I have been away from the blog, and the whole Practice \Success Tools website, for longer than I care to admit. I knew that April and May were going to be very busy with family activities, but a chance remark by my husband sent me off in a technology direction that I hadn’t expected. The good news is, now my readers to get to benefit from my hard work and research. And isn’t that the point of Practice Success Tools anyway?
Some background: If you’ve browsed the website very thoroughly, you may have figured out that I am a big believer in using what is called Contact Management software. In a nutshell, this is like a Rolodex and to-do list combined and on steroids. It’s what I use to keep track of client calls, referral sources, documents and email addresses associated with these, and the tasks that go with them. For many many years I’ve used a product called Goldmine, and it has served me well. In conjunction with it, I used a Palm Pilot Tungsten E to do my calendaring. As a full-time private practice therapist, my main need is for calendaring, and nothing does it better than a Palm Pilot.
But alas, nothing lasts forever, and though my current tools are still going strong, my husband happened to remark that neither one of these, Goldmine or Palm Pilot, are usable in a Windows 7 environment. I am using Windows XP at home and XP Pro at work, but what happens if one of my computers were to suddenly crash and die? We all know that can happen. All my data is backed up, but if I need to buy a new computer, my two main tools aren’t going to work, and that would be extremely unpleasant in a crisis environment.
I believe in planning ahead and being prepared, so I have been researching how to transition my entire professional toolset (at least the behind-the-scenes part) and it has been time-consuming, to say the least. I am happy to report that I have gotten it pretty well figured now, and am in the process of final testing before I begin the big transition. In upcoming posts I’ll be letting you know programs and devices I’ve looked at, what I’ve decided on, and the pros and cons that I see to various options.
Thanks for your patience!
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