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Ask HN: What tools do you use to manage relationships?

1 points by mead5432 ↗ HN
I've been thinking a lot lately about how to maintain relationships with "weak" connections (former colleagues, classmates, etc...). I think they can be very valuable and I'd like to stay in touch but don't really want to reach out and see if they want to hang out on a Saturday night so having them in my phone contacts seems a bit much.

I think it is important to take notes to help remember things to bring up later like things about family, hobbies, etc...

What tools do people use to manage these connections? Does anyone use any tools or am I over-thinking this?

5 comments

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amingilani
I have phone contacts from the past decade and haven't kicked anyone off my Facebook ever. This gives me a nice large pool of people to contact when I need them and the yearly Facebook birthday wish is enough to have them remember me.

I don't take notes at all, but if I'm about to meet someone after a while, a quick look at their Facebook gives me all their current information.

mead5432
Do you use LinkedIn at all for that stuff?
amingilani
I've honestly never used LinkedIn for anything.
tabeth
Outlook.

1. Create a people folder, with a rule for all emails from that person to go into that folder. 2. Sort reverse chronologically. 3. Tag emails manually on some category (personal information, business/career change, etc) 4. Filter and sort upon meeting. 5. Make all communication with all of your friends be exclusively over email (this is the hard part).

mead5432
I think most of my communication is over email anyway so not too bad... well, excluding the occasional happy hour. But I have contacts in Outlook attached, that could be included in notes.