Getting Organized with BaseCamp
With a new piece of hardware in the mail, I think it’s about time for me to straighten up the way I’m organized. The piece of hardware being a 20′ iMac, 2.16 GHZ of Core 2 Duo, etc… With making the move to a more powerful machine, arguably a more apt OS and overall more streamlined for me, I think I could really cut down the time I spend on certain projects and get a lot more done.
First things first, enter Basecamp. It’s a 37Signals product, and has been raved all over and praised to death basically. I’ve been using it today (free version) and I’ll definitely be upgrading. It only handles one project for me at the moment because I haven’t payed them yet, but I’ll upgrade to the personal version at $12/mo for 3 projects. 3 (more like 2.5 actually) is the amount of projects I’m working on now (excluding my own), and anything more than that would kind of be pushing it.
Basecamp’s limitations for the free version of having only one project aren’t really going to hold me back for the time being, even though I have a couple on the go. Their awesome To-Do list feature will let you add a series of lists (finding out how many). This feature will help me out the most, for sure.
The Milestones page is also really helping. Putting a solid date on something that’s always there in writing (2 days away, 3 days away, etc…) is helpful to anyone.
I guess the design of Basecamp could be a little more slick, and easier on the eyes, but there isn’t much need when all the functionality is there. It’s also nice with all the AJAX features, never having to reload a page. Everything is done asynchronous, as far as I can tell so far.
Another step to getting more organized is going to be cleaning up and organizing the space that I work in. It seems that when you work out of your house temptation to eat, drink or whatever builds up and soon enough your desk is littered with plates, glasses, coke cans, you name it.
So, in conclusion, my three top organization tips are:
- Buy a Mac.
- Get Basecamp and set up some to do lists and milestones.
- Clean up.
And the preceding was not payed for by Apple nor 37Signals. 
Leave a comment
Adnan
May 21st, 2007 at 1:34 PM
Yeah I also wanted to have a look at Basecamp just to see what it was like as it had been mentioned so many times. Hopefully we’ll be able to try it out for my project(s)!
And awesome! Please post pics up of your new Mac as soon as you get it!
Connor Wilson
May 21st, 2007 at 1:38 PM
Once I buy Basecamp and figure out the client stuff on it, I’ll move everyone over there. It’s really quite cool for tracking progress. My 12 point to do list for Blogtrepreneur is sitting right at the top. The only thing separating me from that is school work right now. Rare occasion, but it happens
And I don’t know how I’ll take pictures of it, as I don’t have access to a digital camera. Maybe it’ll have a built in camera that i can bend down to look at itself
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