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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

#491

Post by eatbitseveryday »

300bps wrote: post #369
eatbitseveryday wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm interesting. I’ve actually gotten these types of messages before, and now they seem strange. My replies were enthusiastic but did not lead to anymore than a shallow interaction, so I felt it was a waste of my time. Perhaps my cynical view, but I don’t want to be used for someone else’s need to feel like they’re connecting with someone when they’re not interested in more than a hello and hope you’re well. Those are…

Those are small talk and are taxing on me :-( 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."

> "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."

Can you tell me the connection to what I said?

Best friends don't send me these little text messages.

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

#492

Post by olivertaylor »

arisAlexis wrote: post #481
overvale wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No, many more times than that. Maybe 6 months or a year of reaching out. I try to be very generous in this regard. Often times it takes many "investments" for the tactic to pay off.

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

#493

Post by jbuhbjlnjbn »

avgcorrection wrote: post #322
Paul_S wrote: post #10

The next logical step is to have AI (GPT-3?) read the social posts of the contact and produce an email based on that and the last email. I hope the poor people on the other end of the author's networking scheme also have AI to read this and reply.

That’s a logical leap. No part of the interaction is automated.

The timing is automated.

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

#494

Post by avgcorrection »

jbuhbjlnjbn wrote: post #493
avgcorrection wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a logical leap. No part of the interaction is automated.

The timing is automated.

The timing of birthdays is “automated”. Irrelevant.

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

#495

Post by nllewellyn »

barbazoo wrote: post #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 sta…

There is an Android app I found called Regularly.

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... )

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

#496

Post by vorpalhex »

thelettere wrote: post #482
vorpalhex wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You understand Google Scholar returns unrelated studies, right? You have to actually read them. "results by searching terms in google scholar" is not a metric of truth.

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.

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

#497

Post by sundarurfriend »

samatman wrote: post #453
christiangenco wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Derek! 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 stru…

Not at all to bikeshed your tool, which I'm sure works just fine, but this is the sort of application where GNU Recutils really shines. 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.

The tooling (or lack thereof) is the only problem I have with recfiles. It quickly gets unpleasant entering the (repetitive) metadata every time (and the CLI entry isn't much better). I get the impression from the recfiles page that the Emacs plugin is the main supported one, and maybe that one has a good UI flow that makes it usable, but I don't use Emacs.

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.

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

#498

Post by abnercoimbre »

bnralt wrote: post #467
abnercoimbre wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying even e-mail completely died down in your life? I still get a lot of value from e-mail exchanges with old friends -- I agree it's not super common though.

Long form casual social e-mail have just about disappeared for me. The kind where someone writes you several paragraphs about their life or their thoughts for no particular purpose than to chat with you. I used to have a lot of people I kept up correspondence with for several years, but when social media became popular, those mostly stopped. Which is a shame, because social media is much worse for forming actual rela…

I truly think social media is a net negative. I'm sorry that valuable social part of your life has vanished.

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

#499

Post by butwhywhyoh »

snowwrestler wrote: post #470
gjulianm wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Think of the strong traditions behind birthday or annual holiday greetings, for instance. And I don’t know of any meaningful relationship that is maintained just by that bare minimum.

I have some meaningful relationships that are. So, now you do!

Pretty much by definition if your only contact with someone is to say "happy birthday" once a year, that relationship is not currently meaningful.

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

#500

Post by butwhywhyoh »

avgcorrection wrote: post #494
jbuhbjlnjbn wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The timing is automated.

The timing of birthdays is “automated”. Irrelevant.

It's very relevant. The author could have devised a system that was "reach out to people on their birthdays", but they didn't. They set up an automated system that reminds you to contact people based on their predetermined level of importance. Having an AI craft an automated "ice breaker" style message doesn't seem like too much of a leap from here.
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