43 Folders

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Merlin’s weekly podcast with Dan Benjamin. We talk about creativity, independence, and making things you love.

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43Folders.com is Merlin Mann’s website about finding the time and attention to do your best creative work.

Archive your receipts and account info with PDFs

Mac OSX bases much of its interface on Adobe’s PDF format and opportunities to use and make PDF files are ubiquitous.

My favorite PDF trick helps me create an archived digital receipt every time I make a purchase online.

  1. Create a folder in “~/Documents/” called “Receipts”
  2. When you reach a page that presents a receipt, account information, or other stuff you want to capture for future reference, Select “File > Print…”
  3. Click the “Save as PDF…” button
  4. In the dialog box, surf to the “Receipts” folder you made earlier
  5. Name the file something meaningful to you
  6. Click “Save”

You now have a single location for all your receipts and account info . If you’re really cool, you might want to create sub-directories for each type of item (“Receipts,” “Accounts,” “MySQL Setups,” “Affiliate Reports,” etc.

About Merlin

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Bio

Merlin Mann is an independent writer, speaker, and broadcaster. He’s best known for being the guy who created the website you’re reading right now. He lives in San Francisco, does lots of public speaking, and helps make cool things like You Look Nice Today, Back to Work, and Kung Fu Grippe. Also? He’s writing this book, he lives with this face, he suffers from this hair, he answers these questions, and he’s had this life. So far.

Merlin’s favorite thing he’s written in the past few years is an essay entitled, “Cranking.”

 
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