Hey all,

I’ve partnered with Trello and made an official template for people to use to try and figure out how to not be alone based on the NY Times article.

You’ll be able to clone the template and keep track of your own dating chaos, hopefully one day climbing out of your loveless misery.

Deets below. 

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About this template

Adapted from the: NYTimes Modern Love column.

Why This Exists

In 2014 I found myself sitting at a restaurant with a man who clearly used someone else’s photos as his own. Perhaps his son’s.

2 weeks later, I was in a bar with a guy who thought it was weird that I was Jewish while blonde.

“It’s the only reason my family made it through the Holocaust. The only reason I’m still here”. I joked and waited for laughter.

It never came.

Both dates, collisions of misaligned values and nuanced dialogue unnoticed. Things I wanted to avoid.

And so I built a Trello board to keep track of it all. To learn and understand. Come up with a method to the madness of modern love.

How It’s Designed

The Trello board isn’t perfect, but it helps. At least it’s helped me.

The board is built around optimization with the goal of acting as a handy tool to save you time on your journey into the sea of left swipes and unforeseen ghosts. In sum, it’ll help you:

• Keep track of your values

• Save time avoiding those who aren’t a match

• Spend more time with those that are

• Avoid getting discouraged

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Using It

Moving from left to right, you’ll start with a Template Card. First, you’ll change the Labels on the card to match the mediums that you think you’ll be using to yield dates. (BarNextToMyHouse, Tinder, The Town Yenta).

Next change the checklist on the Template card to match the traits you’re vetting for. There should be traits you screen for Before the First Date, and traits you screen for Afterwards. I recommend no more than 10. Feel free to start small (maybe 5 total) and increase as you get to know what you’re looking for. Failed relationships and divorced parents are the easiest ways to figure these out. Try your best to go deep and find meaningful character traits (avoid being the shallow person that you are ♥️).

As you learn more about someone, you’ll check off the Before the First Date options. Once you feel comfortable knowing they won’t kill you, or at least not without consent, move their card to Scheduling. Once that’s done, move them to Scheduled etc.

As you get sick of someone or get dumped (most likely!) feel free to move their card to No. This is empowering. You should keep a bunch of cards here to remind yourself of your progress. If it gets too emotionally painful to look at their name on the card, feel free to Archive the card, or find a therapist at Betterhelp.com and use the promo code ALEX4 to save -- KIDDING. I kid, I kid.

When in Like

Once you're in like or love, feel free to just...not open the board. But dare I say, don’t delete it.

You never know when you might need it again.

Good luck out there.

Here is the link to the template

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My next piece will be about doing Ayahuasca.

It sucked.

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