Strengthening Connections: The Benefits of Creating a Personal Life CRM

As I’ve gotten older and naturally drifted from my friends with my own family growing and the nature of moving cities, maintaining meaningful relationships with friends and family has become more challenging than ever. For me, my nephews and nieces continue to get older, with their own lives, their own story arcs, and honestly, I worry that I’ll become that distant relative at times, the one on the other side of the country that you only see once in a while.

Same with my friends. I’m not the type to reach out consistently, not because I don’t care, but more so because I don’t personally feel like my feelings and fondness towards them changes. My friends will always hold a special part of my heart and head cause they represent a time and place in my life that I hold dear.

Over the last couple of months though, I’ve been trying to implement a Personal Life CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) to keep track of my personal relationships - a catch-all for my interactions with friends and family to keep important information documented and accessible.

Now, I’m not going to explain my personal system. I honestly don’t even know if mine is that good but I love the concept and intention as a means of productive relationships with people.

1. Enhanced Relationship Management:

One of the primary benefits of having a Personal Life CRM is the ability to manage your relationships more effectively. Like businesses use CRM systems to keep track of customer interactions, you can use a Personal Life CRM to record your interactions with friends and family. By doing so, you ensure that you don't forget important dates, like birthdays and anniversaries, and that you follow up on their life events and interests. This proactive approach helps to nurture your relationships, making your loved ones feel valued and cherished. For me, it means having a place to reference and document important and valued moments, events, activities, and interests. It means a place to identify good gifts, inside jokes and references, and intelligent or touching moments you shared.

If they aren’t aware that you have a CRM system, you look like the best friend because you remember all the nuanced, vulnerable, meaningful little details that they’ve shared with you.

If they are aware that you have a CRM system, it demonstrates your commitment to being a friend and the proactive way that you do it.

2. Improved Networking:

A Personal Life CRM allows you to organize and categorize your contacts. Ever wish you could easily blend friend groups or introduce friends to each other? Well, By tracking interests and hobbies or location, it can make it a lot easier to recognize who would be cool to introduce to who. Whether that’s meshing work friends with non-work friends, high school friends with university friends or even people who just have a similar vibe.

Now, you might think it sounds insane to keep it organized to this degree, but honestly, I think this level of organization lets you reflect on the types of people you attract, who challenges you, whose a good role model, whose a negative impact on your life and all the other nuances.

3. Stay on Top of Important Dates:

We've all experienced the moment of panic when we realize we've forgotten a friend's birthday or an anniversary. With a Personal Life CRM, you can set reminders for important dates and receive notifications in advance. This helps you avoid those awkward situations and ensures you can plan ahead to make your loved ones feel special on their special days. Whether that’s a birthday, anniversary, special event date like a graduation, celebrating a work success event, or anything else, you can create reminders so you never forget.

4. Deepening Personal Connections via Time Blocking:

A benefit to a CRM system is the time blocking reminder aspect. By setting aside an hour a week, you can have ensure deliberate time for reaching out to friends and family. By tracking when you last spoke or interacting with someone, you can determine the frequency with which you connect with them. This means you can maintain connections and be reminded of when a defined timeframe has elapsed. If I want to connect with a close friend, Tom, at least once every 3 months, I can now get a reminder of when 3 months is coming up, and reach out to him during my weekly carved out hour of time.

Extend this process out to all my closest friends and family, and I can have a system in which I feel connected to all my friends and family.

5. Efficient Time Management and Introspection:

Having a Personal Life CRM can also help you manage your time more efficiently. By prioritizing your relationships and setting goals for your interactions, you'll find it easier to allocate your time and energy to what truly matters. By forcing you to reflect on and keep track of your friendships, it can help you design a balance for yourself between your friends, social life and personal growth.

If you go through the motions and realize that you spend the most amount of time with friends that you actually only see as ‘close acquaintances’, it can help empower you to decline events and activities with this group of friends and schedule time for the more important people in your life.

Now, I’m not saying be super flakey and ditch people, but be intentional with who you surround yourself with and prioritize in your life. Not cause your an unsocial prick, but because you want to be intentional about designing and building your close social circle.

6. Reconnecting with Old Friends:

A Personal Life CRM isn't just about maintaining existing relationships; it can also help you reconnect with old friends and acquaintances. Over time, people often drift apart due to the busyness of life. Your CRM can help you identify individuals you'd like to reconnect with, making it easier to rekindle old friendships. Furthermore, the structure a CRM might help jog your memory on previous events, important moments, and talking points to rekindle that relationship.

For me personally, it also seemed to alleviate a sense of distress that I had with my relationships. I’d say over the years I’ve become more and more introverted and I don’t think it’s a bad thing but I think it can sometimes feel at odds with socializing and reaching out. I’m not the type of person to out of the blue reach out to someone and express to them how much they mean to me. I have found that in my own way, keeping this CRM has empowered me to know that I am taking active steps to keeping these friendships even if I’m not ready to or not wanting to reach out.

Imagine a life where you can recall every interaction, every small detail that a person has shared with you, a list of amazing gift ideas for them, and a way to track the important landmarks in your relationship over time. A Personal Life CRM can serve as a valuable tool for nurturing and maintaining meaningful relationships with friends and family. It allows you to stay organized, prioritize your interactions, and make your loved ones feel valued. Just as a personal budget keeps you accountable to your financial goals, a Personal Life CRM keeps you accountable to your relational goals, helping you become a better friend, partner, and family member. Furthermore, it lets you prioritize what you want to invest your time in. It lets you keep track of the bigger picture, the long-term aspirations you have with these people, and system flexible enough to change as your relationships with people change.

I hope to continue to use this system and be more intentional with who I surround myself with. It also has surprisingly made me want to make new friends. I’d say, I already felt pretty tapped out or comfortable with my current social circle, but the idea of logging new people, learn about new and interesting characters and seeing their lives intertwine with mine sounds meaningful. I kinda thought as I grew older, I’d become one of those hermits who stays with his family and has a few select humans that he loves and cherishes, but maybe there’s a larger network of people for me.

And that is an intrigue worth pursuing for me at this time.