43 Folders

Back to Work

Merlin’s weekly podcast with Dan Benjamin. We talk about creativity, independence, and making things you love.

Join us via RSS, iTunes, or at 5by5.tv.

”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

"TTTk" puts MacGyver in an Altoids tin

Escape My Head: TTTk, Travel Tinker Trouble Kit

Justin has been working on a "Travel Tinker Trouble Kit" (TTTk, natch), which he conceived "to provide access to a variety of tools and supplies at a moment's notice." The initial list included:

read more »

Humane mouse catcher; Smarter RSS; Fanboy? Me?; Color namer; HTML greys; Better 404s; Hilarious ecards

  • Chris Glass’s humane mouse entrap-i-natorHow to catch a mouse without a mousetrap - 43f’s designer, Chris Glass, shares his humane mouse mojo. “Set the fella loose at least a mile away from your abode. Postnote: It worked within the hour.”
  • notes on ‘dancing monkey rss reader’ - “I would like an RSS reader with a button that says 'Gimme 5' and it loads only five posts people with similar subscriptions are reading within the last 24 hours.” I want something kinda related for email — show me exactly 5 messages that need a response (then, let me get back to work)
  • Daring Fireball on switcher-come-latelies - “There’s a whole class of recent switchers who define ‘Apple fanboy’ as ‘anyone who’s been an enthusiastic Mac user since before I switched to the Mac.’”
  • Name that ColorName that Color - Chirag Mehta : chir.ag - “Being a typical guy, I have no clue what the colors Lavender and Mauve look like. You can show me Indigo and I won’t know if it’s more like Violet or Purple. So I made this little app where you can create a color on the screen (or copy-paste CSS hex# color) and find out the name of the closest matching color.”
  • greys : Java Glossary - Me? I love me some greys, and I like seeing them all at once with their hex codes. Handy.
  • A List Apart: Articles: The Perfect 404 - Seems like a smarter person than me could make a pretty nice “similar to what you searched for” using Drupal and Views Fast Search. Sounds like a job for the Lazy Web. Any takers?
  • someecards.com - “When you care enough to hit ‘send.’” Hilarious ecards, nearly all in terrible taste, and outfitted with awful Reagan-era clip art. Pure gold.
TOPICS: Daily Links

Lamy

TOPICS: Lofi

Calling all Terminal nerds

When you find a web resource that would be helpful to a new OSX Terminal user, post it to del.cio.us with the tag, “OSXCLI”. It's a project or something.

read more »

Flowchart software for OSX?

Flowchart software for OSX?

read more »
TOPICS: Mac OS X

URLinfo's handy site tools bookmarklet

URLinfo beta || Fagan Finder

Fast access to site and domain infoI’ve linked to Fagan Finder’s URLinfo Bookmarklet before (via del.icio.us), but I can’t resist sharing it again here.

Like most cool stuff, it’s easier to use than to explain, but in a nutshell, when visiting a site, you click the bookmarklet and it gives you instant access to a bunch of popular, very useful web-based tools. Virtually any kind of information you might want about a site or a domain is presented in a well-structured, easy-to-navigate frameset using some smart javascript. Some of the highlights include:

read more »
TOPICS: Links, Tips, Tools

Mini-reviews: LabelWriter 400, Polder Vibrating Timer, "Beyond Bullet Points"

I was adding a few items I recently bought and enjoyed over in the right rail, and by the time I was done writing the “TITLE” tags I realized I had three shortie reviews.

After the cut, LabelWriter 400 by Dymo, Vibrating Digital Timer by Polder, and Beyond Bullet Points by Cliff Atkinson.

read more »

Gruber on "Rethinking Email"

Rethinking Email

Good insight from Chairman Gruber, related to the email system he's started employing since moving to Mail.app

...I can classify all incoming personal email into three broad categories: (a) messages that are either very important or very interesting; (b) messages that are utterly non-interesting; and (c) those which fall somewhere in-between.

The vast majority of my email falls into the latter category. Under my previous “system”, I let them pile up in my inboxes, under the assumption that some day I’d get around to answering many of them. Under the new system, if I don’t respond immediately after reading them, they go right into my archive. Out of sight, out of mind.

For folks who haven't crossed the line to where this realization really clicks, I understand that this can sound harsh, even uncaring. But once you have gotten into the habit, you realize the amount of bullshit you had been shoveling to yourself -- hoping that all that stuff in your inbox, which you knew in your heart you'd never do anything about, would just...what?...grow wings and fly a response back to its sender? It's daft.

It's so tough to be honest with yourself about your real situation with email, but once you've made the admission, you're weirdly freed up to communicate more authentically, and, in my experience, with a renewed enthusiasm.

Add tags to gmail using del.icio.us e.g.

Using gmail I always missed a decent tagging feature. The labels provided are fine to mark general categories, e.g. @home, @work or @@waiting_for

If you are not working on more then a dozen projects you might use labels as well to sort your mails into projects. But when it comes to more granular tagging, labels definitely are no longer a solution.

read more »

DIY Planner: Binder?

DIY Planner: Binder?

read more »
TOPICS: Lofi
 
EXPLORE 43Folders THE GOOD STUFF

Popular
Today

Popular
Classics

An Oblique Strategy:
Honor thy error as a hidden intention


STAY IN THE LOOP:

Subscribe with Google Reader

Subscribe on Netvibes

Add to Technorati Favorites

Subscribe on Pageflakes

Add RSS feed

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. »