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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.

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Testing the 43F redesign: Report bugs and comments here

I've flipped on this staged version of the site redesign so I can do some testing, iron out some bugs, and see how the load will be handled by WordPress.

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TOPICS: Admin

New iPhone ad: Release on June 29th

iPhone will be released on June 29th. Here's the ad from tonight's 60 Minutes.

(added a better version of the video, via Gizmodo

[Original news via: iPhone: yours on June 29th - Engadget]


Added 2007-06-03 16:48:46: Commenting on the Engadget story, Jake points to three new iPhone commercials on Apple's site. Check out "Never Been an iPod." Lovely.

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Dave Gray: "The lifehacker's dilemma"

The lifehacker's dilemma
The lifehacker’s dilemma
Originally uploaded by dgray_xplane.

Dave sums it all up nicely, as far as I’m concerned.

(N.B.: the paper-based crotchal coverage hack.)

AskMe: Motivation to do things you dislike

motivation solutions? | Ask MetaFilter

Good Ask Metafilter thread on finding ways to motivate yourself to do things you don't want to do. Good advice so far includes:

  • "Incentivise yourself, e.g. 'If I spend an hour cleaning and tidying, I definitely deserve <insert vice of choice here> when I'm done'."
  • "I set the timer for one hour every weekend and make myself tackle chores before I'm allowed to do anything else. When the beeper goes off, I stop and do something fun for a while. Repeat all day Saturday until everything truely essential is done."
  • "Don't look at everything all at once! Otherwise you won't get anything done other than worry about all the stuff you need to do. You have to pick at it, otherwise it overwhelms you."
  • "just pick one thing and do it, I pick the smallest thing if I'm feeling unmotivated. As you start chipping away the motivation will come to tackle the larger things."

Great tips, and a good time to mention The Procrastination Dash and most especially The (10+2)*5 Hack.

Guesstimating portions with real-world objects

Typical Portion Control Tips/Guidelines

“Deck of cards, Merlin; deck of cards,” my friend Dennis would always say as we sat down to eat ribeyes the size of kittens.

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Pick of the Week: Plain Text Wiki bundle for TextMate

plain text wiki (20 May 2007, Interconnected)

TextMate users in search of a simple wiki should check out Matt Webb's new plain text wiki bundle. He's made it very easy to quickly generate new "pages" and links using nothing but TextMate, the Finder, and CamelCase words:

This is exactly what I need: A bunch of text documents that I'll be able to read at any point in the future, in a wiki structure that will be simple to implement in most extensible text editors.

I'd also note that Matt's bundle works handsomely with Quicksilver's venerable prepend/append and new file functionalities, so, once you've taken the requisite 45 seconds to set this up, you don't necessarily need to even be in TextMate to make additions. You gotta love text.

Nice work, Matt.


Edit 2007-05-22 17:36:17 Forever confusing my British Matts; This bundle is by Matt Webb not the also-wonderfully-talented-and-funny Matt Jones. Many thanks to jjg for the correction. 43 Folders regrets the error.

What does everyone drive?

What does everyone drive?

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TOPICS: Grabass

RII & "What would Descartes subscribe to?"

Rands In Repose: Repetitive Information Injury

The other day someone asked if all my hot-roddding, organization, and Mac fu have truly made me any more "productive," and I said what I usually say: "Yeah, on most days, absolutely. But sometimes I'm just procrastinating with lightning efficiency."

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Sciral Consistency: Track Fuzzy Interval Tasks

Sciral Consistency lets you track repeating tasks using fuzzy intervals.

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Email in the WSJ; Drupal Fastsearch; Getting Things Written; Finding Lunch 2.0; Butt-kickin' Bourne

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