Write Down Your Social Life

Reading The Organized Mind by Daniel Levitin made me realize that I could, and perhaps should, create a second brain for my social life. Initially, I resisted the idea of jotting down information about my friends and family in an external database. I felt guilty because, "If I were a good friend, shouldn't I be able to remember that they got engaged to Michael... or was it Kevin?"

Societal norms and my own personal beliefs about what makes a good friend were holding me back from actually remembering birthdays and celebrating important milestones.

I was able to overcome the emotional resistance when I realized that we already maintain a social database by saving phone numbers. Storing phone numbers is already the norm.

Logistically, the complexity and diversity of modern social relationships make it impossible to store all social information in your head. The author demonstrates that modern city dwellers are exposed to more people in one day than people in the 1800s met in their entire lifetimes. Memorizing your social database was easy back then because your social network was limited to the same 100 people in your village.

Plus, wouldn't you be a better friend if you remembered to send them a birthday gift because you had saved the date in your calendar, as opposed to forgetting to because you didn't?

Letting go of the attachment to memorizing facts about people and friends and securely storing them in an external database is the smart move. Here's my Notion template so far: