I've been using Sandy for some time now to organize my email inbox, to dos, and various other appointments, and it's been mostly a successful experience. I say mostly successful because I still tend to let my email get out of control, but one nice thing about Sandy is it's not too much hassle to get back on track again. Sandy is described as a personal email assistant, although I really think it can be much more than that. It is something I rely heavily on to manage my email, but certain features allow me to integrate it into my Google Calendar, get reminders via Twitter, and even add new items away from my computer (with my phone) via Jott.
I imagine people could use Sandy in different ways depending on how they like to manage their information. It happens to work for me because it seems to address a few downfalls I have with email. One is that I star multiple emails but do nothing with them. I end up with pages and pages of starred email and I attach no action to any of those items. I have a hard time merging offline actions with online ones. If I come across a date or remember something I need to do when I'm away from the computer, I'm likely to just forget about it altogether (that's why I'm excited about Jott integration). Keeping multiple calendars never seems to work for me, especially trying to remind myself of things when I'm offline, I'm addicted to paper calendars but they're not something I faithfully use either. Also the things that I need to get done need to be in front of my face most of the time, or I'll just forget about them completely.
Despite my downfalls in personal information management, I have a pretty good memory for most things. I am a faithful Google Calendar user, it just works for me, but it's also not something that is in my face most times either. I can remember a lot of what I put on the calendar, I may look at it once a day, but since my calendar stays pretty constant, I'm ok not looking at it obsessively too (which makes it a poor tool for remembering tasks for me). Running through the list of things that I do look at constantly, I realize this is a pretty short list, email is undoubtedly at the top though. I think next after that is Twitter, but I most definitely live by my email. I never sit at my computer without a tab to GMail open in my browser.
Sandy works simply by allowing me to forward an item with an action to my specified Sandy email address. I just type one line at the top of the forwarded email, which Sandy parses into something useful, the line is something I want to remember like "Remind me to finish that TPS report by Monday morning" (examples pulled from Sandy website, but I do happen to have some fun TPS reports at work I could really fill in tomorrow if I wanted). Sandy will translate that into a reminder that can be sent to me via email, SMS, or Twitter. I can set appointments, "Remind me I have a Staff meeting on 3/21 at 10-12 am" (that one is real actually) or use tags to control how often I get reminded of appointments, "Remember to turn over the mattress tomorrow morning @monthly" There are some special tags (@todo if you want it to be a to do item) but I can also tag items with my own things to better manage my information. The one thing I did have a hard time getting used to was using the words "remind me" or "remember" all the time, but you can also begin each line with the letter 'r' as shorthand, this is what I usually do. I can also create multiple items in a single email by just starting a new line (with "remind me" or just the 'r' shorthand). Otherwise, the natural language aspects of Sandy tend to work really well. The cheatsheet on Sandy is a good example of how some of these things work.
This whole process works for me because when I get in an email I can automatically assign an action to that email by forwarding it to Sandy. The best thing about this for me is I'm forcing myself up front to consider what I want to do with that email. Do I need to follow up with it? Do I need to contact somebody? Is there information here I want to keep? Once I have a reminder or appointment set up in Sandy, I archive the email (the email remains referenced in Sandy if I need to search for it later). I get it out of my inbox because I know that Sandy will let me know what it is I need to do on the day that I specified to do it. Then I have a clean email box that I have now turned into a functional to do list. Sandy sends a daily digest every morning, which is a helpful way to remind me of what my past self told my future self I would do that day. I usually scan through this for anything I may have forgot about previously in the week. Then I get emails for each to do item I had requested to be reminded of. This is generally the only thing I leave in my inbox, since I no longer have the clutter of starred email there, it actually works as a to do list.
Sandy can generate a lot of email, but it doesn't have to. You can change settings so you don't get email notification, or if you don't prefer email reminders you can set up SMS or Twitter too. Although since I work in GMail the extra email doesn't bother me that much, it's all grouped together and I have tons of space too. Email is my command central for just about everything so it's just something that I'm used to in order to maintain some level of productivity.
Lately I've been pretty excited about how Sandy works with some tools I already use though. With Google Calendar I noticed that I can subscribe to my Sandy calendar, which is a nice way to integrate my to dos and appointments in one place, and just in case I did forget to put something in GCal, it still shows up through Sandy. It's just another way to keep these things automatically in front of me too. Twitter integration is pretty cool since it's another thing I usually have open on my computer at all times, I can send Sandy Direct Messages with reminders and appointments, or get reminders via Twitter from Sandy. I haven't used the Jott integration much, but I can send things to Sandy using my phone and my voice. Actually I hope to start using Jott more and blog about that soon, it looks like a potentially useful way for me to keep track of things when I'm offline (see information management downfalls above). Jott also integrates with Twitter, GCal, and a variety of other cool sites so I'm pretty excited about exploring that tool too.
