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.

Five email tics I'd love for you to lose

For the love of God, people; can we get the word out on these? Format courtesy of my other site.

  1. The liberal use of the "VERY HIGH PRIORITY!!!" flag
  2. The 18-line sig about all the Bad Things that will happen to me if I ever reveal the contents of your privileged, confidential (and unencrypted) message
  3. The unrequested press release (and the serial ignoring of the "Unsubscribe" I sent you for the previous seven press releases)
  4. The graphical background, font and table tags, and remaining 14k of HTML cruft associated with every. single. message. you've ever sent
  5. The including of my -- plus 98 other strangers' -- personal email addresses in the "To:" line of your friendly reminder about Tyler's birthday party

Friend: I love you, but you must evolve.

Clementina's picture

Oh, add to your list...

Oh, add to your list of Not Kosher the forward-posts of so-called humorous emails, and worse, the heart-warming [read: gag-inducing] emails. Or people who haven't the faintest idea of my politics and send me preaching-to-the-choir stuff that I'm not even sure I get the (usually conservative) meaning of (whoops! my bias is showing...but you know, we liberals, being liberals and thus aware of DI-ver-si-ty, don't usually assume people agree with us) . Sorry, kids, but there are only 3 people whom I allow to send me jokes. And the rest get SO insulted when you very kindly write them and ask them not to forward you things unless they would specifically like you to read them. I have insulted many people by politely asking that they not include me in their 100-best-friend joke/inspiration list. What gives?

 
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