An assistant whose entire job is remembering on your behalf.
Around the clock, in ordinary language, with nothing to install and nothing to keep up to date. You hand things over as they occur to you, and they stop being yours to carry.
So what counts as one task?
Worth being exact about, because it is the unit everything is priced in — and because the honest half of this list is the more useful one.
This counts as a task
Anything you would otherwise be holding in your head.
- ✓Remembering an appointment and raising it in time to act on it
- ✓Tracking something you are waiting for, and telling you when it has not arrived
- ✓Keeping a recurring obligation on schedule — refills, check-ups, filings
- ✓Holding a renewal date for eleven months and bringing it back before it lands
- ✓Noticing when something you told it about changes price or stops being used
- ✓Carrying a half-formed thought until it becomes a real date
This does not
Said plainly, so nobody signs up expecting it.
- ×Anything physical — nobody comes to the house, and no errands are run
- ×Acting as you — it does not sign, buy, cancel or spend on your behalf
- ×Medical, legal or financial advice — it is not qualified and will not pretend to be
- ×Emergencies — this is not an alert service and must never be relied on as one
- ×Watching your accounts — it knows what you told it, and nothing else
- ×Being your memory of things you never mentioned to it
Three, from beginning to end
What you say, what happens, and what comes back without being chased.
Counts as: One task
Counts as: One task, sometimes two
Counts as: One task a month
Notice that every one of them has a third step. That step is the difference between a reminder and an assistant, and it is the only part that is genuinely hard to do for yourself.
Say it
however it comes out
There is no correct way to hand something over
Half a sentence is fine. No date is fine. “There is something about the car in March” is fine. Working out what you meant, when it matters and what to do about it is the service — not homework you have to finish before the service will start.
Where it stops
Three limits worth knowing before you decide, rather than after.
A few questions about what keeps slipping. Nothing to fill in, and no obligation.