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

Our Most Popular Posts

Whitepaper: GTD LoFi/HiFi by Emory

Whitepaper: GTD LoFi/HiFi by Emory

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Naming project support files

I've started keeping all my one-page, per-project support files in the same folder as my GTD lists. I still use “@” as prefix for contextual lists, but now I use “&” to indicate a support file.

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Levenger 20% Off Coupon

Levenger 20% Off Coupon

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TOPICS: Lofi

Religious Backgrounds

Religious Backgrounds

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Hack for Charger Storage

Hack for Charger Storage

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TOPICS: Life Hacks

New iPod Nano?; Buddy List Zero; "Bricking" a stolen iPhone; Lovely PocketTweets;

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Zen Alarm Clock

Zen Alarm Clock

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TOPICS: Life Hacks

Colleen Wainwright on email as PSD

Treat your email more like Photoshop

My pal, Colleen, has written up a short, designer's take on handling email. She suggests you treat messages the way you'd handle Photoshop PSDs; streamline, automate, and fear not the rule nor template:

Once you’ve done enough of the same kind of work in Photoshop or Illustrator—say, resizing photos or creating a certain size of flyer—you devise ways of creating your templates quickly...

Apply the same principles to processing your inbox and you will vastly reduce the time you spend horsing around in your email client. There are as many “best practices” with email as there are organizational gurus, but the same principles generally apply:

  1. Handle things once
  2. Process all at once, at scheduled times
  3. Clear your inbox, don’t use it as a holding bin

Right on. And as good a point as ever to re-point-out my beloved MailTemplate, which is still the easiest way I know of to create customizable boilerplate templates for Mail.app and Entourage.

Random Bonus: Here's some video (direct MOV download) of me interviewing the MailTemplate/MailTank guys at Macworld back in January.

Franklin Covey Index Card Holder

Franklin Covey Index Card Holder

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TOPICS: Lofi

MyBlogLog to track outgoing links

Little spoon of JavaScript helps track outbound traffic from your site.

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TOPICS: Reviews, Tips
 
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The Podcast Feed

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. »

Scared Shitless

Merlin’s scared. You’re scared. Everybody is scared.

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