Creating Instant To-Do Lists and Reminders with I Want Sandy

Pity the “to do” list, we both love it, and hate it, and most of us write them up with the best intentions, then ignore them. If you’re looking for a better way to manage tasks, I Want Sandy is an awesome way to do it.

I Want Sandy (or just “Sandy” for short) is a really cool service. You just tell Sandy what you need to do, and when you need a reminder for it, and she’ll nag you via email and SMS to get it done. If you find you aren’t able to work on that big presentation at 3pm, and Sandy nags you at 3, you just reply with “snooze until x” (replacing “x” with a new time, or a set number of hours/minutes/days), and you’re all set. The really cool thing about Sandy is that if you’re a twitter junkie, you can direct message Sandy and she’ll set reminders that way.

Here’s a few examples of how I use it - oh, and I’m just using quotation marks to make this more readable, don’t actually put quotes in your messages to Sandy.

Ex. 1 - I need to be reminded that at 3pm, I have to return an email to Dave about ordering printer paper

I send an email to a custom address (when you sign up, you’ll get an address assigned) with the subject “Remind me at 3pm to email Dave about printer paper”. Nothing needs to be in the body. A few moments later, Sandy will reply letting me know she’s scheduled this.

Let’s say at 3pm, I get my reminder from Sandy, but I’m too busy to do anything. Then I just hit reply to her email, and type “Snooze until tomorrow”. That means tomorrow at 3pm, Sandy will remind me again. You can actually do just about any time combo for setting snooze you like - such as, “snooze for an hour”, “snooze until Monday at 2:15pm”, etc. If I don’t want to bother with this task at all (Because Dave’s a jerk), then I can reply with “forget” and it’s gone from my task list.

Ex. 2 - The twitter method

Once you’ve signed up with Sandy, you can twitter her much the same way you would send an email. This is handy, as you don’t have to remember the email address (so if you’re on someone else’s computer, you sign into twitter and go).  To set this up, remember to go to this page first for instructions.

Once it’s all set up, it’s really easy to send yourself reminders. Just log into twitter (as if you ever log out!) and start your message with “d s” (that’s a “d”, then a space, then an “s” - and don’t use quotation marks) and then the message. The “d” tells twitter it’s a direct message (not to show up to anyone else but Sandy) and the “s” is shorthand for “Sandy.”

Example message - “d s remind me at 3pm to fire Dave”

Hit send, and you’re done. If you go into your twitter Direct Messages menu, you should see a response from Sandy that says “I got….” where the “…” is your message text.  At 3pm, I’ll get an email and SMS from Sandy telling me that it’s time to fire Dave.

Example 3 - the SMS way

If you have twitter set up to receive messages via SMS, then here’s another great feature. Just send a text to 40404 (the SMS address for twitter) and again, do a “d s message” , replacing “message” with your reminder text. Hit send, and you’re all set.

Sandy’s a great way to rip through you inbox, quickly assigning tasks and times for them to get done as you read a message. I tend to keep a tab open with a pre-addressed email to Sandy while in another tab, I’m reading my inbox. As I see something that needs to be sent to my task list, I pop over to the Sandy message, set up the message and send it. Then I can archive the original message for reference when I get my Sandy reminder. Keeps the inbox nice and clean, and forces me to think about what really needs to get done.

What else can Sandy do ?

I Want Sandy is really handy for more than just reminders…

Use her to remember contact info -

“r Frank Fitzwilliam frank@example.com, 123 Couch Street, Portland, OR 97212″

Or she can create a to do list (kept at the site) by doing something like this -

” remember groceries @weekly

* eggs

* milk

* bread”

There’s a whole lot more info in the full Sandy Guide.

I for one, hope Sandy stays around for a long time, I’d even pay a few dollars a month to keep it around (currently, it’s a free service), as I’ve found the service is perfect for me.