HOWTO

How to Use 43 Folders

Merlin — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 19:20:05 -0400

A very simple guide to leaving here quickly so you can get back to making something awesome.

Ask yourself…

Why am I here right now instead of making something cool on my own? What’s the barrier to me starting that right now?

This is not an insult or put-down. It’s a useful question. Please, think about it, then search the site to see if we have anything that might inspire you to make something awesome today.

What Sucks?

Looking for specific answers to what sucks for you today?

“My email sucks.”
“My attention management sucks.”
“My compulsive web browsing sucks.”
“My lack of resolve to put my art first sucks.”
“My procrastination sucks.”
“No, seriously. My procrastination really sucks.”
“My fiddling with ‘productivity systems’ sucks.”
“My to-do list sucks.”
“My blog sucks.”
“My band’s stupid website sucks.”
“My meetings suck.”
“My PowerPoint presentation sucks.”
“I suck.”

More ideas

Still sucking? No problem. Here’s more places to scratch around.

Popular now — Here are the hottest articles on our site (right this minute).

Title	Recent
Getting started with "Getting Things Done"	307
Introducing the Hipster PDA	141
Cranking	102
Procrastination hack: '(10+2)*5'	82
Hack your way out of writer's block	57

Our Most Popular Posts — Okay, technically, it’s the most popular from January 2007 til now. But, you know. You get the gist.

Title	All-time
Getting started with "Getting Things Done"	2049602
"Perfect" iTunes equalizer setting	1634614
Introducing the Hipster PDA	1496500
Writing sensible email messages	547535
Building a Smarter To-Do List, Part I	521925

Still Lost?

Try a mental sweep, do a shitty first draft, or consider a modest change.

Maybe just get away from the computer for a while by taking a nice walk. Without your phone. We’ll still be here when you come back. Promise.

How to Know When You’re Done Here

You’re done here whenever you’ve found just enough information to get you back on track for today. If we don’t have the right fit for you, we sincerely hope it won’t take you half a day of surfing to figure that out.

We love having you visit with us here, and we hope you’ll return many times — whenever you think we might have something that might help you get over the hump. But.

The Only “Productivity” That Matters

The best advice we can offer is to just put your head down, push yourself harder, and try to figure out what you need to change today to get a little better.

“Productivity” isn’t about about making more widgets per hour or being efficient and organized for its own anal-retentive sake. Real productivity means getting faster at moving the crap off your desk so you can have room to focus on the creative work that only you can do.

Figure out how to do that every morning, and you’ll be ready to go pro.

”How to Use 43 Folders” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on September 05, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Deciding Whether to Read a Book: Some Wildly Reductive Heuristics

Merlin — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:42:04 -0400

People send me lots of books, so I have to decide rather quickly whether one should be added to the ambitious pile of stuff I already really want to finish reading.

On the off chance that you care or find it useful in developing your own filtering, here's my insanely reductive, mean-busy-guy way to make a 90-second decision on whether to read a new non-fiction book from an author I'm not familiar with.

It does not matter whether you agree with these; that's how you know they're personal heuristics. Also, they are almost uniformly unfair and unkind. So.

For each question, my preferred answer would be "No." Few of these are dealkillers, but they do quickly aggregate to make the decision easy and obvious for me.

At the highest level, is this book's topic based on the typical "zeitgeist" product that gets greenlit by someone who watches lots of golf on TV and who seldom finishes reading the 1,000-word "features" found in in-flight magazines?
Does the book have one of those irksome, "Everything You Know About Everything is Completely WRONG!" titles?
Is the author's large, whitish face the primary feature of the cover?
Does the cover art contain high heels, Mistral, or any reference to either Oprah Winfrey, Joel Osteen, or "Dr. Phil?"
Can you find the word "secret" anywhere on the cover of the book?
Is the book published by a company that you've never heard of -- or, far worse, does that company appear to share the last name of the author or his yacht?
In the event that this is a book by a "famous" person: if the book were written by someone you'd never heard of, would your interest in the book or its topic wane significantly?
Are there a very large number of "intentionally blank" white pages at the beginning and end of the book? Are there an astonishingly large number of pages that have been provided for "Notes?"
Does the Table of Contents lack at least 10% stuff that sounds kind of familiar to you (and at least 30% stuff that does not)?
Does the first non-front-matter material in the book (often a "Preface" or "Introduction") seem like a damp hotel room towel that's matted with the author's self-congratulation? Is it primarily a sales tool for persons who will never read any further? Does the author seem more arrogant than confident?
Does the book's body or heading text suffer from careless or illegible typesetting? Does the book look like an unfinished government manual? Should the designer be horse-whipped for choosing a bold display face for body text?
Does the book suffer from the overlarge margins, giant type, two-paragraph pages, and "inspiring quotations" that often suggest a rushed, shoddy, or lazy manuscript?
Have you already found erors and misspelings?
Does the book's index seem weak or does it not contain entries for the topic or person whom you most associate with the book's theme or title?
Does page 69 bore, vex, or annoy you?
Can you imagine a future in which closing this book on the last page will make you angry that you didn't just go back and re-read A Confederacy of Dunces instead?
Now that you know about this book and have thought about all these horribly petty little things, can you imagine not reading it this week?

No on all counts? Good! You've found your book. Happy reading.

And, a propos of nothing, here's my current non-fiction pile. If you wanted your book to earn a spot, you'd need to beat this competition (some of which do break at least one of these rules, but all trump on quality and great writing).

The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp
- This is the second-best non-fiction book I've read this year, after the amazing On Writing
Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting by Robert Mckee
When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
A General Theory of Love by Thomas Lewis, Richard Lannon, and Fari Amini
Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky

Noted in passing: all the books on the list were purchased by me with actual money. One data point on how many freebies currently make my cut.

”Deciding Whether to Read a Book: Some Wildly Reductive Heuristics” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on August 27, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Nuclear reset for .Mac syncing

Merlin — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:37:01 -0500

How-To: Truly reset your .Mac sync data [Ars Technica]

I never have trouble finding company when it comes to whining about the reliability of .Mac syncing. It's surely not fair to lay all of this at the feet of the .Mac developers -- sync is, we are often reminded, "hard." But if you want to rely on syncing your Calendars, Contacts, Preferences, snippets, Yojimbo, and what have you via .Mac in a battlefield environment, you're going to need a strong stomach, a lot of patience, and reliable backups. Plus, friends, you will regularly have to _reset frickin' everything_.

Entirely overfamiliar with that particular reality, I was pleased to get pointed toward David Chartier's tutorial on saving your .Mac's village by burning it to the ground. It's a handy, illustrated companion piece to Apple's own advice on scorching earth. Very handy, and, yeah, you will eventually need it. So print it out. Maybe even have it laminated.

Apple's .Mac syncing features are sometimes no exception to these problems, and even though Apple provides a number of decent solutions in its .Mac sync support pages, they don't always work. Fortunately, a brief adventure using .Mac sync chat support (found at the bottom of that aforelinked page) cleared up a repeating "merge/overwrite" sync dialog problem for me, and we felt the procedure was worth sharing.

FWIW, here's a few other things I do (as a raving .Mac paranoiac):

manually backup Address Book and iCal Calendars once a week ("File > Export..."); periodically ".bz" and Gmail them to myself
backup all important "~/Library" files offsite via something like Mozy
Whenever it occurs to you, burn a quick CD of your iDisk (or at least throw your most important stuff onto an encrypted Disk Image on a USB stick)

Also -- and I loathe admitting this -- I have accepted that one of our household's Macs is "the master" (i.e., the "the first Mac you re-register" mentioned in David's piece). This means one Mac in the house gets extra-special backup attention as well as being the "winner" whenever I have to do the (increasingly weekly) nuclear reset David describes in this tutorial.

In an ideal world, you should have so much redundant reliability that you can reset from any recently updated machine -- I mean, isn't that the point of syncing? But, as you quickly learn, that's simply not feasible when things suddenly go kerplooey on multiple Macs over a short interval. But, by always knowing where to restart your electronic Marshall Plan -- which box is the true "original" in the .Mac chicken-waving ritual -- you'll have quicker recoveries and a less frustrating experience in general.

There's no pride to be found in being a .Mac whiner. As I've said before, I believe the .Mac offering is the vorpal blade that Apple's hiding under its cape. Done well -- fixed well -- .Mac has the potential to reliably unify every Apple user's digital world. But for now? Yeah, it's more like owning a Fiat where your toolbox always gets to ride shotgun.

[via]

”Nuclear reset for .Mac syncing” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on February 26, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

The Great Keyboard Bath of 2007

gordonmeyer — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 23:48:08 -0500

A few months back I read Scott Machella's story, via BoingBoing's post, about cleaning a computer keyboard by putting it in the dishwasher. From the little bit I know about electronics, it rang true to me but I didn't feel compelled to actually try it. At least, not at first.

The thing about a dirty keyboard is that it's only dirty if you notice it. I'm a touch-typer, so I rarely look down. But once the aforementioned articles caused me to examine my own keyboards, I was sorry that I looked. Yuck. Clearly, I had to do something about it.

Scott wrote about how he let his keyboard dry out for 5 days, and given my own impatient nature, I thought it best to wait until I was going to be out of town before giving it a try. But I decided to go whole-hog and wash both my beloved Matias Tactile Pro Keyboard and my Apple Bluetooth Keyboard at the same time. (My Apple Bluetooth Keyboard is the original, white plastic model. Not the current slim metallic work of art.)

The Tactile Pro's USB cable can't be removed, so I wrapped it up tightly with a twist-tie. For the Apple keyboard, I removed the batteries and left the battery door cover off. I decided not to remove the keycaps on either of them, having done that in the distant past (while replacing the keyboard springs on my Atari ST) and found it to be too nerve wracking and tedious. But on the whole I followed Scott's process. The hardest part was figuring out how to turn off the drying cycle and suppress the rinse-chemical additive on my dishwasher.

After the washing was over, I shook out as much water as I could, then propped-up the keyboards so they'd drain. (See the photo. The other item pictured is an extension cord that I also washed; it was impulse add-on.) Both keyboards dripped like crazy for a long time, but by the next morning there was only a slight fog of moisture visible inside the clear parts of the Apple keyboard. I resisted all temptation to plug them in, and then left town for 7 days.

Upon my return, both keyboards were completely dry, of course. They were also sparkling-clean and—the moment you're waiting for—functioned perfectly. Hurray! A time-efficient and effective path to cleanliness. What a great feeling. Hey, this mouse looks a little dirty too…

”The Great Keyboard Bath of 2007” was written by Gordon Meyer for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on December 11, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Break out of "phone jail" with GetHuman

Merlin — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 15:49:01 -0400

In yesterday's post about putting customer service numbers onto your mobile phone, commenter Joe suggested checking out Paul English's wonderful GetHuman, a website that diligently collects and updates the phone numbers (and key punches) necessary to get you straight through to a human being at 500 well-known companies.

I realize this site is ancient news to a lot of you, but I couldn't believe I'd never featured it in its own post here; I've been loving and using the crap out of GH (and the preceding IVR) for years now. Consider the oversight rectified.

Paul also shares some smart tips for intrepid information seekers (Hint: that fast "0" mashing tip has worked great for me):

Interrupt. Press 0 (or 0# or #0 or 0* or *0) repeatedly, sometimes quickly. Unfortunately the same keystroke does not always work for each company. Many IVRs will connect to a human after a few "invalid entries", although some IVRs will hangup. :-(

Talk. Say "get human" (or "agent" or "representative") or raise your voice, or just mumble. :) The IVR might connect you to a human after one of these key or unknown phrases.

Just hold, pretending you have only an old rotary phone....

A propos of nothing

I seem to recall mathowie once telling me that if you repeatedly scream obscenities at a voice robot, you sometimes get straight through. I’m not sure if it actually ever works, but it just feels great to scream the f-word into a phone sometimes.

Also new to me: here's a list of the 500 companies and their secret knocks that's suitable for printing at teeny-tiny size and sticking into your notebook or backpack. Or -- if you're feeling particularly ambitious -- one imagines it wouldn't be too hard to convert the HTML table into a CSV file that could pretty easily be munged into an importable list. Just if you're feeling ambitious.

Confidential to Paul: If it's not a programmatic nightmare for you, I suspect that exporting your list to a downloadable vCard (with the secret code in "Notes") would make you a hero. Also? You need you a prominent PayPal link, my friend. :) Great work, and thanks.

Update 2007-10-06 17:27:12 PDT

cshneid and dansays have each done us the honor of mashing up a vCard version of the GetHuman 500. So now you can get all 500 numbers into Address Book (and onto your iPhone) with a nice, easy import. Worked great for me!

See post comments for more info. -- mdm

Update 2007-10-07 07:06:26 PDT

Paul has added a tab-separated file and a vCard version of the gethuman database on his site. Whenever the database is updated, you can grab a new copy for your Address Book. Thanks for the fast response, Paul. more »

”Break out of "phone jail" with GetHuman” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on October 06, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Becoming a tagging kung-fu master

Ian Beck — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 09:28:24 -0400

You’ve heard the hype about tagging. You’ve seen people flocking to sites like Flickr and del.icio.us, where they jump head-first into a pulsing mass of disjointed tags, possibly never to be heard from again. And you’ve wondered: how exactly is tagging worthwhile again?

Any idiot can tag, but you want tags that are useful rather than a disorganized mess. This is not an unreasonable desire, and by completing three simple steps before you start tagging, you too can become a tagging kung-fu master. (Or, if you want more intellectual cred, explicate your personal taxonomy.)

Whether you are tagging in a private, public, or collaborative system, consistency is the byword when tagging. Without a consistent pattern you won’t know what tags to assign items, what tags to search for to find items, or what items you’ll likely get while browsing your tags. The following three steps will help you create a consistent pattern to follow. Even if you’ve been tagging for a while, you may find these steps helpful to refine your knowledge of your own tagging habits and practices. (Please note, however, that these steps are focused on developing a personal tagging system; to optimize your tagging for collaborative use you would need to develop your system somewhat differently.)

Step 1: Know what

Are you tagging PDFs in Yep, notes in Notae, characters in Avenir, or photos in iPhoto ‘08? Whether you’re tagging in one program or several, you need to make a list of the general types of different items that you want to tag.

Tagging many different kinds of items does not make planning a tagging system much more complicated, but because you’ll tag different kinds of items differently you definitely need to think about what you’re going to tag.

Step 2: Know when

Part of knowing your target is knowing what kind of metadata is already available to you (through, say, Spotlight or the Finder) and not duplicating that metadata in your tags. For instance, every file in Mac OS X has a date created and date modified attached to it. As a result, tagging your files with a date is typically a silly idea. Tagging Word documents “word” is also redundant; the system knows which documents are Word documents and finding all of them is only a saved search away. Before you proceed to the third step, you need to make sure you know what information about your target you already have available. You don’t have to write it down if you don’t want to; just be aware.

Although there may be some situations in which you want to tag an item with every possible tag you can think of, most of the time you will want to keep your tags succinct and well-targeted, which means avoiding redundancy. Tags may be extremely flexible but they are the least efficient kind of metadata in some ways because they have no indication what they are marking. When you search the “date modified” field, you know exactly what you’re finding. An “05-31-2007” tag, on the other hand, could be any number of things.

Step 3: Pick your attributes

This is the heart of a consistent tagging system, and can be summed up in a single question: how do you think about the item you are tagging? For instance, when you are filing or searching for a photo, what do you think of? The location of the photo? The subject or people in the photo? The event taking place when you took the photo? Something else entirely?

Write out a list of the attributes that you think of when thinking of your target items. Ideally, you should make this a brainstormed list that includes every attribute you can possibly think of that you might want to tag. As you make the list for your different target items, star the attributes that spring immediately to mind.

Once you have a list, go through it to weed out the attributes that are covered by the item’s non-tag metadata. Then go through it again and pick out what attributes you want to use for tagging. Try to keep it a short, specific list focused on the attributes that sprang immediately to mind. You should also add attributes that didn’t spring immediately to mind, but that you want to make a habit of tagging anyway because they will be useful.

When you have this list of attributes, you are ready to tag. You should probably put your list of attributes somewhere visible, for example a Post-It by your computer or a virtual sticky note on-screen, at least until you’ve either memorized them or developed good tagging habits.

When you’re tagging, try to consistently attach a tag for every one of the attributes that you’ve selected. The more often you can hit all of them, the easier it will be for you to find files later. Additionally, knowing what attributes you are tagging makes coming up with specific tags much easier. Rather than sitting worrying over every photograph you can quickly attach a location, person, and event (or whatever attributes you decide on). Ideally, your attributes and tags should fit into the following sentence: “This [item]’s [attribute] is [tag].” For example, “this photo’s location is New York.”

The specific tags that you use will doubtless shift over time and circumstance, but the attributes that you are tagging should remain much more stable. By defining a standardized set of attributes for each kind of item that you are tagging and only deviating when necessary (or when the way you think about a given type of item begins to change), you will be able to create a consistent tagging system that helps you find items quickly because it matches the way you think.

And more importantly, you will have taken your first steps on the road to becoming a full tagging kung-fu master. Or developing a stream-lined personal taxonomy. Whichever works for you.

”Becoming a tagging kung-fu master” was written by Ian Beck for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on October 05, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"