Brett Kelly, a programmer from Southern California, writes The Cranking Widgets Blog, a personal productivity blog that focuses on David Allen's Getting Things Done. He recently published a post about why he loves Getting Things Done with Backpack.
So, what does Backpack bring to the table that makes me so giddy? Well, several things, actually…
- Polish - Seriously, Backpack looks and acts just like you want it to. One of the driving concepts in the development process at 37signals is that you only include the features that you think most people will need. Obviously, there are tons of people who wish Backpack did [feature] - hell, there are a couple things I wouldn’t mind seeing in the next update - but they choose features to include and make sure they freaking work. And they do.
- The Free-form nature of pages - My Backpack is made up of many, many pages of lists - but there are also a growing number of pages dedicated to specific projects. For example, I’ve been invited to a special luncheon with the Internal Revenue Service in a couple of weeks, and they’d like me to bring along a few things (financial records and such). Before Backpack, it would’ve ended up with me emailing myself a pantload of PDF bank statements, then aggregating all of those emails under a specific gmail tag. Obviously, that would have gotten extremely unwieldy in short order. Now I have all of those PDFs arranged nicely on a few Backpack pages (where you can actually store the files, not just link to them), as well as notes about specific items, a picture of my daughter and a copy of the Gettysburg Address. You shove stuff on a page, drag it where you want it (including to other pages), there’s very little limitation on how you use it.
- Pages can be arbitrarily long - From what I can gather, there’s no set limit on the size of a Backpack page (well, except for the amount of data you’re allowed to store based on the plan you’re using). Using the previous example, I’ve got 38 PDF files on a single page as I write this. I’m pretty sure I could add another 50 and be just fine as cherry wine. I’m also not the least bit concerned with how long my lists get or anything like that, so even you mover-and-shaker types out there can rest easy knowing that you’re not going to “break” the Backpack.
- Each page has an email address - I have one page called “Inbox” where I send random thoughts, new inputs I receive while away from a computer, as well as messages sent from Jott (yep, Jott has built-in support for Backpack through it’s Jott Links service). The magic here is that my new “stuff” is now sitting a click away from the lists that manage the rest of my stuff. Hell, I can even *drag* it to the appropriate list. Freaking sweet.
- iPhone friendly (sorta) - While the default Backpack doesn’t have a special interface for the iPhone (and I’m sure this is one of the most requested candidate features), there are a couple of super easy tricks that allow you to reformat a Backpack page for easy iPhone viewing (without making it look wonky when viewed through a regular browser) and even change the WebClip icon for Backpack when you add it to the home screen.
The post also offers a couple of tips for really getting the most out of Backpack as a GTD solution:
Email things to one page - Your home page is perfect for this. I have a contact called “Backpack” set up anywhere from which I email (Gmail, Mail.app and iPhone), and I email things to this page liberally. Just make sure you check that page often for new stuff to process.
“Email me a copy” - You can email any Backpack page to yourself simply by clicking this link in the page footer. A really kickass way to make backups (or even generate a quick lo-fi version of your GTD system if you expect to be away from a computer for an extended period), this is one of my favorite features.
Read the entire article for step-by-step details on how Kelly uses Backpack for GTD.
