Update: within weeks of blogging this, iwantsandy announced its closure, and it’ll be shut by mid-December 2008. Brilliant. Cough.

Recently, some of my contacts have been perplexed with my emails to them having a little extra instruction. “Sandy, remind me about this on Monday”, I frequently add to my emails.

“Gosh,” say some, “I didn’t know you had a PA. Oooh, how very management of you!” Well, actually, I do have a PA (for BBC work); her name’s Sarah and she’s very good and very efficient (oooh, how very management of me). But, I don’t have a PA for the work I do for Media UK. Or other stuff. Like emptying the bin at home.

I’m using a service which isn’t too new: iwantsandy.com actually went live many months ago. I signed up for it, then didn’t use it, because I didn’t really understand what it did. And now I do.

Reminding yourself of stuff is as simple as copying “Sandy” into your email replies to people. “Sandy, remind me about this” works just fine. “Sandy, forget about this” also works. And, whenever you want her to, Sandy sends you an email which tells you what you’ve got to do, or what you’ve asked her to remind you about. And, crucially, sends you the rest of the email, so you know what it is that you’ve just been reminded about. So you can delete that email from your email totally (aka inbox zero) and have a more restful, calmer experience.

I suspect I’m only scratching the surface with iwantsandy.com – Sandy would sort out my diary if I asked her to, send messages to other people reminding them of things, organise meetings with other people, or even keep my contact details. But just a simple cc to Sandy with “Remind me about this next Monday” works really well. Try it. You might want Sandy too.

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