Contacts lists

Estimated reading time at 200 wpm: 4 minutes

A conversation yesterday 26th June 2021, got me thinking about this. By coincidence, I was in the process of weeding out junk-contacts from my contacts list.

Someone – Person X –  asked me for contact details for an accountant which I had passed to them a few months ago. Why? Because a) they can’t find the details and b) too lazy to go searching their emails or c) they know that they stupidly deleted relevant emails.

So the conversation went something like (meaning not exactly like) this:

CW: You had a phone conversation with Mr B, and now you don’t have his number?

X: Yes – I didn’t keep it?

CW: Why?

X: I don’t save numbers on my phone. I have too many people who give me their numbers.

CW: Yes I get that most people are not important. But surely the accountant was more important than that lot?

X: True.

CW: You know there is Google contacts list that doesn’t store contacts ‘on your phone’.

X: Yes .. but..

CW: Tough – I’m not giving it to you again. Go find it on the net. Take a flying leap. Bullshit returned to source.

I so know that ‘everyone’  has branded me as unhelpful. Do I give a flying banana? I do not! I think I was very helpful, actually. Some people need a right helpful kick to get their act together. Each person is responsible for storing their own contacts information. I’m not paid as a directory service! Had I said, “I can give you the details again but it’ll cost you a fiver.” – wooooo.. woooo.. ‘everyone’ would have called me a set of names related to money hungry bastard etc. Of course, Person X would not have paid. So my time means nothing – is that right? I’ll help so-called ‘friends’ for free but don’t expect me to do it forever, and especially when these sort of folk demonstrate (on occasions) poor personal responsibility for their own affairs.

Now contrast that with me, who was in the process – when the above happened – of weeding out junk-contacts. By this morning I removed some 200 or so. Those are people who I kept their email, work addresses or wha’ever phone number they supplied at the time, but who I had no need to contact for >2 years. Look it only takes about 10 seconds – if that much – to save a number to a Google contacts list from a phone. That’s then synchronised to the cloud automatically. It remains there until weeded out. For me that 10 seconds saves probably 3 minutes each of what other people would do – which is to search inboxes or the ‘recent calls’ section of their phones. It is not just about time – it is about effort. Call me lazy – what do I care! Well the first round of my weed-out didn’t take more than a few minutes, because with the right keyboard and mouse shortcuts I could quickly select loads of people I surely couldn’t remember at all. Anybody I had a doubt about was left on my list.

So this reminds me of the big clear out I did last year. BTW after deleting 57,000 junk emails, I was still left with about 5000! Ah…so now that’s down to about 1,700. But in that clear out I was careful to unsubscribe from loads of things I no longer had an interest in.

I won’t go into the bunch of morons who go, “OMG – I lost my phone (or my phone broke), so all my contacts are lost.” I’ll just end abruptly right here.

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