For the next month or two, alongside Highrise and Basecamp, I am trying out Backpack for the full “37Signals” effect on my life.
It struck me over the last few days that if I didn’t do something to combat the three way divergence my life is taking at the moment, I would end up forgetting things, losing things, making a mess, and becoming intensely frustrated and angry with myself for letting others down.
There’s only so much room in my head, and I’m only so clever; I’m certainly not able to multi-task in the same way most women can. This all means I require other tactics.
My life currently boils down to three people;
Husband/Dad. This is the first and most important person. Husband to lovely lady who is better at being a Mum than I am at being a Dad. Being Dad means getting up before everybody, washing up duties, tidying up duties, bedtime stories, bathtimes, and various other menial tasks - any of which can be derailed if I forget where things are, or that we have run out of this or that.
Professional Software Developer. After many years gaining the kind of wisdom, experience and expertise that gets children beaten up in schools, I am more able than most to invent programming that not only does the job, but does it simply, elegantly and maintainably. Those who don’t code have no idea just how rare and fantastically important that is. The pursuit of this wisdom used to consume most of my free time before children. It now fills the cracks.
Web Designer and Community Member. Taking part in the internet community over the last several years has transmogrified into freelance web design work now and again. Apparently I have the rare skill of making things look pretty, as well as being able to hack databases and XML feeds. Finding time to build web stuff for people (which can be lucrative) eats hours I don’t have unless managed carefully.
It’s worth pointing out that I am sat here writing this at 0:18am, and have to be up at 5:30am to prepare for my next visit to London. At present I am following my wonderful friend Lauren’s advice - the best way to find time for all these activities is to avoid sleeping. It’s over-rated.
Being half serious for a moment, I am actually paying a small amount to use Backpack. It’s an online calendar, reminder, to-do list, wiki, notepad type thing that isn’t great at anything, but does everything well enough that it’s good enough - and somehow easier than Google’s stack of applications. Don’t get me wrong - Google Docs, Google Notebook and Google Calendar are wonderful, powerful, and great to have (I use them), but Backpack suits me better. Backpack could probably be thought of as a digital Moleskine.
Half the reason I am liking Backpack (and relying on it more each day) is because it allows me to be lazy. I can create appointments and reminders by email. I can also fire emails into specific pages to build up notes on subjects. While sat on the train listening to TWiT or Net@Night, I can throw notes into Backpack to research when I get time (when I get time… yeah… hmm…).
Have you looked at Backpack? What did you think?