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Am curious about some practical aspects of the KITW system Mark recommended.

Example:

Say you've got a long list of folks who you want to keep in touch with. You're using CTRL-SHIFT-K or whatnot to create a recurring task for each person in Outlook.

Questions:

1 - How do you verify that everyone in your contact list has a corresponding KITW task?

2 - How do you verify that you don't have multiple KITW tasks for the same person?

I've just finished setting up a pretty similar system in Gmail (thanks PierG for the idea... perfect workaround, if you don't mind the manual labour involved), but (1) and (2) above both strike me as potential headaches going forward.

Not that having too many reminders for a person is necessarily a disaster, but I like things to be systematic.

asteriskrntt1's picture

I don't understand why you require your contacts to have a corresponding system. You are keeping in touch with them. Am I missing something?

As for having multiple reminders, I simply go through my existing database alphabetically and add people. If I meet someone new, I add them right away.

*RNTT

arc1's picture

[quote]I don't understand why you require your contacts to have a corresponding system. You are keeping in touch with them. Am I missing something?[/quote]

My point is, how would you know whether or not you're keeping in touch with them, if you've never assigned a KITW task to them to begin with?

Example - say you have a list of 100 people in your contacts, including John Doe. You create 99 KITW tasks, but for whatever reason, through manual error, you forget to add John.

The KITW system you've created is now "blind" to John's existence, and will never remind you about him.

Just wondering if there's an obvious way to cross-check for this kind of glitch.

juliahhavener's picture
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Arc,

Not that I've found, and I have duplicated an entry or two - I found them relatively easily by a visual review last month. It wasn't a problem, though, I just kept in touch a bit more frequently than I thought for a couple months!

Periodically, I review my KITW tasks (they're group together when sorted alphabetically) and check to be sure each of those folks are still valid (I've had one drop out in that time, but it was a personal relationship, not a professional one, that changed due to other dynamics). This also allows me to make sure I'm not missing anyone.

arc1's picture

Thanks Julia - that seems to be more or less how it's working out, as I get KITW reminders for people that aren't relevant anymore etc., so I just ignore those and remove the entry.

The problem is that b/c I'm not using Outlook, I can do the grouping. Good tip to know though; hopefully sooner or later I'll be back on an Outlook system and can stop using such a long workaround that I am today (Recurring Gmail Calendar entry -> Reminder sent to Gmail)!