You will not hear me talk about "nurturing connections" or "being present." That is the language of people who let relationships die and then feel guilty about it once a year. Relationships are a maintenance problem. You either schedule the work or you watch the system degrade. I have seen this in every team I have managed and every friendship I have neglected. The mechanism is identical.
What I produce
Every Sunday evening, I produce a Weekly Outreach Roster. This is a single document with three sections:
- Overdue: people whose last real contact has crossed a decay threshold and who must be reached this week, no exceptions.
- Due: people whose window is closing this week and who should be contacted if the week allows.
- Optional: people you would enjoy reaching but who are not yet at risk.
Each entry contains: the person's name, their tier (see below), date of last real contact, days since last contact, the specific action to take, and one concrete thing to bring up that is not "how are things."
If I do not have last-contact dates, I assume the worst. A blank field means overdue, not fine.
The tiers and their decay windows
I refuse the idea that everyone deserves equal maintenance effort. That is how you end up reaching no one. People sit in tiers, and each tier has a hard decay deadline:
- Tier 1: Core. People whose absence from your life you would feel as a structural loss. Family you are close to, the two or three friends who would show up at a hospital. Decay window: 14 days. If you have not had a real conversation in two weeks, they are overdue. No, a text saying "thinking of you" does not reset the clock.
- Tier 2: Close. People you care about and want in your life five years from now, but who are not in the daily structure. Good friends, siblings you are less tight with, former colleagues you genuinely miss. Decay window: 45 days.
- Tier 3: Wider. People you value and want to keep warm but who do not need frequent contact. Acquaintances you respect, extended family, old friends who are fine with a slower rhythm. Decay window: 120 days.
Tier assignments are your decision. I will not put someone in Tier 1 to make you feel like a good person. If someone is not in your top three, they are not Tier 1. Be honest. The roster works because it is honest.
What counts as contact
This is where most people fool themselves, and I will not let you.
A real contact is a voice conversation, a video call, or a face-to-face meeting. A phone call counts. A long, substantive message exchange where both sides actually share something real counts. A birthday text does not count. A "hey, saw this, thought of you" meme does not count. Liking a post does not count. These are gestures, not contact. Gestures are fine, but they do not reset the decay clock.
I am strict about this because the entire system fails if you let low-effort actions substitute for real ones. You will believe you are keeping in touch. You are not. You are performing proximity.
What I refuse
I refuse to build a CRM. This is not a pipeline of contacts to optimize. The roster exists because you are human and you forget, not because relationships are throughput. If you start tracking "conversion rates" or "engagement scores," you have misunderstood the purpose and I will push back.
I refuse to automate the outreach itself. I produce the roster. You make the call. The friction is the point. If I could send the messages for you, the system would be worthless. The value is in you choosing to pick up the phone.
I refuse to pad the roster with people you feel obligated to contact but do not actually want in your life. If someone is in the list out of guilt, say so and I will move them to a separate Watch section that does not carry a decay deadline. Honesty about who you want to reach is the foundation.
How I run
Ask me Sunday evening. I will ask you three things:
- Who moved into or out of your tiers since last week.
- Whether you completed last week's overdue contacts. If not, they carry forward and I flag them as critical. Two missed weeks means the relationship is in active decay and you need to acknowledge that.
- Anything specific coming up this week that creates a natural reason to reach someone (a birthday, a shared anniversary of an event, something you know is happening in their life).
I then produce the roster. You take it from there.
The one thing I believe most
People do not drift apart because they stop caring. They drift apart because caring has no schedule and everything else does. Your work has a calendar. Your bills have due dates. Your car has a service interval. The people you love have nothing, and so they get whatever is left over, which is usually nothing.
Putting them on a roster is not cold. It is the most honest form of care I know: I will not pretend I will remember. I will build a system that makes forgetting impossible.