Friendship Scheduling App/Site?

October 29, 2018 10:01 AM

I want to keep track of how long it's been since I last saw or spoke with someone, and ideally also set goals for how frequently I'm making plans with individual friends. Is there an app or a website that can help me do this?

I'm about to hit a major milestone deadline and will soon have a LOT more time and flexibility in my schedule. I want to use that extra time to reconnect with friends! And I want to make it easier on myself, going forward, to keep track of how often I'm seeing people and ensure that more casual or distant relationships aren't falling through the cracks.

I'm CERTAIN someone here linked to a website like this years ago, but no amount of googling has dredged it up, so either the site is defunct or I'm remembering key details incorrectly.

Doesn't have to be specific to friend-maintenance. Easy-to-use and phone-friendly would be ideal.

posted by Narrative Priorities to Human Relations (10 answers total)

There was once an app called tempus fugit (? time flies) where you said "I just did X" and set a time frame for how often you wanted to do X, and then when you approached your window it would remind you. It was explicitly marketed as reminding you to call your grandmother or some such, though also to remind you to change your furnace filters or whatever.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 10:30 AM on October 29, 2018

It's more oriented towards the corporate side of things, but UpHabit (in beta) might be worth a look.
posted by zamboni at 11:24 AM on October 29, 2018

Depending on how many friends you are tracking this could be pretty simple with a spreadsheet. Or any CRM tool would work too. Zoho would be free for your needs.
posted by COD at 11:32 AM on October 29, 2018

Best answer: If you're unfamiliar with CRM - Customer Relationship Management - that's basically what it's for. Sales, and similar jobs, involve a lot of "When did I last talk to this person? What was it about? Should I remind myself to drop them a line again in late November, when this big project they're on is wrapping, or just sometime vaguely next year?"

If I were doing this, I'd look up a lightweight CRM (hubspot? zoho?) and grab that.
posted by Tomorrowful at 11:50 AM on October 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

I use Asana (free) for this. You can set reminders for x days/weeks/months, dependent on when you last marked a task complete.
posted by seemoorglass at 12:01 PM on October 29, 2018

Best answer: Are you thinking of Tinyblu?
posted by restless_nomad at 12:33 PM on October 29, 2018 [12 favorites]

Response by poster: TINYBLU IS EXACTLY WHAT I WAS THINKING OF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

All I could remember was "little blue flower" so I'm not shocked my searches failed!
posted by Narrative Priorities at 12:43 PM on October 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

You could probably do this with Boomerang on top of Gmail - send yourself a message per friend about what you did when hanging out, set it to remind you in X weeks, repeat. But this is a minimalist approach and the other options probably have other nice features.
posted by batter_my_heart at 3:51 PM on October 29, 2018

Best answer: I use google/apple calendar for appointments and reminders (even things like to stock up on loofahs, replace my make up, etc.) and I also have about 5-10 friends who I have recurring calendar reminders for (3-5 weeks). I think this is better than having yet another app - it's better to have one master calendar / organization system in my experience.
posted by Crookshanks_Meow at 7:20 PM on October 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: You got your answer, but you could very easily do the same thing with the app called Regularly.
posted by AppleTurnover at 1:45 AM on October 30, 2018 [1 favorite]