I was as skeptical as anyone when the term Virtual Assistant was starting to be used around the launch of Apple’s Siri 9 years ago, in October of 2011. Who would know that years later I would have accumulated some indispensable use cases for digital assistants and leveraging voice commands?

This progression has been noticeable to others around me recently, even when it was not immediately visible to me. People started to notice how much I use Alexa, the Amazon voice assistant, installed on my Echo device. It recently even inspired a friend to get his own Echo Dot.

Converting one of my friends based on my demonstrated use…that interested me.

That made me think I could decode some of my best tips and share them to benefit more than just one of my friends. That made me realize I could share these tips and help a lot of people save time, and take advantage of a new wave of digital productivity using their voices and not their fingers.

So I want to share with you two simple uses of Amazon Alexa, and how those each help me live and perform a bit better than I could on my own.

These use cases could also broadly apply to voice tools like Siri, or the others available.

For the following 2 tips, I introduce the WHY first and then follow up with the HOW on all the tips too.

Reminders (and the built-in snooze function)

WHY

I wanted to share this one first, because it should readily be available on most smartphones, and platforms beyond Alexa. This one is not the most innovative in terms of newness—but I bet only a small % of the people reading this actually utilize digital voice reminders.

The benefits become tremendous when added together. Think of the advantages of having a simple way to immediately capture and log a scheduled reminder in the cloud, automatically, with high accuracy, and hands-free.

This frees up your hands and mind at a moment's notice from whatever has thrust itself at you. Even if you only set a reminder about whatever came your way for 15 minutes from now, that helps. You can also work way out and say remind me in 3 months, 6 months, or 5 years if you want to.

With this kind of digital assistance, maintaining focus on (or not forgetting) what’s important is so much easier than if we just rely on our brains or analog systems.

HOW

Just say “Alexa, remind me to….”

Then give a specific action like “…check the laundry…”

Also specify your timeframe: “…in 35 minutes.”

Alexa will then confirm with you, and verify that she will remind you in your requested timeframe.

**PRO-TIP:** If the reminder is absolutely critical in importance—double-check in the Alexa app to confirm the correct details were inputted—and consider creating a redundancy like an additional reminder or calendar event outside of the Alexa system.

When Alexa reminds you—you will hear the reminder notification sound and be notified of the statement you requested. (For us this is checking the laundry.)

Let’s say that the laundry is going to take another hour, or whatever we need to be reminded about can wait. That is a key time to utilize the SNOOZE feature within Alexa (and most other reminder tools).

Say “Alexa, snooze.”

After that, she will tell you that she will remind you in one hour.

This is great for non-urgent, but important things that need to get done—but not at any specific time. For example, watering the plants is a notification I often snooze, because the time I thought I needed to be reminded ends up being inconvenient.

In the following hours, depending on how many times I tell Alexa to snooze, I can take care of watering the plants with little damage done to them in the hour(s) I delayed.

These reminders are a great way to store things that come to mind for later—and to set plans in motion, all using only our voices.

Once you start with using this kind of additional resource consistently, it is hard to imagine going back to holding all of our reminders in our heads alone.

Timers

WHY

For several of the same reasons, using your digital voice assistant for a timer function is one of the easiest and most effective ways to leverage your voice and the cloud.

Setting hands free timers while cooking for example—is a huge advantage when you’re busy prepping and executing a meal.

This represents an opportunity for more creative uses too, such as nap timers, meditation timers, and timers for that perfect morning French press.

HOW

This is just as easy as utilizing reminders, but it has some other cool features that are available, and some noticeable machine learning at work behind the scenes.

Say “Alexa set a timer for….”

Specify your duration “…4 minutes.”

That’s it for the basic steps, but we can take that 4-minute timer and give it a name—and then also experience Alexa’s machine learning and AI at work too.

Say “Alexa, set a coffee timer for 4 minutes.”

This indicates a key feature of timers—which is labelling. Telling Alexa to call the timer “coffee timer” sets a label that can provide a distinct timer from others in simultaneous operation.

That means you can have timers for your whole meal all in Alexa at the same time:

-Pasta Timer

-Chicken Timer

-Sauce Timer

-Champagne Timer (in the freezer)

All hands-free and designed to avoid confusion.

Where does the AI come in?

I just noticed this the other day, but I was using the 4-minute coffee timer that I gave as an example above.

Recently I decided to test Alexa and simply said “Alexa, start a coffee timer.”

And to my surprise, she began a coffee timer for 4 minutes. That means she learned that was something I did frequently and was ready to save me time and make it even easier.

She did work behind the scenes to make that easier for me—and save me the few extra words, of “…for 4 minutes.” She did all this without me having to even ask.

That may seem like small time savings, but it is a provable one. I get that time back every morning I make coffee, and these are just as few small examples of the benefits I experience.

With Artificial Intelligence and machine learning running in the background, I am excited to see what else Alexa can do for me in the future.

Use the tools

I think a lot of people are too scared of these tools to realize that there are benefits that can really help us to live better lives, and have more time for everything else that matters.

Try taking advantage of your virtual assistants next time you've got a few things you need to be reminded of, or you need a timer. You might find things getting easier, and faster than you realized.

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Alexa and Siri both provide a lot of value to me every day beyond these two examples, so if you'd like me to share some more cool features or tips let me know in the comments below.

Do you use your Voice Assistants? Leave a comment and let me know what you use them for the most.