why🔗

Most people are bad at keeping in touch, some (like me) are even worse. The folowing system can help with keeping networking and staying in touch with people.

what🔗

I met this idea first at Jakob Greenfeld's and then found it at Derek Sivers' website.

The idea is simple: you label contacts on fourth categories:

  • a: very important, contact every three weeks
  • b: important, contact every two months
  • c: most people, contact every six onths
  • d: rest of the world, contact once a year

Then you need some way of being reminded on time when you need/want to ping a contact. Derek uses his private piece of software, Jakob solved this with Airtable.

setup🔗

I don't have hundreds of contacts, so I used Things - since I anyway have ben using it for years:

  1. create a new project named "Stay in touch" or "Contacts" or "Relationships" or whatever suits more for you
  2. for each person, create a repeating to-do
  • title: e.g. "Follow up with Jane Doe"
  • when: set the due date, e.g. Tomorrow
  • repeat: set this to your desired frequency (see the labels above), e.g. every two months
  • important: in the repeat settings, make sure it's set to repeat "After Completion". This means the "next contact" date is calculated from the day you check it off.

workflow🔗

  • the "Today" list in Things is the "Overdue" list
  • when "Follow up with Jane Doe" appears, contact her
  • once you've "stayed in touch," check off the task
  • things automatically files the completed task and schedules the next one for 2 months (or whatever frequency you set) from today. You don't have to do any date entry or formula management.

conclusion🔗

So, every once in a time I get a notification from Things that I need (or wanted) to reach out to someone; then I contact the person, ask how is life, invite for a dinner, etc.