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

David Weinberger: Blogs and salad bars

NPR : Reading Blogs Is a Time-Consuming Endeavor

David Weinberger has a short, funny commentary on the explosion of blogs -- and of the expectation by anyone who starts a blog that everyone they know should be keeping up with every word they post.

Very funny and true, but this wonderful sentence in particular jumped out as the best summation of modern media bloat I've heard in a while:

A salad bar that's 5 miles long is as useless to me as one that's 3000 miles long because I'm getting all the salad I can eat in the first 15 feet.

The best thing you can do today is figure out what you're taking from that 15 feet of your life each day. Hint: don't load up on iceberg lettuce and onions.

TOPICS: Links

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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Cranking

Merlin used to crank. He’s not cranking any more.

This is an essay about family, priorities, and Shakey’s Pizza, and it’s probably the best thing he’s written. »

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This is the video of Merlin’s keynote at Webstock 2011. The one where he cried. You should watch it. »