Time and Attention

Video: Merlin's Time & Attention Talk (Improvised Rutgers Edition)

Merlin — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 15:57:09 -0400

Video: Merlin Mann - "Time & Attention Talk (improvised)"

Audio (mp3): "Merlin Mann - 'Rutgers Time & Attention Talk'"

This is a talk I did at Rutgers earlier this month. I kinda like it, but for a weird reason. Something something, perfect storm of technology Ragnarok, and yadda yadda, I had to start the talk 20 minutes late with no slides. Nothing.

So, I riffed.

And, I ended up talking about a lot of the new stuff you can expect to see in the Inbox Zero book—work culture, managing expectations, the 3 deadly qualities of email, and one surprising reason email's not as much fun as Project Runway.

Some people liked it. I think. I liked it. I hope you do, too.

Here's the slides I would have shown. ;-)

Who Moved My Brain? Revaluing Time & Attention

Many thanks, again, to my great pal, Dr. Donald Schaffner, for bringing me in for this visit. I had a great time and met some fantastic, passionate people. Much appreciated.

Hey—know anybody who should hear this talk? Hmmm?

I’ll bet. Lucky you, you can hire me to deliver this or any of my other talks to the time- and attention-addled people you work with as well.

Current topics include email, meetings, social media, and future-proofing your passion.

Drop a note if you have an upcoming event where you think we two might be a good ﬁt.

update 2010-04-27_13-50-00

Apologies—my friends at Rutgers (inexplicably) have placed this video under lock and key. Fortunately, I have a lock-picker called Firefox. Samizdat video available soon...

update 2010-04-27_14-42-24

Yay, fixed! Many thanks to my hero, Jesse Schibilia.

”Video: Merlin's Time & Attention Talk (Improvised Rutgers Edition)” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on April 27, 2010. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

43f Podcast: Gangs, Constraints, and Courageous Blocks

Merlin — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 10:57:36 -0500

iTunes: "Gangs, Constraints, and Courageous Blocks"

Learn how ganging and constraints can help you create the blocks of time you need to devote 100% of your attention to making your best work. (10:32)

This text will be replaced

Thanks for your patience, everybody. Nice to be back.

”43f Podcast: Gangs, Constraints, and Courageous Blocks” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on February 03, 2009. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

The High Cost of Pretending

Merlin — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 10:39:50 -0500

apophenia: Warning: Email Sabbatical is Imminent .. and other random thoughts

[via trivium]

danah boyd is finishing her dissertation, then going on vacation for a month. While, she's gone, she's not accepting email. At all. Got that?

No apology. No "vacation message" to pretend she'll read it later. And no implied promise that the stuff people send to her will magically be tended to by an invisble army of interns and elves. While she's away, every message she receives is simply discarded with a friendly response as to why. danah writes:

...I believe that email eradicates any benefits gained from taking a vacation by collecting mold and spitting it back out at you the moment you return. As such, I've trained my beloved INBOX to reject all email during vacation. I give it a little help in the form of a .procmail file that sends everything directly to /dev/null. The effect is very simple. You cannot put anything in my queue while I'm away (however lovingly you intend it) and I come home to a clean INBOX. Don't worry... if you forget, you'll get a nice note from my INBOX telling you to shove off, respect danah's deeply needed vacation time, and try again after January 19.

If you roll your eyes at such fancy, uppity, big-city behavior, consider the alternatives most of us suffer in order to pretend we're listening. Even when we know we're not.

At worst, we lie: both to ourselves and to others.

We play this pantomime game where we continue to offer contemporary life's default level of extraordinary personal access to anyone who seeks it -- even at the times when we have no intention of, or ability to, do anything about what people use that access to ask of us. And, that's a small but telling lie.

You ever done the opposite of what danah is doing? Where you come back from a vacation during which you half-checked email from a mobile device, ignored most of it, and didn't properly finish processing the rest? Sure, you have. And, what happened?

Well, if you're like most people, you deleted a lot of the messages without even reading them. Right? Or, what? You spent 2 or 3 days reading and responding to everything? Even while new (and inarguably more salient) stuff piled up? Right. Smart.

So, maybe you prefer to think of it as mismanaging expectations. Because you feel guilty about just ignoring everything you implied you'd do something about, and you still feel the pressure to do something with all of it -- even if it's just responding with a template or writing back to say how busy you are, and, Sorry! but I'm still getting to this. SORRY!

Or. You could have told the truth. Don't send me email. I won't see it. Write me later.

danah's decision would be so wrong for so many people that it's mind-boggling to contemplate. But it is her decision, and doing anything but congratulating her on having the courageousness to unambiguously manage such a giant expectation would be cynical and (yep) dishonest. This is some bold shit, and, you know what? That scares the hell out of people.

In my experience, most of us are terrified of being told the truth, even about something as seemingly trivial as email. It's so much easier and more comfortable for all the parties in a relationship to fall back on the pseudo-polite non-communication that lets us pretend to pay attention to each other on a massive scale. And, right now, this is a really important thing that very few people are talking about.

Even if we call this something less than "a lie," we're still stuck with the depressing prospect of a secret and shameful existence in which pretending to pay attention to people is less damaging than simply admitting we don't have the cycles to be a big phony. That pretending is a more important use of your time than doing things. That anyone who pretends to pay attention to each of us is entitled to the same nonsense courtesy.

Stress comes from dissonance. When two things in your mind can't be resolved and you start thinking you're going to be stuck with the incongruity forever, you stress.

But, as much as our minds and our hearts encourage us to believe the fault goes to our will or our lack of industry -- rather than our thinking and cognition -- the true cure for stress is to cut the Gordian Knot. To change your mind about at least one thing you think you're not allowed to change your mind about.

You alter the game when you re-write the rules. And, in this instance, if you find yourself more occupied with maintaining the lie than you are with doing the real work that the lie's meant to support, it's probably time to drop the lie. And, it also wouldn't hurt to get unbelievably real about what you really do, rather than how and when you move bits.

Thing is, it's not kindness that makes you see honesty as a dick move; it's fear. And whenever you let fear drive, you're going to end up in some dark, weird places where email ends up seeming like the least of your problems.

No, we can't all turn off the inputs in our life whenever we want. But we can damned sure do the more significant thing danah did here. We can create meaningful and sustainable expectations about how, when, or whether we'll respond to each of the inputs in our world. We can be candid about the level of attention strangers and friends can expect from us. And, when the time is appropriate, we can find the stomach to tell the world we're not even pretending to listen.

”The High Cost of Pretending” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on December 09, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

43 Folders: Time, Attention, and Creative Work

Merlin — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 13:14:34 -0400

["what is this?"]

Here's something I wrote last week for this site's new "About" page:

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

Call it a motto, or a charter, or -- if you have to -- a "mission statement." But, for both of us, it's a stake in the ground that keeps me focused on what I feel best suited to do for you with this site right now.

I want to help you identify and remove any obstacle that keeps you from making things that you love. And then I want to help you figure out how to make those things even better. That's pretty much it.

R.I.P., Productivity Pr0n

Friends, I'm done with "productivity" as a personal fetish or hobby. There are countless sites that are all too happy to vend stroke material for your joyless addiction to puns about procrastination and systems for generating more taxonomically satisfying meta-work. But, presently, you won't find so much of that here.

Except inasmuch as it can help move aside barriers to finishing the projects that you claim matter to you, "productivity" is often a sprawling ghetto of well-marketed nonsense for people who really just need a ritalin and a hug. So, for myself, random tips and lists that aren't anchored to solving a real-world problem for a smart but flawed adult with a mind are dead to me. Pour a forty on 'em.

From now on, I'm going to talk about how people make stuff. Books, art, code, buildings, ballets, companies, furniture, whimsical hats, songs, or what have you. But understand: this isn't just for fancy people and fine arts majors.

You're already "creative"

If the work that really matters to you involves understanding a relationship between a handful of seemingly unrelated things and then figuring out the best way to portray, magnify, or resolve those relationships, then you're already doing creative work. Any time you make a connection between two or more axes that hadn't occurred to you 10 minutes ago, yes, you've done something creative. Seriously. This does not require your wearing a beret.

But, then -- and this is really important -- if you want to actually make something out of all that insight, and if you have the will and desire to polish and improve the execution of all the things you produce, then we'll have a lot to talk about.

But, if you want a "site about GTD," "a blog about index cards," or a wide-mouthed sluice of recycled links to lists of geegaws that will keep you momentarily distracted from how sad you are, then you're wasting both of our time here. So, go. You're stinking up the joint.

This is now a site for people who want to finish things that they care about -- but who still occasionally need help, inspiration, and the courage to push all the bullshit off their work table. This is about clearing that space every day, and then using it to do cool stuff that makes you proud.

So. What, then?

Does this mean that Inbox Zero, Time and Attention Management, or advice on reducing noise will be going away from 43 Folders? No. Freaking. Way.

If I may say, that's all great stuff, and you're still going to need it if the mind is willing but the attention is occasionally weak (or under attack). No, if anything, you'll be seeing more articles targeted at how to do this stuff well so you can get back into the studio faster.

You're also going to see more material about the habits and patterns that have been demonstrated to work for makers who have had long-lived careers in the creative world. In itself, this is the direction I'm most fascinated with right now, and it's likely one I'll be returning to often in the coming months:

How do you fire your muse and learn to rely solely on working your ass off every day?

As I'm learning, it definitely can be done, but there's no secret or silver bullet; it's just work, work, work, combined with a personal commitment to editing and improvement that produces the best results of which you're capable as often as possible. It's the kind of productivity that's about applying your time to frequent, high-quality "releases" -- not laying in a hammock while people in Bangalore update your website.

But, what about all the cool notebooks, links to lists of "GTD resources," and ponderously detailed tutorials on how to label a file folder? Yeah. From now on, maybe don't expect a lot of that here. Unless I feel it has a direct link to helping you do things.

Here’s the thing

A notebook is basically the creative equivalent of the NFL jersey you picked up at Macy’s; unless you fill it with a lot of hard work and sacrifices, you’re just a dilettante with poor spending patterns. An aspiring something. A fan of the game. An existential cosplayer. And, that’s not what I want to help you to be. Even if you really love Moleskines or the Raiders, God love ‘em.

So, we're going to talk about what goes in the notebook; not the fact that it's pretty and has a little bookmark. Then I want you to leave here.

That's the basic idea. We'll see what evolves.

And, there's these other things

I'm also working on some other stuff for the site that I hope will please more people than it annoys. In any case, they're each important to me. Here's the shape of the map.

1. Less noise in general

Less chrome, less noise, less blah-blah, and less unnecessary anything. On a given day in the future, you may notice this as fewer ads, lower (but higher-quality) post volume, and an ongoing attempt to make the site fast and easy to use. I'm working on this. With money and people and new relationships and so on. More as it develops and becomes worth highlighting.

2. Walking a truer productivity walk

It's important to me that we both try to stay focused on the real goal: which is being done with a project that you care about. It's not about hanging out, smoking cloves, and chatting about "Différance" late into the Paris nights. I want you to visit here, get what you need, then get the hell back to work.

So, if you occasionally notice me smiling, and putting a firm but gentle hand between your shoulder blades as we begin a walk toward the door, it's because that's closer to where your work is. It's not here, it's not in your inbox, and, with all due respect, it's probably not in a list of 5,000 links.

Like I said recently, if you've crossed the river, you should quit carrying the boat. And while I very much hope and desire that you make 43 Folders your first stop when you need to feel inspired and confident about making decisions that support your best work, I truly do not want you to waste time here. That would make me sad.

So, yes, please read this page: How to Use 43 Folders. It's a new page that provides basic guidance on finding fast answers, and ultimately, on helping you figure out why you're here.

I imagine the how-to will evolve as the site evolves, so I would be honored if you would trust me enough to bookmark that page, then consider making it the place where you begin your visits here. With any luck, it can also frequently be the page where your visits quickly end here. And, although I have to imagine it will vex the nice people who are kind enough to sell ads for my site: that's okay by me.

3. Mostly firewalled self-promotion

While it's my site and will always be used to promote my ideas and my business in the way that I think is most appropriate, I also don't want it to turn into a glorified billboard for me -- especially to the exclusion of the writing and ideas that make it theoretically useful. And, especially in the articles and content well. That space is getting more sacrosanct.

With much sadness, I've recently watched some of my most beloved and respected friends' blogs degrade into a depressing slurry of pimping, random affiliate linking, paid (or pseudo-paid) placement, idiotic traffic boosters, and wholesale ego boosting about every bakesale, state fair, or mall opening that its authors plan to chopper into.

Here, except for The Monthly Pimp, I want the content well to stay clean, focused, and worthy of your trust and my credibility. Ads go in the ad zones, and anybody can buy one to sell pretty much anything. But it doesn't buy placement in a 43 Folders post, and it shouldn't buy my association or endorsement elsewhere. Maybe for a truly paid, public endorsement deal; but not for a banner ad buy. That's just weird. Plus I don't own a chicken suit.

This doesn't mean that I won't link to my own work and my other sites and projects whenever I think it's appropriate. It also doesn't mean I'll stop linking to Amazon for products or A2 for web hosting when it's germane to what I have to say. But, I do already have a site that's purely self-promotional. And that's where I'd like most of that that stuff to live now.

OT: If you're a blogger I know and love, maybe at least consider joining me in your own overdue Superfund cleanup to the extent that you're comfortable and able. Too much money can easily buy you a very dumb audience and an astoundingly influential cohort of ex-readers.

4. No more fake "conversations"

I've loved so many of the comments and forum posts on 43 Folders. But, for an endless number of reasons that you've probably seen for yourself across the web, the quality and care of visitor contributions everywhere has hit what I truly hope is rock bottom.

Stupid, venal, ignorant, self-linking comments from people who couldn't be troubled to actually read the article. Angry forum posts full of personal attacks, giant avatars of Manga characters, and 4-vertical-inch signatures about which Golden Girl you are. Nonsense tagging, meta-commenting, ass-kissing, trolling, and...oooo!...video responses....neato! Please. It's nuts and it's pointless and it's really cynical on the part of almost every publisher that allows that crap to go on.

"Conversation," like "friend," is a word that has a meaning to human beings with faces and brains. I will not abuse it as code for the surplus page views produced by someone with an afternoon to kill.

5. This is my site. There are many like it, but this one is mine

43 Folders is now, once again, about what I have to say about things, and I want that to be the sole reason that the idea of a visit here either attracts or repels you.

Yes, there will still be occasional guest posts, open threads, and of course, I'll be linking to and quoting widely from the work of others. But I'm taking a cue from John, Andy, Jason, and anybody else who wants to own every pixel of their site. I'm buying back my own stock, even if it incurs a short-term writedown.

If you have comments about what I say here, post about it on your own blog. That's what it's there for, and it's a place where owning your words will have gravity and, in most cases, will be associated with the name of a real person who doesn't pinch loaves on his own couch.

And, then, there's everything else

Over the next year, I'm going to do lots more speaking, more of my own independent video and podcast projects, and, yes, in all likelihood, I'll finish one book and make progress toward a second.

N.B. In the case of that last thing, it's likely to be the sole public remark I'll have to share until I have a release date, an Amazon page, and a sample chapter for you to download. But, that's getting ahead of myself. We'll see what happens. Do wish me luck.

So, "hi." Again.

I want you to know that I'm back. I'm here. And I'm thinking very much about how 43 Folders can become a focused resource for people who do work that they love and make things that matter to them -- but who just want to do it better and with less bullshit and existential overhead on every conceivable front. And, if it's not clear, I really want that same lack of bullshit and surplus of polish to be evident in my own work as well. It's the goal, anyhow.

We'll see how I do. As ever, it's going to be mostly letters to myself. But, the material is out there, and as much as my schedule for other work and the time I set aside for my family and friends will allow, I want this site to be really consistently good. And, where it's able, I'd love for 43 Folders to help you make your stuff even better.

So, that's it for the throat-clearing and metatalk for now. Thanks for hearing me out, and I hope you'll stop by sometimes if you think 43 Folders can help you make something cool today.

Now: back to work.

”43 Folders: Time, Attention, and Creative Work” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on September 10, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

"Right Now, What Are You Doing?"

Merlin — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 16:18:17 -0400

Right Now: What Are You Doing?

I've started to become a lot pickier about where my attention goes as I observe what it means to my work when it drifts. But, I still have a long way to go. Long way.

Like a lot of people I have a bad habit of CMD-Clicking tab sets in my browser, which then spawns a dozen or more new panes of potential distraction, pointless horseshit, and 10,000 excuses not to focus on what I really want to be making right now.

I whipped up this (rather plain and inefficiently coded) page this morning, and stuck it into every tab set that I tend to abuse: as the first tab I see.

It's not a new idea, it's not particularly interesting or sophisticated, and it's certainly not anything you couldn't whip up for yourself (and better) in about 30 seconds. So, why share it?

Because, your brain needs a Dad. If this can help you, awesome. If your immediate reaction is to think, "Oooo...I know how I can add way more features like a social network and procrastination stats!" hang it up; you're already screwed.

Catch the drifting as it happens, refocus, then repeat as necessary. That's it.

Happy Labor Day, friends, and may you find yourself seeing that little page as seldom as possible.

”"Right Now, What Are You Doing?"” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on September 01, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Attention & Ambiguity: The Non-Paradox of Creative Work

Merlin — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 07:40:22 -0400

Psychology Today: The Creative Personality

[via delicious.com/huxant, w/a reminder by Jack Shedd]

Some days, I can't decide how I feel about Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (say: "chick SENT me high"). He's written some great stuff, but, sometimes, he mixes Big-Word academicspeak with anecdotal observation in a way that smells a little hokey to me.

So, although I'm trying not to audibly roll my eyes at a pop-psychology Top 10 list about creativity's "dialectical tension," I definitely am interested in one of his observations about the "paradox" of creative people.

Creative people combine playfulness and discipline, or responsibility and irresponsibility

This is a theme that comes up again and again when professional artists and writers talk about how they approach their work. I'm thinking in particular of things I've read recently by Stephen King, Anne Lamott, and Twyla Tharp.

Most all makers with longevity talk about a process that involves regular, scheduled work periods that allow generous time for warmups and getting into what Csikszentmihalyi himself has called, "Flow." For as long as he or she can stay in that Flow state, a good artist is capable of synthesizing unbelievably disparate material and ideas in a way that's often satisfying and productive. For those who cannot, it means another morning of video games, Facebook, and binge eating.

Artists who are in the early draft stage of a given project tend to adopt a generative attitude about capturing and accepting whatever shows up without judgment or self-editing -- having a gentle attitude about imperfection that gives "bad" or "incomplete" ideas the same wide berth as the the apparently-great ones.

This is not stressful for the gifted artist who knows the dirty little secret that nobody shits a masterpiece; it's all about editing, re-writing, and shaping the raw materials into something that will eventually become whole, polished, and cohesive. Eventually. But, first, you have to get something down. And that's where that supposed "paradox" sure comes in handy.

My 8th grade English teacher, Mr. Selfe, introduced the concept of the paradox by saying it was something that "contradicts itself...or seems to contradict itself." I recall my 14-year-old self thinking both my teacher and this recursive concept were very profound and deep. But, really, that second part is entirely appropriate here.

The artistic combining of "playfulness and discipline" only seems contradictory to the aspiring artist who believes creativity means buying a beret and playing a Miles Davis record while you shoot black-tar heroin. The truth is that creativity is much more about combining the self-discipline to tolerate ambiguity with the will to transform the results into something meaningful. It's not really contradictory; it's largely an issue of intentionality and attention.

If you can find a regular time and place where you feel safe to let all your ideas sit naked for a while, you're much more likely to produce work you can be proud of. Granted, in the editing process, you'll adopt a schizophrenic alternation between openness and judgment, but it's still not really a paradox at all -- no more than "heads" and "tails" make a coin paradoxical.

Sure: you can call this, "dialectical tension" if you like. But, from a tactical standpoint, this stuff comes down to basic attention management -- finding a way to shut out everything that's not the thing that requires your focus to get made.

And, yeah, "talent" doesn't hurt either, but there's no way to even discover if you have talent until you've made a lot of crap and an occasional good thing, and find a way for that all to be okay. Plus, anyone can tell you, "talent" is like having a nice ass or a rich father; it helps open doors, but the actual work on the other side of the door is all on you.

Donate your beret to Goodwill, clear a Saturday morning, and maybe brew a pot of coffee. You have a lot of work to do, and the paradox is that you can't work on it while you're reading about the non-paradox of creative paradoxes.

How you like that one, Mr. Selfe?

”Attention & Ambiguity: The Non-Paradox of Creative Work” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on August 20, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Closed Doors and Casualties in the "Coup d'attention"

Merlin — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 12:37:31 -0400

Last night, I got home from a lovely one-day trip to do some speaking, and I was catching up on a couple emails before I went to bed. One of the messages was a thoughtful note from someone who works in the US Government (and whose name, job, and identifying elements I'm changing to protect his or her privacy).

"Sally," I'll call her, likes the 43 Folders stuff, but has legitimate concerns about how all this "attention management" stuff might send a wrong or hostile message to her colleagues. It's a great point.

As is so often the case, I ended up realizing I had a lot to say in the response, and, if you'll indulge me, I'd like to share what I had to say to Sally with you, as well. Especially since it's a question that's been coming up a lot, and I'm happy to have had the chance to address it at length.

The Question to Me

“Does managing your attention have to mean acting like a jerk?”

A Nice Exchange with "Sally"

"Sally Griffith" wrote:

Heya, Merlin - big fan of all your talks and trying to figure out a way to get the [BIG US GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT] to hire you to speak to we [KNOWLEDGE WORKERS] who really produce nothing but knowledge - and then only occasionally.

I just looked at your new slide deck. The one thing I didn't see (but you may have covered it in your patter) are the intangible "costs" of working in this way. An open door policy gets you interrupted, but pays off in morale and people thinking that you care. Walling yourself off from distractions, you project a nasty image: if I ever were to give anybody a token that says "don't waste my time," instant loathing and mockery would ensue. So might be a topic for a future MM talk: How do you do Inbox Zero w/o sacrificing the intangibles?

Then I replied:

To me, what's important is to make yourself accessible to the people who need you when they need you, but within reason -- this is really different from ceding 100% access to anyone anytime. That...is insane, and it does favors only for the people who can't be bothered to get their shit together and honor a reasonable schedule. (IMHO)

This is all about managing expectations.

Today I learned about a guy who's one of the most respected and admired people in his company; and everybody in the company knows that his door is closed (really closed -- no interruptions, no exceptions) all morning every morning. That? That is when he works. Then after lunch, through the end of the day, his door never closes -- yes, come in and "interrupt" all you want. That's the whole idea. And it works great.

He's hugely successful, not because he says, "Sure! Squander my time whenever it occurs to you," but because he essentially tells the world, "Look: both of our time is valuable; I will make time for you, but never for a minute think that I'm your Mommy."

He's created an expectation people understand and respect. So they get their shit together before they ever consider asking for his attention. That's some Batman-level shit, if you ask me.

Also? People will always despise you if you end up doing less stupid BS than they choose to suffer. If you start to firewall your time, it makes you look like a "snob," right? Meh. I understand and acknowledge your point -- it's up to each of us how to decide the most civil way to get what we need. And, certainly, jokey stuff like Mike's meeting tokens don't necessarily need to govern the way you choose to treat actual people. I should make that clearer, but I guess I hope that's always understood: this all has to be adjusted to _what works for you_.

But I reject the idea that we should sweat those people who refuse to understand why attention is worth being picky about in the first place. If they can't respect that in themselves, of course they won't respect that in you. They aren't capable. And, if you ask me, it's time to stop positively reinforcing that kind of execrable behavior.

Then Sally responded:

Point taken. I'm shocked that you took the time to reply. You are a mensch.

Thanks!

Then I said:

For you, Sally? Anything! :-)

Because here's the real (REAL) secret of attention management: once you stop doing all the stuff you don't care about, you get an extraordinary amount of time to do the stuff you DO care about. Like making a connection with nice, thoughtful people like Sally Griffith.

Make sense?

your new internet friend,
Merlin

Odd Man Out

Here's the thing. It's like being able to see The Matrix; once you realize the control you can choose to exercise regarding your attention, you'll start to see all the unnecessary waste that everybody else thinks is unavoidable, natural, and even healthy ("I NEVER shut off my BlackBerry!"). See? Now, you are the weird one. Weirdo.

But, man, what a difference it makes to see (but ignore) all those things that you used to allow in. Things that now just bounce off you like raindrops. While everybody else is walking around wearing sponges.

Guy on the Soap Box

Also? Yeah. I understand that I have a really strong personality and know how to push a button until it breaks. That doesn't mean you have to love me or try to emulate me -- you know what you need to do to be the person you want to be.

But, I also tend to shrug my shoulders at folks who charge that this kind of attitude is too aggressive. Maybe. Maybe not.

I believe this is a message that needs to reach everyone, and I'm entirely willing to risk people disagreeing with or actively disliking what I have to say if it means that people who feel they've lost control of their life may get to hear it and realize for themselves why this stuff matters. Today.

Why We Fight

As with any revolution, the attention management coup will not be without its (metaphorical) blood, toil, sweat, and tears. C'est la guerre.

Today, you can find 10,000 reasons to keep letting people, institutions, and media noise continue to waste your life. I have only one reason you should not, so I say it over and over again. Often loudly:

Your attention needs a defender. And the people who want you to apologize for that are precisely the reason you need a stronger and more unapologetic defense.

”Closed Doors and Casualties in the "Coup d'attention"” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on August 16, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Cooking for the Creative Beast

wood.tang — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 06:46:44 -0400

Guest post

Guest blogger, Matt Wood, learns how to feed his creative side (without giving it a big gut). —mdm

Earlier this summer, I was in the kitchen, trying to cook dinner. I had a pot on the stove and a fire going on the grill outside. I was fumbling with a bag of frozen peas when my three-year-old started shouting at me to fix one of his toys. “Hold on a second, son,” I said. “I can’t do two things at once.” He looked me, dead serious, and said, “But you have two hands, Daddy.”

Too Many Pots on the Stove

My life usually feels like this. I set out to do make something nice, and I end up with a scorched side dish, charred burgers, and crunchy peas. The output barely resembles that delicious-looking picture in Cooking Light, but hey, the toy trains are running on time!

My immediate solution has been to limit the inputs and not try to do so much at once. If I can’t cook a nice meal with a preschooler underfoot, then I won’t even try. Chicken nuggets and grilled cheese for everyone, and you’ll like it, thank you very much. While this approach to dinner fulfills various statutes regarding child neglect, it’s also not very satisfying. Apply this approach to work and it certainly creates more time to do Important Things, but it makes for soggy, microwaved output as well.

For example, around the same time my son was questioning my competency with opposable thumbs, I was going through a phase where I had stripped by my daily routine down to the bare bones. I wasn’t happy with my word count, and I blamed it on the internet. I unsubscribed from RSS feeds right and left. I shuttered my blog. I quit visiting forums. I stopped following half the people on my Twitter list. And it worked, for a while. In the first few weeks of this monastic regimen, I wrote a 20-page essay—with footnotes—about my childhood baseball hero that was accepted by the first publication to which I sent it. Score. I thought I was on to something.

Then my ideas ran out.

My creative beast is restless and hungry, and I’ve learned that if I starve it by arbitrarily limiting its routine, it’s not happy. It’s all well and good to cut the fat out of your life to make time for what’s important, but you can take it too far. By turning off the internet, I turned off my source of inspiration. I was trying to write in a vacuum.

Apparently this works for some people. I was in a workshop recently with a guy who has a cabin in the New Mexico desert where he holes up with four dogs, smokes pot, and writes novels. He said it was the only way he could get any work done, but that wouldn’t work for me. Not yet.

Batting Practice

I’m learning, slowly, that creative work requires both inspiration and a certain amount of warm up. Fooling around online gets my creative juices flowing and helps jump start more important work. The benefit doesn’t come from the sheer volume of information I consume; it comes from redirecting some of that stream and trying to synthesize it into a blog post or a pithy comment, none of which may be things I’ll put on my CV at the end of the day. But one-off, frivolous activities like that keep my brain working, and help me warm up to create things that will make me proud. I’ve cautiously reintroduced some of my old online haunts back into the routine since the summer drought, and sure enough it’s helped shake more ideas loose.

To torture another metaphor, it’s like baseball players taking batting practice. It’s fun for them to crank balls into the cheap seats to make the crowd ooh and ahh. It doesn’t count in the standings, and yet it’s serious work. They’re sharpening their eye, loosening muscles, working on hitting balls to the opposite field. If they went a week without launching a few crowd-pleasers into the stands, their performance in the real games would suffer because they’d be wasting their first few at bats working out the kinks that should have been worked out in practice.

The same goes for writing, or any other creative work. You need to let yourself practice with blogging, journals, or throwaway poems and work under less than perfect circumstances, the same way a guitarist noodles around with chords while watching TV, or an artist scribbles on a sketchpad while riding the bus. You can’t be too precious with your words or your notes or your brushstrokes. Believe me, someone will be there to trash your work anyway, no matter how long you petted it and brushed its hair. It’s more important to keep your brain switched on than trying to preserve every last bit of inspiration.

Distraction as a Role Player

Blaming your failures on wide distractions like the internet is just an advanced form of procrastination anyway. I’d gotten so used to blaming the amount of time I spent online for why I couldn’t get anything done that it became an all-or-nothing proposition: work or the internet. Dedication or distraction. The distraction became an excuse for why I avoided putting in time on things that matter.

But the trick isn’t cutting out that distraction completely, it’s acknowledging it, admitting its power over you, then drawing lines and finding its proper role in your life. There is a big difference between surrendering your attention to the demands of someone else and simply letting your brain wander off and play on the swings for a while.

Your boogeyman may be Guitar Hero, or fantasy football, or long phone conversations with your friends. This isn’t permission to mainline RSS feeds or wire Wikipedia straight into your brain. We all know where that leads. But you’ll find that in responsible portions, your creative side feeds off those rejuvenating distractions. It can’t live on chicken nuggets and grilled cheese for long.

”Cooking for the Creative Beast” was written by Matt Wood for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on August 15, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Time & Attention Presentation: "Who Moved My Brain?"

Merlin — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 09:52:05 -0400

Who Moved My Brain? Revaluing Time & Attention (slideshare.net)

Thanks to my pals, Dara and Shawn, I've been preparing for a return visit with the folks at GoDaddy to deliver a couple talks on Inbox Zero and Time and Attention.

As I've been going over my slides for the Time & Attention talk, I realized I hadn't shared how the material has evolved since it premiered at Macworld in January. Which is to say, "Kind of a lot." So, I've posted the updated deck.

Of course, the irony of making cool, unbulleted slides is that the decks you create won't make a lick of sense without the accompanying audio and -- you know -- human presence. So, I've made a special version of this for you to view online, adding slide notes at the bottom that can help give you the flavor for what's happening as I wave my hands around on-stage like a huge dork.

I'm proud of this work, and I really hope you find it useful. The 5th to the last slide makes me teary. Partly because I really do believe this stuff is important. It's about more than email and "productivity." It comes down to how you decide to spend your life and, on some level, what kind of human being you want to be.

Many thanks to Mike Monteiro, Joel on Software, iStockPhoto, and Futura (the unofficial type family of Mssrs. Anderson and Kubrick.)

And, yes, here's the minor pimp (I mean, it is what I do for a living). You can hire me to deliver this talk to the time- and attention-addled people you work with. Drop a note if you have an upcoming event where you think this might be a good fit. And, yeah, unless I know you really well or your company is giant, awesome, and MUNI-accessible: it costs money. Yep. So. You know. Serious inquiries only, and what have you.

See you soon, GoDaddy! I crave your hell-like climate right now.

”Time & Attention Presentation: "Who Moved My Brain?"” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on August 14, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Making Time to Make: One Clear Line

Merlin — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 01:10:45 -0400

This article is Part 3 of a 3-part series about attention management for people who do creative work called, Making Time to Make.
Previously: Part 1, Bad Correspondence
Then: Part 2, The Job You Think You Have

Could an email recluse like Neal Stephenson just cowboy up by agreeing to a monthly chat session or the occasional visit to a fan forum? Sure, he could. Could a volunteer intern scan Neal’s email once a week for particularly wonderful notes? You bet. Could he even conceivably just drop all the blast shields, open a chat room, “livestream” from his desk, and then spend the rest of his life answering questions from people with nothing better to do? Maybe. Sure. But, probably not. He’s already told us as much, hasn’t he?

The point, from my perspective, is that Stephenson possesses the man-sized pant stones to declare precisely what the people who enjoy his work should expect from him. And, in so doing, he has drawn a clear line that some might find hard to love, but that is very easy to see, understand, and respect. No, he didn’t hire someone to answer his email, or get a kid to pretend to be him on Twitter, or install a Greasemonkey script that “autopokes” people on Facebook (I’ll leave you to guess which two of these I do).

Neal Stephenson essentially said, “Listen, gang, here’s what I’m going to make for you: novels.” And then, he went back to typing. To working. On work.

Get Ready for the First World

No, sir, no one that I know (including me, of course) could ever get away with such an ambitious opossum routine when his primary medium is the web — and, really, who’d want to?

It’s fun and gratifying to connect with people, to find common interests, and to make things as a group. That’s why the internet is so much more fun than reading the corkboard at your laundromat. Usually.

The challenge for each of us today — maker, worker, leader, or layabout — is to figure out where our own clear line should be drawn, and to determine how we effectively communicate where that line is in a way that’s useful, civil, and as open as we need for it to be. Again, though, all in the context of firewalling time to make things.

If this all strikes you as fancy, handlebar moustache talk from an old misanthrope who doesn’t get things like whatever the hell we’re calling “conversations” this week, maybe you’re on to something. You wouldn’t be the first to say so. And, if you’re honestly completely unburdened by doing the things that are important to you while staying in joyful personal contact with everyone who wants it from you — then, I do applaud you. I guess. Although, frankly, I think you’re probably fibbing at least a little.

Drawing Your Line

For myself, I think it’s critical to set reasonable expectations about how, when, and where people can expect to have authentic, honest-to-God contact with us, and here’s why: if you leave every channel open to everybody and anybody, all the time and without limit, you necessarily prevent yourself from ever stepping away from the fray for long enough to focus. You'll never make the time that it takes to produce the sort of good work that theoretically made you so appealing in the first place.

And, perhaps as importantly, you also can never devote your undivided attention to the biped mammals who are breathing air in the room with you. Here. People. With faces and hands. Not “friends,” but friends. Real people. Because, if total focus on the known important stuff in your life has to battle with a never-ending doorbell attached to your brain, it’s hard for me to imagine how your work, or your family, or your sense of who you are, alone in a room without the ringing, can possibly thrive. But, again, that’s really up to you to decide.

Balanced Patterns for Recovering Time to Make

If you’re determined to get back to work today — to start making more than SMTP queries — here are a few patterns for helping you find your way. Adapt as needed.

Clarify your needs

Think about what kind of environment you need to do your best work, and consider what you'd want to change today in order to make that environment more accessible to you for uninterrupted blocks of time.

Consider that the busy work, meta work, and stupid or boring monkey work in the life of a creative person should serve one purpose: clear the decks of distraction so you and your brain can work uninterrupted. To me, that is "Step 0."

Define “OFF”

Decide what it means to be “available” versus “not available” at a given time. How long can your world tolerate your absence, and what does it look like when you re-surface? What needs to change in order to minimize stress and drama? Remember, the time you make needs to be all yours to the greatest degree possible. If you can still hear the phone ring or the baby crying, you may not really be "OFF" yet.

Consider the equivalent of a safe word for when the really important stuff needs to punch through your firewall. This is a young field with blunt tools right now, so consider employing wetware; work with a partner, colleague, or friend to be your attention sentry during times when you need to go off the grid for half a day. Reciprocate.

Draw your line

Make it clear how, when, where, and for how long people can expect to interact one-on-one with you. Don’t hesitate to point to community forums and mailing lists to which you contribute, FAQs you’ve answered a million times, or any other resource that liberates the previous use of your attention by exposing the fruit of its labors to the world.

How? Could be lots of ways, but whatever you use, try to find automation and economies of scale. That means:

add info on your Contact page explaining what people can expect from you
use auto-responses and email templates
where necessary send short responses to clarify when you'll be available again

Also? Google. Tell people about this amazing new thing called “Google.” Apparently, it’s a service that helps people find all kinds of information without sending a single email. Handy.

Be honest

In the case of email in particular, you quickly learn the irony that a short response — far from retiring a topic — often is regarded as confirmation that you "want to play," providing unintentional encouragement to send you lots more email. And, then come the growing expectations, now that you've unconsciously shown yourself to be an email punk.

Listen: if someone starts demanding a level of engagement with you that you can’t meet, just say so. And consider telling them why. You'd never hesitate to say "I have a doctor's appointment," so don't be embarassed to say, "I can't talk to you now, I'm in the studio all morning." If you can't work because you're distracted by someone who wants to argue about how you spelled "wookiee" (don't laugh — it's happened to me twice; once when I was wrong and again when I was right), you need to cut the cord.

Also, keep in mind that most time burglars eat excuses for lunch. There's an entire industry around shooting down excuses, and it's called “sales.” Give people the honest attentional equivalent of “I have no money, and I'm not interested.” And, if that doesn't work? Yes, lie. Tell them you're dying, and today you're going to SeaWorld with your church youth group for the last time.

Let bits drop

You'll need to decide for yourself where the floor is in terms of requests for your attention that don't require (or deserve) a response. V14g#RA spam clearly does not need a "No, thank you," but what about the guy with the terrible new book who suddenly wants to be your boon companion and wants to "keep in touch" thrice weekly? For me? Those emails maybe don't get answered so much. (Sorry, I Have a New Book Guy: at least I didn't use your name)

Remember: for a lot of people, your one-time attention and decency will instantly be melted down to base metals for shit like PR blasts, "funny joke lists" (aka 'blogging for old people'), and frequent help desk-style requests. If you've decided that this stuff is out of scope for your time on The Marble, systematically destroy it with brutally efficient filters that are the equivalent of Tachy Goes to Coventry.

To paraphrase the great Lucas Jackson:

Sometimes null can be a pretty cool response.

Be courageous

If someone cannot understand or accept why the judicious use of your attention — and its application in the service of making work for a broader audience than exactly them — takes precedence over their need to repeatedly monopolize your time, dump them. This is not a good person.

But! Also remember to be cool

I’ll never forget the time that Jonathan Richman answered my stupid fan mail. Those 2 sentences on a piece of paper with his return address on it meant the world to me in 1988.

Always remember that some contact is just about a human connection, and that’s such a great thing. Just be realistic about how much of it you can personally manage, and then make the effort to reach back to people who are awesome.

And, NO, the whole point of this is that you can’t ever answer them all (and I’m not saying you should try), but if you can respond to 5, 10, or 20 emails or forum posts per week, without stepping on your “make” time, you’ll also make some really nice new friends.

Hint¹: Given limited time, always favor contact with young people; they need the high-five, and it means an awful lot when you reach back to them. These are good people.
Hint²: PR people who want to “thank you” for your work and then sign you up for a “webinar” do not count. These are not good people.

Noted in passing: Outside of various record sites, I can't immediately find anything like an official anything for Jonathan Richman today. Don't know if this is symptomatic of his long-professed affection for simple, old-timey things, or if he's just decided to no longer field questions about The Velvet Underground from stoney liberal arts students.

Identify and engage your high-value targets

Embrace the disingenuous charge of elitism (or, as I prefer to call it, maturity) by not pretending that everyone is equally “special” to you. Remind the people who matter to you that you’re always available for them, then tell them how to do that, including specific instructions (n.b. this is important for relatives who think the internet is just eBay, urban myths, and Joel Osteen). Get a friends-only email address. Get a friends-only GrandCentral number. Do whatever it takes to provide a backchannel for your super-secret network.

Widen the channels to the people you adore, and never make them suffer by your weird compulsion to wave at strangers. You have plenty of time to make new friends, but for God’s sake, don’t neglect the ones you already have and enjoy. These are good people.

Respect others

In the interest of sharing the aloha with all the makers and consumers in your world, consider making it excruciatingly easy to deal with you. Especially when it comes to email. Everything goes both ways, so remember that anyone you contact today could be having the best or worst week of his life; choose your ultimatums with care and context.

Work. work, work.

The hard work of a creative life is a topic that I’ll be returning to often over the next few weeks, but here’s my one pro tip for you today: once you’ve stolen back your time and wrangled your attention, put it to good use by making awesome stuff that everyone you want to delight can enjoy. Throw a giant tent party for the world and show off what you can do when you stop compulsively typing for an audience of one. Get your awesome out where we can all see it.

Make it, release it, and make more. And never apologize to anyone for demanding the respect for your attention that you, your work, and the people who enjoy it each deserves. Make the time.

”Making Time to Make: One Clear Line” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on August 07, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"