· October 25, 2007 at 8:32 am · Online Tools
Having a hard time remembering certain things that you don’t really have time to write down? Well, if you are one of those people who live in their e-mail inbox IWantSandy.com might be the service for you.
Using this service could not get any easier. You get you own e-mail to contact Sandy at and she will then remember or remind you of certain things. For an example if you send her an e-mail saying, “Remind me to post about Sandy on Mitchelaneous in 15 minutes” then in 15 minutes you will get an e-mail back reminding you of the task you need to do.
The service (trying my best to stop calling the service “she” and “her”) knows the words remember and remind the best. Here is a little more information.
When you signed up, I sent you a “Welcome” message containing your own personal Sandy email address. You send me stuff by writing to me at that address, either directly or by Cc’ing me on a message to someone else. You can write to me in the subject line or the body of an email message — I pay attention to both.
More details about the service can be found on the official web site.
All in all I think this is a neat service, and I am currently trying to find reasons to use it more and more. If you need a little help getting your projects (and/or life) in order you might want Sandy too.
· February 19, 2007 at 5:00 am · Personal
Now I wouldn’t call myself the most productive person I know, but from time to time I go have spurts of productivity and am able to do a large amount of tasks in a small time frame. I have become better over the last few years at managing my time and getting things done. I figured I would share how I get things done in order to better help some of the less organized out there.
One good way of getting more productive is to make yourself a list.
Now I know some people poo-poo this idea because it sets a goal that you can not reach. Your to do list might be really huge, and looking at it might discourage you from moving forward. For me though, a list is a good way to help me remember what my daily tasks should be and what my weekly tasks should be.
You shouldn’t put things on your list like “brush your teeth” or “take a bath”. Hopefully those are given tasks that you know that you will do by the time the day is over with. Things marked on the lists should not be everyday goals you set out to do. They should be the odd little things that take up your free time.
I want you to create two notes to yourself. One should be what you want to get done in a day (normal day to day tasks that you need to make note of). The other should be things you need to get done by the time the week is over with (these can be bigger tasks or jobs that you do not need to do every single day).
For example, if I know I have to write five articles, I could try to write them all in one day - but then they would probably be a little suckstatic in their quality. Instead, I have five days in the work week, so I can write down on my daily to do list - write an article. This way one job that would take several hours can now be spread out through the week and take only a few minutes.
Now what is a good way to write these notes to yourself? Here are a couple of program that should help you out in that department. Both allow you to put little sticky notes on your desktop to write things down on.
+ StickyPad
+ ATnotes
+ Stickies
The great lesson to be learned is to not overwork yourself. Instead of doing one big job today, make it into several little jobs you can spread out through the week. This way you can have more hours of your day to do other things you need to do.
· September 27, 2006 at 9:59 am · Personal
Since I started my new job, I have been trying to manage my time better. I have a bad habit of putting things off till the last minute, and then spending an entire day working on things that I could have spread out a little better. So what was the solution to my time management issues?
Well so far, making lists of things for me to do has been working. I have a daily to do list with all the things I need to do every single day. For other tasks that I do day by day, I have a daily to do list for each day of the week.
So I might have five things I need to do every single day that is on my daily to do list, and everything else gets spread out on smaller to do lists for the days of the week.
So far it has been working out. The only hard part about it all is making myself stick with it, so I don’t have a boatload of work left for me at the end of the week.
