Anyone who’s kept up with me over the last few years realizes I love 37 signal’s products. I’ve used them all, but always wondered why they didn’t integrate. Instead of getting stuck on that concept, I’ve embraced their exclusion and containment. I’m glad I did. It seems complicated on the surface but deep down it’s simple. You can take a look at major CRM’s and see examples of integration. You’ll see a loaded down, bogged down productivity system. People in my experience will spend all their time learning and working the system instead of getting results.

So here’s how I see the transition between 37 signals products.

Backpack for me was the end all be all. I used it for everything.- sharing pages with customers, keeping lists and running projects. Lately, I’m back to using it as I believe it was intended. A place to organize your organization. I keep reference lists (not task lists), share reference pages with customers and compile data for events, trips or major ideas. I also use the calendar to organize one step actions that happen on a particular date. I keep budget (bill payment) info on the calendar as well. Of course I ical this into Google Calendar so I can access it on my iphone wherever I go. Plus I share Google Calendar with several others. I have started to use the Backpack journal feature at night to record the days happenings.

Basecamp for me is all about projects. If you use the GTD terminology a project would be anything you can’t do it 2 minutes or less or that doesn’t have one defined next action to complete it. This is still a tough balancing act. I have most mid to large projects set up independently in Basecamp. Basecamp is also where I manage my business, my wife’s business and collaborate with key people who contract with us. We manage monthly deliverables for retainer customers along with new customer projects in Basecamp.  I love Basecamp because of writeboards and milestones but template to do’s are the powerful stuff.

Ta-da lists are a new edition to the arsenal for me. I love them. Instead of keeping simple next actions (not associated with projects) in Backpack or Basecmap, Ta-da lists allows me to quickly put them into list format. That’s not the key though. Any program can do that. A text file can do that. The real power is the iphone ready site which parallels the web version. Check off something from your list on your iphone it mirrors up on my Macbook in the cloud. What do I keep here?

• Shopping lists
• Errands
• Weekly Review lists
• Daily Review lists
• Today’s tasks
• Daily supplements (you name it)

Highrise is my weakest area. That may be the case for many people. It’s a powerful platform but I think I stumble here because of the lack of sync tools in the cloud (which still boggles my mind). I do keep my contacts here and the new ability to add social media contact info has been a big addition. So much communication takes place in mobile environments or in email threads, that getting it into Highrise can be difficult. I would suggest you at least organize your contacts in Highrise and record key conversations or meeting notes. You need those kind of records and that kind of data stored somewhere. Once someone becomes a customer they usually migrate to Basecamp in my experience.

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