Contacts and Relationships

ADHD doesn't damage a person's capacity to care about people. It damages the execution layer that translates caring into action. The relationship system in ATEND exists to compensate for exactly that gap — providing external memory and gentle prompts for the connections that matter most, so that relationships don't quietly erode from inattention rather than indifference.

The social cost of ADHD

The social consequences of ADHD are among the least discussed and most significant. Without the executive machinery to remember to reach out, to recall what was happening in someone's life the last time you talked, to notice that a birthday is approaching — relationships drift. Not from not caring. From the working memory failure that affects everything else.

The specific patterns this creates: friendships with no transactional content — no tasks, no meetings, no shared obligations — go invisible to any task management system. "Call Mom" has no deadline and no external consequence if it slips, so it slips. Social guilt accumulates. The guilt produces avoidance. The avoidance makes the next reach-out harder. The relationship erodes.

Contact types

Every contact in ATEND has a relationship type. The type determines what system features are available for that person — not as a judgment about the relationship's importance, but as a way of matching the right tools to the right kind of connection.

The cadence system

For family and close friends, you can set a connection cadence — a rhythm for how often you want to be in touch. Weekly, monthly, or quarterly. When the interval approaches without a logged connection, ATEND surfaces a gentle prompt:

The three responses:

Reach out now creates a task — "Call or text Dave Chen" — pre-tagged with the contact and added to your inbox. It goes through normal processing and ends up in your active pool.

Remind me in 2 weeks snoozes the prompt. The cadence clock continues from the original last-contact date, not from today. Use this when you're aware of the situation but the timing isn't right.

We connected recently updates the last contact date to today and resets the cadence clock. Use this when you've been in touch but didn't log it — a text exchange, a chance meeting, a family dinner.

What counts as a connection

The last contact date updates automatically when a task tagged with that contact is marked complete. If you create a task "Call Dave to check in" and complete it, Dave's last contact date updates without you needing to do anything. You can also update it manually from the contact's detail page, or by tapping "We connected recently" on a prompt.

The system doesn't try to detect connections automatically from your phone or messaging apps — it relies on your explicit signals. This is intentional: the act of logging a connection is itself a small moment of intentionality about the relationship.

Context notes

Every contact has a context notes field — a few lines of living context that you want to remember about this person. It's not a biography. It's the stuff that matters right now: what they're going through, how they prefer to be contacted, the thing you forgot to mention last time, the project they're working on.

Context notes appear automatically wherever a contact surfaces in the app — in the task detail view when they're tagged on a task, in the project detail view when they're listed as a collaborator, in appointment details when they're a participant. You don't need to navigate to their contact page to see the context. It comes to you.

After you complete a task involving a contact, the system quietly asks: "Anything worth remembering from that?" One line, skippable. If you type something, it's appended to their context notes. This is how the notes stay current without requiring dedicated maintenance — each completed interaction is an opportunity to capture what matters.

Significant dates

Birthdays, anniversaries, and other significant dates live on the contact record and automatically generate annual reminders. When you add a significant date, a recurring ClearEvent is created that fires a notification seven days before the date (adjustable) with an action prompt: "Sarah's birthday is in 7 days. Want to add anything for it?"

Three responses: add a task (goes to inbox), just remind me on the day, or nothing needed. The prompt doesn't assume you need to do anything — it just makes sure the date doesn't pass unnoticed.

When you import contacts from your device, ATEND scans for birthday data and offers to create contact date entries automatically: "Sarah's birthday appears to be May 12 — want to add it?" One tap per suggestion. You can also add significant dates manually from any contact's detail page — not just birthdays, but anniversaries, work anniversaries, or whatever dates matter in that relationship.

Relationship health in the dashboard

The progress dashboard includes a relationship health section for contacts with active cadences. It shows each contact, when you last connected, the cadence target, and a plain-language status. The language is warm rather than clinical:

The relationship health section is hidden if no contacts have active cadences. It only shows family and close friend contacts — not vendors or professionals. Tapping any row opens the contact's detail page directly.

Adding and managing contacts

Contacts are added in several ways. During project setup (Step 8 — People involved), you can add collaborators by name and they become contacts. From any task detail view, you can tag a contact or create one inline — name is the only required field at that point. From the People tab, tap the + button to add a contact directly. And from Settings → Import, you can selectively import contacts from your device.

The import is always selective, never a bulk dump. You search by name and choose who to bring in. For each imported contact you assign a relationship type and optionally a hat and role. The system scans for birthday data and existing references in your projects and offers to connect them.