Have you ever felt like you have way too many people to keep track of? Between our personal relationships, our work associates, our families, and all those friends we don’t want to lose connections with, there is far too much information to keep in our memories.
So what is a popular, memory-challenged person to do? Well, you could cut everyone else out of your life, but I have found that the best solution for me is to buy an address book. They aren’t expensive–unless you want them to be–and there are a lot of different options out there.
How do you know which one to buy? Start by asking these questions:
1. How many people do I need to keep in my contacts list?
The reason to ask this question is to get an idea for how big your address book should be. If you are talking about a dozen names, or even a couple hundred, a paper-based book should be more than enough to keep track of everyone.
If you are talking about thousands of people, that’s a lot of writing to do, and your address book will probably be too heavy too lug around. Which takes us to question two:
2. Should I use an online system?
One of the challenges with having a physical address book is that you can’t lose it or you’ve lost your information. There are online options such as Gmail or the social networks like Facebook that a lot of people are completely comfortable with as storage devices. The reason is simply that you dump your information on a server out there and as long as nobody misplaces that server, your information is pretty safe.
This does raise other questions about privacy, so be sure you know what information you are comfortable sharing online (and how it will be shared) before choosing this option. Make sure that you are comfortable with the strength of their security.
Other than those two questions, buying address books is really a simple question of cosmetics. Pick a style you like and you’ll have the peace of mind of knowing that you are not going to forget the relationships you have in your life.
