Wheel of Time in the nineties and early aughts, I can't associate that word with anything else.

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