Keeping notes about people in the Notes app

The Notes app is where most people start, and for a handful of friends it works well. Here is a setup that holds up, and an honest look at where it gets hard.

A setup that works

1. Make a folder called People.
2. Create one note per person, with their name as the title. The title is what search finds first.
3. Put the newest line at the top, with a date: “Nov 3. Starting the new job on the 17th. Nervous about the commute.”
4. Pin the people you see most.
5. Lock a note if you would rather nobody reads it. Notes can put individual notes behind Face ID.

Then, when someone tells you about something coming up, add a reminder in the Reminders app for the day you want to ask about it.

That is the whole system. If you keep it up, you will remember more than almost anyone you know.

Where it starts to strain

Group moments. A dinner with Luke, Sam and Leo belongs to all three. In Notes you either copy the same lines into three notes or pick one and lose it for the other two.

The reminder lives somewhere else. The note says the interview is on Monday. The reminder to ask is in another app, and nothing connects them. When the reminder fires, you still have to find the note to see what he actually said.

Nothing brings the note to you. Before a dinner you have to remember that the notes exist, and open each one. On a busy day that step is the first to go.

Quick notes land in the wrong place. A fast line typed on the street tends to go into whichever note was open, or a new untitled one. A month later you know you wrote it down and can’t find where.

It doesn’t tell you who you haven’t talked to. A note can’t notice that five weeks have passed.

None of this matters much with five people. It starts to matter around fifteen or twenty.

What a page per person changes

Wajed is an iPhone journal that works the way the setup above does, with those gaps closed.

• Every person has a page. A memory about three people shows on all three pages, written once.
• A follow-up is part of the memory: the question to ask and the day to ask it. The notification on that day names the person and the question.
• Before you reach out, or before an event with people you know, Wajed shows what to bring up.
• You can set how often you would like to talk to someone, and Wajed tells you when it has been a while.
• Search finds a person or a memory by any word in it.

It is private in the same way Notes is. There is no account, the journal stays on your iPhone and backs up to your own iCloud, and you can lock the app with a PIN and Face ID.

Wajed is free for up to ten people, so you can try it with the friends you already keep notes on.

If you would rather start with the habit itself, read How to remember what your friends tell you.