Purging your Address Book

July 17, 2009

I just (finally) upgraded to an iPhone.  I am really enjoying it and starting to use the computer less and the phone more.

One thing I realized after migrating is how messy my address book is.  Thousands of contacts, many of which I have never met, but I have connected to from Plaxo, LinkedIn and other sources and they have ended up automatically getting added to my contacts.

In the past, I liked this kind of automation and group growth.  But eventually you pass a tipping point and your address book becomes worthless.

So now I am purging my address book.

I have created categories like 10 and 50.  The ten best people to help me accomplish my goals, the 50 most interesting business people I know well, and so on and so forth.

It is going to take time.  But I am looking forward to getting back to relationships being in one place and lists being in another place (Like facebook and twitter)

What do you think?  Do you keep a small, active list or do you add lots of people?  Comment below.

- Thank You!

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Blog 

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Comments

3 Responses to “Purging your Address Book”

  1. Göran Askeljung on July 21st, 2009 2:57 pm

    Hi Ron,
    I just have 3 Categories; CANs, FANs and PANs.

    - CANs are Current “Active” Contacts, people I work with, partners, my friends and family and a few more.

    - PANs are “Past” Contacts, people I did work with ages ago, past partners, schoolmates and friends who at some point earlier where CANs.

    - FANs are people I consider “Future” Contacts, interesting people from my DataBase of various Social Network Contacts I mostly never met (yet) and others I consider might be interesting for me in the future, given their wealth of experience, work or what not.

    The concept was established by Christian Mayaud, one of my FANs and LinkedIn Contacts and is described in detail here: http://www.sacredcowdung.com/archives/2005/03/right_sizing_yo.html

  2. Ron McDaniel on July 23rd, 2009 7:22 am

    That is interesting. It is easy to remember.

    Thanks

  3. SKI on July 25th, 2009 9:05 am

    Hey Ron

    Hope you got the 3GS (with video).

    Being “a Mac” I love that my iPod touch syncs with my address book on the Mac. Hard to believe you cannot search the address book on iPhone, but they keep improving with each release.

    Sticking with my iPod and old phone until iPhones can use more affordable cell providers. That is when the iPhone will all but eliminate the Crackberry.

    Do checkout the urbanspoon app!

    -ski

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