[morning-coffee]

If "relationships matter" and you need an app to remind you of that, I'd posit you have a larger problem than any app can solve. Consider putting down the device and connecting with your peeps in the real world every once in a while.

[kstrauser]

Why use a calendar? Just remember everything you have coming up. Why use a to-do app? Just remember all the things you need to do.

Life gets busy. I want to drop a note to my distant family regularly, but between work and family and friends and hobbies, sometimes out of sight becomes out of mind. I like having a periodic nudge to ping that far-off person. Today I’m using Things for that, with repeating tasks to text so-and-so periodically. Something that integrates that with a record of what we talked about last time (so I can follow up with them) or alert me on special days would be nice.

I do all this because I care about those people and want to make a special effort to keep up with them. If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t be interested.

[beart]

As an adult deeply involved in my children's lives, with a demanding job, and volunteering in local athletics, your comment completely missed the mark. It's trivial to lose track of social relationships.

[Ritepaw]

The way we see it is that most people want to be connected and want to be good friends. But they either

a) Lack the social skills or

b) Lack the time management skills

This is where we want to help.

[jetsnoc]

Might you consider for just a moment, if you will, people who do have a larger problem. People who are neurodivergent who may be challenged with object permanence. Apps like this help greatly. It's not that we don't care or we're stuck with a device in our face, it's that the person doesn't exist unless brought to the front and center.

[morning-coffee]

That's why I suggested it... I myself am diagnosed ASD and have realized the amount of time spent finding, curating, tinkering with these "life-hacking" apps... and the diminishing returns they all produce. By all means, use a Contacts, Calendar, and ToDo app to get a reminder... Then take any spare time remaining and actually get out and connect with the people you care about, instead of endlessly optimizing, in solitude, in front of a device, the systems and processes around the meta for personal relationships.

The premise that one of the myriad of other tools that already exist to get a reminder to connect with someone you care about are somehow so insufficient, and that if only I had this new CRM app for personal relationships that I'd finally be able to cultivate those relationships like I've always wanted, is just so preposterous sounding to me that I felt I had to comment.

[jetsnoc]

Oh, I see. Thanks for your perspective. I can understand trying to use contacts and calendar for this and the need to keep it simple. I had a really hard time keeping those organized and the data entered but as apps like Messages get smarter and recognize when I say Happy Birthday to someone that it needs to put a birthdate on that contact, it’s getting a lot easier for me to stay organized.

[CatWChainsaw]

Sibling comments are rather affronted at this, but I happen to agree that leaning into technology to reclaim what we lost to technology in the first place is not actually solving a problem, it's slapping a bandage on and juicing up with some morphine.

Technology can't give a person more than the set amount of time, energy, and attention they have by virtue of being human. We're cramming more and more into our lives, but I doubt that in general we feel more satisfied and fulfilled. You can add and add until you can't. At some point you need to subtract. In this community there's likely to be at least some stigma around not optimizing every last second of your life, and personally I think that attitude should be stigmatized. It's insulting to personal dignity.

[TeMPOraL]

But optimization is exactly what you called for - subtracting things, rearranging things. Because the issue is that we have little choice in how much stuff we have to cram in our lives. That's the social problem of technology: it's a ratchet.

Consider a clock. Why do you need to know what time is it, with minute accuracy? Because you need to synchronize in time with other people. Why do you need that? Because everyone else does that and it's now a basic part of how society functions. You owning a clock is a default expectation.

How did it came to be this way? The first clocks invented weren't very useful for this (they were for navigation at sea, though), because approximately no one had them. But then someone put clocks on church towers and someone else miniaturized them, and at some point we crossed from it being a convenience to it being necessity.

Same story with calendars, todo lists, having a phone at home, having a phone in your pocket, having a bank account. Emerging additions to this list include having credit/debit cards, having smartphones, having social media accounts. Individually, we can do little about it; at some point, resisting costs more than giving in.

[CatWChainsaw]

I think we're agreeing just from different angles. We seem to have the same opinion about the veritable rat race of being forced to juggle ever more things, because technology. It seems that where we're not agreeing is 'optimizing'. IMO the end goal of optimization is to do as much as possible, which is additive. I can see on a personal level some optimizing might be subtractive, but for society as a whole I don't think so.