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

Open Thread: What's your killer app?

The other day I was talking with someone about the novel and non-obvious ways that people use Excel in their work and home life. Gotta say, I’ve personally seen some pretty amazing stuff happen when people take a favorite app, get really good at it, then bend it to their will. (And Excel is perfect for this.)

This tracks to Danny’s Life Hack concept by which the alpha geeks were achieving lofty heights of productivity partly by mastering 1-3 “killer apps” – then using them to solve most of their information and functional problems in fairly novel ways.

So my question for you: What’s your killer app? Is there one place where 80% or more of your activity takes place (by choice)? Vim? Excel? Perl? Firefox? Post-it Notes? What’s yours and when did you realize you’d become a badass at using it?

JoAnna's picture

What’s yours and...

What’s yours and when did you realize you’d become a badass at using it?

Filemaker and TypeIt4Me.

I realized I became a filemaker expert when my husband started calling me from work and asking ME for advice on creating fields & layouts. And, in the past, I did consult on it professionally for one of the big media commpanies in hollywood.

You don’t need to be an expert to have TI4M be wonderful, you just have to program in your own intuitive shortcuts for things you either don’t want to type out, or things that you have to repeatedly type but don’t have the capacity to remember. it’s like Word’s autocorrect on steroids. It is truly one of the most elegant applications out there.

I am visibly crippled on the rare instance when I have to work on someone else’s computer.

 
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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.