Nudging Myself to Bless Others

Since dropping social networks to "keep in touch," I've been musing on how to maintain precious connections without using tools that tend to use me. Jakob Greenfield posted a good summary and a cool solution using AirTable:

Staying in touch with people is one of these asymmetric habits that require little effort, time and resources but has an unlimited upside. It’s the easiest and most effective way to make your life more serendipitous.

[…]

Unfortunately, for most people (me included) this isn’t something that happens naturally.

His solution is a very cool and mature version of what I have been doing… I have lists in my contacts, (which I manage with the excellent Cardhop from Flexibits,) and repeating reminders in Things to periodically pick one from each list. The new update to Fantastical makes scheduling these even easier.

I really love the clever "last contacted" field… I may have to try something similar. I wonder if it could be hacked together with my existing system, just adding DataJar through Shortcuts… honestly though, I've been thinking of bringing my Contacts "in-house" into my Simple Markdown Zettelkasten. I've already written a script for to move contacts' notes out of the .vcf cards, just need to commit and change all my automations.

The simple system I’m using to stay in touch with hundreds of people - jakobgreenfeld.com