Keeping Up With the Joneses...How to Keep Track of Your Contacts

Time management principles focus upon doing task, no matter how seemingly mundane, as simply and efficiently as possible. Being organized, you are eventually able to do something like keep track of your contacts in minutes, whereas before, it might have taken you half an hour, an hour, just to look up the information you needed, edit it, and, if necessary, pass on information to other people in your home or business.

You might not think it, but something as simple as keeping you address book contact information up to date can be challenging. Of course, when you read the title of this article, you were probably thinking, "oh, that's easy, I don't need to read about that!"

The reality is, keeping up with your contacts isn't as easy as it looks or sounds.

First of all, accept that there are a variety of things that go on in the lives, personal and professional, of the people you are in contact with. People get married, have children, move house, lose a parent, suffer an illness, receive a promotion, and or buy a new car. Multiply this whole range of possible events by your number of personal contacts - family, extended family, friends, and old acquaintances - and you have lot of stuff going on. Then, look at the people and companies you do business with. New staff are hired all the time, new deals go down, new products and services are offered, new interests are established. Companies are started and they are sold off. Again, this is a heck of a lot of stuff to keep up with. By this point, you're probably wondering why you would need to keep up with all of this stuff anyway. You're probably also noting that the title of this piece "Keeping up with the Joneses" essentially has no relevance to keeping your address book updated.

Wrong again. You need to implement a very straightforward method for updating your contacts. You also need to recognize that your contact list is an invaluable source for networking. It's not what you do, it's who you know. Don't underestimate that adage! You never know when you might need to find someone who's an expert bridge player or someone else who just had knee replacement surgery and can recommend a good physiotherapist for your grandmother.

Here is the most straightforward, time-efficient method for keeping up with your contacts:

1. Establish a generic contact update note that you can send out by e-mail or by mail to all the people whose email and mailing address you have on file.

2. At least once a year, send out your generic contact update note to everyone on your mailing list, whether you know them from work or from your personal life.

3. If you don't have someone's mailing address or e-mail address, call them up by phone at least once a year to ask them for an update of their contact information (for heaven's sake be polite and ask for an update about their life or business as well).

4. Set aside a day every year (perhaps even more frequently if you have a lot of contacts) to check through your contact list and update any changed information.

If this sounds an awful lot like work, realize that it's a really easy thing to do around New Year, when everyone is sending out cards and seasonal greetings anyway.