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.

Mac OS X

My email diet

GmaillikeI love using Gmail, but until it works with my über IMAP acount, I wouldn't seriously consider switching over.

Still, Gmail's made me see the value of having very few actual folders for storing new and archived mail. It makes it much easier to track and organize your mail on the fly, plus Google's search and labeling tools let you confidently shunt items out of your inbox constantly without fear of having stuff disappear. So I decided to try a little experiment.

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Sogudi for searching via Safari's location bar

KitzKikz: Sogudi

Sogudi is a plug-in for Safari that lets you search your favorite sites from the location bar. This means that instead of having to visit a given site, you can just type a keyword into the location bar, pop in your search terms, and jump immediately to the results.

Hint: If you're going to be following along on our Quicksilver series, I recommend installing Sogudi and acquainting yourself with it; we'll be using it a lot.

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Quicksilver: Grab a copy and play along at home

If you’re kind enough to revisit here in the future, you’ll be hearing about a program called Quicksilver that’s become an important part of how I work with my Mac. I figure since I’ll be talking about it so much, it’s probably beneficial to give you a little lead time in case you’re interested in following along. So here’s a quickish introduction as well as some information and links on getting you started with the home version.

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Using Eastgate's Tinderbox for GTD implementation

Tinderbox Wiki: GettingThingsDone

I haven’t kept up much with its recent development, but I know Tinderbox has been a terrific, versatile application that’s just about perfect for GTD implementation in many ways. Bit of a steep learning curve, but a lot of folks says it’s worth it. I’ve certainly enjoyed tinkering with it in the past, and I still find it very satisfying as a mind-mapping tool and occasional IA app.

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Icons for Safari favorites

Free up space in Safari's bookmark bar with cool little icons.

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Quicksilver: Append to a text file from _anywhere_

Appending to a txt file in QS

Quicksilver makes it easy to add new lines to a txt file without even opening an application. Here’s an example of how you might add “coffee” to your “groceries.txt” list.

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Roll your own print-friendly page

Use Safari and TextEdit to print or PDF just a portion of a page.

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Archive your receipts and account info with PDFs

Mac OSX bases much of its interface on Adobe’s PDF format and opportunities to use and make PDF files are ubiquitous.

My favorite PDF trick helps me create an archived digital receipt every time I make a purchase online.

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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. »