Days since you last called: a keep-in-touch counter
Set up a days-since counter for the people you mean to call more often, pick a tolerance per person, and decide what actually counts as a reset.
There is a particular kind of guilt that arrives at about 11pm on a Sunday, when you realise you have not spoken to your father in a while and cannot work out whether “a while” means three weeks or three months. The honest answer is usually worse than the guess. A days-since counter fixes the guessing part, but only if you set it up with more thought than picking a few names and hoping the number shames you into action.
TL;DR
Pick a small number of people, give each one a tolerance in days, decide in advance what counts as a reset, and run them as count-ups rather than repeating reminders. The counter exists to answer one question quickly: who has drifted furthest without either of us noticing.
Why a repeating reminder is the wrong shape for this
The obvious approach is a calendar entry: “Call Mum” every second Sunday. Most people try it, and most people stop within about a month.
The problem is that a reminder makes a demand at a moment it chose, not one you chose. It fires while you are on a train, you swipe it away, and now you have added a small failure to a relationship that did not previously contain one. Do that four times and the reminder is the thing you feel guilty about, which is a strange outcome for a tool meant to help you talk to your sister.
A count-up asks for nothing. It sits there showing 23, then 24, then 25. You glance at it when you happen to have twenty free minutes, which is the only moment a phone call was ever going to happen anyway. Nothing has failed at day 25. The number is information, not an instruction, and we went into that difference in calendars versus counters.
Day Counter does have reminders, and they earn their place on countdowns where a date matters. For staying in touch, leave them off. The widget is the whole mechanism here.
Step 1: choose a short list, not everyone
The instinct is to add thirty people and build a full contact system. That version collapses in a fortnight, because thirty counters is thirty small obligations and none of them stands out.
There is research behind keeping it short. Robin Dunbar describes friendship as nested layers, roughly five, fifteen, fifty and a hundred and fifty people, each outer ring maintained with far less contact than the one inside it. Analysis of mobile phone records in Calling Dunbar’s numbers found the same layered pattern in who people actually call and how often. The innermost handful need something close to weekly contact to stay inner. The outer layers survive on a call or two a year.
So build the list from the inside out. Start with the five or so people whose absence you would notice within a week, then add the ten or fifteen you would be sad to lose touch with. Stop there. Day Counter has no limit on events, so you can always add more later, but a first list longer than fifteen is usually one you are about to abandon.
One more finding worth knowing: family ties are more forgiving of silence than friendships are. Roberts and Dunbar’s longitudinal work on relationship decay found emotional closeness to friends fell off once regular contact stopped, while kin relationships held up on much less maintenance. Your friends need the counter more than your relatives do, even though your relatives are the ones you feel guiltier about.
Step 2: give each person a tolerance in days
This is the step that makes the whole thing work, and the one nearly everyone skips. A number means nothing until you know what number is too high for that particular person. Forty days without calling your closest friend is a problem. Forty days without calling your old university tutor is normal.
| Who they are | Tolerance | Past that number |
|---|---|---|
| The closest handful | 7 to 14 days | You are guessing at what is going on in their life |
| Siblings, close friends | 21 to 30 days | You are catching up rather than keeping up |
| The wider circle | 60 to 90 days | The friendship is running on history |
| Old friends, mentors, ex-colleagues | 180 to 365 days | Someone has to make the first move or it quietly ends |
These are starting points, not prescriptions. Some friendships pick up perfectly after a year apart and some need a fortnightly check-in. The point is to decide once, while you are calm, rather than at 11pm on a Sunday while feeling guilty.
Then put the tolerance into the event name: “Dad (14)”, “Priya (30)”, “Uncle Tom (180)”. Now a glance at the widget is a comparison rather than a raw figure.
Step 3: decide what actually counts as a reset
A counter you reset inconsistently is worse than no counter, because it produces numbers you no longer trust. The rule that works best: reset on a real conversation, not on contact. A voice call, a video call, or a long back-and-forth counts. A birthday message does not. A like on a photo definitely does not.
This sounds pedantic until you notice what happens without it. Reacting to someone’s story feels like contact, so the guilt goes away, so the call never happens. If a thumbs-up resets the counter, you are measuring app usage rather than a relationship.
Two edge cases. If they called you, it still counts, because this tracks time since you last spoke and not time since you last made an effort. And seeing someone in person counts for more than a call does.
To reset, open the event and edit the start date to today.
Step 4: set it up
- Open Day Counter and tap the +.
- Choose count up from a date.
- Enter the date you last had a real conversation with them. If you have no idea, scroll your call log or message thread and use the last timestamp you can find. An approximate date is fine, since you can edit it later.
- Name it with the person and their tolerance: “Mum (14)”.
- Add a photo of them or an emoji so the list is scannable rather than a wall of text.
- Repeat for the rest of your short list.
- Put a widget on your home screen. The single-event widget is free and works if there is one relationship you specifically want to protect. Seeing five or six people at once needs the multi-event widget, which is a paid feature, and this is one of the few use cases where several numbers side by side is the entire value.
If you switch phones often, turn on optional iCloud or Drive sync so the dates travel with you.
When a counter is the wrong tool
A few situations where this setup does more harm than good.
As a scoreboard. The counter measures elapsed time and nothing else. It knows nothing about your friend’s newborn or your brother’s night shifts. A high number is a prompt to call, not evidence of neglect on their part, and if you catch yourself thinking “it has been 60 days and they have not called me either”, it has turned into a small resentment machine. Showing someone their own number is not the warm gesture it sounds like in your head either.
Estranged or difficult relationships. A number climbing on your home screen does not help you decide whether to reach out to someone you have complicated history with. That decision is not about elapsed time.
Grief. Do not run this on someone who has died. If you want a counter for a person you have lost, it belongs in its own event, named for what it is, with no tolerance attached.
When the guilt is the problem. If the widget mostly produces a low hum of failure rather than the occasional useful nudge, take it off the home screen and glance at the events once a month instead. A tool that makes you feel worse about your friendships is not doing its job, however accurate its arithmetic is.
Related
- Tracking long-distance relationships if the person you are calling is in another time zone
- Days since we met for the count-up that runs in the opposite direction
- 5 best uses for the home screen widget for other things worth glancing at
FAQ
How many people should I track? Five to fifteen. Fewer than five and you would have remembered anyway. More than fifteen and the list becomes a chore you stop opening.
Does a text message reset the counter? That is your call, but the rule most people settle on is that only a real conversation resets it. Quick messages keep a relationship warm without keeping it current.
What if I do not remember when we last spoke? Check your call log, message thread, or photos and use the most recent timestamp you find. If the trail has gone cold, put in a rough date and edit it after the next call.