A good reminder note isn't the one you see all the time, it's the one that shows up at the moment you can act: walking out of the door, arriving at the shop, the day before. With XNeuronal, you dictate it in one sentence ("when I leave the office, remind me to take the parcel"), and it comes back on its own at the time, place or situation you chose, read aloud if your hands are full.

Why the sticky note ends up invisible

On the first day, the yellow note on the fridge jumps out at you. By the third, it's part of the furniture. After a week, you walk past without reading it. That isn't carelessness, it's the brain doing its job: what doesn't change stops being noticed.

The phone is no exception. A to-do note opened every morning ends up skimmed. An alarm that goes off every day at 6 pm gets swiped away without even being read, because at 6 pm you are rarely in front of the thing to do.

That is where the real difficulty lies. A reminder doesn't fail because you forgot it, it fails because it arrives at the wrong moment.

Making reminder notes that work

A few principles change everything, with or without an app.

  • Put it where the action happens. The parcel to post goes against the front door, not on the desk. The evening medicine goes next to the toothbrush.
  • Tie it to a moment, not a time. "When I go out", "when I get to Grandma's", "the day before we leave": the moment is what counts, not the clock.
  • Write the action, not the topic. "Call the plumber about the quote" rather than "plumber". Read in a hurry, the first one tells you what to do.
  • Keep few of them. Ten notes are wallpaper. Two are signals.
  • Remove it as soon as it's done. An out-of-date note teaches you to ignore all the others.

What XNeuronal does

XNeuronal is an app that remembers what you tell it. A reminder note becomes a sentence, and the app takes care of bringing it back at the right moment.

  • You dictate it the way you'd say it to someone. "Remind me to call the plumber on Thursday morning." No form, no time picker: next Thursday, in three weeks, the 10th at noon, it understands.
  • On time, even with no signal. The reminder is set directly on the phone, and a backup notification takes over if the app has been closed for a long time.
  • In the right place. "When I leave the office, remind me to take the parcel", "within 500 metres of a bakery, think of bread": the reminder goes off when you enter the area, or when you leave it, even if you haven't opened the app for days.
  • When the weather turns. "As soon as it freezes, remind me to cover the plants." Some things aren't done on a date but when the weather decides, and the app watches the forecast for you.
  • Read aloud. When a reminder arrives, XNeuronal can read it out instead of leaving you to decipher text on the lock screen. Hands in the flour or at the wheel, that's what makes the difference. And you choose the hours when it stays quiet.
  • Corrected in one sentence. "Friday instead", "only in the morning", "widen it to a kilometre": the existing reminder is changed, never duplicated.

And because everything you tell it stays in memory, the reminder keeps its context. The day you ask "what was the plumber's quote again?", the answer is there.

The reminder you no longer see, but that rings

The best reminder note is the one you no longer need to look at. You say it once, when the thought crosses your mind, and it comes back when you can act. The rest of the time, it stays quiet.

To go further: reminders and calendar, location-based reminders, weather reminders and notifications read aloud.