“Studies show it doesn’t matter whether you ask people for their realistic best guess or a hoped-for best case scenario. Either way, they give you the best case scenario. It’s true on a big scale and it’s true on a small scale too.”

“Why don’t we just call plans what they really are: guesses. Unless you’re a fortune teller, long-term business planning is a fantasy. There are just too many factors that are out of your hands: market conditions, competitors, customers, the economy, etc. Writing a plan makes you feel in control of things you can’t actually control.”

This is a great article. Predicting the future is an eductated guess at best.

37signallers can set their own schedules but I’d say, on average, we work a typical workday (8 hours) and we don’t work weekends. [...] A normal workweek should be plenty. Even less is ok. In fact, being short on time is a good thing. It forces you to focus on the essentials. There’s no time for things that don’t matter.

My favorite part is the ending: “Worry about the quality of your hours, not the quantity. That’s what really matters.”

Agreed.

[Highrise] worked great for keeping track of things associated with people I wouldn’t normally add to my Outlook contacts. But Outlook is such an integrated part of my day-to-day life, I have a difficult time imagining how Highrise could enhance that without weighing me down with extra effort to keep everything in sync.

I use it for a variety of things. Here are the highlights for me: 

Follow-ups

When I need a response from someone to keep a project moving, I blind carbon copy my Highrise email address (dropbox+tomorrow.xxxx@highrise.com or +thisweek or +nextweek) . This sets up an automatic to-do that will remind me later to follow up. And when that reminder does comes up, I’ll have a copy of the email at hand, their phone numbers right there on right side of the screen, and a full history of my communications with that person. Last year alone, I used it to track some 1,000 follow-ups.

Not just you, but your company

From any contact’s page, only a click away is the full history of all the conversations I’ve had with anyone at that company. I find that useful, especially when trying to keep track of hundreds of different conversations with people all over the country. This would be of high value for our team to coordinate communications since we all talk individually to our customers in the field. But for now, I just use it to remember my own conversations. 

Beyond companies, you can also create add-hoc groups by tagging people. Example: give me a all conversations with people from the local .NET user group, or all conversations with Sales Managers.

Track Important Topics

I also use it to track specific topics. For example, I have a Highrise Case that tracked all of the things around our kitchen remodel from last summer. Cases work well to group all project-specific conversations together.

Better than Outlook Folders

Folders are nice, but they have their limits. When you create a folder in outlook, you can only keep email in that folder.  Highrise lets you keep files, emails, and phone-call notes all in one, easily accessible place.

Anyway, I like it

And it seems to work well for me.

Start seeing empty spaces as packed with freedom. Celebrate every empty shelf, bare wall, and exposed square foot of flooring as the ultimate victory. If freedom equals happiness (or at least a big component of it), then not having something just brings you closer to your personal nirvana.

The same can be said for software development. Sometimes, not adding a feature, is exactly what your product roadmap needs.

1. what was happening
2. why I care
3. what I could do about it, and 
4. where to go if I had questions

An excellent communication all the way around. Thanks 37signals for sweating the small stuff!

I’ve used it to pick baby names with Sarah, track my work and home to-do lists, plan vacations, communicate with our kitchen designer, and set up reminders to change the furnace filter regularly – it works great!

Give it a try!

Phone calls require you to stop what you’re doing, go to a quiet place, and concentrate. It requires waiting on the line, listening to hold music, being transferred and possibly having the call lost, all so you have to start over again. You can’t share a phone call with your colleagues, you can’t get someone else’s input or feedback.

…

We get requests every day from people who don’t think email support will cut it and demand a phone number to call us. Their worries are assuaged when they get a reply from me in less than 15 minutes that is informative, helpful and obviously written by a human being. It’s absolutely 100% possible to provide excellent customer care without a phone or phone number, and our company proves that daily.

Their support ticketing system? Gmail.

Before:

After:

I’ve been thinking about a redux for some time and as I considered it more, I concluded that the reason wasn’t to simply fill a void*, but that it furthered the purpose for the whole site: I’ve found stuff on the internet that I think you’ll find interesting and useful. I posted about these things once, and more than a year later I still think they are every bit as relevant and important as when I first posted them. If you missed them then, perhaps you’ll enjoy them now. Thanks for taking the time!

* I think a lot of redux’s are to fill a void, and this isn’t my problem: I’ve got a backlog of posts that could fill half a year and the ideas keep flowing as I scan some 2500 articles a month.

REDUX POSTS FROM 2006

* Google News can send you email updates when any new information or recent news articles are posted to the internet on a topic of your choice. Click on “News Alerts” on the left side of the web site to set up the scheduled email. Useful for breaking news or keeping up on any topic you want to follow. (11/10/2006)

* Collaborative writeboards, online notes, a calendar, etc with Backpack. All in the fancy web 2.0 style with AJAX. My favorite feature: set a reminder on the site that will text message your cell phone at a preset time so you don’t forget about something. Originally posted on 12/15/2006, and mentioned again “to keep track of the links” on 11/14/07 and yet again on 12/11/07 as “a way to track your to-do’s and other random data that you want to get done.” I’m still using it every day.

* “[Work] below your means. If you can handle three elements, handle only two. If you can handle ten, then handle only five. In that way the ones you do handle, you handle with more ease, more mastery, and you create a feeling of strength in reserve.” [Pablo Picasso] (12/22/2006)

But tell me what you think! Do you already use Google News and Backpack? Is this old news? Did you look into them and decide they were no good? What do you use instead?

But despite the inconvenience, and massive failure, I feel better about sending my hard earned cash their way. Why? Because they communicated fast and remarkably well.

First, within minutes of the sites going down, a notice was put up:

All systems are currently offline as we’re experiencing network outage from our provider. We’re working on it right now. No data has been lost, all our machines are still working, but they’re not accessible from the internet. Sorry for the inconvenience.
— 10:03am CST (16:03 GMT) on January 18, 2008

Notice how address my immediate concern: data loss, and then an apology. Updates were delivered every 30 minutes and included easy to understand details with more apologies. It was clear that even though it was out of their hands, they were doing everything in their power to get it fixed. One of their last messages, “This is not how Fridays are supposed to be.” was nice. It helps to remember that they are people too, and while I have high expectations from their service, I have some understanding too.

Of course there is a cost/benefit to every service and if they fail too often I’ll look elsewhere. But, 37signals has increased my confidence that they can and will get this sorted out. People just don’t react that fast if they haven’t done most of their homework already.

Some other items of note:

• They now have a status web site (apparently it works even during system outages, but I only just learned about it)
• Quickly after the system was restored, they put a nice Downtime Notice “What happened?” note at the top of each page (pict above) with a link to a post with all of the details

Thanks 37signals for an excellent response to a tough situation!