43 Folders

43 Folders feed subscription icon - Shiny!Time, Attention, and Creative Work. After 4 years and a lot of productivity pr0n, we’re shifting gears. Re-learn how to use 43 Folders. Then back to work. [»]

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

One reason your boss is so twitchy

Marketplace: Another crazy boss

Stanley Bing on what the crapflood of incoming data is doing to your boss’s state of mind.

BING: Well, what that does is that feeds control freaks with a constant, steady stream of stuff that needs to be controlled. That’s what’s making people more crazy. And what happens is that everybody goes crazy in a different way. In other words, some people get extremely morose. Other people get very paranoid. You know, it’s really like a graded scale of pathology. But it all comes from the same root source, which is, you know, basically personalities under too much duress.

I think one of the emerging leadership skills of the next five years will be learning how to do brilliant filtering — either programatically or by delegating information-sorting to others. To ultimately become someone whose system accounts for incoming data in smart ways and who never has to make excuses about too much stuff.

Yeah, I know smart execs have delegated for centuries. But I can envision a world where sweating over your beepy electronic device starts looking about as “executive” and “pro-active” as sucking on a crack pipe in the break room.


About Merlin Mann

Merlin Mann's picture

Bio

Merlin Mann is an independent writer, speaker, and broadcaster. He’s best known for being the guy who started 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. Also? He looks like this, answers questions, and has something like a life.

Merlin’s favorite thing he’s written recently in the past few years is a short essay entitled, “Better.”

 
EXPLORE 43Folders THE GOOD STUFF

An Oblique Strategy:
Discover the recipes you are using and abandon them


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The Podcast Feed

Inbox Zero

The original 43 Folders series looking at the skills, tools, and attitude needed to empty your email inbox — and then keep it that way. Don’t miss the free video of Merlin’s Inbox Zero presentation.

Making Time

3-part series on attention management for artists and makers. Read Bad Correspondence, The Job You Think You Have, and One Clear Line.