43 Folders

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

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

Elsewhere

InformationWeek story on Merlin's Macworld '08 presentation

macworld 08 talk

How To Take Back Your Time And Attention -- Merlin Mann -- InformationWeek

Wow. Mitch Wagner did an ass-kickingly thorough job of summarizing my talk at Macworld about wrangling your time and attention. Really nice work, Mitch -- thanks, man.

"When the value of your times is set too low, or not at all, it leads to waste and abuse," Mann said.

This is a particular problem for knowledge workers. (How do you identify knowledge workers? "Look for someone with girlie smooth hands who can go to lunch whenever they want," Mann explained.) Knowledge workers have huge amounts of freedom in how they work, they aren't micromanaged, they just have goals to achieve. That freedom is dangerous. "You can find yourself at two in the morning staring at Wikipedia covered in pizza crusts," Mann said.

Up top is a snap of the slides from my talk, which I'll try to get up on Slideshare when I get a chance to tidy them up.

[Pimp: here's information on my speaking gigs and how to bring me in to speak with your organization]


update 2008-01-21 12:39:42: Okay, she's up. As ever, I'm not sure these'll make much sense without me standing there, yammering, but here's a clickable version of my slides:

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Back to MacBreak Weekly with Episode 70

MacBreak Weekly 70: Happy Life Day!

>

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Alex Lindsay, Andy Ihnatko, Chris Breen, Merlin Mann, and Scott Bourne

It's the Macbreak Weekly Year Ender!

Here's a direct MP3 download of MBW 70.

And here's linkage to a few of the things I mentioned (adapted from this episode's show notes):

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Merlin at IDEO: "Know How" Talk with Scott Underwood

Scott Underwood from IDEO was kind enough to invite me down to their Palo Alto HQ for a tour of the renowned design group (they designed Apple’s first mouse!) and to participate with him in one of the company's internal "Know How" talks. It was very informal (and -- because this was during my recent "100-year sinus infection" -- I was completely high on cold medicine).

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Merlin & the OmniNerds coming to Tekserve in NYC

Very cool announcement to share -- Ken Case, Ethan Schoonover, and I will be doing an after-hours demo of OmniFocus on September 27th at Tekserve in Manhattan:

Not only will you get a sneak peek at the forthcoming OmniFocus software, but Merlin Mann from 43folders.com, a popular site about personal productivity, will be here to lead a discussion on personal organization and life management.

Pete the Tekserve Guy says seats are filling up fast, so be sure to register for free now if you're planning to attend.

This should be really fun -- and we'll all be hanging out after the presentation to talk, hang, and meet you. I'm pumped. It's my first trip to Manhattan since 1989 (and, no, I won't have a tragic mustache and a Meat Puppets shirt this time. Sorry.).

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Merlin on Mark F's "Rule the Web" show

Rule the Web show: Merlin Mann, Wednesday, July 18, 5pm Pacific

cover of 'Rule the Web' by Mark Frauenfelder

Rule the Web
by Mark Frauenfelder

Forgot to mention that my pal, Boing Boing's Mark Frauenfelder, recently was kind enough to have me on his Rule The Web podcast (which is a companion to his swell new book).

We talked about jobs, procrastination, clutter, and a bunch of other stuff. We also took calls from a couple people, dishing out advice on topics like where to park ideas and how to fight distraction.

You can listen on Mark's site, download an MP3, or listen using the player below.

Mentioned in passing: del.icio.us, DEVONthink, Yojimbo, Mental Case (app whose name I forgot), In Our Time, and The Sound of Young America.

Video for Merlin's "Inbox Zero" talk

Google Tech Talk: Inbox Zero

This is the video for my Inbox Zero talk I presented in July of 2007 at Google.

Is Inbox Zero an idea that your company should learn about in person? You can invite me to speak to your organization, live and in-person.

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Macworld: Mac Gems Picks

Macworld Feature: Connect with the world

Macworld Magazine asked me to pick out a few of my Mac Gems, and I was happy to respond with four favorites.

Default Folder, for example, is a PreferencePane that I've used and loved since Christ was a corporal:

Default Folder X (****½)

You can tell Default Folder X is a classic because you start missing it the second you sit down at a Mac that doesn’t have it installed. It reduces the tedium of a handful of annoying dialog-box tasks, and it’s worth its price solely for the ability to set a per-program default location.

Google Tech Talk: Today @ 2pm

Google Tech Talk, Today @ 2pm

A reminder to any Googlers out there that I’ll be giving a Tech Talk on Inbox Zero today at 2:00 pm in the Seville room on the Mountain View campus.

Hope I’ll see you there. (And many thanks to Dick Wall for the hook-up!)

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MacBreak Minute: LiteSwitch X

In the latest episode of MacBreak Minutes (subscribe), I talked about a favorite PreferencePane of mine called LiteSwitch.

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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. »