Merlin’s weekly podcast with Dan Benjamin. We talk about creativity, independence, and making things you love.
Merlin’s weekly podcast with Dan Benjamin. We talk about creativity, independence, and making things you love.
”What’s 43 Folders?”
43Folders.com is Merlin Mann’s website about finding the time and attention to do your best creative work.
October, 2006Naps: Endangered species in modern life?Merlin Mann | Oct 31 2006My Make column on napping is overdue, and yet right before dashing off to steal a rejuvenating 20-minute nap, I take a spin past del.icio.us/popular to find this little gem: read more »43 Comments
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David Allen Interview: Getting Things Done with EmailMerlin Mann | Oct 30 200643 Folders and The David Allen Company present the fifth in a series of conversations that David and Merlin recently had about Getting Things Done. Summary
Grab the MP3, learn more at Odeo.com, or just listen here (after the cut). Merlin's commentsEmail was one of the topics that I was most interested in talking to David about, and I found his responses to my questions thought-provoking. David makes the case that email is basically just another input -- like voice mail, for example -- that needs to be emptied and processed every day. That it's not substantially different (apart from how badly mostly people do it right now). While I absolutely agree on processing to zero, I think opinions may differ on the significance of email's impact on the life of the average knowledge worker. read more »POSTED IN:
Life hacky door matMerlin Mann | Oct 26 2006
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MacBreak Weekly 12: “Smokin’”Merlin Mann | Oct 24 2006read more » POSTED IN:
Post your MacBreak Weekly ideas to del.icio.us: "mbwideas"Merlin Mann | Oct 24 2006I'll steal a page directly from Amber's book on this one -- if you have something that you think might make a good story for us to cover on MacBreak Weekly, you can add it to del.icio.us with the tag "mbwideas". We check that page pretty regularly (I actually look at it once a day or so), so it's an easy way to get your favorite Mac and Apple stories of the week into the queue for consideration. read more »POSTED IN:
Vox Populi: Best practices for file namingMerlin Mann | Oct 23 2006If it wasn't apparent from my pathetic cry for help the other day, even I -- one of your more theoretically productive persons in North America -- struggle with what to call things. Tags, files, and -- dear Lord -- the innumerable assets associated with making web sites, graphics, audio, and video projects; it's all a hopeless jumble unless you have some kind of mature system in place for what you call your stuff and its various iterations. Of course, if you're like me -- and I hope that you are not -- you still have lots of things on your desktop with names like " For prior art, I still treasure this Jurassic thread on What Do I Know where people share their thoughts on this age-old problem, but, frankly I haven't seen many good resources out there on best practices for naming. Anyhow, during a recent MacBreak shoot, I noticed that Alex and his team seem to have a pretty fly system for naming the video files that eventually get turned into their big-time IPTV shows. Thus, I turned to Pixel Corps' Research Division Lead, Ben Durbin (co-star of Phone Guy #5) for insight and sane help. And, brother, did he ever give it to me (see below the cut for Ben's detailed awesomeness). But, just so I don't lose you, do give me your best tips in comments: What are your favorite current conventions for naming files? How does your team show iterations and versions? Do you rely more on Folder organization than file names in your work? How have Spotlight, Quicksilver, and the like changed the way you think about this stuff? read more »POSTED IN:
43f interview: David Allen on Getting Things Done with your teamMerlin Mann | Oct 23 200643 Folders and The David Allen Company present the fourth in a series of conversations that David and Merlin recently had about Getting Things Done.
Grab the MP3, learn more at Odeo.com, or just listen from here: read more »POSTED IN:
Text Expander for automagic typo correctionMerlin Mann | Oct 23 2006TextExpander AutoCorrect Snippet File Recently, I was emailing with our friends over at Smile on My Mac about how I use Text Expander as an automatic spelling and typo corrector, and I realized that there wasn't a canonical location for the user-created "snippets" file you need to import in order to get this feature working. read more »POSTED IN:
Merlin at NC Conference; Discount for 43f readersMerlin Mann | Oct 22 2006Important update: 2006-11-15The Working and Living Life Smarter Conference, announced below, is being rescheduled to a TBD date next year. Registrants have been notified and have received refund info, but you should feel free to ask any questions to either the conference’s organizer, Kay Ethier (sales at aboveandbeyondlearning daht com), or me. 43 Folders will update when the new dates are announced. So sorry for the change! I apologize for any inconvenience this change has caused and hope that you can still make it to the rescheduled conference next year. WORKING AND LIVING LIFE SMARTER 2006 (43 Folders Discount) Next month, I'll be speaking at the Working and Living Life Smarter Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina. I'll be doing two talks that should be a lot of fun for 43F fans. And -- lucky for you interested folks, there's a discount afoot, as well. read more »POSTED IN:
43f Podcast: Ian Shoales on Wasting TimeMerlin Mann | Oct 20 2006Odeo: Ian Shoales on Wasting Time
Grab the MP3, learn more at Odeo.com, or just listen from here: read more »POSTED IN:
Vox Populi: How are you using Mail Tags?Merlin Mann | Oct 18 2006I open the floor to all of you on a question of particular personal interest to me: How are you using Mail Tags? While my uses of it to date have been helpful, I keep getting the feeling I'm not getting all that I can out of it -- especially since the ability to associate Projects, Priorities, etc. to a message could make for some really enticing Smart Folders. I wonder if my question is ultimately more taxonomic in nature -- ultimately more about Spotlight in general or Tags in very very general: When tagging items on your Mac, what kind '-onomy' are using? How strictly do you enforce your vocabulary? What are the best practices for someone who's new to this? read more »POSTED IN:
DavidCo's Robert Peake on "Getting Software Done" (part 2)Merlin Mann | Oct 18 2006This is the second of a two-part article by Robert Peake, CTO of the David Allen Company. Be sure to start with yesterday's first part, "Why GTD Matters To Programmers." Part II: GTD and Extreme Programmingby Robert Peake, David Allen Company I have to admit that I'm not a perfect adopter of Extreme Programming. We don't program in pairs, for example -- quite the opposite, our coders are flung far and wide, tethered together only by a broadband connection. However, as much as GTD is "advanced common sense", so to my mind is Extreme Programming a form of "best practices on steroids" -- and for this reason, there are not only many parallels, but great crossover when it comes to managing programming projects. read more »POSTED IN:
MacBreak Weekly: "iPhone Home"Merlin Mann | Oct 18 2006MacBreak Weekly 11: iPhone Home read more » POSTED IN:
Guest Post: DavidCo's Robert Peake on "Getting Software Done" (part 1)Merlin Mann | Oct 17 2006Robert Peake is the brainiac CTO for the David Allen Company (a/k/a, "DavidCo"). I first met Robert when I was down in Ojai a few weeks ago to record some stuff with The David, including our Productive Talk podcasts and that TechGTD panel we did with Robert and Eric Mack. Robert really impressed me with his humor, his insight, and his mad Macintosh skillz. Also -- off the record -- I happen to think Robert's probably the most articulate evangelist for geek GTD I've ever met. He really gets both pieces so well that, of course, I demanded he write an article for 43F, right on the spot. He was kind enough to play along, and flipped around this terrific piece in record time. As he covers in this series, a lot of Robert's time over the past few months has been spent putting together the GTD Connect membership program, as well as making sure all the company's lights stay on from a technology standpoint. Since I know a lot 43F readers share Robert and my interest in GTD and programming, I'm sure you'll dig hearing from him. He successfully pulls together some pieces I've had floating around in my own head, and I thank him much for sharing this. [Note: Part 2 of Robert's article, entitled "GTD and Extreme Programming," appears Wednesday on 43 Folders.] Getting Software Doneby Robert Peake, David Allen Company Since launching GTD Connect, we have gotten a lot of great feedback not only on the content, but on the technical underpinnings of the system we built to deliver the audio, video, forums, podcasts, and other goodies on the site. What a lot of people may not realize is that, to my mind, a lot of the elegance expressed in the technology that drives Connect stems from the fact that we implement and use the GTD methodology in our software development process. We really do "eat our own dog food" at DavidCo, and I'm convinced that necessarily translates to a more positive user experience overall in every product we produce, and especially software. A lot of people also don't realize how highly relevant GTD is to the software development industry specifically, and how many interesting parallels there are between software best practices and workflow best practices (i.e. GTD). read more »POSTED IN:
Dethroner on the 1.0 of incremental weight lossMerlin Mann | Oct 17 2006Dear Grady, You Asshole at Dethroner Joel, situated in day two of Dethroner's topical "weight loss" week, throws down on the need for what I like to call a 1.0; yeah, we all want to be perfect, but first we just have to suck less -- in Joel's case, that means the need to just intake less, even if it's pre-packaged, non-organic, non-artisanal cuisine. The compulsion to be perfect, immediately and eternally, is one of the most profound causes of procrastination for the garden-variety human, and it most certainly gives each of us all the reason we'll ever need not to even try. Or, as Joel puts it, to commenter "Grady:" read more »POSTED IN:
43f Interview: GTD's David Allen on the "Someday Maybe" listMerlin Mann | Oct 16 2006Productive Talk #03: Someday Maybe 43 Folders and The David Allen Company present the third in a series of conversations that David and Merlin recently had about Getting Things Done.
Grab the MP3, learn more at Odeo.com, or just listen from here: read more »POSTED IN:
HOWTO network without becoming a disingenuous weaselMerlin Mann | Oct 16 2006Business Networking Advice: Merlin Mann from 43Folders.com - Interview Josh asked me two interview questions about business networking, and I answered them. [Spoiler: historically, I've not been such a big fan of business networking]: read more »POSTED IN:
6 powerful "look into" verbs (+ 1 to avoid)Merlin Mann | Oct 15 2006In one of the recent podcast interviews I did with David Allen, we talked about procrastination and how he tries to get people -- especially knowledge workers -- back to just "cranking widgets." I love this term, because, in his humorous way, David captures how any thing we want to accomplish in this world eventually has to manifest itself in an intentional physical activity. Seemingly over-huge super-projects like "World Peace," "Cancer Cure," or "Find Mutually Satisfying Vehicle for Jim Belushi" all still come down to physical actions, such as picking up a phone or typing an email. And David is wise, in that interview, also to highlight the importance of what he refers to as a "'look-into' project," which just means that even deciding if a project is interesting and useful to undertake can be a project in itself. It also means that, even with an outcome of "deciding," that meta-project still consists solely of physical actions. In this case, it's the physical actions that help you locate the additional information you'll need to make a timely and wise decision about whether to proceed at all. In sum, no matter what, it all still should come back to widgets and how they get cranked. Like a lot of you, I've struggled with how you turn "thinky work" into physical action widgets, but here are a few of my favorite task-verbs to get you started in the right direction. They're presented here in a rough approximation of the order in which I use them in my own "look-into" projects: read more »POSTED IN:
Open Thread: Doodle & your favorite simple web toolsMerlin Mann | Oct 13 2006This has been mentioned here before (just in comments, I think), but I have to repeat: I can't say enough good things about Doodle. It takes the idiotically over-complicated problem of figuring out when all of n people are available to do something, and in the simplest way conceivable, polls all the participants to find the optimal time and date. I'm always thrilled when colleagues send a meeting invite in the form of a Doodle email; it requires zero fiddling on my part and pleasantly skirts the need for the endless email threads that most people rely on to get a group of people extant in one time-space unit. I'm risking the indignity of a double-post on an "old" link for a good reason: with all the foam and fuss over "Web 2.0," and the ever higher (Ever! Higher!) technology we shovel to solve stupid human problems, it's refreshing to see adoption of a tool that ends up being no more complicated than a white board with electrical-tape columns. I wish stuff like Doodle would inspire more developers to start with the Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work. No Arial Rounded, no whizzy AJAX, and no angel-round-attracting gradients. Just a modest solution to a single dumb problem. That is a life hack, defined. What's your favorite idiotically simple web tool right now? POSTED IN:
Productive Talk 02: David Allen on patching GTD "leaks"Merlin Mann | Oct 12 2006Productive Talk #02: Patching Leaks 43 Folders and The David Allen Company present the second in a series of conversations that David and I recently had about Getting Things Done.
Grab the MP3, learn more at Odeo.com, or just listen from here: read more »POSTED IN:
Merlin's top 5 super-obvious, "no-duh" ways to immediately improve your lifeMerlin Mann | Oct 11 2006How to get organized and stay that way When I was up in Toronto last week, I was interviewed by Samantha Grice from the National Post about 43 Folders, productivity stuff, and the sad sorry state of my own day-to-day productivity. Very "Brady's Bits." As a sidebar to the little profile she wrote, Samantha also asked me to draft a few words on my favorite fast tips for getting it together. Although these will each be painfully old news for you who've been with 43F for a while, I wanted to share the original draft of what I came up with, because it's sufficient as a cocktail-napkin version of what I think 43 Folders has to say to people. You may share it with the disorganized and confused in your own life, if you like. I also loved the limitations of this particular exercise: 300 or so words in five bullets that represent my best day-one tricks. Due in minutes. My kind of challenge. Although I did go over on word count, and I'll own that. Herewith: **Merlin's top 5 super-obvious, "no-duh" ways to immediately improve your life.** read more »POSTED IN:
43F Discount: 10% off all A2 hosting..._for life_Merlin Mann | Oct 11 2006As you may know, 43 Folders is hosted through our friends at A2 Web Hosting. They’ve been great to work with and have an amazing record of stepping up to the plate whenever we have any problems — even those mysterious problems that turn out to be, uh, “pilot errors.” read more »POSTED IN:
MacBreak Weekly: "Look What They Done To My Boy"Merlin Mann | Oct 10 2006MacBreak Weekly 10: Look What They Done To My Boy
Links to some of the stuff I mentioned in the podcast: read more »POSTED IN:
Podcast: Interview with GTD's David Allen on ProcrastinationMerlin Mann | Oct 10 2006Productive Talk #01: Procrastination As I mentioned yesterday, today 43 Folders and The David Allen Company are happy to bring you the first in a series of wide-ranging conversations that David and I recently had about Getting Things Done. So, let's kick things off with a goodie. Here's The David's take on that devil, Procrastination.
Grab the MP3, learn more at Odeo.com, or just listen from here: read more »POSTED IN:
Introducing "Productive Talk" Podcast: 43 Folders meets David AllenMerlin Mann | Oct 9 2006Sample from 'Productive Talk: 43 Folders Meets David Allen' Starting tomorrow (Tuesday), 43 Folders and the David Allen Company will be bringing you "_Productive Talk_," a joint podcast series featuring audio of conversations that David and I had during a recent visit near his offices in Ojai. This was a lot of fun for me to do, especially since it gave me the chance to ask David many of the questions that you and I have both had about Getting Things Done -- so, as you might expect, there's a heavy focus on implementation and best practices, as well as how to troubleshoot problems in your own GTD system. Lot of good stuff that I think you'll enjoy and will learn from as much as I did. Subscribers to the 43 Folders Podcast (subscribe now) will receive new episodes of "Productive Talk" automatically, although you can also just stop by either 43 Folders or The David Allen Company's site for all the latest web-based updates. Tomorrow's inaugural episode is on procrastination, with more episodes coming once a week or so for the next few weeks. Here's a little sample from an upcoming episode to give you a taste of what's coming: read more »POSTED IN:
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