It’s time for a Xembly review!
This company approached me recently, asking me to take a look at them and to give an honest review on how they are for ADHD brains. They didn’t have to ask me twice, because I’m going to take any excuse to play with new apps that I can get. So let’s discuss, shall we?
And, of course, if you’d like to watch me talk about this, you can go here. To listen, listen below, or on your favorite podcast platform.
What, exactly, is Xembly?
Xembly is a Chrome extension that calls itself your “AI Chief of Staff.” Through Chrome, Google Workspace, and Slack, you’re able to talk to Xembly in order to ask it to do a host of things that you may struggle with getting on the calendar throughout your day. Imagine Motion, Skedpal, Otter.ai, and Todoist had a baby, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what Xembly is like.
Why is Xembly great?
It doesn’t take much at all to get set up with Xembly. All you have to do is integrate it with your Google Calendar, Zoom, Slack, and Google Workspace, and–voila!— you have a little friend in your pocket at all times, waiting for you to ask for help.
Using Natural Language, you can ask Xembly’s main assistant, Xena, to do a lot of things for you, including blocking time off in your day for to-dos; keeping track of and checking off said to-dos; comparing your schedule with people you work with in order to find good meeting times, and responding to emails with clear times on your schedule.
You’re also able to set preferences according to your work schedule, set the system to insert breaks after a certain number of tasks, and give Xena different personalities, like Gollum and Hippie, which isn’t necessary but actually kind of hilarious.
While all of this is awesome, I particularly loved two things. The first was the way Xembly summarizes meetings for you. Not only does it transcribe the whole thing, but it’ll also do a surprisingly accurate job at assigning action items to each person in the meeting. Usually, I set up an Action Plan for my clients that I have to type up and send after each meeting; Xembly made this a thing of the past for me, because I just have to double check the action items it already transcribed, and then I can send the whole thing to my client to review however they like. It also makes sure that I don’t forget anything I say I’ll do doing meetings, which…I mean…could happen.
Secondly, Xembly IS AI, so when I’m trying to think of how to draft a newsletter or email, all I have to do is give Xembly prompts, and it’ll deliver a solid suggestion within a few minutes. From an ADHD perspective, this takes a lot of the overwhelm and guesswork out of writing things like that. I love it.
How could Xembly improve?
Xembly is still in its infancy, so there are still parts that don’t exist that probably will not long after writing this. For example, there isn’t a phone app available right now, which can get annoying when you’re out and about and need to change something on your calendar. The company assures me that an app is in the works, though.
I will also say that I’d have loved to have a bit more control over things like priority and deadline. Where apps like Skedpal and Motion give you space to prioritize and influence the AI with deadlines, Xembly hasn’t quite perfected that part yet. This means that sometimes, you’ll wind up blocking off time for things that maybe weren’t the most important, and that can obviously lead to some mayhem.
This is also not a project management app. You can’t utilize subtasks, color coding, or other things that you might need to keep track of overarching projects. So when using Xembly, make sure that you have something else keeping track of all the moving parts.
In conclusion…
Xembly is a very exciting entry into the AI scheduling arena, and it’s already a great way to help ADHDers with busy schedules to keep track of the time they have with little to no confusion.
Details
Platforms: Google Chrome, Google Workspace, Slack
Cost: Free for now, but I’m not sure how much longer you have on that, so if you have a chance, go get in on Xembly now before they start charging.
BEST FOR: People who often work from multiple different calendars/schedules; people working on teams, small business owners.
NOT GREAT FOR: Stay at home parents, people with simple/linear jobs, anyone who doesn’t work with Google products
