A simple system I’m using to stay in touch with hundreds of people | Hacker News Reader

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

jakobgreenfeld.com

828 pointsjakobgreenfeld487 comments

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 guilt of getting out of touch makes it hard to push through that resistance. I just push through it.

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 small talk and are taxing on me :-(

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."

Sometimes shallow interactions are fine. Like bread in your diet, there's nothing wrong with it so long as it isn't the only interaction.

It's an opportunity for engagement. Sometimes nobody wants to take the opportunity but it's valuable to have.

If you want it to be more engaging, make it so. Ask questions in return, share good responses. "How are you?" can be answered in one word or several paragraphs.

They're text messages. They are the very epitome of shallow interaction. I agree with your sentiment completely.

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 hard feelings if we don't speak for another year.

Serendipity and randomness wins.

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.

I don't know what it is in me or how it got there, but I seem to be thoroughly convinced that I'll only be bothering people. When I rationally think about it, even emotionally, I disagree, yet I cannot shake the instinctual feeling.

> Serendipity and randomness wins.

Randomness you said?

ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1

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"

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.

If I got a message like that, I would wonder which kind of sausage app or Like-Facebook-for-X development project, you wanted to peddle on me this time.

Thanks for this.

I started to write too long comment about how I feel scheduling my life would not work for me, but that doesn't add anything to the discussion.

I've just texted an old friend.

And I think I'll set up some yearly reminder to reach my few friends that don't respond anymore, but that I care about anyway.

I started doing this with covid lockdowns, and it's been wonderful. I've had days-long text chains with people that naturally drop off again for a few months, but got us both caught up. I've had meaningful connections with past colleagues that made us both realize how much friendship was formed at work. I've even had it pivot to zoom and a couple of times turn into not just a friendly catch up but learning about opportunities at someone's new company (I'm actively job searching too).

At the end of the day, just catching up with people that I used to see and talk to on a daily/weekly cadence has been a significant emotional boon, and I don't see any downsides. Some of the reaching out didn't go anywhere, and that's fine - most were very worth my time.

I do the same thing. I keep a text file with friends' names and from time to time check it too.

It sounds like good advice. Heck I don't wanna automate my life, especially not up that point. Imagine if the people the author contacted knew why, I wouldn't be too happy about it. Slightly related, I try to remember my closest friends birthdays, means more to me if I can remember it rather than a generic reminder...

If I ever received a message like that I would be completely weirded out, is this a thing people actually do?

I do something similar, and actually wrote an app to help recently. It goes one step further by allowing you to specify different messages that it can use at random. The landing page for the app is at http://communiqai.com.

What's the channel you use to get the message across I wonder? Email? LinkedIn?

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 think it's perfectly fine to separate emotions and reason like this. The reason: I am on the other side when it comes to managing my friends: I am not separating reason and emotion. Because of that, I am failing hard at staying in touch with people that I would like to stay in touch with (I am noticing it with certain friends of my as well). I am succeeding to stay in touch with a few people, but if I'd have a system like this I might be able to stay in touch with many more people that I'd like to stay in touch with anyway but for some unknown reason have some sort of blockade or friction.

Other than that I think the interpretation is not charitable enough, I also have personal experience that it might be wrong. For example, I view the dating markets strictly from a market perspective that is heavily inspired by micro-economics and "common sense". Initially, such a perspective is detached from emotion, but there are certain points where it is attached (e.g. with supply/demand questions like: "what do I want/need from a partner" or "What can I offer? What do I want to offer? What do I need to offer?"). Moreover, upon meeting people there is empathy, sympathy and human intuition involved. Sometimes the emotions will be so strong that I have a compulsion towards meeting a person again (e.g. falling in love). Those emotions are not helping! Sometimes I feel the right amount that is also in line with my other needs and in other cases I don't feel enough about a certain person when I don't see them (but when I do see them, I am delighted to catch up).

Management of personal life != how people are on a moment by moment basis in personal life

I think by having a system like this, you can put Dunbar's number to shame.

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.

I made it a habit to speak to a friend every day of the week while taking my walk. The rest follows effortlessly - I usually rotate friends and end up with 7 to 10 people in a frequent conversation pool.

Absolutely. When Facebook got to the point that my old friends and family were ubiquitously present, it was a godsend. I reestablished contact with people I hadn't heard from for years, kept up-to-date on family that I would otherwise not have heard from - it was great.

Lately, Facebook doesn't do a very good job of this, so I've been thinking of better ways of doing it. Something like an email reminder might work.

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 why are these people still "friends"?

- Lack of flexibility. Organic relationships will have different contact frequencies over time. For example, I might have inconsistent contacts with a friend that I've known for a long time because of reasons, but if they're having a rough time I will probably be more attentive and want to contact them more frequently.

- Relationships are two-way, so you'd expect that the other part initiates contact a significant amount of the times. Given the myriad of ways that contact can happen, updating the database for hundreds of people can be a real hassle. The fact that this is not mentioned at all indicates that a lot of these might be one-way relationships, not actual friendships.

- 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?"

I understand what other people are saying in the comments about forgetting to contact people or being too busy, and needing reminders. But I don't think that's the same problem the author is solving.

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.

> Relationships are two-way, so you'd expect that the other part initiates contact a significant amount of the times.

Seems both fair and reasonable, but IME it's wrong.

It's wrong in a way that is stable as well, and that is why it takes effort to fight: people easily get anxious about rejection, and they easily get it in their heads that the other person doesn't want to hear from them. Anything from "we had a bad interaction" to "they didn't reply last time" seems to be an excuse to cut contact.

According to (probably dubious) tests, I'm not especially extroverted or introverted. But I make conscious effort to keep contacts alive, because I just like the human contact and keeping updated on people's stories.

It's also the case that people like to help, and will do so readily if you reach out to them, which is another weird hold-up in people's minds (can I ask this person that I kinda know about this thing? 90% of the time, yes). Just this week I reached out to people who were my primary school teachers for some advice, I kid you not. Now do I talk much to these ladies that I knew 30 years ago? No. Now and again I'll send out a short piece about how my family is doing, and that's it. But even if they read it and don't reply, chances are they appreciate it. Kinda like TCP, you can have an open connection even though nothing is sent over it.

Another case is that friend who sucks at staying in touch. I have a number of friends who are super warm and chummy when I'm near them, but they never take it upon themselves to initiate anything. Think about when you were a kid, how many people did you hang out with, vs how many people bothered to organize parties? It's like 50 and 4. So a lot of people will just wait for an invite, and they'll get enough that they don't need to do anything.

As for the logistics, I don't have a custom program to do it for me, it's just a Trello, plus FB and LinkedIn that I scan from time to time. FB tells me birthdays, so that is a good time to write a DM. LinkedIn tells me when they changed jobs, which is also a good time to update. And then Trello because not everyone is active on the other two. I'll also do a quick scan if I'm travelling, in case someone I know is at the destination, and I'll send out some emails at Christmas/NY.

I use a much simpler system, I have recurring reminders setup and when they trigger I just reach out to that person. I try to keep things light, like a text message, photo, link, etc. the great thing is that you can use the same message/photo/link for everyone. At first it felt impersonal but the message is always simply a trigger for the conversation that comes next. Ultimately it doesn’t matter what you say when you reach out.

Look, I'm 55 years old. There are people I haven't heard from in maybe thirty years, easy. I wouldn't mind catching up on those people yearly - and it would be at least a thirty-fold improvement over my current management technique, right?

Yep. I’m bad at contacting family and my 700+ ppl in LinkedIn and yes I know them all or would not add them in the first place. Definitely going to try this.

(I'm the guy he refers to in that post.)

If anyone reading this builds software like this, and releases it publicly, whether free or for sale, please let me know. I'd be happy to send people your way.

Because of https://sive.rs/dbt I get a few emails a week from strangers, asking if my software is public yet, or if not, what else I would recommend. (And I might never make my software public. It's too tied-in to my now-complex PostgreSQL system of everything.)

I'm definitely going to send people to Jakob's post here now. But if interested in this subject, please email me here:

https://sive.rs/contact

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 structure I can do a bunch of cool things with simple scripts:

- print out a list of upcoming birthdays, half birthdays, birthdays on Jupiter, etc. of all my friends - print out a list of friends I haven't contacted within my desired `frequency` (the subject of this post) - create or open the friend file containing a particular name from the command line (ex: `,people Sarah` prints out all the Sarah files I have and asks me which I'd like to open)

I think plain text is the way to go with something as personal as a system for keeping track of your friends. I was inspired to go this route by your post on journaling[1]:

> If digital, use only plain text. It’s a standard format not owned by any company. It will be readable in 50 years on devices we haven’t even imagined yet. Don’t use formats that can only be read by one program, because that program won’t be around in 50 years. Don’t use the cloud, unless you’re also going to download it weekly and back it up in plain text outside that cloud. (Companies shut down. Clouds disappear. Think long-term.)

I've been chewing on how to make this system something that might be used by other people who don't know how to use the command line. Something like the way Obsidian[2] works might make sense.

1. https://sive.rs/dj

2. https://obsidian.md/

Glad to see you back -- at least for a couple comments, Derek!

You might find Perkeep interesting: https://perkeep.org/

I've been working on one of these on and off for a while now!

It'll eventually be up on gosayhito.com. I'll try to remind you when it's done, but you can also probably put the website in as a monthly thing to check on.

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 more invasive those days. I don't remember when I last called someone else than my close family (and very close friends upon first fixing a date/time for the call).

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.

I feel exactly the same, and honestly, it keeps me from approaching some people I‘d like to.

If anyone has figured out a pretext or mental framework for warming up conversations that have effectively died long ago, I would be delighted to know about it.

I find it nice, if it's not spammy. Two relatively distant friends starting do a quarterly "newsletter" of their projects and I found myself getting in touch with them more often. Same with strangers on social media. Often good things happen when you 'just go for it'.

Yeah, a big part of being social is about stifling the expectation of rejection. No one is going to yell at you for asking how their day was. No one is going to call the cops if you send them a text "Hey, wanted to catch up. How's your week going? I saw this super insightful comment by nefitty on HN about being social and it made me realize we hadn't talked in a bit."

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.

I agree with you. The author is trying to automate human connection - but it probably doesn't come off genuine.

Have you ever played Stardew Valley? One game mechanic involves managing relationships with members of the town. You need to discover peoples' likes and dislikes, keep up contact, and remember their birthdays and probably a few other rules I'm forgetting. There's essentially a spreadsheet that you manage. It's the strangest thing to me - it feels like the way an autistic person might view relationships, but also like it's common sense. I think it's just that in real life you're better off not keeping score on some things.

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 calendar feels odd. It makes me think of those emails you get "from" somebody after signing up for a service, and after a few you notice their time stamps all end in 00:00.

> 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.

Perfect summary. The people I'm still in contact with are those that grew into better people together with me.

I like to think I chose depth over breadth. I can count my real friends on one hand and I feel like we have deep and meaningful friendships. They're people who I've been through some shit with, or people who I'd be prepared to go through some shit with if it came to it.

Everyone else is someone who can come and go. How long are they around for? Who knows, it's just a temporary crossing of paths that feels nice while it lasts. I couldn't maintain a connect with hundreds of people unless fate crossed our paths again.

But, you know, even those deep connections might be temporary, just on a longer timeframe. If one connection faded then perhaps there'd be room for a new one.

I think this is for higher level contact - not personal friendships. Networking for professional development - more along those lines.

Something I need to get back into. Interacting, at least casually, on a routine basis with a wide amount of people has lead to every job I have ever held - they came to me based on my reputation or past interactions. It's definitely the best way to get a new (and better) job rather than blindly fishing for them.

That's the real power of systems like this. Not to develop personal friendships, but to remain relevant in the eyes of a large number of people so that if they have a future opportunity you will be top of mind for how they can get it addressed.

I think it's why he stresses making the contacts personal and with meaning/value specific to that person. These aren't soulless automated computer generated emails, but a system to prompt him to write relevant and sincere contact messages.

Is it a lot of work? Sure. But building up a network of people who see you as contributing value is priceless.

I feel the same. In fact, I intentionally avoid interacting with people from my past since they may have bad memories involving me that I'd be resurfacing by contacting them. I've considered reaching out to certain people to apologize, but I stopped when I realized I was mostly just looking for absolution rather than actually trying to make them feel better. To me, the kindest thing I can do is stay out of their lives.

I do the same, but it often makes me worried about what kind of person I am. I don't really have too much to apologize about - at least that I know of. But for some reason, I tend to grow apart from people who know my past or who simply know too much about me. Not every single one of them, but apart from very few people, this is the case. I think it's safe to say I have trust issues, but I never understood why, as I haven't suffered any trauma and don't really have a reason to be this way.

I consider this to be a bad trait, because finding new friends isn't easy and I'm trying to get rid of this habit.

I know I'm not particularly unique in having that sort of past, but it's comforting to hear someone else share these thoughts. Thank you.

I hate when a service normally sends emails from Service Name, but then once in a while they send an email from Firstname Lastname to make it look personal. It's not going to work, but it sure is annoying.

There’s a CRM of some sort that sends emails I’ve received that even mentions a nearby restaurant or point of interest in its emails. It’s trying so hard to be personal it’s laughable.

You’re not scheduling interactions with this system, you’re just reminding yourself about the people you enjoyed talking to.

Nothing prevents you from talking to these people more frequently, this system seems more like a way to nudge you to remind you about conversations you forgot.

I dunno, I am very bad on the phone and an introvert but I found that even after a few years I have people who are genuinely happy to speak with me. I forced myself to call one of them last week and reconnected. Not my best friend but feels good

The forcing is weird, right? Why in the world does it take so much work to reach out to someone?

The obvious explanation would be fear of rejection.

Another story you could tell is fear of connection due to opportunity cost -- what if, among all the people you could connect with, this one isn't a great choice but will end up consuming a lot of your time?

But I think it's probably the first.

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.

I understand the feeling.

What I've learned in the last five years is contacting people has more upside than not contacting them.

The worst thing that can happen after contact is a return to disconnection and the other person maintaining the same opinion.

I moved back to my hometown 20 years after leaving. At one point I thought I should pull out my old yearbooks to try to remember who everyone was. I decided that was a bad idea. It would be better to learn who everyone is.

I'm on the same boat,however one things I learned with my kids is that you can apologize for what you feel embarrassed about.

I've resumed chatting with some people this way (even though they didn't feel there was a need)

ha ha - "my shittiness"

Well I definitely heard that. I have a thing the voices in my head periodically inflict on me that I call Embarrassment Day, where I spend the day remembering past incidents that I'm embarrassed about. Lots of fun.

The silver lining of course is that if you're embarrassed about things in the past, it means you've grown enough since then to be embarrassed about them. If all you want to do is double down on everything you did, either you were already perfect or you haven't grown at all since then.

Valid points, but this post is about organizing communication for professional development. The author mentions referrals and interesting code. Consider a professor and past grad students.

I don't want my wife to every meet my friends from my teenage and early 20s for exactly this reason.

> Of course, not everyone publishes content or updates regularly. In that case, I usually just ask what they’ve been up to lately.

> You’d be surprised how many people are really happy to get these kinds of messages and they often spark all kinds of deeper conversations.

I had an acquaintance I barely had any common interests with that every few weeks out of the blue would ask me "what's up?". Not once did it lead to any value for me or him and just mildly annoyed me and made me less likely to cooperate if he ever needed help. I'd still help him, because I'm a helpful person but I'd have more mixed feelings about it than if he was just memory of last pleasant interaction from few years prior than fresh memory of scheduled networking/nagging.

I think if you can't personalize approach to provide value to that person with your interactions you should skip keeping in touch because you might be worse off.

You know it's funny - I read your comment earlier today and it stuck out because I have one old acquaintance who does the same thing -- we really weren't that close when we lived in the same city but he still pings me every once in a while just to say "what's up?". For some reason I find it exceedingly annoying, although I generally really like staying in touch with people.

Anyway, as if his ears were burning, he actually sent me a "what's up?" text about 5 minutes ago (first time in a year). So I had to come back here and comment because the timing was just too perfect :)

Part of the problem is friend are like dating, for it to not be annoying you gotta both actually like each other. The acquaintances who do this to me I usually don’t really like. But there are other people I would be happy to hear from in this way.

An important aspect of this kind of workflow — one that is kinda glossed over in the convo here — is that the relationship one have with a contact is fluid. If the convo with a contact is cool, and you're both having fun, you're probably gonna bump to more frequent exchanges, while if the contact never seems to engage, you're probably going to bump them down or even remove them from the workflow. There is no point in annoying people.

Clearly, this acquaintance of yours is not taking your lack of response into account. Or, they're just trying to get closer to you and you might be reading their message as inpersonal when it is actually genuine. Anyway, I can't see myself sending multiple messages per month to someone who never answers back.

Many people have mentioned Monica, which is what I use for this.

I live overseas from loved ones and old friends, meaning there are few natural cues to encourage communication. Without very regular chats my memory doesn't let me be as in context with the major things happening in their lives as I need to be to have meaningful conversations with them. Monica helps with both of these things.

Getting reminders only really helps if the interactions themselves are also rewarding when you do them. If, say, calling an elderly family member feels more like a chore, it's easy to end up skipping the reminders more than you'd like.

Do you have a link to this? Every search query I try produces results for the character Monica from Friends. Seems like exceptionally poor SEO, heh.

https://www.monicahq.com/

Chiming to say that I also use a self-hosted instance of Monica.

I hop between a lot of projects and hobbies so I tend to be a bit scatterbrained. Having a central store of my contacts, past events, their likes/dislikes is extremely useful for me.

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.

Silicon Valley had an episode about a similar idea and it didn't end well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEzvFiR_Dts

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

The timing is automated.

People definitely do this on matchmaking sites!

Just ask Eric Schmidt. Oh, wait. Whacky parsed as ad making sites. Nevermind. Didn't that guy write something about AI with another guy named Henry? Is AI trying to get us mad or get us laid? Somebody needs to write a program to figure that out and turn it into DoggyDuJourCoin. I heard you can make easy money doing that. It's all good. Who wants to bother with thinking when computers can do that for us now. I'm sure nobody is trying to take advantage of people who don't do that. #PTBarnum

I don't think this is fake or forced at all. It's just a necessary counteraction to the way the modern world is constructed. In the past, you'd maintain all of these weak social connections automatically, simply by going about your daily life. You'd talk to your coworkers daily, the baker/grocer/butcher a few times a week, neighbors weekly at the church, other citizens monthly at a town hall, and so on. You didn't need a system because it just happened naturally.

These days, most of these situations have been removed. Workers change jobs every couple years (and can work remotely), most people barely speak to their neighbors, grocery stores are either huge and faceless or just have items delivered by an anonymous gig worker, town halls don't really exist, etc.

If you think that social connections have value (and they almost always do), this is the rational move.

Jakob is clearly the bottleneck here. Surely GPT3 or something could write these mundane "messages" for him? So inefficient. With a bit of luck and some elbow grease he could sell this as a service. To his friends. Then they'd never have to think about each other ever again.

I’m a bit surprised by the negative reactions here. I don’t think the post is saying “I use a tool to remind me to talk to my spouse/close/friends/family” so much as “having weak social connections is more useful for both sides than not having them at all and I have a tool to help me do the work of maintaining them”. Two things which I think are acceptable and similar are:

1. Contacts who mostly just exchange Christmas cards (but what a bad way of staying in touch! One year my dad decided he was sick of Christmas cards and he would just call his acquaintances and talk to them instead, which seemed a better way to do things)

2. Maintaining business relationships. E.g. maybe you meet someone from some other company at a conference and then email a bit and decide there isn’t some business you currently want to do with them (eg their product is unsuitable) but you may still want to keep in touch in case they offer something new or may remember you and mention your services to someone else or vice versa. I don’t think people would be so upset to hear that someone they worked with had some reminder system to help maintain such relationships.

Sorry, under no circumstances would I EVER want to be a part of someone's automated list of "weak connections". And it sounds like I'm not alone.

Someone made a tool for this purpose: https://github.com/monicahq/monica

"You may call it cheating but considering my poor memory, I call it caring."

I tried Monica for the reason in the quote - I don't try to be a bad friend, but I'm forgetful, and I was hoping it would make my life a little easier by being a digital memory in the absence of a good meat-based one. I found the learning curve and the way they viewed capturing data to be just a little too opposed to how I wanted to use it, unfortunately. Particularly, I was invested in the idea of moving all of my contacts in to it and letting it be the source of truth on my phone, but the friction to import my contacts was high, and once I did, the way to log interactions with people, specifically colleagues from work, was very challenging.

I'd love to hear of others who are successfully using it, because I'm always game to try twice.

This is the reason I started Dex (YC S19) -- tried Monica and while it solved the right problem I found it a heavy -- it felt like to much work. To be a single source of truth I wanted to import from Facebook / LinkedIn etc, and I didn't find it possible with Monica. (plug: Dex does)

Reading this, I also came up with a simple system. It call it an "address book". Write people's names in it, along with their contact info. Feel free to use paper or digital.

Once in a while, look at the list. If you see someone's name and think, "I wonder how they're doing?", contact them.

It's a lot more organic than scheduling the contacts, and it'll feel more organic to the recipients, too.

I get the point you're making. That said there are definitely people in my life that are (very obviously) better and worse at reaching out, and I assume it's similar for most people? I have friends who are phenomenal at reaching out frequently, saying "whatcha up to, shall we get a drink?" I also have friends who (because of family, work, location, whatever) will never do this, but absolutely jump at the chance to meet if you offer them one.

I'm not suggesting those who are good at contacting people use some sort of scheduling tool - it's probably just that their personality type suits doing it and they're usually the middle of a social group. Some people are naturally better at this kind of thing than others, right?

So I absolutely see the advantage of giving yourself a mental nudge to call, message or email people. I don't think it's in the slightest in-organic and I doubt a single person would think "oh, it's 6 months to the day I last spoke to this person" - more so they'd probably just think "oh, it was nice to hear from X". I have an alert to call my mum / dad every week or so. I don't always do it, but I appreciate the reminder and they appreciate the call.

I'll probably give this kind of set up a go at some point.

Seems really arbitrary to call one way organic and to deride the other approach like that. Everyone will figure out for themselves how much structure and organization that they need.

Sir, is a bitter comment like this necessary?

Derek Sivers seems kinda cool. I mean, I used to read him back in the times of CDBaby and he seemed like a nice person. Of course, I can only say he seems so because I haven't really met him. I don't know him.

Later, I would receive some of his emails and while they always did feel honest and thoughtful, I always understood we'd never even talked to each other. Sometimes I could think it was "just a commercial email" to present this book or whatever. Other times he would just sort of talk, about things in his life, "without anything to sell". But whatever the case it was clear I was "on a list".

----

I keep very few contacts. Probably too few. There's only a handful of people I talk to regularly. There is a woman I love quite dearly and we talk on the phone maybe once a week, sometimes less, sometimes more. Some other very close friends, less than I can count on my fingers, and again we talk occasionally, randomly. Maybe every few days, maybe once a month or less.

I have been postponing visiting them because of other personal circumstances, but we know that's just how things are at the moment and that we'll see each other "soon". Those friendships will not disappear even if, for whatever reason, we don't get a chance to talk or see each other for a couple of months or longer.

There's also a larger number of acquaintances. Friends, but less close. Ex-coworkers or ex-colleagues. There's this group that likes, say, comic books and I'm giving away my collection. So I might just throw an email in their direction because I remember they liked that. Someone may be interested. We'll meet and talk about whatever past and present we may have in common -or not-, maybe have a drink or a tea or maybe not, I'll give them the comics and then maybe I won't see them again for years. Maybe forever, because life is that way and you never know.

----

I've always felt Derek's approach to keeping in contact... interesting. I mean, if that works for him, then great. But I think that the system is a lot more for his benefit than for the benefit of the relationships themselves. And again, great for him. I mean it. But I don't feel the need for such a system for myself and I feel like not many people do.

Thanks for this feedback. For what it's worth, the “keep in touch with hundreds” system I describe in this post is not the one you've encountered me using. It sounds like you're just on my list, as you said.

The “keep in touch” approach is more for the people you meet in-person, say if you go to conferences and meet 50 people in a weekend, or are out working as a musician constantly meeting fellow music industry people while on the road.

It's different than the “broadcast → follow” relationship.

Oh, hi :)

I hope I didn't say anything inconvenient. I sincerely appreciate you even if we've never met.

And thank you for the clarification, of course.

At least for me when friendships/relationships become transactional it loses a lot of the value. This method of staying in touch feels _very_ transactional, and I just imagine sending some random person you spoke to a few times in high school/university a message every 6 months - 1 year.

Some people aren't meant to be in your life forever, and that's okay! However, there the people you choose to make time for will stick around.

I love this idea! I can't tell you how many friendships I've lost in the past (or ones that could've taken off but prematurely died) from getting stuck in the "I think they don't want to talk to me"/"They think I don't want to talk to them" cycle. Then you end up with neither person initiating contact, and the whole thing just kind of ends. Many if not most people these days don't want to initiate, including me, so if you wait on them to reach out to you, they simply never will, even if they want to talk to you, or would enjoy a conversation.

I've been making steps toward being the person who initiates all contact, and so far it seems to work better than my previous strategies of "never initiating contact", and "initiating 50% of contacts and assuming they're not interested if they don't initiate". The only problem is I'm really not a natural at reaching out, so if left to my own devices I wouldn't do it often enough to maintain the relationship. I like OP's idea of externalizing it with a tool, that makes it a lot easier to maintain the kind of consistency needed to grow a relationship.

To all those saying this is forced or inhuman or robotic or whatever... Listen it would be great to have some kind of easy natural friendship where both people would do half the work, think of each other regularly and reach out in an easy non forced manner, but in my life experience that kind of relationship seems to be very hard to find, if not impossible.

In the real world it seems to me like the choices are be lonely and alone, or to do all the work (especially in initiating). In the past I chose to be lonely and alone, maybe holding out for that kind of unicorn, ideal friendship that people in this thread are talking about. I don't think it was a good choice. I switched, I'm doing the other approach and now I have people I can talk to. I do feel kind of resentful for having to put in way more effort initiating than the other person in these relationships, but it beats being alone and lonely, so I'd still say it's a net positive overall.

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 / year over the course of COVID, and think it's a super valuable practice. Most people would not reach out themselves, but are totally down to catch up when messaged, and the worst case is you just don't end up meeting to chat.

+1 to this. I use Dex https://getdex.com/ and I see a few other apps in the feed too. There is clearly some market demand.

Life gets busy and it helps to have something more than just a stock contacts app.

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.

That article’s old app link doesn’t work so fyi: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/garden-stay-in-touch/id1230466...

I have a similar system, not for friends, but for acquaintances, business connections etc. I have a google sheet and a google script, the script runs once per day and checks the last time I emailed them or they emailed me. If it’s too long ago it adds a reminder to my calendar for that day. It’s simple and means I don’t have to remember to use the system.

I'm also trying to build my own in a quick easy way. Could you share with me your sheet (with private info removed) so I can work from that?

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.

I started a year ago to shoot random videos throughout my week and then edit them on sunday (takes 1h with luma fusion). I limited each video to 3 minutes and added voice over.

Then I sent the videos out via whatsapp and to 100 friends in a telegram channel.

The effects of this were really great. People said it’s now part of their Sunday. And they get to know me quite well, without scheduling calls or such.

This is what makes Stories so powerful on Instagram, WhatsApp, FB, etc

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't seen in months. A system like this would probably give me the nudge I need to take the initiative myself.

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.

I don't understand the problems with this approach and I might adapt it. I have a bunch of business connections, but refrain from contacting them because A) social anxiety and B) not thinking about them because I'm drowning in daily business and life is hectic af sometimes. It would actually be very helpful to get reminded once in a while to do some "relationships" stuff (which I'm not good at). Of course you should be very mindful about using this. If you think of a person, write them, if you don't want to write them because you feel like you don't add any value for them, don't. Sounds easy to me.

/e: I also wonder if this could be done with notion instead.

The OP's system seems good, but the initial system, where the guy lists everyone he knows by A, B, C and D seems like he's creating informational toxic waste, IE something that causes damage if it gets out.

Even if all it means is they get less emails, who the hell wants to find themselves categorized as acquaintance level D.

It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone - if you talk to someone twice a year you wouldn't expect to be in their closest friends group. I can't imagine someone being offended by this as a mature adult.

You could just remove the ranking system and store the intervals directly. Saying “this is someone I talk to annually” is not nearly as offensive as, “this is a rank D person.”

> Even if all it means is they get less emails, who the hell wants to find themselves categorized as acquaintance level D.

If the feeling is mutual then that’s completely fine. The only problem is when there’s a mismatch.

There might be people who get hurt when they find out that Peter, who they consider to be barely a friend, does in fact not consider them to be a best friend. But that sounds pathological.

But if you grind out friendship rep points you can pretty easily get to B tier. A tier takes finesse and finding their favorite gift.

I resonate so much with this, it felt very easy to fall out of touch with people that I had closer some time ago.

I've actually started building a more niche version of cal.com|calendly that focuses exactly on this but with a twist for coffee :) the main differentiator being setting a "time limit" that reminds you to meet X. Very similar to this A,B,C or D system.

It feels robotic, but if it helps someone that's enough for me.

The bad reactions here make me wonder what is an acceptable way to stay in contact with your friends. Consider the enormous popularity of social networking. What is that for if not to help you to stay in contact with people? Why is that OK but this isn't? People used to (some still do) write Christmas cards to everybody in their address book. Many of these would be people they had made zero contact with over the year. Again, why is that OK but this isn't?

I wonder if it's because this makes it too obvious what is going on. It fits a pattern I've noticed in general. People need plausible deniability. When things are made explicit like this, people don't like it.

Remember how long it took online dating to become popular? Part of that was how explicit it was. You were basically shouting "I am lonely and wish I had a partner". That was too much for many. Even now the popular online dating apps nurture plausible deniability (only on there for a laugh, to "meet people", to "make friends" etc.)

For me personally the difference is that with social networking I'm reacting to something someone else posted or vice versa, which makes it organic. Being cold contacted on the other hand generally results in exchanges that feel stilted and weird to me.

The dawn of "digitally augmented relationship management"?

- Dave, I noticed you haven't spoken to X in a while. Do you want me to sent them a short generic message to keep the relationship warm?

- Aaw, thanks HAL. I love how you are taking good care of me.

On the other hand, we have finite and overburdened memories. Surely there is a way to get them triggered that doesn't feel mechanical and "fake".

Pretty soon all you'll be building is relationship between two bots. Then we can cut to the chase and be totally transactional. So serendipitous!

Hmmm, I would never use such a system as for one thing - if people aren't contacting me, why should I care about contacting them? I have several 'best friends', maybe twice that 'friends', and then a bunch more I interact with sometimes, and I feel this is relatively normal. Also, I don't care actually if it's not normal, and don't feel I'm missing out on anything. That said, I'm quite the introvert and generally value time by myself over time with others.

Still, if this is what works for the author, and they feel they need to 'keep in touch', and that describing such a system helps other people, then good for them. Someone else using this system doesn't hurt me in any way, in fact if I was contacted by someone AND found out about the system behind it, my curiosity about how it worked might lead to a new deeper friendship.

> if people aren't contacting me, why should I care about contacting them?

That’s my current main interrogation in life and honestly, I have not found the answer.

I feel alone, but I have a fair number of "old friends" I barely contact anymore. I want to keep in touch but don’t know what to say. And they don’t spontaneously contact me, neither do I. It’s a chicken and egg problem. Maybe people don’t care about me. But they could feel the same about me.

Am I strange or is everyone just bad at keeping in touch ?

The few times I did spontaneously contact old friends, it was pretty cool. We had some drink and updates, and enjoyed it. So I think it’s just we are all bad. But it’s exhausting.

I often have a mismatch between communication styles leading to problems with such reciprocal expectation about contact like you describe - especially since I try to be conscientous about other people's time. In fact, the more I care, the harder it is to possibly interrupt someone who might be in middle of something important to them.

I see this system as a way of preventing backsliding into rarer and rarer interactions when they aren't pushed by common activities.

> if people aren't contacting me, why should I care about contacting them?

If they utilize the same philosophy then you will never contact each other.

Solve the problem by only contacting 50% of them.

I can see how it's polarizing especially since it feels like CRM for some.

I'm, however, going to try this approach myself. Reason for that is that I'm all-or-nothing kind of person. I can nag you daily and overshare but then if our roads split (different job, environment etc.) I forget to reach out - simply because what's off my eyes is off my mind.

It's not like I don't care for people, sometimes I find myself thinking about some colleagues couple months later. I don't reach out though cause it would be weird and it feels like cold e-mail. Done this few time and people would drop some bomb (like, oh yeah, our life changed 180, why didn't you call?) which would - instead of keeping relation, chill it even further, as we both feel weird about not caring.

That reminds me that my grandma didn't get a call from me for past month or so (sigh).

I keep a birthday calendar, also for my friend's kids. I stay in touch over the years this way really well, along with the occasional 'something popped up that reminded me of you'. For closer friends, it ebbs and flows naturally or as we travel.

How do you get someone's birthday? Ask them! Everyone is delighted to tell you, even if they are shy. The possibility of a future greeting is very meaningful.

I've mentioned this a few times on Hacker News, and I've gotten some great turnout, so I'll mention this again: I host a once-a-month party in New York City, mostly tech people, especially during the warmer months. See photos here:

http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/everyone-was-amazing-...

If you live in New York City and you want to expand your circle of tech people (and also some theater people and artists), feel free to reach out to me. Phone number in bio.

> I typically spend a few minutes researching what they’ve been up to recently.

So this process isn’t for friends? I find this behavior personally strange. I’d rather get the information on what they’ve been up to from them directly, and the way I do that is to video call them on a weekend to catch up.

It really is impersonal in my opinion to learn about a friend via broadcast messages posted to social media.

As for the technique in the post, I do agree. Some regularity is needed. Every few weeks I call people via video and talk. Others I share photos about what I’ve done via Signal and ask how they’re doing.

I mean, I have a lot of friends who I don't live near who will periodically post pictures on Instagram or updates about their lives on FB. Scanning their feed for a few minutes if they're active on social media is a good way to make sure you're at least a little up-to-date on what's going on in their life, and will frequently give you a good hook for a conversation (i.e. how is little So-and-So?, or I saw your trip pictures, how was Wherever?). Also can help you avoid a faux pas. It's never fun to ask someone who just got divorced how their spouse is doing.

Sounds like the system could be created using https://www.monicahq.com/ Personally, I never had the discipline to turn this into a useful tool, but I definitely see the value in it from the perspective suggested by the author.

Let me just point that the messages must be genuine and thoughtful. It is written in the article, but it seems that some people failed to notice it and accuse the author of objectivization and hypocrisy.

They would be genuine and thoughtful if the system didn't rely on previously prepared notes such as "He publishes incredible posts on his blog".

This system is more akin to how a politician or salesperson manages personal interaction for maximum effect — there's a lof of method but little sincerity involved.

I'm not saying the system isn't useful to some degree, but this is a bit much for me.

You can also choose not to write. If the reminder email names someone you don’t feel like keeping in touch with anymore, you can just delete the email and go on with your day.

It’s a system of personal reminders, not a Jira backlog to burn down.

This post has to be one of the most archetypal one on HN. Rationalizing human interactions with friends through the use of planification tools.

Normally I'd totally agree with you and cringe at what feels like ridiculous over-engineering of what should be a natural and effortless process... but I was just thinking last night how hard it's been for me to live hours from all my closest friends, and how covid has made it so much harder for me to get my extroverted needs met. My closest friends are, for the most part, our highschool friend group of 15 or so people who live across many states and a couple countries. Juggling all those incredibly important friendships gets hard without a nudge and a reminder to call or text them.

It's a good problem to have, too many friends.

Some people put birthdays in their calendars. I don’t see how using recurring reminders in order to initiate contact is fundamentally different.

This is terrible. If this is in a professional setting, use a CRM. If you put your friends in a "CRM" with SLAs a and reminders to "touch base" ... you don't have friends.

What I tried some time ago, was putting people as projects in my trello board (I had it set up as a GTD board with a separate column for Projects). And each time I did a review I wrote a comment like: "Didn't do anything recently" or "Seen last weekend, X and Y was lot of fun". And when I felt it was time to reach out I did - if not it waited for the next review.

I find this pretty sad to be honest. How would you feel if you were on a B or C list and got some kind of shallow, automated message like this? For me it would probably do the opposite by showing me that you don’t actually value me or our friendship, just the outcome. Like an SEO guru type or something, full of shallow words.

Friendships, like any relationship, require work. And, given we are human, nuance and authenticity too. I text people when I think about them. Occasionally I’ll scroll through my text message history to see if someone I care about hasn’t heard from me or viceversa in a while. Sometimes it leads to a text-convo, a phone convo, or IRL plans.

If you struggle with friendships and see an article like this as a way to “hack” the system, I caution you to think twice. Less is more. Cultivate your tender friend garden with intention, not automation.

I was just reading a blog complaining about commenters not reading the article, and the next comment I read on a completely different article did not RTFQ.

> got some kind of shallow, automated message like this?

Jakob describes how after he is reminded of the person in the morning, he researches what has happened to them since he last spoke and finds some genuine content/connection to send to that person.

I have a system I use to communicate with about 14,000 connections on LinkedIn. It takes me about six months to work my way through the list, at which point, I start again. I spend about 15 to 20 minutes per day on the outreach. 30 minutes at the outside.

I tend to build little side projects, about once every four months or so, side projects that I can show off to people that are interesting in some way, then use that as my launching point for reaching out. "Hey, I built this interesting thing, it uses the following technologies. This isn't a pitch, I'm not trying to sell you a service, I just thought you might be interested. What are you up to these days? Building anything interesting?"

Leads to an awful lot of potential work, job interviews, availability checks, and coffee meetings. A lot of people ping back, many never respond. This technique has gotten me jobs and work for the past 15+ years, ever since LinkedIn was launched.

I have a pretty simple system. It starts with social media -- a bunch of my friends are still there (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc).

For the ones that aren't there, I put a recurring item in my calendar to remind me of their birthday. Then I text them on their birthday.

The last step is going through my text message history, which is conveniently ordered by last contact. I skip down about two months, and then work my way down the list pinging people I still want to keep in touch with, either with something relevant (how's the new job, how's school) or generic (hey it's been a while how are you?).

That pretty much gets me everyone. I usually do a deeper review of my other contact methods (email, niche chat apps, etc) once a year around Christmas to make sure I didn't miss anyone and wish them a happy new year and try to get their number so they are in my text list instead.

This should be SaaSified and sold for $5/15/25 per month, with AI-generated trivial empty messages.

Also, you could sign-up for the antipode service, for only $50 a month, which will reply on your behalf to such AI-generated postcards.

Soon, we'll just have chatbots congratulating each other on birthdays and such.

Isn't life wonderful? /s

This is awesome to see - I built myself an incredibly similar version of it using Airtable as well. I send myself 3 names per week, and found that's the right number for me to send outreach to.

To me, it doesn't feel forced at all - it's up to me whether I want to contact the suggestions, or ignore. Often times I get a suggestion for someone who I've spoken to recently, and I can happily ignore the reminder!

The biggest issue I have with it is keeping the contact list up to date. I would love if someone built software that did exactly this, but also let me sync my Linkedin / Instagram / Gmail accounts and suggested new people to add to my list, based on who I've newly connected with recently. Or if there's a way to do it in Airtable, even better.

Actually, it is a helpful system to be in touch with ex-coworker or colleagues or even some old classmates, but a sad one for friends and relatives.

I’ve found it very helpful to take a bit more “forced” approach in maintaining relationships, especially as I am very poor at remembering names and biographical details.

I just have a notion doc called “people.” At first people have just a name and a physical description, along with where I met them. That just helps me remember names.

But with my partner, different subsections have emerged, with gift ideas, movies to watch, fun things we could do.

The approach outlined in this doc seems to focus on scaling the number of people you can keep in touch with. I struggle to see how this is different than traditional social media - eg the impersonal happy birthdays we’ve all come to ignore in Facebook.

This is very well constructed but this is like a full time job in itself!

I also worry that such a systematic method won't result in meaningful connections and could actually result in annoying your contacts or wasting their time..?

Birthdays occur slavishly on the same date every year. Is going to the same person’s birthdays too systematic?

"simple system" -> requires engineering skills and a full article to explain it.

Keeping social interactions this way is kind of sad and gray, just keep less people around but with some quality time invested for them.

But if you have those skills, it's pretty simple. And most people here do have them.

Is scheduling social events through a personal calendar also sad and grey?

I see this easily implementable in Obsidian with Dataview plugin, with random notes about ppl to boot. Like gift ideas etc. I have notes for important people in my life anyway cause I have terrible memory :/

I find it very odd that someone categorizes people / friends into buckets and have a schedule to communicate with them. If o knew someone is writing me because of a schedule it would put me off immediately.

I don't think this is "spammy" nor "unnatural". There are important persons in our life that are worth keeping contact with for the sake of keeping contact with.

If you create this list and it's only filled with people that could be helpful to you in the future (agents?). Maybe it's time to recall that we the people are ends rather than means to themselves.

Second, Mental memory is lossy. Sometimes you move for a while to another city. It's easy to get distracted and forget to keep in touch with the people you love.

There seems to be a non-fringe sentiment that "this is pretending to care" or "you can't automate friendship", etc.

I see where it's coming from, and I agree to some extent - I wouldn't want to be contacted "for the sake of it". Feeling like it's a chore for the other person that they have to get through, in the hopes of some (maybe financial?) reward at the end of it.

However, I think this approach warrants some defense against the "I would purposefully avoid people like this" reaction.

Using myself as an example - I have considered doing something similar, and I liked the article a lot. And it's not because I "want to hack some serendipity", but because I genuinly have a hard time finding enough time for all the things that matter in life. Having a system in place doesn't mean it's fake, it means you are prioritizing this aspect of your life (i.e. you care enough) and are finding ways to fit it into everything else you have going on.

In a normal workday I spend ~9 hours in "work mode". I want to fit in ~1-2h of running every day to counteract my sedentary lifestyle. I need to spend some quality time with the immediate family (wife and kids) - let's say ~2 hours. And there are additional little everyday tasks that need to happen every day - shopping, helping kids with their homework, doing the dishes, etc.

How much time does this leave to socialize? I will occasionally think of some friend or another, and miss them. But I won't have time to reach out in the moment. And then - e.g. when the weekend comes - who do I reach out to? Do I spend every saturday just calling everybody in a row?

I enjoy catching up with my friends, but it takes a lot of energy for me. I can't feasibly reach out to everybody in a given weekend - it would leave me completely drained, and exhausted.

So I prioritize. I try to reach out to people I haven't spoken to in a longer time period. Or people I know have had some life event happen recently, etc. I try to find a way to keep in touch with most people, instead of just a few of them.

But here's my issue - it's hard to remember how to schedule who to get in touch with, and when. "Did I last talk to X 1 week or 2 weeks ago? Should I get in touch with Y instead?" etc.

Now, I could start taking paper notes, or look at my calendar, etc. But at this point I'm setting up some mental system to help me with the scheduling. Which is basically just a different (possibly less efficient) flavor of what's described in the article.

Now, maybe I'm projecting, and this doesn't apply to many others. But please consider - if you feel someone in your life is reaching out through automated means - that they might really care, and just have a hard time figuring out how to do it otherwise. If scheduling catch ups comes naturally to you, it might not to others.

(and I know the article mentions "serendipity" and is not necessarily about catching up with close friends. I think it works well for both)

> but because I genuinely have a hard time finding enough time for all the things that matter in life.

Mate. It takes seconds to send a simple text message/mail "Hey, how're you doing?" while sitting on the toilet.

Everyone sits on the toilet, quite regularly.

I don't want to keep in touch with more people than I have digits. I would call the desire to do so marketing; that is marketing yourself or your business. Which is fine if this is your motivation.

Friendship is your partner who sticks by you. It is the person you go for walks with and just talk. It is the person you meet for lunch and you argue about who pays. It is the person who knows what is going on in your life. It is the person whose floor you have slept on. It is the person who listens to you and then takes action.

It depends on the type of relationship to some extent e.g. friends, acquaintances, business relations, etc.

But in general, I feel like we are too self-conscious about staying in touch. And often because we have experiences where something happens in our lives and we find ourselves regretting "I wish I had stayed in touch with ----".

But when that happens, maybe we can ask ourselves: even if I had stayed in touch, would it really have turned out as I am fantasizing now in my regret? If we think about it carefully, I think the answer is probably no. A meaningful relationship is not that simple nor easy.

As others have mentioned, a relationship is two-ways so it takes both sides. And it only takes one to remember occasionally to stay in touch, so if we both were interested in each other, most likely we would have remained in touch already. And even if we had not, it's never too late. With such relations, I find that I can just reach out now and resume the same relationship no matter how much time passes in between. Even in the worst case where I don't have the contact anymore, if I were truly determined, I will do everything I can to find a way to reach that person.

On the other hand, a shallow relation is bound to not get too far: it will fail (or break, or be lost, etc) at some point in one way or another anyway. So it most likely wouldn't have turned out as my regret is fantasizing anyway.

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?

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.

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... )

I have an extremely similar system hacked together myself. It has definitely been a game changer for my relationships. I created it because I decided about a year ago I wanted to be a better friend, and the best friends I had were extremely intentional. I wasn't going to just get more intentional naturally, so this system helped me get there. Being able to reflect on what we talked about last time and get reminded to reach out after on a predefined interval is extremely helpful!

I get why someone may need tools like this, especially if they are in sales or a similar profession, but I can't help thinking how disingenuous this is.

Moreover, it's easy for me to sniff out and block people who try to keep me "engaged" with systems like this.

If you want to engaged me, I hope you have a specific reason to do so.

If I want to engage you I will just do it and you can bet that I won't waste your time on idle chit-chat.

Otherwise, I have friends and family that don't get enough of my time as it is.

I could see this being useful for friends that I haven't seen or don't have the opportunity to see. When I was in school, I interned in a few different states over the Summers, working with and meeting a ton of great people. We aren't best friends by any means, but I'd like to know how Chris is doing, ya know? We both know we're just acquaintances at this point, but I like catching up with them once and a while, and it's easy to forget otherwise.

> If I want to engage you I will just do it and you can bet that I won't waste your time on idle chit-chat.

Probably a difference in personality between us, since I find the idle chit-chat kind of nice, but I can absolutely understand being on the other end.

Sales wants to sell you something. This guy wants to get in contact with people for its own sake.

One could imagine a salesperson just thinking about a potential customer and then calling them immediately. No CMS involved. Just like how you could randomly think of a friend and call them. The respective motivations are still the same.

The “just do it” distinction is meaningless w.r.t. intent. You’re just being uncharitable.

When I was in school, I'd get home and call at least 2-3 friends on a daily basis on the landline, just to chat or ask what all homeworks we were supposed to do for the next day. We lost touch after we graduated and went our separate ways. But what I miss the most from those times was how interconnected our lives were. We'd hang out together all the time in school, then come home and talk on the telephone. After exams, we'd meet up at someone's house for a sleepover, play video games and gossip about school all night long.

I have tried implementing a similar lifestyle with my new friends as I grew older, but it just didn't work. I realized then, that the kind of bond we shared was a rarity and others had not had such an experience. I barely call anyone now. And more importantly, I feel uncomfortable calling people. Like I'm disturbing them. However, back in school days it was the telephoning that made us the great friends we were because we got to have 1 on 1 conversations with each other very often.

In recent times, texting has destroyed the telephoning culture. I absolutely detest texting, but all of my peers are doing it. I wish times were a little simpler.

a friend of mine would send all people he knew new years wishes via regular mail.

It was hundreds of letters he would all print out and sign manually.

Most people would ignore it, a few even found it offiensive fo receive a mass letter.

But every year dozens answered with a happy reply.

Very nice gesture from him IMHO.

One of my mom’s friends has a great method for keeping in touch with people. He keeps one of those daily tear-off calendars (filled with cat/dad jokes) on his desk. Each day he looks at the joke and decides who it reminds him, then just tears that page off and mails it to the person, along with his business card. No further explanation or note involved. I guess he just needs a lot of stamps.

With my brother, we recently created a small app dedicated to this task: https://app.kipinto.ch

It's available on the web, on Android and on iOS, under the name Kipinto

This app is not specifically targeted to follow your friends, which happens quite naturally, but more to keep in touch with those persons that you consider important but with whom you have no "natural" occasion to interact: an old colleague or client for example.

You can see screenshots on the website https://kipinto.ch or on the app stores, but description is in French (even if the app is available in English)

An interesting observation we have done, is that by making the effort of taking notes of what you talked about, you remember better --even without reading the notes-- next time you see the person.

It can feel "disgusting", but in fact the effort of keeping contact with a person when it is not easy to do so should be seen as a positive sign of your intention to strengthen this relationship.

I'd like to test it. Can you make it available to download in the UK? Currently seems to be unavailable. Thanks!

If this system is used as a gateway to schedule a meeting or ask for a favor then might be all right! Like, if you're honest and say "hey I did even setup a reminder to make sure we agree on our next meetup that we talked about earlier". And then remove it from the reminders and make sure to follow up as with a normal friend if they want to. A reminder has to have a specific reason, and "say hi" is not specific enough.

Otherwise, nobody wants (downvoted posts at the bottom) to get a message from a person who did it because a CRON job sent a reminder to their email, this is how sales people work. Furthermore classification should not be that explicit, yes we have our favorite acquaintances, but not with labels in the lists. Labels have a weird side effect, what if you follow up and have a convo and them meet a person, do you go back to the list and elevate their status?

Actually this is sad

As I understand this, it shouldn't be primarily for close friends, but for other people. For example, some journalist wrote a very interesting article, so I sent him an email, he answered, maybe we exchanged one more email, and that was it. Now with this system I would get a reminder 6 months later to reach him again. Why not? It can develop into online friendship or something good can happen out of it. If I don't do it, just nothing happens with that person anymore. And if I tell myself that I don't need to contact this journalist anymore, then ok, I will not put him into the system. Still, I would be curious to learn how many people he has in his system.

I have a semifinished website that does something similar. It lets you schedule reminders to reach out to people you care about at set intervals. The difference is that it texts you the reminder and will add in suggestions of what to reach out to them about.

I find that having something to say is just as hard as remembering to reach out.

Oh yeah, great. More beeping from my calendar. Sure. :(

I know networking is important but many people don't evoke the "I want to keep in touch with this person!" response instinctively and naturally in me.

And I am not at all introverted, quite sociable in fact -- but not the proverbial extrovert that feeds on communication either; I am one of these people that needs time to recharge the social battery, however it does recharge rather quickly (I know I can have social events with people outside two times a week; sometimes three).

I mean, squint hard enough and almost every problem can be reduced to "let's use machines to poke us in the butt because we forgot to do this or that". No thanks. Good cause and I agree we need to keep in touch but I'll keep searching for other, less stressful and schedule-oriented, methods.

I also do this and it's really nice. But use a recurring Google calendar event. Way more simple

If you're doing something remotely similar to this, please, just add unsubscribe button.

I built a system like this, and loved it enough that I built an app to do what the author describes: http://parsnipapp.com/

Totally free, with no plans to monetize it. Having an easy system like this adds enough value to me and my friends who use it to continue to develop and maintain it.

I love the author's automation for sending an email digest, I think that's a great feature that I'll add to the roadmap. Up next for development I'd like to add reminders for specific days (eg., birthdays, trip reminders, w/e).

If anyone gives the app a shot, I'd love to hear from you. Feedback is appreciated!

Not a feedback on the app. But I clicked through the link on my mac (Monterey) and was pleasantly surprised I could install this iPhone app on my mac. Is this new? Can we install iPhone apps on mac now?

I don't think there's a problem with the formula here in terms of maintaining professional contacts, but it does seem like an interesting--and quite recent--phenomenon that staying in touch with hundreds of people is even desirable unless you are doing sales.

There's certainly utility and yet, it's staggering just how few people do the more rewarding and impactful (with lots of research to back it up) work of daily connection with one or two people.

I would venture to say that it's even more 'socially acceptable' to put effort into cultivating weak ties that stay weak than to do the work to transform non-romantic relationships into close friendships.

I have a similar system, but mine is just a Python script and a text file. I hardcode people in the file in different categories and the file stores the recently contacted people. Once the file is the same length as the hardcoded people, the script clears it and we start anew. It emails me an idea of an opening line that I can expand upon so I can streamline the contacting, since I could sit down for 5 minutes without thinking how to open a conversation.

I really like systems like this. Some of my favorite things on HN are about automating life, but without removing the "you" part of it, just making it easier to manage.

PS: if anyone has any examples, I'd love to hear.

Oh good god. The things people do, like every aspect of life can be automated with code.

I know, right? This is kind of how I feel about org mode (in Emacs).

I also have a database I created with Airtable! Although I’m rather weary of using “free” 3rd-party systems and considering using one I have better control over.

I’m thinking an SQLite db with a separate open source data viewer/editor

I have a very similar system. I use Trello. I have one column called 1M, one called 3M, one called 6M (representing how often I want to reach out to them). Each card is one person and the cards have a field on them that is called: Last Contact. Every week, or so, I have a look at the Trello board. I look at the top cards in each column and if it’s time to reach out, I do so, update the Last Contact field, and move that card to the bottom of that column.

Sometimes I add notes to the cards.

That’s it!

Edit; The reason I don’t have one big list, is that I’ve gotten a sense of how long each list can be for it to be manageable.

It's not clear why would anybody try to force a communication when there is no common interest, project, or actually any reason to communicate. It always looks fake and inevitably ends with discomfort. It's worth staying in touch if there is a topic to discuss, or mutual interest. If the whole routine is just for your own mental comfort that you are a "good" socialite, it's worth thinking twice before contacting yet another person out of the blue.

It's better to just go to a bar and meet new people instead of trying to return to the past.

I would totally disagree. I can think of two dozen folks I would love to catch up with (and I'm sure they would agree) but between work projects, kids, family you keep losing track of time.

The real proof of this is when I run into them on the commuter train, we sit together and have vibrant conversations. Or you run into them on the street, and next thing you know you've got an active SMS thread going...until the kids have some issue at school and now you're distracted.

Look at these assumptions that you just inserted:

1. No “common interest, project ...”

2. You just want to be a “"good" socialite”

3. “Forced”: A lot of social interactions are “forced” in the sense that the conversation does not flow completely effortlessly so this applies generally

As to (1): one can have common interests etc. even though one does not see each other regularly. As to (2): this is just a contentless insult towards people who like to socialize, similar to the “loner” insult which is aimed towards people who prefer to be more solitary, so this can be disregarded.

Really dumbfounding to see so many people in this thread who think it’s unnatural to keep in touch with people by way of things like the telephone.

It never ceases to amaze me how computer programmers can take the simplest things and make them mind-numbingly complex. Oy ve (and yes, I'm a programmer)! But if it makes him happy, more power to him.

Some things are simple to some people - and cripplingly hard to others :/

This looks really nice. I don't use airtable, but I use Notion and the formulas in the post seems similar to those in Notion database. I wonder if it is possible to do something similar in Notion.

For those of you who are trying to leave social media—this is an excellent way to keep in touch.

When you're on Twitter or Instagram, it's easy to see a picture or comment and message them about it. Or when you see someone's birthday on Facebook. When either you or your friends/family/acquaintances leave that social network, it's easy to lose track of one another.

I built something similar to this in Notion last year. It's a great way to keep contact with individuals—wherever they are—and not just a social profile.

It sounds good for business contacts or people that you might want to interact with for specific reason, but for anyone else?

Why would one force their interaction with people if it's not genuine.

I'm curious to hear your results from using this system. How long have you been running it for and what did you get out of it? I understand that the point of doing this is to not expect anything in return but, that's a little misleading because it's hard to have honest conversations in regular frequencies with people you barely know (B, C, D list). What do you do when people don't respond? Do you take them off the list?

The problem is when you know someone contacted you because of their 'system'. I feel less compelled to reply. It feels more that the person is doing their chores and you are just helping them to get the task done. Somewhat similar because people only reminded of you because facebook displayed on their timeline that it was your birthday. No right or wrong here, but when it's not genuine it's not genuine and period.

Another way to look at it: This hypothetical person created their 'system' because they valued their connections enough to establish a way to maintain them. And they specifically added you to the finite list of people they don't want to lose touch with. So it is genuine—it's just a reminder, we all need reminders once in a while.

Now, if the person isn't actually your friend, but a professional contact (e.g., recruiter) who just hopes to extract value from you someday, then those guys can go jump in a lake.

I love the tips on what to write. I make a Personal CRM called Queue (https://queue.community) and the biggest reason people stop using it is that they just don't know what to say when it's time to reach out. The truth is people on the receiving end of catch up requests are almost always happy to chat, and it's often enough just to say hi.

If these other people have similar systems you could even authomate it via shared API so that they are just doing ping-pong of howareyou-imfine. Win-win!

Perhaps the people that should be at the absolute top of our list to contact are the ones that have bothered contacting us over the years?

Other than that I don’t have much to add — I’m absolutely terrible at this and my life suffers as a result. If probably enjoy building a tool like this but the problem is I don’t enjoy reaching out to people. Although I would enjoy the consequences of having reached out.

Would be a great if there was an app that helped you do social like this. Sort of like a Facebook that works for you instead of against you.

This reminded me of something I believe I saw on here some time ago: https://github.com/monicahq/monica

EDIT: Yeah, I saw it here on HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25270001).

This was the selling point of facebook and why people clicked away their privacy to the great surveillance machine.

Note how ridiculous facebook seems as a solution to this problem now? Facebook has to go, delete it. Regulate it hard. Burn it to the ground if that's the only way.

The bait and switch /must/ have consequences for ethical reasons IMHO.

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.

Could imagine you could do something like this in Emacs org mode just by keeping a repeated SCHEDULED: datestamp under someone's name, say in a file called contacts.org? Using airtables seems a bit overengineered

  * Contacts
   * Alissa p hacker
     SCHEDULED: <2022-03-14 Mon .+3m>

Interesting. I’ve got to say, a bit cold, but I agree that is definitely better than no reach outs at all.

This is exactly what I need. I'm so bad at keeping in contact with friends, extended family, ex-coworkers. I try to make an effort for a few weeks / months, but I end up getting distracted by a stressful new work project, school, new stuff going on at home, etc.

Has anyone used the Google Contacts / Airtable integration? https://www.airtable.com/integrations/googlecontacts

I haven't talked to anyone outside of my family since the beginning of the pandemic and I assume the fact that no one's contacted me means I shouldn't bother? Not really sure how this kind of thing works.

I think the people I'd put in "Group D" would be the ones that respond immediately and expect an ongoing conversation. I can't imagine reaching out once a year to confirm we're both still alive!

I think touching base with people should be more spontaneous, real and relevant.

Just use a spreadsheet?

Does having a list of friends on a spreadsheet make you a data controller?

I could see this being helpful with staying in touch with people you don't want to be friends but you want to keep up to date with professionally. Using this for your personal life is just sad.

A great system!

I keep a spreadsheet with name in first col and one col for every month and in cells I put day of month for birthday. I also use this as my Christmas card list and my keep in touch list

Spreadsheets can work quite well for this. I made an iOS app as side project inspired by this post from Derek Sivers.

https://amicu.app

Kai Oelfke! So glad you posted this here.

https://amicu.app/ is a great example of this idea in action.

This is pretty cool! You can even add a birthday reminder; or even a name-day reminder if you're greek and my father who's kinda obsessive with these things.

"We needed a tutor

So built a computer

And programmed ourselves not to see

The truth and the lying

The dead and the dying

A silent majority"

I had built a free app to automate periodic tasks like this: https://tododock.com

My approach is I don’t have hundreds of people I need to contact regularly. It works very well. This very procedural method of communication reeks of compassion.

Man, I hope I never get on that guy's list...

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 illusion of a social life, is being dictated by a machine.

I see how it might look like that, but you are missing a critical point.

Everyone is different. What comes naturally to some doesn't come naturally to others.

For a lot of people (me included) keeping in touch with others doesn't come "naturally". We miss contact, and yet we sheldom establish it. There are many reasons for this: poor time management skills, low self-esteem, simple lack of practice, etc. In any case, it takes effort to break out of it.

Try to think about something that others do, and that you would like to do, but is difficult for you. Exercise, learn a new language, go to bed earlier, eat more healthily... whatever. This might give you a perspective of what it is like to have this "friction".

I see what this person is doing as a way to remove the friction and create a new habit. I have no doubt that when "they gets the thing rolling" with someone it will gradually easy to keep engaged without the machine "dictating" anything.

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 to help.

What does it change that he uses reminder to think about reaching out? In the end he is still the one doing work towards fostering relationships.

"if you cared, you'd remember"

glad you have this experience, i dont think all of us do. i care deeply but seem to forget people exist and that makes me sad and dislike myself. i wish i could just remember. id still have so many friends if i did.

> If there were friends, he'd not need to be reminded of contacting them.

No, things just slip your mind, especially if there are a lot of other things going on in life.

People forget to take medications that when not taken lead to psychotic breaks. It isn't because they don't care about being sane.

People forget their kids in cars. They didn't casually want them dead of overheating.

I have friends that when time allows, we speak to each other for hours every day. When time allows. Plenty of times one or the other has forgotten that the other existed for a few weeks.

Things get forgotten.

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 doesn't kick in and give me that reason I need just to check in on someone I actually care about but haven't had the opportunity to speak to in a while.

For some people memory is event-driven not interrupt-driven. They can remember all the steps in a complex task, or when with friends, all their shared history but forget to take out the trash, or birthdays, or to call their friends.

I think the alternative to having a social life "dictated by a machine" (a machine which, in this case, encodes the intentions of its programmer) is to have a social life dictated by chance and by other's intentions - coincidences on public transport, social media posts ranked by a black box, the noisy patterns of our recollection, etc... what is so 'authentic' about sacrificing one's attention to these forces, which may only align accidentally with our priorities?

I've kept a spreadsheet for about 5 years of people I know from my hometown, from uni, past jobs, in other countries, family of friends, etc... ranked roughly by how frequently to contact them, and it has been so helpful and fun for me (and them!) to use it. This might not be helpful for everyone, depending on what you care about and the size of your network, but it seems more "sad" to me that people let chance and social media control their patterns of interaction.

> If there [sic] were friends... He'd miss contacting them.

Interesting! It looks like you are indirectly articulating something about your personal value system and how you express and/or receive caring. Are you familiar with the Five Love Languages [0] idea? The bosic concept (and book) are tailored for couples and couples counseling, but it generalizes in obvious ways to platonic relationships.

Essentially, it posits that everyone expresses caring and seeks expressions of caring in specific ways, so called "languages". It's entirely possible---probable in fact!---that the ways in which you personally express caring don't match up with the kinds of expressions that make your friend (or lover) feel most cared for.

YMMV, but I've personally found this idea to difuse a lot of "judgemental" feelings towards others, especially in close relationships.

[0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Love_Languages

I didn’t read this as asset management at all, nor as someone managing their actual friends in a list. It seems more like these are various people who they’ve crossed paths with at some point but who aren’t overly close anymore. It’s a system set in place to actively keep in touch with people. I understand that there is a component to this that feels very artificial and maybe therefore quite cold. But consider the other side too: someone is not the best at keeping a contact alive but still values the relationship very much so they put in the effort to create an external structure to help them out. Isn’t that a pretty warm thought after all?

I have lost several friends, even good friends by failing to contact each other. If you have many friends who move around the world a lot it's very easy to happen. I miss them very much.

I don't miss them as assets as you say. I believe that if I suddenly needed their help and asked for it, they would help me - and it goes the other way as well ofc. I'm not concerned by that.

But how do you start talking to someone after years and years of radio silence? Even more importantly, how do you make sure you won't slip out of touch again, other than using a system?

Hard disagree here.

My days are long and full. And as a somewhat introverted person it takes additional energy to remember to keep in touch with people. Even those that I like very, very much.

So it helps to have a reminder and something that actively pushes one to do so. Not every person in the world is wired the way you are.

Jakobs approach is basically a more automated calendar. Plus, he is actively making an effort to keep in touch with people he deems important enough to be in his life. Its not as if he is sending automated messages to them.

This comment comes across as arrogant. It's a privilege to have the spare time and energy to act on all of your intentions. You could apply the same argument to keeping to-do lists, storing people's phone numbers in your phone book, using facebook or having a birthday calendar etc.

Try having a child and see how close your ability to execute is with your principles!

People with ADHD sometimes forget people even exist when they're out of sight.

Just because your built-in OS lacks a scheduler and notifications to remind you to keep a connection with friends doesn't mean you don't care about them.

Sometimes the person might even receive the notification but fails to act on it because of poor social conditioning.

Look, it's great you can handle your friends with ease.

It's really great your life didn't mess you up to a point where contacting people you would normally call friends induces anxiety.

Really, congratulations to your great and happy life.

Others have to rely on shitty tricks like these.

What are YOUR weaknesses then? What can YOU not handle without the help of technology? Please share so somebody can make fun of you too :D

OP: thanks for posting.

That's not always so easy. For many people, such as people with ADHD, the concept of "out of sight, out of mind" affects their life to a significant level, to the point where they really enjoy contact with their friends, however reaching out to them never comes to mine.

Some people legitimately can't remember to contact friends without any external prompting.

With respect, I feel like this reaction is a bit luddite. OP is using technology to help maintain and build relationships. It's not technology that's dictating anything, it's technology as it should be used: to make our lives better.

I'd be absolutely fine with someone I appreciated reaching out to me and asking how things are going, even knowing they are using a prompt, as long as the contact was sincere.

I'm wondering what the difference here is compared to these: a close family member / friend who is really good at keeping in touch with people, and prompts you as well; a birthday calendar; a rolodex [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolodex]; Facebook / Instagram as a primary way of keeping in touch with people

For me, the difference is only in the specific technology being used, but the intent and effect is indistinguishable.

It is not much different than having birthday of your family members in the calendar. It is just a tool to remind you to make contact, what contact will be like is entirely up to you.

> 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.

Regardless whether Dunbar's number is real or not, one cannot have "hundreds" of actual friends. So we're not really talking about friendships here, but about maintaining a network of contacts - or acquaintances at best - and that type of relationship is usually mutually based on the premise that "One might some day need them", there's nothing wrong about approaching it that way. And even though you're not super close, keeping in touch regularly is very important aspect of keeping your social ring alive. I'm too lazy and disorganized to approach it the way the author describes, but I totally see how it can be a beneficial socializing strategy in long terms.

You're wrong.

Just because your brain is able to keep track of your friends and actively remember to interact with them, doesn't mean everyone is like you. People who are not neurotypical can have very close friends and family and not realize that 3 months have passed since they last called home or checked in with a friend. It's so easy to forget that other people's brains don't work exactly like ours; remembering that is an extremely important habit to exercise.

Well I am not find of his method, especially about doing a classification of people you would call friends. This is something I would hate to do and would hate feeling others put me in a drawer.

On the other hand while local friends can be easy to reach, invite or bump into randomly maintaining long distance friendship is a lot harder to do and require actively looking for that relation to not die. It is ok not to talk to friends every month when they are living far away nor does it diminish your feeling towards them and the pleasure you would have to meet them even if it takes 10y to do so. However if you are not actively maintaining a relation, and that requires some additionnal efforts as it is not natural to reach for people you aren't bumping into every other week/month, you might simply lose trail. It is relatively easy to reach to someone who has social media accounts under his own name and never changed phone number. It requires a lot more of detective work to reach out to people who aren't active on social medias. I have lived in several countries and I had to resort to use linkedin to get back in touch with some of my friends and it can took months for them to reply as most people don't even log on linkedin on a regular basis unless they are actually looking for a job. Some of them I lost complete trail as I couldn't find any social media account either.

So automatising your own reminders and force yourself to talk to people you might not reach out on a regular basis, because your local social circle already keeps you busy a lot, is not necessarily a bad thing, even if it feels forced.

There are a lot of people I care about, but sometimes you just _forget_. Or you remember, but it's too late to call them, or they're in a bad time zone, or they mostly use FB and you hate FB. After two kids, rebuilding a derelict house, etc. I found I had to be more intentional about keeping any friendships alive, and this basically seems like a more involved version of keeping friends' birthdays in a calendar to drop them a line.

That seems like a very neurotypical view point. Of course people miss people, however, some people (especially people with for instance ADHD) often forget stuff and get distracted, so having an extra layer of organisation can be extremely helpful.

I think describing other people as "friends" or "assets" are just labels you've made up. I think it's unnecessary to be condescending by saying someone else's interpretation is "incredibly sad".

> He'd miss contacting them.

No, you would miss contacting them. But he is not you.

Your comment can be read in two ways. Perhaps you think everyone should be like you and those who are different are "sad". I hope I don't need to explain why this is wrong. Or perhaps you think someone who isn't like you doesn't deserve to have any human contact and should be alone. What a horrible thing to think.

This comment is far more cynical than his life.

My grandmother knew hundreds of people. Her little black book was massive. She had a system as well for reaching out.

Your emotions are good for regulating your relationships with 5-10 people, that's about it.

>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.

You've basically described every single family relationship ever.

You don't like catching up with them, and they don't like catching up with you, but you do it anyway because one day you might need a kidney or a ticket out of Warsaw.

What’s the alternative here? Stop contacting his friends unless he misses them? Also, why are you such a judgmental dick about it?

> He'd miss contacting them.

I keep fond memories of nearly all people I know. I'd help them on the spot and have a pleasent conversarion if they contacted me.

Yet I never miss contacting people I know.

I don't like this method much either but in fairness to the author, as you get older and our social circle inevitably widens with friends from old sports clubs, old neighbors, friends from school, colleague, university, old jobs, friends who are kids friends parents from school, et al, and thus it gets harder and harder to keep track of everyone given much effort it often takes to keep our head above water in our own busy lives. How many people say "we only catch up once every couple of years?" At least this method allows the author to keep those connections open for people he wants to stay in contact with. Even if it might seem a little impersonal from a superficial standpoint.

> If there were friends, he'd not need to be reminded of contacting them. He'd miss contacting them.

As someone who needs a separate text file for remembering important dates (from where i stand, calendars are just weird, the months names arbitrary, the amounts of days in each also an example of some odd legacy system), i disagree.

If my brain refuses to work well for dates for a few dozen people, why would someone else remember to contact more people, especially given how busy the lives of many are? Is it a bit nonconventional to develop an automation system for that? Maybe, but then again, people don't even bat an eye when putting down events in their Google Calendar or whatever.

"If those events mattered, you wouldn't need to be reminded of them." doesn't sound like a reasonable argument to my brain, even though it might to someone else's.

> It's incredibly sad that his social life, or rather: the illusion of a social life, is being dictated by a machine.

It's not sad (to me and probably others), please don't downplay someone putting in the effort to address what would otherwise be a shortcoming. Even though a bit odd, if it works for them, props to that person!

For further reading, have a look at Dunbar's number: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

Why wouldn't we expand past the limitations of our brains, if that is beneficial to both ourselves and others, especially when extending that reasoning to a professional setting?

"I should send a Christmas greeting to that cool boss i had years ago." probably doesn't occur to people that often, but is still a nice thing to do!

Personally, without that text file of mine (or reminders from Facebook or whatever for others), i wouldn't remember most birthdays (of friends or acquaintances) or other celebration days, which would be bad for everyone - to me, because of feeling bad after forgetting about those days, and for others because of not receiving greetings or gifts.

If I write my friend's birthdays on a calendar, prompting me to contact them on their birthdays, do you think that's treating them as assets not friends? If not, what is the relevant difference?

I guess you must be pretty young and havent experimented yet how easy it is to get swallowed by life.

Some people can’t express and maintain relationships like other people but still like their friends. Having a system which can make my friends feel that I value them (which I do, but find difficult expressing) helps some people maintain a semblance of a social life.

> If there were friends, he'd not need to be reminded of contacting them.

That sounds rather strong. It's not unusual to keep a Christmas card list, which is pretty much the same idea.

Personally I don't see a problem unless it's automatically sending messages giving the impression they're not automated. The blog post makes it clear that all the messages he sends are written by him, the system only prompts him to write+send them. I don't see an issue in using a system to send reminders.

Incidentally this topic has been discussed before in a thread 7 months back. [0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27643328

How did you conclude he’s talking about friends? In the whole article word "friend" doesn’t appear even once. Also, a person can hardly have hundreds of friends. Three, sure. Seven, very probably. Twelve, maybe. But hundreds? Impossible.

He's delegating his humanity and friendships into a spreadsheet! Next stop, do the interactions themselves in the cloud!!

Makes sense for networking though. Which I think is what he's actually getting at.

>>the illusion of a social life,

Yep, that summed it up for me in 6 words.

That would also apply to most social media as well.

No he doesn't, you reach the wrong conclusion.

It is more similar to a birthday calendar reminder.

He also pretty much screws up the whole system by announcing it like this. There's no way I'd feel anything but manipulation coming my way if I was his friend and a message from this guy popped up in my notifications.

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

For so long we were (and still are) called a human resource, whole departments and studies devoted for human resource management. Treating people like assest fits here.

Integration with Google contacts would be awesome because I already have them all there in groups and with notes.

Asymmetric? Ok, it take somebody else's time, too. Reaching out is no work for people with no real work.

I would immediately block someone if I found out they were doing this to me. Disgusting behaviour.

CRM for friendships, is it really a friendship after that or a customer/lead/prospect?

effectively you've created your own personal Sales/Marketing DRIP campaign, neat, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drip_marketing

Sometimes a blogpost can seem a lot like marketing of a product with a story spun around it.

Wow. I don't know enough people even begin something like this, but impressive!

I too live for the honor of being a line in someone's spreadsheet

My immediate reaction to this: this is a form of sociopathic behavior.

Then, I read the comments and saw that every person who came to the same conclusion is downvoted to hell. So I'm just adding this comment in solidarity with people who possess some sort of emotional intuition / "yikes radar". You're not alone.

Have you considered that your emotional intuition might be wrong? Does your "yikes radar" fire when you see people using mobility or sensory aids to overcome disabilities?

Thing is, sociopathic would be if they lacked empathy for other person, not that they automated reminders and notes to regularly connect with other people (at various degrees of acquaintance&friendship).

Do we put the same kind "yikes value" on couples that schedule weekly outing to cinema? If no, why not? It's essentially the same base mode of operation, setting up a regular reminder to make time for each other. Or a group of friends. Is it really "more genuine" just because you don't know one of them has 20 overlapping calendar appointments with reminders in order to ensure that the weekly meet works out?

And honestly, a lot of those reactions were downvoted to hell because apparently there's quite a lot of us who don't find it easy to "message someone on the toilet" and don't accept pithy, empathy impaired message that if we have issues communicating then we don't care.

Hi %famous-person% have my free %upvote-or-acknowledgement% for implementing a %faux-human-response%.

Do I now have to do traffic analysis on my received mails to detect which ones have suspicious periodicity to measure my A,B or C-dom?

D I know: its the Christmas form letter.

Something that really freaks me out about the world is how much power tech people have and that their sociopathic behaviour, like treating all your personal relationships as transactional data, is considered a "simple system".

It’s not a tech thing and is not sociopathic. Sells have been keeping cards on their customers for centuries and a whole category of software exists for that, CRMs. I personally can’t remember the names and ages of all the children of all the people I interact with. I still take the time to take notes about it when I can and review them before seeing someone. I still think it’s better than not caring at all.

Reading the comments on this discussion it seems that a significant part of HN is suddenly discovering that fostering relationships and keeping a network alive actually requires work.

would have expected a plain text aproach.

Simple and authentic feel like they're the magic formula here. Deceptively difficult to balance.

For personal, I'm trying my best to text people when they come to mind. I always appreciate when someone does that to me.

For business, I'm trying https://www.strata.cc/, which uses your email history to nudge you to reconnect with people. I'm just starting to use it but has already made some spot on recommendations in the first couple of weeks.

Why do we need to optimize everything?

It's completely and utterly superficial. You just cannot stay in touch with hundreds of people - it's not possible, unless you are doing so superficially and treating "friends" as "things I need to check up on so I don't lose a node to a network of people that might be helpful to me".

Completely maxed out, humans can only have about 150 friends[1]. Trying to have more is just not being genuine. And think about the other side of this - what if you learned someone you thought actually cared about you, or that you actually considered a friend, was using a fucking automated system to "stay in touch". It's sociopath behavior.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

I would be happy that they valued me enough to add to their automation, and I would probably set up some automation to remind me to talk to them, and we would be automation buddies. Sounds a lot more fun than the likely alternative, that we never talk to each other again.

Thanks for that link! I was trying to remember what the number/theory was called.

> It's sociopath behavior.

You say that out of the privilege of neurotypicallity.

"Sociopaths" (as you seem to call people who use this or similar approaches for keeping in touch) also need to live their lives.

Alternatively, is it your opinion they should be all locked up and put away with?

My initial thought as I read the first paragraph was: this seems kind of sociopathic (in a non-dramatic way).

I ended the article with "hmm, a system like this could be directly useful to me, especially at work."

If I read a post on my friend’s blog exposing that their occasional texts had genesis in an automation and not genuine interest I would try very hard to not talk to that person

Unsubscribe, please

I trust you don't use a calendar to keep track of birthdays, otherwise people will try very hard not to talk to you.

Huh, fascinating difference between people. Personally, the fact that my friends use a calendar event to remember my birthday and some of them have an earlier event to remember to plan something for me makes me happy. They precommitted to this act of caring and built it into their workflow so it wouldn’t be missed! I love it.

People are so different in our attitudes to life. It reminds me of the Calendly snafu from earlier.

I’d say that the genesis is a genuine interest in keeping in touch, automation is managing the process. I get behind on messages with my closest friends/family, and then I have a large network of professional/semi-personal relationships to maintain.

I empathise why the OP would do this.

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