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.

What text files do you use?

I started keeping text files of ideas a year or two ago, but the system quickly collapsed due to its own complexity.

I am a journalist and a blogger, and so I started out with three files. -- blog ideas and article ideas. I also had a file called "inbox" for random thoughts, most of which would get turned into GTD next actions.

The first difficulty I encountered was that it wasn't always clear, up front, what's going to turn out to be a blog, and what will be an article. Back then, I went by gut feeling, now I think I have some good thumb rules -- but either way, this decision should not be made at this stage of the process.

Then I said to myself, "I really ought to group similar ideas together, because they're likely to all end up in the same article or blog." For instance, I'm a Second Life enthusiast, and I'm working up a list-type blog post or article: "N Easy Things Second Life Can Do To Make Itself More Useful And Attractive" So I really ought to group all those ideas into a separate file.

So I started keeping separate files for separate projects. Separate ideas for separate contexts, too -- for example, I'm one of those people who gets only limited time with his boss, so I had a whole list with the filename, "@Tom."

Quickly, I had a half-dozen lists, then a dozen, and eventually the whole thing got too hairy and I had to give it up.

But then I heard Merlin's talk at Macworld, and he mentioned, in passing, while making another point, an "ideas" file. And I thought to myself, "One file for EVERY idea. That's the ticket!" Just open Quicksilver whenever I have an idea for something, invoke the append-to command, append the idea to the "ideas" file, and then move on. Read through the file and organize occasionally. Very much in the spirit of the "trusted system" in GTD.

Only now I've opened a second file -- I've started a Facebook group for InformationWeek (the publication I work for), and I'm using the "Post" command to post links to selected articles. I like to do that once a day. When I see an article during the day that should be promoted, I append it to the "promo" group, and I plan to check that group every morning.

I put next actions in OmniFocus. It's usually pretty easy right upfront to tell what's an "idea" and what's a "next action." Or it seems that way to me.

Which leads to the question:

What sorts of lists and plain text files do you keep?

mactheweb's picture

Scrivener

I've tried plain text files, DEVONthink, Yojimbo, Notebook and a couple of other organizers that I don't remember offhand. I finally found a good fit for my organization, Scrivener. It's a writing program but also a great place to drop quotes, ideas, web pages, images and so on.

In addition to nested folders, a clipping service, which offers the ability to append the contents of the clipboard to an existing note or create a new one, and the ability to use one program for both writing and research, it offers a nice full screen writing mode and I can view items in a notecard view which is drag and drop sortable.

 
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. »