from popofatticus

Every day this week, I’ll be posting based upon a random Flickr image that inspires me. Here’s one now.

Is that a cute pic, or what? It reminds me very much of my 2 year old granddaughter. She’s at that stage of blooming independence in which she wants to do things for herself without any help from us old fogies. If I attempt to help her put on her shoes, for example, she’ll say “I got dis”. Sometimes, she does “have it” under control, and other times she still needs my help. But her confidence in her growing abilities is fun to watch.

I, on the other hand, am regressing as I age. Rather than growing in independence, I’m becoming more dependent. I now have to depend upon reading glasses to read things. I now have to hold on to things (chair arms, tables, whatever) to go from a sitting to a standing position or vice-versa, more and more frequently. And the worst of it all is that I am losing my memory quite significantly. This is the ultimate in dependence. I can no longer depend upon my own mind to remember things the way I used to do. When it comes to memory, I can no longer confidently say, “I got dis”.

So, what’s an aging brain to do? Call in the backups, that’s what! I’ve recently been introduced to Sandy, and she is now my new assistant / brain / life-changing virtual assistant. Sandy is in fact, a virtual assistant service from iwantsandy.com. From now on, Sandy reassures me that she’s “got dis”, and she really does have my back when it comes to remembering what I simply cannot.

There are gazillions of to-do sites, calendaring sites, etc. out there, but Sandy works for me because she requires almost no exertion from me. I’m a busy gal, and the fact that I’m often multi-tasking is one of the reasons I can’t remember everything. The last thing I need is to take too much time or too much effort to add yet another thing to my to-do list, in the form of creating a to-do list! I’ve tried desktop calendars, online calendars, PIMs, all sorts of widgets and gadgets, but none have transformed my life’s memory problem like Sandy has.

Now if you haven’t heard of Sandy, don’t come to it filled with assumptions that it is another calendar/todo service. That was my assumption, so I didn’t truly investigate it right away. Once I did, I realized what a mistake I’d made in passing it by earlier.

Let me give you some examples of how Sandy helps me. Feel free to go get the official examples from Sandy’s site, but here’s my own personal take on it.

I always have email open and at the ready for my use. So, using email to control my virtual assistant would be a no-brainer for me. I wouldn’t have to open/use/connect with any additional application. I can tell Sandy to remind me of something just by sending her an email. And luckily for me, I don’t have to waste a lot of time or words to do so. Want an example? Ok, here’s one.

To: Sandy (your own private sandy email address)
Subject: Remind me to write post about Sandy next Tuesday at 7pm

That’s it.

Sandy will understand things like “next Tuesday”, “7pm”, “remind”, “remember”, “today”, “tomorrow”, “in 2 days”, “in a month”, “in 15 minutes”, “1-4pm”, and lots more. I can use the language I would normally use, just as though I were speaking to a real live human being, and virtual Sandy understands what I’m saying, stores the information, and then reminds me about it when I need to know.

Want another example? My email inbox has been killing me for years. No matter how well I try to organize it, I still end up with an ever-growing list of emails in my inbox. If I move them out of the inbox, then I tend to forget about them and never follow up. If I let them slide down too far at the bottom of the growing list of inbox items, again, I forget about them. No more. Now I just forward them on to Sandy, asking her to remind me of them near the time I actually have to deal with them. For instance, an affiliate program emails me and tells me I need to change all my affiliate links because they changed something on their end. That’s a pain in the rear for me to have to do, so it’s something I probably need to put off until I have the extra time to deal with it. But I do have to make sure it gets done by whatever date the affiliate network has specified, which is usually a week or two away. So I just forward it to Sandy, asking her to remind me a couple of days in advance of the due date, and I can safely move that email out of my inbox, without fear of forgetting about it. My inbox is now clean and pristine!

There are a million other reasons I love Sandy, such as the fact that she can remind me via email, Twitter, SMS on my phone, integrate with existing calendars, etc. You should definitely go read up on everything she can do, because there’s just not enough time in my day to tell you everything. But I do suggest you at least give Sandy a real look if you need this kind of service, without making assumptions based upon past calendaring tools you may have tried. Sandy really is different and she just might take away some of stress and productivity problems.

She may or may not be right for you, but for me, I can almost hear her say “Don’t worry about remembering that Donna. I got dis“.

(from Smash Mouth. "AllStar" Astro Lounge. Interscope Records, 1999.)

Posted on February 27th, 2008 by DazzlinDonna
Filed under: Tools of the Trade