Merlin’s weekly podcast with Dan Benjamin. We talk about creativity, independence, and making things you love.
Merlin’s weekly podcast with Dan Benjamin. We talk about creativity, independence, and making things you love.
”What’s 43 Folders?”
43Folders.com is Merlin Mann’s website about finding the time and attention to do your best creative work.
Personal ProductivityBoard thread: Quicksilver podcast questionsMerlin Mann | Jul 28 2006Open Thread: Quicksilver podcast questions - 43 Folders Board Following up on the (very enthusiastic) response to the MacBreak podcast about Quicksilver, I've opened a new thread on the board where people can ask questions -- and all you Quicksilver ninjas out there (given the time and interest) can maybe me help answer anything not covered in the documentation. I'll answer as many as time allows (my internet access will be spotty for a few days), so anything the QS pros can do to help would be greatly appreciated. Stop by and get your 'Silver on! Reminder: Good Quicksilver links:
POSTED IN:
Lawrence Lessig on "email bankruptcy"Merlin Mann | Jul 28 2006Wired 14.08: How To: Be More Productive I love Lawrence Lessig's plan for email bankruptcy from the latest WIRED. read more »3 Comments
POSTED IN:
Merlin on MacBreak: Intro to QuicksilverMerlin Mann | Jul 26 2006Leo and Alex were kind enough to ask me to drop by MacBreak to talk a little bit about Quicksilver. Most of what we discussed is probably old hat to the hardcore fans, but if you're looking for a fast intro, this might be a useful link for your friends and cubemates. read more »POSTED IN:
Back to GTD: Do a fast "mind-sweep"Merlin Mann | Jul 24 2006This post is part of the periodic “Back to GTD” series, designed to help you improve your implementation of David Allen’s Getting Things Done. Whether you learned GTD from the book or heard it from The David himself (via one of his excellent seminars), you know that the vital first stage of Getting Things Done is Collection. As laid out in Chapter 5:
And, as David succinctly states elsewhere in the book, if you don't use a dedicated inbox in the context of a healthy collection habit, your whole house or office turns into your inbox. And that just doesn't scale. Failing to do so in recent weeks may be why you've fallen off the GTD wagon. So, just as you learned Collection as the first step in implementing GTD (and to subsequently maintain your system), it's precisely the place to start when you're trying to properly get back into it. And for the errant GTDer, I feel like the most powerful collection exercise is what DA calls "the mind-sweep." read more »POSTED IN:
43F Series: "Back to GTD"Merlin Mann | Jul 24 2006Everybody falls off the Getting Things Done wagon from time to time. Maybe you got completely caught up on your work for a while, but then got lazy and slid back into slack. Maybe you had a crapflood of new projects that made you "too busy" to do GTD properly. Heck, maybe you just decided it was a big waste of time and threw in the towel altogether. But, for whatever reasons of frustration, neglect, or (my favorite) "being too busy," it's not at all unusual to find you've slipped on your reviews, quit capturing, and basically let your little system fall into seemingly hopeless disrepair. And, I'll bet you're paying for it now, right? You're wandering around, unsure what to do next, and you've lost confidence in your external system as a trusted outboard brain for your life. Stuff piles up. You hide the piles under newer piles. You make assurances to yourself. You start managing by crisis or by whomever in your life has the shrillest tone of voice in a given day. You've unintentionally started using the walls of your skull as a whiteboard (and you know how reliably that works). Ultimately, you're spending all your time worrying about what else you should be doing, so instead of focusing on completing a single important task at a time, you've landed back in "plate-spinning mode," half-assing your way through a dozen poorly defined projects at one time (mmmm...multitasking). Nothing's getting done. You're procrastinating. You're eating pie and crying. You want to crawl under your desk and die. Sucks, doesn't it? read more »POSTED IN:
2 OS X timers to watch: Flextime & MeridianMerlin Mann | Jul 19 2006An alarmed timer is one of the most simple external systems you can employ, and many of us distracted geeks have come to rely on them as a way to improve concentration, redirect attention, and bitch-slap procrastination. Why make your brain be the time-keeper and scold when you can just make some little robot do all the heavy lifting for you? Exactly. Lucky for the Mac-scented timer geeks out there, this is an area of software development that seems to be flourishing lately, with sexy little apps like Minuteur and Dashboard widgets like ProdMe arriving on the scene to ride herd on the wandering mind. Further, in the past week, I've stumbled across a couple more new apps that look like promising additions for the time-addled brain -- and, I'm happy to note, they look especially useful for fans of the (10+2)*5 dash. read more »POSTED IN:
Gina on not checking your email first-thingMerlin Mann | Jul 18 2006Geek to Live: Control your workday - Lifehacker Gina has a good post on ways to structure your work day and ensure you get your most important stuff accomplished, and she includes a piece of advice I've recently started practicing myself:
I've discovered that a lot of my most unpalatable, low-priority email arrives overnight; it's when most cron jobs and mailing digests run, plus, I suspect, it's when a lot of garden-variety crazies get their second wind (or 12th beer). Waiting an hour or so to collect the overnight haul buys me time to wake up, get some work done, and generally orient myself. By the the time I raise the electronic flood gate, I'm already feeling on top of things and have no problem blowing through all my mail in a few short minutes. Even the crazy ones. The larger issue is a pillar of Inbox Zero: it's your mailbox, and you get to decide when and for how long it draws your attention. I recommend affecting that decision while awake, cogent, and adequately caffeinated. POSTED IN:
43F Podcast: Work the Dash and Take the BreakMerlin Mann | Jul 17 2006Work the Dash and Take the Break
Grab the MP3, learn more at Odeo.com, or just listen from here: read more »POSTED IN:
Hawk Wings: 10 Mac GTD toolsMerlin Mann | Jul 14 2006Hawk Wings » Blog Archive » Ten Mac tools for Getting Things Done Tim Gaden summarizes ten tools with which Mac users can do GTD. read more »POSTED IN:
New GTD resources pageMerlin Mann | Jul 10 200652 Reviews » Getting Things Done, Resource Edition 52 Reviews has a handy reference page on popular GTD implementation tools. Although, personally, it looks incomplete to me without Kinkless GTD on there :) . Many of these will be familiar to GTD fans, but there are a few I hadn't seen or that are worthy of a second look: read more »POSTED IN:
|
|
EXPLORE 43Folders | THE GOOD STUFF |