04 January 2019

Free For All Friday - No. 529

Last weekend in the lull between Christmas and New Year, I completed a task I've been working on for some time.

For ages now I have been wanting to be able to convert the Contact details in my phone and on my Mac to a suitable paper record that I could put in to my organiser. This would serve as a back up if nothing else.

The task ended up taking a while to find a suitable workable solution, but I got there in the end. For those of you interested in it I will do a suitable blog post at some point in the future.

However, I was still left with one problem. How up to date is the data I have entered on my phone? I so infrequently call people these days, half the phone numbers could be out of date for all I know!

So how do you ensure that the contact information you have recorded is up to date, no matter how it is stored, analogue or digital, the problem is the same?

Of course it is Friday so you can discuss anything organiser related.

7 comments:

  1. I try to keep paper and phone lists in sync, but it's pretty hit or miss for me. I would love to see this topic explorex!

    ReplyDelete
  2. People changing phone number or address without warning me is a nice way to purge my contacts list, actually. 2018 has been a "letting go" year, and I got rid of many things I didn't really need... (including toxic or outdated people)

    ReplyDelete
  3. It is an issue. And I am facing it the other way, needing to let potentially hundreds of people know of a change without them seeming to get a 'standard letter' email. Which they may well forget to action anyway! Look forward to a print option. Many contacts systems seem just to add that as an afterthought.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I have had the same mobile number since my first mobile phone, which is about 20 years I think.
    I started keeping a paper backup of important numbers when my son had to go into hospital and I couldn't keep my phone charged very easily. At least then I knew that I could make an urgent call from the nurses station if I needed to.
    But if people change their number and I don't tell me then I just hope I have another way of contacting them, such as messenger.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Same for me as Marie - my phone number hasn't changed since I've started in the early nineties....

    Anyway, there are two options, as I see it:
    - either people inform me about a change in their contact information, then I can update in my phone and my filofax (which has e.g. all the addresses, my phone only holds the numbers)
    - or they don't. I then accept that I'm not important anymore and let go, again updating in my filofax as well.
    Sometimes, if I feel them important to me, I ask back by other means, in most cases email. If I get an answer - good. If I don't - oh well.

    I just purged a lot of whatsapp groups, some contacts. Lots of contacts in social networks, both private and business.
    It felt good, actually :-)

    ReplyDelete
  6. I think it's a great idea to have a paper record of phone numbers. So many people rely on electronics. I plan to keep important phone numbers, not all of them, in my planner.

    ReplyDelete