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

Apply the "Write it Down" Method to Everything!

First off, this new forum layout is retarded, had to get it off my mind!

If you have found that writing tasks/todos down is helping with your mental capacity and freeing up your mind, apply it to the rest of your life as well for even more free and available space.

I have taken to adopting the GTD method for organization and keeping track of things I need to get done, but I was still having issues, still letting "life" get in the way sometimes, whether it be personal conflicts, personal thoughts/opinions, etc. I decided that I should start journaling my thoughts that occopy way to much of my time, that I don't need to waste on them. They start coming to the forground when all my TODO items are written down, and then I'm still storing these other things in my head and then they start to get in the way of getting things done, because they are stored in mental ram as well.

I started writing these things down recently, and amazingly, my head start to feel even more open and I was able to look at things on "paper" and decide what I wanted to focus on.

So... if your still having issues with GTD and focusing... think about writing down everything else that is keeping you from focusing, be it ideas, opinions, or journaling your thoughts.

Kind of like my opening statement. See, I feel better already.

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