If you’re as forgetful as I am, a gentle reminder of an important event a day or two before it is scheduled to take place goes a long way towards avoiding embarrassment – and possibly a lost opportunity.
Sure, you can tape a note to your computer screen or your car’s rear view mirror, but there’s actually a much better way…
A great free service called NudgeMail allows you to quickly and easily schedule a reminder email to be delivered to yourself (or to someone else) at the exact date and time of your choosing.
You can schedule as many reminder emails as you want. Personally, I like to send one to myself a reminder a week ahead of time, another one two days before the event, and still another the night before.
Emails can be scheduled for delivery by the minute, hour, day, month or year, providing plenty of flexibility for ensuring that your reminders will show up exactly when you need them.
Scheduling email reminders with NudgeMail is easy. Simply follow these quick steps:
1 – Create a new email using your preferred email program or service.
2 – Enter [email protected] in the “To:” field.
3 – For the Subject, simply type the day, date, or time when you want the reminder email to be delivered. For example, “Sunday”, “Tomorrow”, “June 4″ or “5 hours” are all acceptable dates/times.
4 – Enter the text of the reminder you wish to receive in the body of the email, then click Send. The email will arrive in your inbox at the time designated in the subject line.
NudgeMail works with any standard email service and and any type of device you might happen to use.
All it needs in order to send your NudgeMail reminders to you is a working email address. It doesn’t really care what that email address is. If you can receive email at that address, you’ll receive your NudgeMail reminders!
I do need to mention one caveat, however: How promptly your NudgeMail reminders arrive will depend on the promptness of your email service. Some services place newly received emails in your inbox immediately while others take their sweet time.
That’s why you might need to build in a little “wiggle room” when telling NudgeMail when to deliver your reminders. They’ll send them exactly when you tell them to but your email service might not retrieve and display them until after a delay.
For example, I’ve found that the online email service I use only checks my POP 3 email accounts once every 30 minutes.
That means it can take up to 30 minutes for an email someone sends to me to actually land in my inbox. I’m fine with that, but I always schedule my NudgeMail reminders to be sent 30 minutes before the time when I’ll actually need them.
Anyway, for most situations a slight delay like that won’t really matter. Just be aware that a delay could exist, depending entirely on the promptness of your own email provider.
In case you’re wondering, NudgeMail doesn’t retain your email address in any kind of database, and they won’t sell it to a third party. And they insist that no human NudgeMail employee has access to your NudgeMails.
That being said, according to their FAQs page they do retain your reminder emails on their servers for 30 days just in case they receive a court order requiring them to cooperate with law enforcement.
I strongly recommend that you keep that in mind when using their service.
Hint: Don’t schedule a reminder email telling you to do something illegal next Tuesday! ( I know you wouldn’t – just covering all the bases here!)
Bottom line: Why not give NudgeMail a try? It’s free, it works extremely well, and it sure beats having sticky notes plastered all over the house!