Nobody has ever accused me of being the most organized person. I don’t carry a PDA, a dayplanner, or even a notebook/moleskin. It’s pretty much just Outlook at work, and a lot of Post-Its at home. But recently I’ve discovered two applications that help me remember all the thoughts that flit in and out of my mind. This is in turn saves me money indirectly with less late fees and missed opportunities. Both have been around a while, but were new to me:

Sandy
First up is IwantSandy, which is an assistant that you can interact with by sending e-mails. She communicates back to you via e-mail or SMS text messages.

Say you want someone to remind you for your doctor’s appointment at 4pm next Monday. No problem, just send an e-mail to Sandy:

Remind me about Dr. appointment at 4pm next Monday.

Sandy will send you an e-mail or text message to do just that, both in a daily digest and a specific reminder 15 minutes (by default) before the event. Most casual language is recognized. You can set repeating reminders easily:

Remind me to pay off Citi 0% credit card on 4/24 @monthly

You can also tag items for easy organization, add contacts, and or create To-Do lists.

Remind me to call contractor back in 3 hours @newhouse

Remember Melissa Valiant (415) 555-1212 mval@gmail.com

Remember my United mileage number is A4362215 @travel

Remind me to refill my prescription tomorrow @todo

You can even “snooze” by replying to a reminder with “snooze 4 hours”. Lots more examples here. I live by my e-mail and I have unlimited text messages, so this system has been working out well for me. (Text messages can be better if you are under e-mail overload.) I basically just shoot Sandy an e-mail anytime a thought pops into my mind.

Remind me to blog about Sandy @daily @blogposts

Remind me to sign up for Citibank 25,000 mile banking bonus @daily @todo

Try it! It’s free and even a bit fun at first. I’m not quite sure how or even if they intend to make money. More organized people might not need Sandy, but I learn a new feature every day. For example, if I e-mail Sandy from any computer with “lookup blogposts”, I get a reply with all my post ideas. Very handy while traveling.

Jott
Now what if you’re away from your desk? Jott is a service that convert your voice into text and sends it as an e-mail. It’s like having your own secretary transcribe your thoughts.

On top of that it, even integrates with Sandy. Just add Sandy as a contact, and call her. From the EfficientMD:

Let’s say you’re on your mobile phone and a colleague tells you about a meeting you have to attend tomorrow at 3pm. You’re walking quickly and don’t want to slow down, so you call Jott’s toll-free number and have this conversation:

“Who do you want to Jott?”
“Sandy”
“Sandy. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
BEEP.
“Remind me about meeting tomorrow at 3pm.”

And that’s it. Sandy/Jott will email you a confirmation to ensure that they’ve heard you correctly (which in my experience, is practically 100% of the time), and then tomorrow before 3pm, you’ll receive a text message reminding you about the meeting.

Together, it’s like having your own personal administrative assistant. She’ll remind you about stuff, remember important contact and numbers, and you can just e-mail or call her like a regular person. You don’t need to install any new software or buy any new gadgets.

More Reviews
LifeHacker posts on Sandy and Jott
Mrs. Micah on Sandy
Efficient MD on Sandy and Jott

My 5-year-old shredder is dying from all the junk mail I’ve fed it over the years. I’m totally hyped about buying a jumbo 12-sheet shredding beast. Coincidentally, I just ran across a free service called ProQuo.com that supposedly helps you remove your name and other information from a variety of different lists, including Coupons & Weekly Circulars, Snail-Mail Marketing Lists, Mail-order Catalogs, Telemarketing Lists, and Credit Card and Insurance Offers. From their FAQ:

How does ProQuo help consumers?
ProQuo helps consumers remove their personal information from marketing lists, data brokers, and other organizations responsible for a large amount of junk mail. ProQuo does this by helping people request removal directly from these sources. In many cases, ProQuo will send these requests electronically to the specific organizations that consumers select. For companies that don’t accept electronic requests, ProQuo helps consumers to print out forms for mailing or directs consumers to third party web sites.

I’ve been trying them out, and many of them do require you to print out and mail in a form to request removal. Still, many accept electronic requests, and I had no idea any of this was even an option. ProQuo also incorporates other removal services like the National Do Not Call List. Here’s a screenshot from their interface:

If the service is free, how does ProQuo make money?
In the future, ProQuo will allow consumers to request offers that they do want in addition to eliminating the offers that they don’t want. ProQuo will make money from the advertisers that provide these offers. ProQuo will only provide these offers when requested by consumers.

Hmm… I’m kind of skeptical but their Privacy Policy looks okay at first glance. “We will never release consumers’ personal information without their express consent – ever.”

It’s spring cleaning time. On top of the usual build-up, we are moving in a few months to a place where there (gasp!) probably won’t be a basement! I’m not the best at organization, but here’s what we’ve done so far:

Made two big boxes labeled Sell and Donate. If it has a chance of selling for $10 or more, I’ll eBay it. Hard-to-ship stuff will go on Craigslist. For clothes, we’ll do a run at Buffalo Exchange (used clothing store). Everything else will be donated. I might try FreeCycle, but to be honest I will probably just follow my neighborhood’s common practice of leaving a box outside labeled Free Stuff and let people go at it. We get a decent amount of foot traffic. Now that’s recycling locally 😉

Implemented the one-year rule for clothes. If you haven’t worn it in a year and it isn’t formalwear, it’s gone. That means you’ve gone through all four seasons, cold, hot, wet, dry, and not found a reason to wear it. This can be pretty painful for my wife, but she gets dibs on the clothing credit at Buffalo’s so maybe it’ll work out. If I could fit all my clothes besides winter coats into two large suitcases, that would be awesome.

As a certified pack rat, I really need to let go of certain things. I just have to accept that it’s okay to once in a while buy something again that I already owned once 15 years ago… Sure, keeping 500 ft of old ethernet cable might come in handy someday, but really, it probably won’t. I’m not the only one with 300 blank 4x CD-Rs that I got free after rebate ten years ago… am I?

I really want to simplify and de-clutter my life. Any other tips, if only psychological, to help me do so?