Help! How do YOU Manage Your “Go-To Guy” List
People have unique skills and talents, and over the course of your days, you meet new people and connect to begin new relationships all the time. This means you also expand the very nature of your pool of people to consider asking for help from should a problem arise.
For instance, I met some new friends who have a great piece of software, but no marketing or sales experience. I immediately sifted through recent contacts and found a few people (both people I met at Lifehack.org) to ask whether their expertise matched these people’s needs.
In essence, I reached out to my small network of “go to guys” for help.
But as the list of contacts I make is growing, I find myself wanting to keep a simple, flexible database. Something that captures the contact information, maybe tags their skills, and keeps the communications log I mentioned yesterday.
How are YOU managing your list? How do you keep it clear in your head who might be helpful to different problems and opportunities that arise?
Share your personal methods with the other Lifehack.org readers.
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Comments
The OC Alchemist says on June 8th, 2006 at 5:56 pm
While there obviously are so many techno-gadgets out there for this(and I am guilty of owning too many), I personally find the classic Rolodex with vinyl pockets for business cards the most efficient, especially for the collection of less than 300 contacts. I throw all the business cards that I actively do not communicate with or haven’t recently realized the value of - in a shoebox.
WTL says on June 9th, 2006 at 9:06 am
I just use OS X’s Address Book - in the Notes area, I type in some detail about the person - for example:
John Doe
123 Street
Ottawa, Ontario
Notes:
Source for Ram, HDs, and FW enclosures.
Then in the search box, I just type in FW, and his entry will appear. Nice, easy and doesn’t require anything I am not already using.
Lizzy says on June 9th, 2006 at 12:27 pm
All though I don’t use it for this exactly, I know its quite simmilar. I use MS Outlook to organize my contacts (which I can sync with my palm)and use categories. I also believe that input keywords and search by those key words. Like my major categories are Family, Business etc, but in my nowtes section I can input more personal info like French, Computer, Pet.
I’m sure most other address books have simmilar capacities. Good, luck!
Kevin says on June 15th, 2006 at 4:00 pm
This software called illumio is for managing networks of topical experts. “Search your groups of friends and colleagues for information, people, and answers.”
http://www.illumio.com/web/home.jsp