Getting Things Done

For the past several months I have been trying out various tools to help me fight the disorganisation that follows when you have a day job, a freelance gig, and a family of five to support.

Those tools have included various things – from a paper Moleskine notebook, to the bundled iPhone calendar application, to online services such as 37Signals Backpack, and “Remember the Milk“. I heard about most of the ideas I have tried while listening to various podcasts over the last couple of years, and reading 43 Folders and LifeHacker.

It’s probably worth pointing out that there is an apparently very good book about simplifying and organising your chaotic life, called “Getting Things Done” by David Allen – regarded by the seminal reference on “GTD” ideas and methods. Although the book sounds appealing, I tend to think that people who spend their time reading such books would be far better employed getting on with whatever they are avoiding in the first place.

I have no great wisdom to share, but I can relate my experiences of the tools I have used over the last couple of months. My views are by no means definitive – I probably used tools inappropriately, incorrectly, and obviously didn’t read any documentation (who does).

Moleskine Notebook and a Fountain Pen

This is an interesting one, and probably appeals to the more eccentric/luddite crowd. The notebook is quick to pick up and jot something in, excellent for drawing diagrams, and doesn’t require batteries or a power source. It’s also disorganised, requires forward planning while writing (a good thing, some may argue), and is inflexible in that you cannot re-organise what you have already written. Your own handwriting can be a future hindrance too.

The idea of buying a fountain pen – and spending more than you might like on it – is purely to make sure you look after the pen. I spent 20 pounds (40 dollars) on my pen two years ago. I still have it, and it writes wonderfully.

37 Signals Backpack (www.backpackit.com)

I trialled Backpack for about two months, and found all kinds of uses for it. It is wonderfully flexible in allowing you to make any number of “pages” holding notes, to-do lists, images, and further information. It has great email integration, allowing you to post information into specific pages, and a wonderfully simple “Journal” for recording what you are doing privately (think “twitter”).

It is not free, and this is where it begins to fall down. It has a calendar feature, but it is not as fully featured as either Google Calendar, or the native iPhone calendar. For a “paid feature”, the calendar is sorely lacking. It does allow you to aggregate other calendar iCal feeds though, which works rather well – but then so does Google Calendar (for free!). If the calendar was better, it would be worth paying for, and using extensively.

37 Signals Basecamp (www.basecamphq.com)

As a freelance web developer, I needed something to help me organise projects – to keep track of conversations, tasks relating to projects, and files shared between myself and clients. Basecamp was a no brainer, and I’m continuing to pay for an account now.

Basecamp integrates tightly with email, making group conversations very easy to follow and contribute to. I use the task lists to show clients where I am on their projects, and file sharing to get screenshots approved, and to post quotation and billing spreadsheets (typically output from Google Docs as PDFs).

I’m struggling to find anything negative to say about Basecamp – perhaps lack of integration to other 37 Signals products such as Highrise is the only downer.

37 Signals Campfire (www.campfirenow.com)

Campfire is a chat room facility, providing group instant messaging. It can be attached to projects in Basecamp too, allowing you and the client to hold instant message meetings, with the transcripts recorded neatly for future reference. As a virtual meeting place it works very well, but depends on take-up from colleagues and clients to get any value from.

While working in my day job as a software developer in London, I became aware on the days we have been “building the trunk code” that a high speed exchange of emails was happening in and around the office as code was checked in, confirmations shouted, and various administrators called off their part of the process. Campfire would provide a wonderful central hub for this kind of task (with transcripts for managers to read), and is being looked at right now following my suggestion that we look at it.

37 Signals Highrise (www.highrisehq.com)

Highrise is effectively “online CRM” – or “Client Relationship Management”. It’s designed to help you file communication with clients away neatly, create “Cases” containing all communication for a specific project for example, and manage tasks.

I loved the idea of Highrise, and used it for about a month. Like many of the other 37 Signals solutions, it has tight email integration – allowing you to forward, or BCC emails to Highrise, and allow it to manage filing it against the appropriate person. In the end three factors made me stop using Highrise. Firstly, it is expensive – for a freelancer this was a significant issue. Secondly, it had trouble dealing with long email addresses, meaning the email integration suddenly wasn’t as integrated as it had been.

Finally (and this is no fault of Highrise per-se), I decided that I didn’t have enough work to warrant using a CRM system. It was an additional overhead I didn’t really need.

SugarCRM (www.sugarcrm.com)

I installed SugarCRM – a very powerful open source client relationship management system – after deciding that Highrise was too expensive, and with the thought that I should at least try alternatives. While it is very, very powerful, if fell foul of the same reason I didn’t use Highrise in the end – I do not have a good enough use-case to warrant spending the time managing and updating project, client and task information in a CRM system. If I was in charge of a company, the story would be different.

iPhone + MobileMe (www.apple.com/mobileme)

Purchasing a 3G iPhone in early September was instrumental in the closure of my Backpack account – mainly because the iPhone replicated features I had been using Backpack for (tasks and calendar). It’s worth pointing out that the iPhone doesn’t have a task list application, so I purchased “ToDo” from the App Store, which integrates with “Remember The Milk” on the net (more about this in the section about RTM below).

The iPhone has been a huge success from a functional standpoint. I now have access to all of my email accounts (GMail, Fastmail, Yahoo, MobileMe, Freelance, and work) from wherever I am. I can also check my calendar, and update it either on the web, or the phone. The ToDo app I bought wirelessly syncs with “Remember the Milk” on the web, and prompts me each day with notes to myself.

If there is a downside to the iPhone, it’s that the calendar application (if using MobileMe) cannot show external iCal feeds within the calendar… so, for instance, I cannot see my wifes Google Calendar iCal feed on the iPhone.

For a time I tried forwarding email from everywhere into the MobileMe account to take advantage of it’s “push” functionality, but this quickly exposed the web interface to MobileMe – when filled with a few thousand emails, it almost ground to a halt.

Remember the Milk (www.rememberthemilk.com)

I signed up for an account with Remember The Milk as a necessity of using a third party ToDo list application on the iPhone. The plus side to “RTM” is that it has a web interface, it’s straightforward, and it has an API – allowing the sync to happen. I was happier using a ToDo list application that didn’t store it’s data purely on the iPhone – I wanted something with web access.

The downside to RTM has to be it’s horrible web interface. It’s “Web 2.0″ for no reason what so ever, and takes the idea too far – meaning you are often unsure what you are ticking, or changing.

 

I guess it’s time for some conclusions!

• The iPhone has transformed my ability to keep on top of what I need to be doing each day, purely because it places a calendar (events), and to-do list (tasks) in my pocket at all times – and bugs me with reminders to do things.
• Without question, if I didn’t have the iPhone, I would still be using 37 Signals Backpack.
• Basecamp is probably the most valuable tool from a business perspective – providing excellent collaboration tools and shared work spaces.
• I have concerns about putting so much data “in the cloud”. There is no easy way of exporting all the information from Basecamp, and this worries me.
• If more products provided more ways of integrating, my experiences might have been very different. Google Calendar would almost certainly have made an appearance, along with Google Notebook. As it is, they are relegated to the list of “nice apps, but too much hassle to bother with”.

With a little luck you found this post useful, and perhaps informative. These were just my experiences, thoughts and opinions – I would encourage everybody to try as many different services and products out as they can. Find the best solution for you.