43 Folders

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

Good tips from the wiki

Unsorted life hacks - 43FoldersWiki

A sampling of some entries I’ve particularly liked on the unsorted life hacks page of the 43F Wiki.

  • Media-related distraction? Hit the panic button! When I get the sneaking suspicion that I’m wasting valuable time on the internet, I hit the monitor’s power switch and wait until I get my focus back. This also works for TV, and even the phone.
  • Gas Cap Loser? I was too. But now I always pay for gas with a debit card, and when the screen says “receipt yes or no?” I choose yes. This extra 10-15 seconds of waiting is my reminder that I need to use that time making sure the gas cap is put back. After a while it becomes habit, and you automatically look for the gas cap when you hear or see the receipt printer working
  • Keep Meetings Short and On Topic Write up an agenda. Make everyone in the meeting drink 16 oz of water as the meeting begins. Conduct the meeting with everyone standing up. Everyone will stay on topic, and when about 30-45 minutes is up, everyone will have to pee.
  • Spindle Anytime you finish a major task or project write it on a small piece of paper and stab it on a message spindle. Keep the message spindle on your desk as a reminder of what you are (or are not) getting done. The spindle will be helpful when drafting status reports or undergoing a performance review.
  • Address Labels that charities send you are great for labelling things you tend to lose. Someone once returned an umbrella to my house. At work people return my pens and my stapler and tape dispenser stay on my desk
  • Messy house? Always keep several get well cards on the mantel….. so if unexpected guests arrive, they will think you’ve been sick and unable to clean.

edit 2005-07-19 18:14:49: Criminy, people, unwad. The last one’s what we in the industry call “a joke.” I’m not actually advocating that you feign illness to deceive your friends (and I kind of doubt that the original poster meant it that way, either). In any case, all future humor will be clearly marked for your convenience.

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About Merlin

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Merlin Mann is an independent writer, speaker, and broadcaster. He’s best known for being the guy who created the website you’re reading right now. He lives in San Francisco, does lots of public speaking, and helps make cool things like You Look Nice Today, Back to Work, and Kung Fu Grippe. Also? He’s writing this book, he lives with this face, he suffers from this hair, he answers these questions, and he’s had this life. So far.

Merlin’s favorite thing he’s written in the past few years is an essay entitled, “Cranking.”

 
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