I have recently started revisiting Backpack. It clearly had not impressed me at all to start with. My initial conclusion: so what?
Postings by But She is a Girl, tech ronin and plasticboy among others, have made me think that I should perhaps try again.
I gave myself a week to try and integrate it to my current implementation of gtd. After a few days I must say that I am now very, very impressed. So much so that I have already upgraded to the $5 a month option.
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I find the ability to send emails lists on Backpack hugely convenient. The Backpack account gives me the possibility of creating 20 lists, which I use for context and projects. I am now processing emails every time I check my in-box. I use Backpack this to translates any e-mail, or the meaningful text from emails, into a next action item on the lists I keep in Basecamp Backpack. All it takes is to forward to the page. This is very easy as each page has its very own emain address. I also use a gmail account, completely separate from my main email account, to store emails, which I may need just in case. All emails on my main email account have now been processed and I aim at having it empty by the end of each day.
I keep the research side of my work as an academic entirely in Devonthink, as most of the research in libraries and archives is conducted off-line. I incidently spent a wonderful afternoon working on old Edwardian periodicals at the Manchester City Library today.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow, thanks for the tip. I’d been using Backpack just for simple lists. I just upgraded to an account that has the calendar, and now I’m finding Backpack + Devonthink + Quicksilver (which has a nice Backpack module) to be highly efficient for my GTD setup. Sorry to comment on such an old post, but it was just what I needed!
Glad to hear that you found the post useful.
Reading it again after all this time, I think that one of the sentences deserves to be amended in the following way:
“I use
Backpackthis to translates any e-mail, or the meaningful text from emails, into a next action item on the lists I keep inBasecampBackpack.”I am not sure why I wrote about Basecamp when I clearly must have meant Backpack.
Very strangely, I have never ever tried using Quicksilver. I should have a good try.