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

Life Hacks

Mentat: Wiki on becoming a better thinker

Cool wiki full of memory tricks, mnemonic systems, and other mental parlor tricks.

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Let us now praise Post-it notes

Phil's cool trick reminds me that I do love me some Post-it notes. How do you use 'em?

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ETech Notes: Englishmen on the beach, attention deficit, and the 12-inch Life Hacks remix


Nick Sweeney says Damn You Merlin Mann
Originally uploaded by caterina.

I’m back from ETech and starting to recuperate a bit. It’s amazing how just a few days and nights can be so exhilarating and exhausting at the same time (esp. if one of those nights is spent on a fake beach with a lot of English people who drink like sailors). (Incidentally, if you have a pulse and a POP account, I probably owe you at least two email replies at this point, so accept this massive group apology until I can shovel my way toward the light.)

I reckon that if my technical prowess were more mature, I might not have to confess that all my favorite conference stuff inevitably happens outside the sessions—although in the case of ETech, the ones I caught were all very good. But there’s a weirdly “Disney World” quality to wandering around a hotel lobby bumping into, literally, dozens of clever, hilarious people whose work you’ve admired and enjoyed for years. Such a thrill for me. Like meeting Santa, Han Solo, and The Monkees all in the same friendly bar.

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Life Hacks Live: Cory's Notes


Life Hacks Live : Danny O'Brien
Originally uploaded by up4.

Life Hacks Live

Cory has posted his excellent notes from our talk at ETech today.

Danny: I had a TV show in deep cable called 404 NOT FOUND. We obsessed with the segues, “That was a cold way of chilling your computer and another cold thing is penguins and now Linux” — we used to obsess about these.

The good thing that came out of this was before commercials, my co-presenter Dave Green would turn to the camera and say, “And now, a few short films about capitalism.”

And now a few short presentations about Life Hacks. I’m using a 10 minute timer to ensure that I talk as fast as possible.

Stever Robbins on email overload

Great article on dealing with high email volume that focuses on what you can do to craft email messages that are easy to process, read, and answer.

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Lifehacker: Canadian Press Secretary on his HPDA

Gina talks with Ian Capstick, who coordinates complex press interactions for NDP party MPs using a favorite tool of ours.

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Guest: Mike Harris looks at "Remind"

How much do I love my readers? So much.

Mike Harris very kindly sent me a suggestion about having a look at Remind, a swell little Unix program for doing CLI stuff to give yourself, well, reminders. It’s really quite powerful, that.

Despite my initially flipping the bozo bit by asking for technical support about installing Remind, Mike responded with one of the most useful emails I’ve received in a year. So good, that I asked him to move a couple things around and turn it into a full-length guest feature for 43 Folders. So he did.

Many thanks, Mike. I'm still getting my head around a lot of this, but already see many uses for this. Fellow Unix noobs: this looks like a pretty good first project, eh?

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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. »