Exactly. Agree with this. I think we come to terms at a certain point that its impossible to stay in touch with everyone.
I actually kept a table with people to stay in touch with them every:
- month
- quarter
- 6 months
- a year
(if its less then you remember anyways)
I quickly killed that approach, because people who genuinely understand overwhelm also are always happy to catch-up once in a while and we hold no hard feelings if we don't speak for another year.
I agree, but I also think it's also an issue (particularly with the popularity of social media) that people are often trying to keep in contact with many more people but also interacting a lot more than in the past.
For instance, I know people who were part of the greatest generation that would have decades long pen-pal type relationships with people they hadn't seen in person in years. It was pretty common for them to send several long hand written letters to several of these friends every year, for 30, 40, 50 years. But I don't think I've encountered anyone in younger generations who would do that.
15-20 years ago, I had a number of e-mail acquaintances who I'd send long e-mail to every few months, and they'd send another long e-mail in return. This went on for years, but with the increase in popularity of social media, these exchanges dwindled into nothingness.
Likewise, I remember when almost everyone I knew was on AIM. But that became old fashioned, for some reason. Not for any particular reason; people still can and do communicate with text messages, and it was no extra effort to keep an AIM client running in the background. But when something new comes along, there's usually an exodus from the old.
Up until recently it seemed that Facebook was the platform to communicate, and it had a very specific, shallow form of communication sent to everyone. Though now even that seems to be dying down.
Mst people are driven by social trends at large. If you sent a handwritten letter to an acquaintance at one point in time, you'd get one in return. Likewise with a friendly e-mail talking about your life. Nothing we have now is really a replacement for e-mail, but it's more trendy, so the old form of communication gets completely neglected.
Are you saying even e-mail completely died down in your life? I still get a lot of value from e-mail exchanges with old friends -- I agree it's not super common though.
Long form casual social e-mail have just about disappeared for me. The kind where someone writes you several paragraphs about their life or their thoughts for no particular purpose than to chat with you. I used to have a lot of people I kept up correspondence with for several years, but when social media became popular, those mostly stopped. Which is a shame, because social media is much worse for forming actual relationships, in my experience.
I don't know what it is in me or how it got there, but I seem to be thoroughly convinced that I'll only be bothering people. When I rationally think about it, even emotionally, I disagree, yet I cannot shake the instinctual feeling.
Not sure about the studies that are listed below. Honestly I just kind of try to understand the patterns / feelings and try to see whether its really intrinsic or something else.
But here is a good tip, people who want to stay in touch, will be in touch.
People who want to stay in touch and are busy will respond, are happy that you reached out and will suggest a catch-up
Rest is well, not worth your effort.
You can easily feel the vibe and if you would be a person I knew or met at some point I would be: "Wow so great to hear from you!"
I had this case last year when I reached out to an acquaintance, whom I helped back in the days and suggested a "catch-up over a zoom". To which he said he can't allocate time right now as he is busy. Had the same happened on Twitter. It felt a bit painful at first but then people are just living a busy life these days. Its a weird world that nobody experienced before...
So don't worry about these feelings, just do it anyways and worst case scenario you have a great catch-up and happy memories.
> But here is a good tip, people who want to stay in touch, will be in touch.
This flies in the face of the whole point of OP's post. It's hard to stay in touch. Even when you want to. I have at least 2-3 friends who were very good friends at one point and who I'd like to be good friends with again but we just don't keep in regular contact. When we do talk its great but for some reason or another we don't talk often.
One of the most powerful life hacks I've discovered is management of rejection sensitivity/expectation of rejection. CBT can help. Also, surprisingly, Tylenol...
I don't understand - have you never used Google scholar? Type in the relevant terms and there are a million relevant results. I just pasted the top one, which is all about how physical pain and mental pain is basically physiologically identical and specifically mentions Tylenol in relation tto its effect on social pain. Full text shod be on sci-hub.
You understand Google Scholar returns unrelated studies, right? You have to actually read them. "results by searching terms in google scholar" is not a metric of truth.
Did you actually read your posted source? It does not mention Tylenol, nor is it on Sci Hub. I can tell you what is in it, I can not read it for you however.
It is likely Google Scholar selected it because it cites another study which does discuss Tylenol, however that study does not support the claim being made and instead makes a different specific claim.
> all about how physical pain and mental pain is basically physiologically identical
That is not what your linked study says. I would encourage you to read it slowly. The study you linked is making a very specific, very narrow claim regarding the neural circuitry of social pain observed in some conditions.
Yes it does mention it - scholar gives you direct quotes in the subheading, which for this one is: "alter one type of pain (eg, Tylenol reduces
physical pain) can alter the other as well (eg, Tylenol reduces social pain)."
I did a paper on this subject some years ago, so I know the info is legit. I didn't expend a ton of effort because information on human beings in hacker news is almost always shockingly lacking and so if I bother to write a high quality post it almost always gets either ignored or downvoted - because the "experts" here don't have the knowledge base to recognize what is true.
And as for scholar, if you type in the right terms, 99% of the time it gives good results. So in this case obviously "tylenol" is not a good search term because that's a brand name. What you want is the active ingredient, which in this case is Acetaminophen. If you type "Acetaminophen rejection" into scholar what are the results?
I just did and there's a wealth of highly cited studies backing up OP's claim, including the very first result.
Sorry, I wasn't trying to be antagonistic. I can see how my comment could have come off that way though. I honestly didn't even read the linked study. I was just providing a possible reason for why a search for "NSAID" may not have yielded any results.
I'm sorry, but programming languages need to call that function either RND() or RANDOM(). Ever since I read The Wheel of Time in the nineties and early aughts, I can't associate that word with anything else.
I think both approaches work. Like, most people survive with a to-do loop just in their brains, stochastically prioritizing and picking tasks to do as circumstances change. The difficulty comes in when a person either doesn't have the capacity for multiple threads in their mind (ie mental disorder, creative loop dominance, overwhelm, unreliable memory, etc) or when a person wants to focus their mind completely on some personal endeavor.
It's likely that most traditionally successful people have some sort of task system in their life. Who's to say that the most socially "successful" people don't have similar systems as well? It reminds me of the show Veep, where the main character's entourage whispers in her ear the name and info about a person she's about to shake hands with. The whole persona of a politician is based on making and juggling and keeping connections open. Biden is still in regular contact with people from decades ago from the beginning of his career, for example.
I told a friend once that I was using the Habitica game to help me stay productive. He was incredulous, "You really need a piece of software to tell you what to do?!" He manages and co-owns several ice cream stores, so I know the stochastic method is feasible in more complex lifestyles. That's just not the case for my brain.
I admit that I am hesitant to build a social system because of the expectation of perception of cynicism or even sociopathy. I have my friend's birthdays on my calendar. Why shouldn't I also have a little blurb about what they like, what they're up to and a log of our contact? I think I would be floored and honored if I found out a friend lovingly kept little journal entries about me, I mean, after the intial weirded-outness I guess.
I actually kept a table with people to stay in touch with them every: - month - quarter - 6 months - a year (if its less then you remember anyways)
I quickly killed that approach, because people who genuinely understand overwhelm also are always happy to catch-up once in a while and we hold no hard feelings if we don't speak for another year.
Serendipity and randomness wins.