There are levels of closeness that we feel with others, often built over time and through shared experiences. Though we might drift away from them, there are still memories that anchor us to these people, bringing us back to times when we were closer.
It used to be that we would store these memories in photo albums and scrapbooks, saving contact information on index cards or in rolodexes. But now, it’s all digital, and there’s no reason to ever let someone fade from your life again.
You can store hundreds of phone numbers on a cell phone. You can have thousands of “friends” on any social network. Your email address book could be stuffed to the brim with personal, business and random acquaintances. You can contact anyone at any time for any reason.
But what’s the point?
One of the few things that I agree with the minimalists on is that there are some parts of everyone’s lives that could use de-cluttering. I don’t really need the number of a fellow DJ who I played with at a club in New York about three years ago and haven’t talked to since. There’s no need to keep the email of a friend who has long since stopped responding to my “how are you doing” messages – for all I know, she has a new address for those. I don’t need to be Internet friends with a girl I went on one date with back in high school, when the extent of our communication is me wishing her a happy birthday every year.
Technology has made friend collectors of us all. We don’t need to search out people from our past, because there’s a very good chance that we can just find them on one site. It’s easy enough to revel in it, to enjoy it, and to live blissfully unaware of these habits. But breaking the strings is easier than one might think, and it can lead to improved relationships, renewed social confidence, and a better understanding of your own personality.
I call it the Three Rings system. It’s something you’re already familiar with, and really doesn’t require that much work. You might know it better by the method people use when sorting clothes (Keep, Donate, Trash) or by the frequency strategy (always, sometimes, never).
The three rings are three layers of social communication, kind of like a misshapen onion. The outer layer (ring 1) is the thickest, and contains the largest number of social contacts. The middle layer (ring 2) is reserved for people you at least consider friends, or with whom you interact frequently. And the innermost layer (ring 3) is your inner circle and core social group. It looks kind of like this:
Thanks to that handy-dandy visual reference there (which you can click to embiggen), you should have a good idea of what we’re talking about. And you should also be able to see which people in your life fit into which rings. Sure, there might be some people who started at ring 1 and are now at ring 3, and there might be some who were once at ring 3 and have now moved to ring 1. But hold on to your hats, kids, because it’s about to get REAL.
Each of the rings can correlate to a different form of communication. On the outside with ring 1, where we have the most people, we need the simplest way to reach the widest audience, which works well for services like Facebook and Twitter. For ring 2, we move on to things that might be a bit more personal or professional, to the point where we need at least occasional contact. Instant messengers and email clients are good for this. And for the innermost ring, the secret sanctum, that’s where we keep our strongest connections, and that’s where we should use our strongest communication devices. Like our phones.
So, in short:
- Ring 1: Anyone you know – Facebook
- Ring 2: Friends and good acquaintances – Email
- Ring 3: Close personal contacts – Phone
But Andy, that seems silly. You think. My smartphone can cover all of those services, so what’s the point? I can get to everyone on one device anyway. But that’s not the point. It’s not just about how you get to the data you use to contact them, it’s about frequency of use, and how you contact others. If you’re not getting any utility out of keeping someone’s email address, and haven’t for a long time, the only thing it’s doing for you is cluttering up your address book.
But think about your phone: how many people’s names do you struggle to remember when you go through the list of stored numbers? How many extra people do you scroll through to get to the ones you actually want to call? And do you accidentally call some of those extra people, then dread the thought of them calling you back?
It’s a simple fix, despite the seemingly complex social rules of communication. It’s just 3 steps, broken down by rings:
Step 1: Leave your social networks alone. Personally, I try to avoid adding people who I’ve never met or heard of to my account, but with this one, casting a wide social net for ease of communication with others is fine. The only real reason to remove someone you know on this level is if you absolutely can’t stand someone’s tweets or statuses and they are also not a resident of rings 2 or 3 (or subsequently fail those levels as well).
Step 2: If you haven’t emailed or chatted with someone in at least the past 6 months, delete them! Even if it’s an old work contact who you think might be useful to you for a reference one day, or if it’s someone you used to chat with a lot, you’re not getting anything from keeping a collection of useless contact info that grows within your address book or buddy list like a fungus. Besides, if you do need to get in touch with them, you’ve still got their info thanks to the first ring.
Step 3: Delete anyone from your phone where you need more than 5 seconds of looking at their name to remember who they are. And if you do know who they are, but haven’t used the phone number in question to call and chat or text with them in the past six months, remove them. Also remove them if they fail the following test:
Over the course of a week, use that person’s phone number to contact them at socially acceptable times. Calls are worth 10 points, texts are worth 6 points. If they haven’t gotten back in touch with you by the time they’ve “reached” 30 points, delete them. But don’t feel bad about this; they’re still on rings 1 and 2.
By paring down your social contact lists, you will not only have faster access to the people you care about and want to communicate with, but you will be able to see your social circle in a more cohesive way. Access to those who are important to you will become easier, and you can work on enriching those relationships, or even on improving them with people who seem to have drifted away.
When people talk about clutter, they’re usually referring to things that take up physical space. But clutter can just as easily take up space in your mind, on a hard drive, or in a memory card. And really, there’s no more reason to leave it there than there is to hoard anything else. Just start with the first ring and work your way in. You might be surprised about what your social life looks like once you’ve cleaned it up.
