Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Staying connected with friends and family with repeating tasks
Keeping in touch with friends and family doesn’t take much, but it does take regular contact. This is demonstrated aptly in this week’s tip, shared by quam, who shows an easy way to incorporate staying connected into your weekly/monthly routines.
Sometimes good friendships are lost just because we are very busy with daily life, we move, or just don’t visit the same clubs anymore. Whatever reason life comes up with for losing contact, I would still like to keep in touch with friends and family, but I lose track of who I spoke to last. Sometimes even a call every six months is enough to keep connections alive with interesting and beloved people.
So here’s my RTM approach:
1. Create a list for contacts, I call it “contacts”.
2. Add contacts and set the “repeats” property to X weeks or months. Best for me is repeats > advanced > after completion. So the task will be only repeated if I complete it by getting in touch with somebody.
3. (optional) Create a Smart List “kit” (short for keep in touch) with:list:contacts AND dueBefore:"1 week"
to see calls/hangouts for the upcoming week. Or, personally preferred:list:contacts AND dueBefore:"1 week" NOT dueBefore:today
if you don’t want see overdue calls. After all, it’s a can-task, not a must-task. In this case, it’s probably better to use the regular “repeats” option: that way, if you don’t call this week, the task will automatically pop up again next week. Clean up missed opportunities in the “contacts” list whenever you feel like it.
As other RTM users have pointed out in their tricks, it’s useful to summarize a call/hangout in the notes section of the task. That way I know where to start the next conversation from.
If I ask myself: “Hey, when was the last time I talked to Bob” then the completed tasks section is the place to look.
Best wishes and stay connected!
Thanks for sharing this tip, quam! You’re our Tips & Tricks Tuesday winner this week.
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