Keeping Up With Everyone

Social media was sold to the world as a way to keep up with friends from high school, coworkers from previous jobs and your Aunt Lynda who lives in Wisconsin. All you have to do is become their friend on Facebook (feel free to insert another social media site here), and now you can keep up with what's going on in their life! It was a wonderful pitch, but now that just about everyone we've ever met has a social media account, it's not quite that simple. Even Facebook's famous algorithm can't keep me updated with my nearly 1,300 Facebook friends.

Since I've been in Houston, I've thought a lot about how to keep in touch with my college friends, professors, coworkers, mentors and even family. Looking back, I'm realizing that I've never been very good at it. I can see how I've let wonderful relationships from my high school years fade away, and I don't want to do that again.

With this in mind, I came up with a plan. I made a list of 30 people and immediately realized how small this number is compared to the number of people I want to and should be keeping in touch with. But you have to start somewhere, right? So I began by adding these people to my task manager, Omnifocus. If you don't use Omnifocus, I'm sure you could do this with another task manager or even a calendar. I scheduled each person to a day of the month, and put him or her on repeat (some weekly, some biweekly, some monthly & still others every three months). I am now reminded on a daily basis to reach out to someone that I care about. I've already found this practice encouraging to me and to others. I'm continuing to add friends, family and coworkers to my list, and I'm having fun with it. It's exciting to check Omnifocus to see who I'll get to chat with today.

How do you keep up with family, friends and colleagues? Is there some sort of process that you follow?