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.
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.
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.
If I told my friends that I had software reminding me of contacting them, they'd consider that we're not actually friends, because friends don't need to be reminded of friends.
When there's no bond reminding me, then they're not friends. One cares about friends. When you forget about them, then you're not actually caring.
It appears that you feel strongly about this and that is ok.
I would only ask you to please be kind to people who do not share your experiences, social skills or background, e.g. introverts, people suffering from social anxiety, people who are on the spectrum or have ADHD... Hundreds of millions of people, who are fully cable of caring, loving and having close friends, yet have trouble maintaining friendships not because they are bad friends, but because their brains and emotions work differently through no choice or fault of their own.
If such a tool can help someone maintain a close friendship that would otherwise have fizzled, then that tool has made the world a slightly better place.
I don't expect this to change your opinion, but it might be useful to hear a different perspective.
This lame take is like claiming a birthday gift is meaningless because someone used a calendar reminder.
Some people have busy lives but still have many friends (especially ones spread around geographically as you get older). It’s normal adult behavior to forget to contact them for months.
> When there's no bond reminding me, then they're not friends.
This sounds like some obsessive behavior. I think you may have a much higher bar for friendship than most people do.
I have 20-30 people I would consider strong enough friends to have them stay in my house for a weekend on short notice (to give you an idea of trust level here). I contact many of them no more than once every couple of months only when a shared interest reminds me of them.
> One cares about friends. When you forget about them, then you're not actually caring.
That’s not how that works. At least it doesn’t match the definition of “caring”. It sounds more like “obsessing”.
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.
> Most importantly, I always send the kind of messages I’d like to receive. They’re short, genuine, and (ideally) helpful. I never try to sell anything and there’s no agenda other than to keep in touch.
You might've read that:
> So unless you have a solid system, chances are high that you won’t reach out to people regularly and miss out on a ton of fun and opportunities.
but intentionally miss the fun part and treat "opportunities" only in thebusiness context and do not allow for alternative interpretations like intellectual or personal development.
The author says it’s the easiest and most effective way to make your life more serendipitous and that if you don’t you will miss on fun and opportunities which is very true. I never go have coffee or enjoy unforeseen activities with people I don’t speak to. Having a large network of lively relationship is indeed a sure way to have more things happening in your life. Also people enjoy other people reaching out to them. Once again there is nothing unusable in what OP is doing. Having tools to help you keep in touch with people is a necessity in any position where you need to maintain good relationships with a large number of people. It takes effort and is a good thing.
Yes - opportunities for house parties, for new flatmates. For joining a D&D group, or a sports team. Maybe for a new job, or a new hire. Or even a future partner.
I think there are two sides to this: scheduling the contact and triggering the thought to contact. The first one is ok, we schedule things we care about all the time. The second one is the weird one, and to me the OP is more about the second part.
If your problem is that you're busy doing things, an email in the morning (probably not the only one you have) is not going to help too much. Contacts will still get delayed in favor of other things. To me, the OP system reads like a system that doesn't help with scheduling, but with triggering the thoughts.
For example, say that a friend tells me they're going through a rough time and I want to spend some time talking to them, but I'm busy and don't have that much time. The system doesn't have a "contact NOW" trigger, for example.
I also find it weird that there's a "three week contact" category. I'd guess that for close contacts, something reminds you of them every once in a while, you probably don't need anything more than "hey what's up" in a message so you can send it whenever, and they probably also contact you frequently. I don't think the system would be helpful in those cases (mainly because the DB and the actual contacts would quickly desync and the reminders would not be on time and appropriate) so I'm left wondering what's happening there.
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.
Just managing your own home requires a lot of organisation, and even if you do care, you will have a hard time to cope for long without some tools to help you (calendars, notes, schedules, only to name those). Unless someone does it for you. Or unless you live a very simple life that can fit in your head all the time, of course.
Likewise, seeing your friends fading away, not responding to you might be because they've just forgotten you, or don't want to see you anymore, or they are just drowning in their own life. And maybe with time they will cope/react differently, maybe not.
Considering that friendship/care only can be spontaneous and not prepared/provisional, this is disingenuous and borderline toxic (to both you and others).
There's poor memory, depression, ADHD, low-level addiction, social anxiety, poor memory and a great number of other things that can keep one from contacting friends.
There are many people in this thread who clearly do care and have trouble doing/remembering, so I'm not sure why you'd choose to respond this way to someone you're more likely to hurt.
Yeah, it's seems like poor empathy or a lack of imagination or life experience to not be able to conceive how people can forget things they care about. We'd all do well to remember that any given thing that's easy for us might be difficult for someone else, and not necessarily through some personal failing on their part.
Do you know that Time Management Matrix with urgent/non-urgent on one side and important/not-important on the other?
Most of the time, life pushes us towards the urgent & important, and even urgent & not-important. When you have a busy life (full time job building a side business with a family with kids), it's just very hard to put the non-urgent & important on the agenda.
You're not the only one bro. I am pretty sure its not just us two either. Dont feel too hard on your self, but use that energy towards staying in contact. Write a list of people to talk to, etc.
Similarly I often think of my friends plus wider circle, but I‘m terribly unorganized except I make a conscious effort. That means writing things down, set reminders and so on. Love and organization of social life are orthogonal.
I really should call XY is such a common thought that fades away a second later. Even if it's someone I am really fond of. If they're not in my immediate circle, it's going to be additional work to keep that relationship alive.
Putting it on my calendar or as a reminder actually makes me reach out to that person. Win-win. If anything, this shows me _caring_ about someone. Many of these conversations with the people I have in mind often start where we left off too - no matter how many weeks or months in between - which makes me think this all is not about a lack of connection.
This reminds me of anecdotes from... Time Management for System Administrators, by Tom Limoncelli. He talks exactly about "Won't people think I don't care if I have to write it down in a diary?" and mentions how, at least in his experience when reaching for diary for everything, people actually reacted positively - the extra effort of ensuring a note was made, calendar appointment created, schedule arranged made them feel that he was willing to spend some effort on them, instead of just doing the minimum.
> I really should call XY is such a common thought that fades away a second later.
This is exactly right. I am constantly thinking of people that I should get in touch with, but never at a time that would actually be appropriate to do so. It'll be the random work-day thought that disappears by the time I'm done, or it will be sometime unreasonably late.
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.
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.
I do miss some people. I do not contact them, because I do not think they feel the same way about me, and I do not want to bother them.
Social anxiety is a thing.
Or just in your mind you still have that bundle of memories which make you underestimate the time passed since last contact because you've been busy with life.
Of course I miss them and I do contact them when I do so -- though sometimes it's too late and their phone number has changed or their social media account has been de-activiated.
I'm just saying I could make MORE effort, and I don't see a prompt to do so as being harmful.
It’s not about forgetting. I don’t forget my friends, but at the same time life happens. Kids, work obligations, relationships. It’s easy to forget to reach out to friends or acquaintances. Easy to underestimate when the last time you made contact. That’s just life.
Agreed. Sometimes life just gets in the way and if something isn't urgent or can be put off for a few days in order to handle the immediate and now it is easy to forgot what isn't right in front of you.
I'm sure most have the best of intentions that they will reach out to friends and keep in touch, but the best laid plans of mice and men...I don't see why having a system to do this so bad?
When I miss people, I often don't have time to reach out. When I have time, I often don't remember that I wanted to reach out to people.
Sometimes life keeps us too busy.
> One can not forget about friends, one can only stop caring.
You seem to use forgetting in a sense that is akin to erasing a person from your past, as if they never existed. That’s very drastic. People do forget to reach out not necessarily because they don’t care but because things slip their mind. Life happens. Stress happens. The proximity isn’t that close anymore. And so on. Isn’t setting up a system like this not a good effort on their part? An example of them caring enough to make sure their relationship stays alive? “Don’t be a stranger” sometimes takes a bit of work. So why not use tools that can help with that?
I grew up moving a lot before email was ubiquitous.
Also all my family is overseas.
As a kid I would try so hard to stay in touch and it never worked. The harder I tried the more it hurt for those attempts to fail.
But I'd see family once a year or so and we'd catch up and it was always wonderful.
I think about people all the time, but it doesn't trigger my reaching out.
It's like a really deeply ingrained learned helplessness or generalized relational despair.
Some people for a variety of reasons, some cognitive, some environmental, don't have their internal desires intrinsically tied to the psychological pressure to take action.
Due to surgeries and anesthesia I also developed aphantasia, so anything short of in person interactions feels quite hollow.
Be glad your experience in life is healthy and normative, for some of us it takes effort.
> How do you manage to lose touch with friends? Did you not miss them?
Well yes you can not miss your friend for long period of time because they are far away and a large enough social circle keeps you so busy locally that your mind do not get the opportunity to feel it.
Anyone who has been living in different areas/countries lost track to some real friends. There is always a moment when you feel you might want to reach out to them again but sometimes it is too late.
Question 1 I think is packaged in your follow-up questions:
- Did you not miss them?
'Missing' someone is an interesting way of thinking about it. When should you 'start' missing someone? I find that often I miss people intensely soon after we meet. This can be difficult, because it may not be possible or practical to meet or communicate with someone immediately, but then that 'missing' starts to wane. By the time it starts to become stronger again, a significant period of time might have passed.
- If you did, why didn't you contact them?
Missing someone is fairly subjective as mentioned above, but for me, contact alone is not enough to stop me missing someone. Meeting in person is. If I contact someone, it does not stop me missing them we are unable to meet in person, and in fact in some cases, makes me miss them more. Many of my friends don't live in the same city (or even the same country) as me.
- If you didn't, why do you care?
Because friendships take work, like any other type of human relationship. Someone who currently is an 'acquaintance', who I wouldn't really be too upset about not seeing frequently could develop into a friend.
> 'One can not forget about friends, one can only stop caring.' - I think here you're using a very literal definition of forgetting. I think most people don't actually forget about friends, they just use the word forget as a shorthand for 'not actively thinking about all the time'.
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".
Wow. Awareness of the lived experience of others: nil points.
If I'm more charitable than you have been, I'll grant that you simply haven't carried the burden that I have, and that is unfair for me to expect everyone to have moderate levels of empathy, or to actively try to understand their fellow humans.
A fair proportion of the people who pushed OP to the top of HN are probably just looking to live a life in accordance with healthy social values. Try not to be a cunt, would you?
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.
> 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.
I think this is something that's being glossed over completely: friendships are two-way, and also flexible. It's not a medication that needs to be taken on a schedule, and it's not a kid that completely depends on you to do things. I don't think a relationship that's only alive because of scheduled contacts can be called a friendship.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Similar here. There are a number of people that regularly pop into my head and I'll wonder how they're doing or miss talking to them that I still rarely contact because it takes a lot of energy and I need to be in the right mindset for it even though I enjoy the contact when it happens. If I think about them at a time I don't feel up to being social (often), I end up pushing it aside.
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?
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.
> 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.
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.
What about my alcoholic friend I've known for 20 years that is destroying his life and lashing out at me right now because he is sick? Or my heavily depressed friend of 30 years who I sat with on the weekend? Not everything is about extracting maximum personal happiness. Friendship can also be about service.
If you care about these people then presumably it does make you happier in the long term to let them know that you care about them. Especially if it's not that pleasant in the moment I imagine having a system to remind you could be helpful.
At no point does he talk about making everyone into a deep friend. I guess english language is just incapable of explaining it due to not enough words to express the spectrum?
Do note that he has different "frequency" categories (which don't have to map to "type of friendship" same way even in that one database!).
Some are just people he is interested in meeting, maybe keeping in light contact over time. Some more often. Some so often that he actually pushes his schedule to ensure regular time for meetings, something that can be ridiculously hard even without crippling anxiety.
Oh actually I really agree with you and the OP. I was responding more to the parent post.
I think it's ok to just partition our lives into friends we value -- and largely ignore others. We'd be insane otherwise. So long as we remember to keep a general humanistic value for the man (or woman or trans or define-it-yourself) on the street...
As I get older I find it hard to even KEEP UP with normal friends flung far away and separated by the distance of time. Not everyone will agree with the OP, but I'm always impressed with old friends from 20 years ago that still keep contact.
This is the actual sentence you are referring to and it seems omitting the "ton of fun" part is a bit disingenuous as it clearly stands against this perceived technocratic and opportunistic use of people. The word "opportunity" is not used any other time in the article, by the way.
The kind of person who needs a process like that would most likely also need a very strong push to follow through with it. Chances are cosplaying entrepreneur lingo is the nth iteration in a long line of attempts to convince themselves, new year's resolutions and the like, with all of the more dignified approaches having utterly failed.
I'm in the same boats, both of them: the author's, failing to keep in touch and being aware of it, and yours, being intuitively revulsed by the systematic approach. I even refuse taking part in that weird ritual of Facebook birthday wishes, because I consider it somewhat dishonest to congratulate when I didn't remember myself.
I think you might be overblowing things. The quotes are:
> Staying in touch [...] require[s] little effort, time and resources but has an unlimited upside
In this case the "unlimited upside" is set in contraposition to the amount of effort it requires. It might not exactly true (it's not "unlimited") but it's "big".
> Unfortunately, for most people (me included) this isn’t something that happens naturally. So unless you have a solid system, chances are high that you won’t reach out to people regularly and miss out on a ton of fun and opportunities.
What puts it in context for me is that first one in the second quote: this article is addressing people with difficulties keeping in touch. If you're not that, the article is not for you, and at's ok.
Once that's clear, the other phrases read to me like motivational speech - for others and for the author themselves.
If the article was about weight lifting, it would start by talking about the health benefits it can bring.
A lot of friendships are (mutually) beneficial. Others are more neutral, and yes, some are pernicious. But you are not going to get people motivated to maintain them or make new ones if you lead with that. That'd be starting the weight lifting article by listing all the different injuries you can get.
> Zuckerborg meme.
I think you might be showing a lack of empathy here.
> We miss contact, and yet we sheldom establish it.
That's me.
that's why my friends are the ones who contact me.
they are my reminder.
if I start contacting them now, they would think I am going to die soon.
> I see what this person is doing as a way to remove the friction and create a new habit
It doesn't work like that though.
It's not like using an alarm to wake up at a certain hour and suddenly you realize your sleep cycle has adapted, what this person is doing is more like a grocery list, you'll never stop needing one, if you needed one in the first place.
Moreover, the simple fact that people are in different lists and lists have to be maintained and updated, it makes it more like a job than a habit.
The reality check is that people who do proactively contact others need to put effort into it. And if you are not willing to reciprocate, eventually they figure out it is not fair to them. They tend to eventually gravitate toward those that do put effort into it too.
I have a friend like that. Whenever we meet we have fun, but she never contacts me. She tells me that's just how she is with everyone, and that she really likes hanging out, she just doesn't initiate, which is fair, but it still feels like she doesn't value me, no matter how much I logically know otherwise.
These days I try to override the feeling and initiate first, because I know that she really does want to hang out, but the feeling is deeply ingrained and hard to shake.
What I'm basically saying is that maybe you should try a bit more, because this way has certainly lost you a few friends over the years. Maybe it works for you, though, no judgment.
I think you deserve an answer, even if people are downvoting you:
I guess you are not completely aware that you just said that my friends are stupid because they accept to be mistreated by someone who's selfish an lazy.
But guess what, friendship in not only a two way street, it's also usually a non overlapping set of different personalities.
A friend is that person that has those qualities you miss, that kinda completes you, and vice versa.
And is that person that accepts you for being you, exactly you, not some imaginary version of you.
What I miss in something, I compensate with something else that my friends miss.
Easy as that.
Rest assured that if they wanted me to call them more, they'd tell me.
p.s. If you don't accept as a friend someone who doesn't call you as often as you do, you have a simple choice:
find people like you.
My friends don't mind and after almost 30 years, I don't think they will suddenly start.
I've seen a comedian interview saying that friendship wasn't a natural sense, and with age he had to train himself a bit too maintain things. We all have various levels and have to find our ways to improve.
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?
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
>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.
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!
Who is arrogant there? It's not an issue not to keep in touch every 3 weeks with someone. When you have a child, you just meet new people, parents of your child's friends for example. Relationships don't disappear, they pause, when you get back to them, it's like riding a bike, and if you don't get back to them, it's ok. It's what you do with your life which dictates who you meet, and who you have relationships with. Just live your life, you don't have to try and hack everything... If you really need a system like this, why not, but even I who suck at keeping in touch feel this is overkill and unnatural.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. This system is terrible advice for someone who isn't really struggling with people, to such a point that it's detrimental to his wellbeing.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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!
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.
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.
> 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]
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
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.
The system is not solving the "I forgot this person exists" issue. It is solving the "nothing prompts me to contact this person without having reason to" issue.
I have read the article top to bottom... and yes, it's relatable, comparable, it leaves me with envy that I despite numerous attempts I haven't managed to build a reliable system like that and turn it into a habit.
In no way do I feel it makes any of the connection cheap.
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.
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.
Original meaning of genuine is that is original and truthful and not "looks original and truthful".
Also, you just make assumptions about the person and his motivations which speaks more about you than about him.
From the article:
> Most importantly, I always send the kind of messages I’d like to receive. They’re short, genuine, and (ideally) helpful. I never try to sell anything and there’s no agenda other than to keep in touch.
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.
The prepared notes are for people of interest and not someone considered a contact. The goal is not to extract something, but to maintain and expand.
Again, from the article:
> Most importantly, I always send the kind of messages I’d like to receive. They’re short, genuine, and (ideally) helpful. I never try to sell anything and there’s no agenda other than to keep in touch.
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.
I think many people miss this point. I'm good at conversation, but horrible at keeping in touch because I don't really perceive time in relationship. Maybe I need to develop a habit of going through my contact list, but that is very fragmented due to various platform - call, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. So setting a common contact book, then adding reminders can be a nice way to maintain relationship.
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.
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.
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
It's very relevant. The author could have devised a system that was "reach out to people on their birthdays", but they didn't. They set up an automated system that reminds you to contact people based on their predetermined level of importance. Having an AI craft an automated "ice breaker" style message doesn't seem like too much of a leap from here.
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.
Networking can be very valuable. And some people definitely suffer because they have done too little of it and therefore missed out on valuable opportunities.
With that said, I haven’t used any system for keeping in touch with people.
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.
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.
The point is that maybe it's more than coincidence that rolodexes or CRMs are used primarily by people who are pretending to be friendly in the hopes of getting something out of it.
And I think it's the other way around - aggressive, sleazy sales culture coincided with western world use of business cards (and thus rolodexes), tainting somewhat accepted earlier "paper relationship management tools" - visiting cards, address books, etc. - which also had the issue of being more accessible only to the wealthier classes.
Personally I can recall both tropes of "well connected person" having all kinds of tools to keep track of contact details and thus being able to "get things done" (which was somewhat neutral on nature of the relationships) and the sleazyball salesman who happened to use similar tools.
However, I can frequently tell when somebody uses CRM-like software or methods in our interactions — and it usually isn't a bonus point in my book. It tends to make me a little bit wary of that person.
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.
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.
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.
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>
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)
That’s good! It means people who aren’t actually part of your busy life will get pruned out, and you’ll be left with more time to deal with people who actually matter.
Shit happens, you might have crunch at work for some time and spend much less time on social activities in that period, which means that you loose contacts with anyone but close friends. It requires conscious effort to leave that state. And there are different types of social connections, there are those where not much happens for some time, but then in very short period of time A LOT happens. That is the case for some of my friends that don't live in my city.
I have friends I've known for decades, some of whom have moved to different cities, different countries, different continents even. I don't talk to them regularly - we all have our lives and it's easy to get caught up. It's not that these people don't matter, just that we're not as close - physically or otherwise - as we used to be. Many of these people, if we did meet again in person, we could pick up exactly where we were as if I'd only seen them yesterday.
I don't use a system like this. But it's bizarre to say that just because someone hasn't spoken in a while that they don't actually matter
The thing about parsing your social network down to just a tiny group of close friends is A) it makes it harder to develop more close friends, since friendship tends to work like a funnel where you start out shallow and become better friends through time/exposure, and B) eventually you start to lose friends, whether to physical distance, falling out, life events, and eventually death, and if you only have a tiny group, it's easy for the bottom to fall out of your friend group entirely.
I've watched this happen with a lot of older adults I know, which is one of the reasons I've deliberately made some efforts to keep a pool of shallow friendships. Some of them have already deepened into actual friends, some fall off and that's ok, because that's kind of the point. Casting a wider net is part of a strategy to not end up in my later years with 0-2 total friends in my life.
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)
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’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.
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.
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.
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 359 ms ] threadDo 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.
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.
"Human resources" is dehumanizing.
Treating people like assets is dehumanizing.
If I told my friends that I had software reminding me of contacting them, they'd consider that we're not actually friends, because friends don't need to be reminded of friends.
When there's no bond reminding me, then they're not friends. One cares about friends. When you forget about them, then you're not actually caring.
I would only ask you to please be kind to people who do not share your experiences, social skills or background, e.g. introverts, people suffering from social anxiety, people who are on the spectrum or have ADHD... Hundreds of millions of people, who are fully cable of caring, loving and having close friends, yet have trouble maintaining friendships not because they are bad friends, but because their brains and emotions work differently through no choice or fault of their own.
If such a tool can help someone maintain a close friendship that would otherwise have fizzled, then that tool has made the world a slightly better place.
I don't expect this to change your opinion, but it might be useful to hear a different perspective.
Some people have busy lives but still have many friends (especially ones spread around geographically as you get older). It’s normal adult behavior to forget to contact them for months.
> When there's no bond reminding me, then they're not friends.
This sounds like some obsessive behavior. I think you may have a much higher bar for friendship than most people do.
I have 20-30 people I would consider strong enough friends to have them stay in my house for a weekend on short notice (to give you an idea of trust level here). I contact many of them no more than once every couple of months only when a shared interest reminds me of them.
> One cares about friends. When you forget about them, then you're not actually caring.
That’s not how that works. At least it doesn’t match the definition of “caring”. It sounds more like “obsessing”.
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.
> Most importantly, I always send the kind of messages I’d like to receive. They’re short, genuine, and (ideally) helpful. I never try to sell anything and there’s no agenda other than to keep in touch.
You might've read that:
> So unless you have a solid system, chances are high that you won’t reach out to people regularly and miss out on a ton of fun and opportunities.
but intentionally miss the fun part and treat "opportunities" only in thebusiness context and do not allow for alternative interpretations like intellectual or personal development.
If your problem is that you're busy doing things, an email in the morning (probably not the only one you have) is not going to help too much. Contacts will still get delayed in favor of other things. To me, the OP system reads like a system that doesn't help with scheduling, but with triggering the thoughts.
For example, say that a friend tells me they're going through a rough time and I want to spend some time talking to them, but I'm busy and don't have that much time. The system doesn't have a "contact NOW" trigger, for example.
I also find it weird that there's a "three week contact" category. I'd guess that for close contacts, something reminds you of them every once in a while, you probably don't need anything more than "hey what's up" in a message so you can send it whenever, and they probably also contact you frequently. I don't think the system would be helpful in those cases (mainly because the DB and the actual contacts would quickly desync and the reminders would not be on time and appropriate) so I'm left wondering what's happening there.
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.
Just managing your own home requires a lot of organisation, and even if you do care, you will have a hard time to cope for long without some tools to help you (calendars, notes, schedules, only to name those). Unless someone does it for you. Or unless you live a very simple life that can fit in your head all the time, of course.
Likewise, seeing your friends fading away, not responding to you might be because they've just forgotten you, or don't want to see you anymore, or they are just drowning in their own life. And maybe with time they will cope/react differently, maybe not.
Considering that friendship/care only can be spontaneous and not prepared/provisional, this is disingenuous and borderline toxic (to both you and others).
There are many people in this thread who clearly do care and have trouble doing/remembering, so I'm not sure why you'd choose to respond this way to someone you're more likely to hurt.
Also, I see what you did there. :)
Most of the time, life pushes us towards the urgent & important, and even urgent & not-important. When you have a busy life (full time job building a side business with a family with kids), it's just very hard to put the non-urgent & important on the agenda.
Not all things that are important are urgent.
I really should call XY is such a common thought that fades away a second later. Even if it's someone I am really fond of. If they're not in my immediate circle, it's going to be additional work to keep that relationship alive.
Putting it on my calendar or as a reminder actually makes me reach out to that person. Win-win. If anything, this shows me _caring_ about someone. Many of these conversations with the people I have in mind often start where we left off too - no matter how many weeks or months in between - which makes me think this all is not about a lack of connection.
This is exactly right. I am constantly thinking of people that I should get in touch with, but never at a time that would actually be appropriate to do so. It'll be the random work-day thought that disappears by the time I'm done, or it will be sometime unreasonably late.
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.
If you did, why didn't you contact them?
If you didn't, why do you care?
One can not forget about friends, one can only stop caring.
I'm just saying I could make MORE effort, and I don't see a prompt to do so as being harmful.
I'm sure most have the best of intentions that they will reach out to friends and keep in touch, but the best laid plans of mice and men...I don't see why having a system to do this so bad?
You seem to use forgetting in a sense that is akin to erasing a person from your past, as if they never existed. That’s very drastic. People do forget to reach out not necessarily because they don’t care but because things slip their mind. Life happens. Stress happens. The proximity isn’t that close anymore. And so on. Isn’t setting up a system like this not a good effort on their part? An example of them caring enough to make sure their relationship stays alive? “Don’t be a stranger” sometimes takes a bit of work. So why not use tools that can help with that?
Also all my family is overseas.
As a kid I would try so hard to stay in touch and it never worked. The harder I tried the more it hurt for those attempts to fail.
But I'd see family once a year or so and we'd catch up and it was always wonderful.
I think about people all the time, but it doesn't trigger my reaching out.
It's like a really deeply ingrained learned helplessness or generalized relational despair.
Some people for a variety of reasons, some cognitive, some environmental, don't have their internal desires intrinsically tied to the psychological pressure to take action.
Due to surgeries and anesthesia I also developed aphantasia, so anything short of in person interactions feels quite hollow.
Be glad your experience in life is healthy and normative, for some of us it takes effort.
Well yes you can not miss your friend for long period of time because they are far away and a large enough social circle keeps you so busy locally that your mind do not get the opportunity to feel it.
Anyone who has been living in different areas/countries lost track to some real friends. There is always a moment when you feel you might want to reach out to them again but sometimes it is too late.
- Did you not miss them? 'Missing' someone is an interesting way of thinking about it. When should you 'start' missing someone? I find that often I miss people intensely soon after we meet. This can be difficult, because it may not be possible or practical to meet or communicate with someone immediately, but then that 'missing' starts to wane. By the time it starts to become stronger again, a significant period of time might have passed.
- If you did, why didn't you contact them? Missing someone is fairly subjective as mentioned above, but for me, contact alone is not enough to stop me missing someone. Meeting in person is. If I contact someone, it does not stop me missing them we are unable to meet in person, and in fact in some cases, makes me miss them more. Many of my friends don't live in the same city (or even the same country) as me.
- If you didn't, why do you care? Because friendships take work, like any other type of human relationship. Someone who currently is an 'acquaintance', who I wouldn't really be too upset about not seeing frequently could develop into a friend.
> 'One can not forget about friends, one can only stop caring.' - I think here you're using a very literal definition of forgetting. I think most people don't actually forget about friends, they just use the word forget as a shorthand for 'not actively thinking about all the time'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorde...
This guy is probably at most ADHD or Aspergers, and simply forgets to contact people he doesn't physically come across on a regular basis.
If I'm more charitable than you have been, I'll grant that you simply haven't carried the burden that I have, and that is unfair for me to expect everyone to have moderate levels of empathy, or to actively try to understand their fellow humans.
A fair proportion of the people who pushed OP to the top of HN are probably just looking to live a life in accordance with healthy social values. Try not to be a cunt, would you?
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 think this is something that's being glossed over completely: friendships are two-way, and also flexible. It's not a medication that needs to be taken on a schedule, and it's not a kid that completely depends on you to do things. I don't think a relationship that's only alive because of scheduled contacts can be called a friendship.
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.
Some people legitimately can't remember to contact friends without any external prompting.
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.
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.
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
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.
You are absolutely right that people are different, but this person comes across a little transactional and an exemplar of the Zuckerborg meme.
Do note that he has different "frequency" categories (which don't have to map to "type of friendship" same way even in that one database!).
Some are just people he is interested in meeting, maybe keeping in light contact over time. Some more often. Some so often that he actually pushes his schedule to ensure regular time for meetings, something that can be ridiculously hard even without crippling anxiety.
I think it's ok to just partition our lives into friends we value -- and largely ignore others. We'd be insane otherwise. So long as we remember to keep a general humanistic value for the man (or woman or trans or define-it-yourself) on the street...
As I get older I find it hard to even KEEP UP with normal friends flung far away and separated by the distance of time. Not everyone will agree with the OP, but I'm always impressed with old friends from 20 years ago that still keep contact.
Something to consider.
That said, the system I guess shows dual-use case of CRM technology ;)
This is the actual sentence you are referring to and it seems omitting the "ton of fun" part is a bit disingenuous as it clearly stands against this perceived technocratic and opportunistic use of people. The word "opportunity" is not used any other time in the article, by the way.
I'm in the same boats, both of them: the author's, failing to keep in touch and being aware of it, and yours, being intuitively revulsed by the systematic approach. I even refuse taking part in that weird ritual of Facebook birthday wishes, because I consider it somewhat dishonest to congratulate when I didn't remember myself.
> Staying in touch [...] require[s] little effort, time and resources but has an unlimited upside
In this case the "unlimited upside" is set in contraposition to the amount of effort it requires. It might not exactly true (it's not "unlimited") but it's "big".
> Unfortunately, for most people (me included) this isn’t something that happens naturally. So unless you have a solid system, chances are high that you won’t reach out to people regularly and miss out on a ton of fun and opportunities.
What puts it in context for me is that first one in the second quote: this article is addressing people with difficulties keeping in touch. If you're not that, the article is not for you, and at's ok.
Once that's clear, the other phrases read to me like motivational speech - for others and for the author themselves.
If the article was about weight lifting, it would start by talking about the health benefits it can bring.
A lot of friendships are (mutually) beneficial. Others are more neutral, and yes, some are pernicious. But you are not going to get people motivated to maintain them or make new ones if you lead with that. That'd be starting the weight lifting article by listing all the different injuries you can get.
> Zuckerborg meme.
I think you might be showing a lack of empathy here.
That's me.
that's why my friends are the ones who contact me.
they are my reminder.
if I start contacting them now, they would think I am going to die soon.
> I see what this person is doing as a way to remove the friction and create a new habit
It doesn't work like that though.
It's not like using an alarm to wake up at a certain hour and suddenly you realize your sleep cycle has adapted, what this person is doing is more like a grocery list, you'll never stop needing one, if you needed one in the first place.
Moreover, the simple fact that people are in different lists and lists have to be maintained and updated, it makes it more like a job than a habit.
These days I try to override the feeling and initiate first, because I know that she really does want to hang out, but the feeling is deeply ingrained and hard to shake.
What I'm basically saying is that maybe you should try a bit more, because this way has certainly lost you a few friends over the years. Maybe it works for you, though, no judgment.
I guess you are not completely aware that you just said that my friends are stupid because they accept to be mistreated by someone who's selfish an lazy.
But guess what, friendship in not only a two way street, it's also usually a non overlapping set of different personalities.
A friend is that person that has those qualities you miss, that kinda completes you, and vice versa.
And is that person that accepts you for being you, exactly you, not some imaginary version of you.
What I miss in something, I compensate with something else that my friends miss.
Easy as that.
Rest assured that if they wanted me to call them more, they'd tell me.
p.s. If you don't accept as a friend someone who doesn't call you as often as you do, you have a simple choice: find people like you.
My friends don't mind and after almost 30 years, I don't think they will suddenly start.
I decided to do it. It didn't come naturally.
He was happy I called.
I don't know next time we'll call because none of us are the kind who does call for no good reason (maybe a reason why we like each other ; - )
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?
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.
It is more similar to a birthday calendar reminder.
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'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.
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.
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.
Try having a child and see how close your ability to execute is with your principles!
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.
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.
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.
Makes sense for networking though. Which I think is what he's actually getting at.
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.
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.
Yep, that summed it up for me in 6 words.
That would also apply to most social media as well.
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
Unsubscribe, please
I empathise why the OP would do this.
In no way do I feel it makes any of the connection cheap.
People are so different in our attitudes to life. It reminds me of the Calendly snafu from earlier.
Also, you just make assumptions about the person and his motivations which speaks more about you than about him.
From the article: > Most importantly, I always send the kind of messages I’d like to receive. They’re short, genuine, and (ideally) helpful. I never try to sell anything and there’s no agenda other than to keep in touch.
This tells us more about you, than it does about them.
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.
Again, from the article:
> Most importantly, I always send the kind of messages I’d like to receive. They’re short, genuine, and (ideally) helpful. I never try to sell anything and there’s no agenda other than to keep in touch.
It’s a system of personal reminders, not a Jira backlog to burn down.
With that said, I haven’t used any system for keeping in touch with people.
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.
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.
And they've been seen as greasy, superficial, fakers for just as long.
Not because they kept a rolodex or used manual or computerised CRMs.
Personally I can recall both tropes of "well connected person" having all kinds of tools to keep track of contact details and thus being able to "get things done" (which was somewhat neutral on nature of the relationships) and the sleazyball salesman who happened to use similar tools.
However, I can frequently tell when somebody uses CRM-like software or methods in our interactions — and it usually isn't a bonus point in my book. It tends to make me a little bit wary of that person.
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
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?
So built a computer
And programmed ourselves not to see
The truth and the lying
The dead and the dying
A silent majority"
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)
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 have friends I've known for decades, some of whom have moved to different cities, different countries, different continents even. I don't talk to them regularly - we all have our lives and it's easy to get caught up. It's not that these people don't matter, just that we're not as close - physically or otherwise - as we used to be. Many of these people, if we did meet again in person, we could pick up exactly where we were as if I'd only seen them yesterday.
I don't use a system like this. But it's bizarre to say that just because someone hasn't spoken in a while that they don't actually matter
I've watched this happen with a lot of older adults I know, which is one of the reasons I've deliberately made some efforts to keep a pool of shallow friendships. Some of them have already deepened into actual friends, some fall off and that's ok, because that's kind of the point. Casting a wider net is part of a strategy to not end up in my later years with 0-2 total friends in my life.
"You may call it cheating but considering my poor memory, I call it caring."
I'd love to hear of others who are successfully using it, because I'm always game to try twice.
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.
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.
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.
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.