Productivity

How To Be A Rockstar

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 13:00:31 GMT

Whether you are an aspiring rock star or not, this list will help you achieve success in your field. It will also show you how some timeless ideas are still vital in your new-fangled social networking environments. I Was A Teenage Rock Star ? kind of ? As a younger dude - sans cell-phone and computer [...]

How Spirituality Helps New Entrepreneurs

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 13:00:01 GMT

Some people consider worldly success, such as success in entrepreneurship, to be incompatible with spirituality.? ?It’s a dog eats dog world.? they’d say, ?If you want to succeed, you do whatever (dirty things) you must do. Then you dress up and go to church on Sundays.? If you want to embrace spirituality full time, stay [...]

The Personality Puzzle - Pick The Brain Exclusive Offer

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 13:00:07 GMT

What can four letters tell you about someone (including yourself)? It turns out quite a lot. “The Personality Puzzle” is the new e-book from Pick The Brain contributor Hunter Nuttall. Back in August we published Hunter’s first article for this blog: Introverts And Extraverts: Can?t We Just Get Along? If you enjoyed this article (and it [...]

Lifestyle Design for the Rest of Us

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:00:49 GMT

The great playwright and Nobel laureate George Bernard Shaw once said, “Take care to get what you like, or you will be forced to like what you get.” Wise words indeed. The concept of lifestyle design was popularized by Tim Ferriss in his book The 4-Hour Workweek. The idea was to create a system that would [...]

Harnessing the Power of Your Subconscious Mind

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 13:49:40 GMT

More and more people are becoming aware that they have two distinct minds–the conscious and the subconscious. We are generally more aware of the conscious mind, because we spend most of our waking hours there, while we spend our sleeping hours in the subconscious mind. The conscious mind is like the tip of the iceberg [...]

Let Me Google That For You Passive-Aggressively Helps your Friends [Tech Support]

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:30:00 GMT

If you're a power searcher, or other people think you are, and you're getting tired of constant requests for answers to questions that a quick Google search would provide, try Let me google that for you. Enter a search term, click the Google Search button, and a link appears that you can copy, paste and send to your friend. When they click the link, an animation displays the complicated process of searching Google for information, and then directs the user to the actual search results page from Google. Snarky? Yes. However, the time the user is forced to study the search term you used, they might pick up a trick or two in keyword syntax, search operators, literal strings and the like. After all, give a man an answer, and he'll come back tomorrow asking for more. Teach a man to search Google, and you'll have to offer tech support when he ends up downloading malware while cruising shadier purveyors of adult entertainment and file sharing software.

Gmail Updates Its Look, Adds Themes [Screenshot Tour]

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:38:54 GMT

Google's beloved web-based email client has always been ripe for third-party design customization (we've always been partial to the Gmail Redesigned skin in Better Gmail, for example), but now Gmail is officially riding the interface customization train by offering 30-some new themes to spice up your inbox. Keep reading for a screenshot tour of the cool new offerings.

Ninja

Graffiti

Planets

Candy

Shiny

Mountains

Terminal

You can check out some of the other new options in the preview grid below.

Unfortunately I still don't see the Themes tab in my Gmail settings, but Google is an expert of the slow rollout, so we can all expect them sometime in the next few days. I'm partial to the ascii/Terminal theme, though it's probably a touch on the impractical side. Other than that, a lot of the offerings actually look really nice—especially compared with some of the lame duck skins Google offers in iGoogle. Let's hear which themes you like best—and whether or not they're actually enabled in your accounts yet—in the comments. Thanks Mark!

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Thu, 20 Nov 2008 05:29:15 GMT

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Merge MP3 Combines Audio Files in Drag-and-Drop Interface [Featured Windows Download]

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:30:00 GMT

Windows only: If you are looking for ways to merge a bunch of MP3 files into one larger file, and don't like the command line solution I wrote about earlier this week, try Merge MP3. The application is tiny, the interface familiar, and it will allow you to drag-and-drop MP3 files onto a playlist, change the order, preview the audio, and then mix them all down to a single MP3 files along with APIC images and ID3 meta-data. Perfect for creating a mix or joining files from an audiobook you've ripped from multiple CDs. Merge MP3 is a free download for Windows.

Save Time with the Help of a Free Personal Shopper [Shopping]

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

If you feel shoppping for clothes is a chore and an expensive waste of time, think about using a personal shopper. Get rid of the mistaken idea you may have that personal shoppers are people employed by rich celebrities to dress them (those are called "stylists"). Most large department stores offer a shopping service. Simply call and ask for a personal shopper, provide measurements and a list of items you're looking for and make an appointment. They'll help you select items based on your budget and needs, and will offer an objective perspective on questions of fit and fashion.

The personal shoppers and clerks know the latest trends much better than I do, and they always seem to find things that flatter my body better than I find when I?m left to search a store on my own.

It will save you the time of having to wander around the sales floor looking for what you want. And right now, it's a buyers market at retailers, so don't be shy about bringing your list to other clothing retailers and asking for help. Anybody have experiences with a personal shopper? Share them in the comments. Photo by Phil Whitehouse

Setting Goals For The Present, Not The Future

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 13:00:24 GMT

Image courtesy of Wili Hybrid When you set goals for yourself, do you picture the benefits you?ll receive in a year, five years, ten years? Do you struggle on day by day in activities you don?t particularly enjoy ? or actively dislike ? because you want to reach a target some day in the distant future? You [...]

Official Netflix Streaming on Xbox 360 Isn't Bad, But You Can Do Better [NetFlix]

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:30:00 GMT

I've been streaming Netflix Watch Instantly videos to my Xbox 360 for months now using Windows Media Center and a free program called vmcNetflix, but now that the New Xbox Experience released this morning also supports Netflix streaming, users have two different options for streaming movies to their Xbox. The question is, which option is better? The obvious answer is that the official offering is the hands-down winner, but having used the alternative for the past few months, Netflix on the New Xbox Experience left me cold. Here's why.

What's Great About Netflix Streaming on the Xbox 360

Netflix streaming on the Xbox 360 has a few major pros over vmcNetflix.

For one, the video quality is better. In fact, you can even stream the video in HD—which I don't believe is an option (yet) in vmcNetflix.
Also, as opposed to vmcNetflix, you don't need a Vista PC to use it.
And last but certainly not least, it's less buggy and subject to breaking, since Microsoft and Netflix are actually working together on it.
Aside from that, the official Netflix offering has an attractive interface, which is always a draw.

How Could vmcNetflix Possibly Be Better?

Okay, so at this point choosing the official Netflix channel seems like a no-brainer. To a large extent it is, but vmcNetflix is actually way better than the official Netflix-on-Xbox streaming in a few very important ways.
- vmcNetflix can browse the entire Netflix Watch Instantly library, and when you find something you want, you can play it. The app organizes movies by genre, popularity, and new releases, so it's not only a destination when you want to watch a movie you've added to your Netflix Watch Instantly queue—it's also a destination when you're just looking for a movie to watch. The New Xbox Experience currently only lets you stream movies you've already added to your Watch Instantly queue.
- vmcNetflix can do way more, including search the Netflix library and add to or remove movies from your Instant Queue or your DVD queue.
- vmcNetflix allows you to save movies to your hard drive. It's not necessarily copacetic with the Netflix ToS, but it can come in handy if you have a slower connection.
The extreme limitation placed on the New Xbox Experience version of Netflix streaming really cripples what should be an excellent addition to the Xbox. Maybe in time an update will fix all of my complaints, but for now the new offering is sort of a lame duck compared to an enthusiast-built alternative already available. (Learn more about using vmcNetflix to stream videos to your Xbox 360 here.)

Then again, maybe I'm being too hard on it. If you've used both, let's hear what you think in the comments.

Create "Speakers" from Earbuds and Paper Cups [How To]

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 01:30:00 GMT

It's hump day and I was looking for a quick, fun project to try out. So I figured I try something easy I found over at the Make Magazine blog earlier this week—a set of speakers made from paper cups and a pair of earbud headphones originally created by artist Dmitry Zagga (in no small amount of jest). The PaperCup speakers are based on the principle of a megaphone: Energy from sound waves from the earbuds would normally disperse in all directions. Instead, the cups focus the sound waves in a particular direction, making it louder for those in front. While pretty self-explanatory, I figured I'd whip up a how to, especially since the folks at my local coffee shop were happy to provide the materials for free.

You'll need:

A pair of earbud headphones.
Four paper drink cups
Two toothpicks or skewers
Tape
A small knife or scissors

First poke a hole in the side of the cups that will be the "speakers" resting on the base cups. I eyeballed it about a third of the way up from the base of the cup, along the seam.

Cut a cross with one long and one short axis in the back of the speakers. Insert the earbuds all the way through the holes until only the wire is outside the cup.

Now, reach in with your finger and push the flaps of paper out a bit to create an indent where the back of your earbud can rest. Pull the earbuds back through the hole until they're nestled against the back of the cup.

I chose to tape the bases of the earbuds to the back of the cup to make sure the speaker portion is facing out towards the mouth of the cup and not dangling down or pointing to the side of the cup.

Poke the toothspick or skewer through the bottom of the base cups, and slide the speaker cups on where you made your initial cut. Tada! You've got yourself a pair of speakers.

Now these aren't very loud (for comparison, the speakers on my MacBook were much louder). And the bass response is abysmal. So I tweaked the equalizer setting in iTunes a bit. The stereo picturing is pretty good if placed equidistant from your ears and pointed toward you. If you want to listen to music quietly but don't want to put headphones on, or are concerned about ear fatigue or hearing damage, it's just the thing. I could see coming up with these in a pinch, MacGyver-style, on a camping trip. How would you improve them to make them louder? Share your ideas and pictures in the comments.

Employees Sue to be Paid for Time Spent Booting Up [Law]

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 02:30:00 GMT

If you're manager tracks your time based on when you log in and out of your machine at work, then are you missing out on pay for the time you're waiting for your machine to boot up and shut down? That's what a series of lawsuits by employees from the likes of AT&T, UnitedHealth and Cigna demand.

Add those minutes up over a week, and hourly employees are losing some serious pay, argues plaintiffs' lawyer Mark Thierman, a Las Vegas solo practitioner who has filed a handful of computer-booting lawsuits in recent years.

In other words, does the clock start when you show up at the office or when the computer first logs you into the company network? A lawyer representing the defense on one of the cases argues that the time is generally spent doing personal activities like taking a coffee break or going out for a smoke. Are you getting stiffed time at your desk waiting for your operating system to startup? Photo by Andy Melton

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Thu, 20 Nov 2008 05:29:15 GMT

I Kissed a Girl ....... By Katy Perry.
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The Lazy Man?s Guide to Getting Things Done

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 21:45:56 GMT

Photo courtesy of judsond

10 Mistakes That Could Be Killing Your Blog, and More

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 22:16:28 GMT

I just wrote a post over at Write To Done that the bloggers among you might be interested in (and blog readers — I’d love your opinion too!): 10 Mistakes That Could Be Killing Your Blog If you like it, please share it by bookmarking in Delicious.com! And while I’m sharing links, here are a few I enjoyed [...]

Six Life Lessons Learned from Triathlon Training

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 11:49:37 GMT

10 Steps to Take Action and Eliminate Bureaucracy

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 23:15:31 GMT

Photo courtesy of projectbamboo

Ask the Readers: Could You Give Up Email?

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 02:59:48 GMT

Photo courtesy of the New York Times

How to Cut Your Grocery Bill In Half

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:40:21 GMT

Photo courtesy of ninja poodles

How to Beat the Plague of Limiting Beliefs

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 13:00:29 GMT

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that limiting beliefs are, well… limiting. Duh, right? Well, they’re not just limiting. They ruin lives. They keep us from being authentic and living the way we really want to live. There are many times where I’ve wanted to say something, tell someone how I really feel. But I [...]

Living Simply: The Ultimate Guide to Conquering Your Clutter

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:05:45 GMT

Monks like to keep things simple.

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Thu, 20 Nov 2008 05:29:15 GMT

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"Right Now, What Are You Doing?"

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 20:18:17 GMT

Right Now: What Are You Doing?

I’ve started to become a lot pickier about where my attention goes as I observe what it means to my work when it drifts. But, I still have a long way to go. Long way.

Like a lot of people I have a bad habit of CMD-Clicking tab sets in my browser, which then spawns a dozen or more new panes of potential distraction, pointless horseshit, and 10,000 excuses not to focus on what I really want to be making right now.

I whipped up this (rather plain and inefficiently coded) page this morning, and stuck it into every tab set that I tend to abuse: as the first tab I see.

It’s not a new idea, it’s not particularly interesting or sophisticated, and it’s certainly not anything you couldn’t whip up for yourself (and better) in about 30 seconds. So, why share it?

Because, your brain needs a Dad. If this can help you, awesome. If your immediate reaction is to think, “Oooo…I know how I can add way more features like a social network and procrastination stats!” hang it up; you’re already screwed.

Catch the drifting as it happens, refocus, then repeat as necessary. That’s it.

Happy Labor Day, friends, and may you find yourself seeing that little page as seldom as possible.

?"Right Now, What Are You Doing?"? was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on September 01, 2008. Except as noted, it's ?2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Recap: 43 Folders' Corvette Summer

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 13:41:14 GMT

Welcome back, friend. Per what I wrote in your yearbook back in June, I hope you had a nice summer and stayed sweet and cool. You look great. Did you lose weight or something?

Somewhere along the way over the past few weeks, I seem to have got my game on again here at 43 Folders. I wrote a few items that I’m proud of and that lots of people seemed to enjoy. I’m once again posting about stuff that means a lot to me, and I’m feeling good about the site and where it (and I) will be heading over the next year. (More on that soon)

But, if you were tanning on Ibiza or building houses with Jimmy Carter and missed out on my wordy comeback season, here’s a few articles I hope you will enjoy.

It’s nice to have you back; I found the Vette, and I’m pumped for Fall.

Making Time to Make Series

Link: Making Time to Make

One of the reasons I’ve started really enjoying writing for the site again is best summed up in my favorite thing I’ve written recently — a three-part series on public attention management for creative types that I called, “Making Time to Make.”

It’s been a while since I’ve had such clarity about what I need to do with myself (and, perhaps, more importantly, what I need to be okay with not doing with myself). And these three posts captured what I wanted to say.

If you’re in a big rush and only have time to read one thing out of all these links, jump to the third and final article in this series, Making Time to Make: One Clear Line; that’s got lots of tips and what have you.

Here’s links to all three:

Making Time to Make: Bad Correspondence - Aug 4 2008 - “As I read all this, I hear a man saying (at least in my words), ‘I can either be a guy who writes novels, or I can be a guy who answers email. Realizing I cannot be both, I?ve made the decision, and now I live with it.’”
Making Time to Make: The Job You Think You Have - Aug 5 2008 - “Thing is: if the amount of time you devote to lite correspondence with individual people exceeds the amount of time you spend on making things, then you may be in a different line of work than you?d originally thought you were.”
Making Time to Make: One Clear Line - Aug 6 2008 - “For myself, I think it?s critical to set reasonable expectations about how, when, and where people can expect to have authentic, honest-to-God contact with us…”

Rest of the Best of the Summer

And here’s a few more of the posts that people seemed to like over the past few weeks.

Free Books for your Amazon Kindle - Jun 6 2008 - My favorite places to find free material for Summer’s favorite new toy
NYT: Businesses Fight the Email Monster They Helped Create - Jun 14 2008 - Big Companies are starting to get the email problem. Now they’re just trying to figure out what to do about it.
Guide to Better Napping - Jun 17 2008 - Link post to a fantastic infographic on ad hoc snooze-taking.
Kurt Vonnegut on Writing Better - Jul 14 2008 - Writing advice that’s as practical and down-to-earth as the guy who offers it - a humble man who obsessed over every page he ever wrote.
On Peanut Shells and Email Archiving - Jul 24 2008 - A controlling metaphor that helps explain why I advise people not to save their peanut shells.
Foo for Bar: Kicking Ass with Outcome-Based Thinking - Aug 08 2008 - Simple formula for distilling any mystery meat need into a Project + a Next Action.
Ideas, Execution, and the Rare Auteur - Aug 11 2008 - More thoughts on why ideas are just a multiplier of execution.
What Makes for a Good Blog? - Aug 19 2008 - I still owe Six Apart a list of favorite blogs, but, weirdly enough, this list of things I look for in a good blog was the most popular thing I wrote this summer. Go figure.
Social Networks: The Case for a “Pause” Button - Aug 26 2008 - I love you, but sometimes I need “me time.” And I need you not to know it.
Deciding Whether to Read a Book: Some Wildly Reductive Heuristics - Aug 27 2008 - My snarky (but honest) shortcuts on quickly sussing out whether a book is worth your attention. (Hint: most don’t make the cut.)

Like I say, welcome back. In case it fell out of your pocket on the train to Paris, here’s our site’s free RSS feed.

See you in study hall.

?Recap: 43 Folders' Corvette Summer? was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on September 02, 2008. Except as noted, it's ?2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

43f Program Note: The Week Our Gears Shift

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 13:09:03 GMT

Reserve Reading: kung fu grippe - “Better”

In light of some new directions I’m taking with my work, 43 Folders is changing focus and approach from being the “blog about productivity” that many readers may view it as today.

So, this week, I’ll be presenting a few articles that touch on where I’m heading with this stuff, and why.

By way of prologue, if you’ve been enjoying the stuff I’ve had to say over the past few weeks, I think you’ll find the course adjustments wholesome and useful. If you haven’t so much cared for that stuff, I’m not sure what to tell you. Except there’s a strong possibility this won’t be the site for you. Which is always a risk, anyway.

If you’re wondering about a rough heading on why I’m doing what I’m doing — and what that means to you as a reader — please read this post I wrote the other day for my personal site.

Notwithstanding the fact I stuck that article on a way less visible site mostly out of fear I’d freak people out by putting it here on 43f, I now realize that little essay ended up being exactly what I needed to say, and in exactly the way I needed to say it. Think of it as a first draft of a blueprint.

Put differently, if something like “Better” is not what you’re looking for on 43 Folders in the future, I can’t guarantee that this will continue to be a site you’ll enjoy in precisely the way you did before.

As of today, the menu’s changing, and the snack platter is gone.

While I’ll leave it up to you to decide the degree to which the changes I have in mind will improve 43 Folders in a way you find useful, I hope you’ll at least give it a throw, on the strength.

And, if you share my feeling that real “productivity” means a lot more than index cards, lists of links, and endless, free bus rides for bored tourists, I think you’ll enjoy and benefit from the change.

I want to take your attention seriously by sharing ideas that help you focus on the hard work of making something that you love — and making it better.

?43f Program Note: The Week Our Gears Shift? was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on September 08, 2008. Except as noted, it's ?2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Four Years

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 14:25:39 GMT

[“what is this?”]

Four years ago last Monday, I started 43 Folders with a TypePad account and no idea what I was doing.

The obsessions that brought me here struck me as fascinating and under-reported — if almost entirely unrelated, one to the other. And, talking about the stuff I was really bad at often made me feel less awful about it. Sometimes it even helped me to rehabilitate the triggering, sucky behavior. On a number of levels, this felt really good.

Even though I never really knew where I was heading, I tried to remain candid that the primary reason the site existed at all was because it helped me — a strident preacher, clutching the pulpit in one hand and a book about Next Actions in the other. But, by even a week in, I realized I was writing to a growing audience and found myself daring to hope for a little dough to come my way as a result. Someday.

But, to this day, almost everything I’m proud to have written on 43 Folders started as a letter to myself. No shit.

I also realized from the beginning that the real life hacks were about making your way from a place that’s chaotic and depressing toward someplace where you feel more competent, stable, and alive. A place where you eventually may not need the life hack any more. I wanted to figure out why this stuff did and didn’t work by living inside of it, and by filing real-time reports about what I learned — effectively operating on myself in public with a keyboard, a handful of index cards, and an infinite IV of French Roast coffee.

Some days, it helped me. I’d feel a real sense of purpose and focus that made my new job about writing about my new job seem less weird, fractal, and self-involved. But, on just as many days, it felt like I was allowing myself to be tossed around by a menacing Rube Goldberg device of my own design. On more than a few days, I wondered what, precisely, I was trying to accomplish. Some days, I thought I might be losing my mind. One blog post at a time.

Only on the web could a zero-budget, one-person project about such random shit hit the kind of hockey stick curve 43f rode in late 2004.

People I idolized were suddenly saying they enjoyed what I had to say. People like Andy Baio, Danny O’Brien, Dan Gillmor, and Ben Hammersley each said things about 43f that made me feel really good about what I was doing, making a case that I swear by to this day: producing something that’s enjoyed by the people you admire and respect is the greatest reward a writer can imagine.

But, in no small measure, it was Cory Doctorow’s surpassingly generous linking and encouragement that shot my crummy little site to its cruising altitude, where (for now at least) it remains. Some days, I’ll admit, Cory drives me crazy — and I’m far from the Boing Boing fanatic that I was at the beginning of this decade. But, until the day someone in a smock sets my corpse aflame and pours the remains into a big, red Folgers can, Cory will have my deepest gratitude for using his considerable whuffie to almost singlehandedly put 43 Folders on the map. Thanks, man.

Through 2005 — even as poor Danny and I struggled to finish an unfinishable book by employing a Kafka-esque process that redefined my notion of “irony” — 43 Folders continued to grow in traffic and in whatever passes for stature on the internet. People seemed excited that blogs were finding a sweet spot in which niche topics, passionate writers, and devoted readers could form a long-distance relationship that was satisfying to everyone in a way that print media increasingly was not.

At some point that year, 43f became the surreal and unexpected circus tent under which my family began drawing an increasing amount of its income. This was weird, but it was also exactly as gratifying as it sounds. Which is to say, “very.” But, my small measure of something like success did not go unnoticed. In fact, the popularity of small blogs like 43 Folders contributed to the arrival of a gentrifying wagon train of carpetbaggers, speculators, and confidence men, all eager to pan the web’s glistening riverbed for easy gold. And, brother, did these guys love to post and post and post.

Over the years, “productivity blogs” of unbelievably varying quality shot up like hothouse kudzu — many baldly hoping to capitalize on the low-cost, high-return business of theoretically useful self-help publishing — mostly without affecting even the vaguest patina of wanting to help another human being solve a real-world problem. Some of these folks continue to make a living (and draw a considerable crowd) by producing material that I personally find transparently dumb and useless.

Thus, in time, phrases like “life hacks” and “GTD” became associated with everything from printing your own graph paper, to taking a nap, to making a living by pinching off lists of links to lists of links to Firefox extensions that help you use Facebook to more efficiently pretend to like people whom you’ve never met.

Important Intermission

At this juncture, I wish to apologize and formally atone for any role 43 Folders or I have had in popularizing “hack” as the preferred nomenclature for unmedicated knowledge workers dicking around with their “productivity system” all day. 43 Folders regrets the error.

Plus, as the “Top n” style of shoveling context-free horseshit to an undemanding audience became the new way of “blogging,” I started to wonder where the hell all of this stuff was heading. And, more importantly, I wondered whom any of this stuff might actually be helping. Besides the bloggers, of course. Bloggers love that traffic. Even when it contravenes the basic goddamned tenet of every post their addict-readers are mainlining. But, then, nobody ever said gold mining was going to be good for the environment.

As I continued writing regularly for 43 Folders — and it was very hard to keep up with the pace I’d set in the first months of the site — I often had a gut sense of when I was doing well. I knew when the material was working, because I felt good about the results, less crummy about myself, plus I was still occasionally hearing thoughtful, non-ass-kissing feedback from people whom I respect and admire. Somedays, I fundamentally got it. Other days, I just typed and hit “Post.” Just like the gold miners I despised.

Along the way, I got dubbed “a productivity guru” and was repeatedly reminded by almost everybody that 43 Folders was “a site about Getting Things Done” — period. Which certainly came as a surprise to me. Still does.

By improbably (and I’ve often thought, mistakenly) landing a brief berth in the Technorati Top 100, 43 Folders was also “discovered” by an unspeakable black mildew of PR people who, on their clients’ behalf, “reach out” to bloggers with the gruesome goal of getting them to trade their credibility for access to free crap and “embargoed” press releases. Mm, pinch me. And, somewhere in there, I heard somebody say, “Marketing is the tax you pay for being unremarkable,” and I dreamed of having that phrase printed on a giant hammer.

As I experimented over the years with sundry ways to make money with my site, I tried (and mostly abandoned) a dozen different small trickles of income, before eventually settling on a relationship with a dependable ad company whom I still work with today. They’ve been good to me.

Of course, I occasionally still find myself on the receiving end of an astonishing array of paid promotional offers — a few of which have been the web equivalent of being asked to stand on a street corner, wearing a chicken suit, while spinning a giant red sign that promotes computers I’ve never used. I’m proud to have said “no” to all but a couple of these — I refuse all of them today — although I do regret not having purchased my own chicken suit. Because, that’s steady work that you can do anywhere, you know?

By 2007, an increasingly large number of mornings would find me staring, dead-eyed, at del.icio.us or Digg or reddit, feeling queasy as I wondered what possible role, how ever small, my stupid blog might have had in helping inspire 1,000 hucksters to try their hand at half-assing a living from pretending to help strangers — while providing their quarry an unapologetically infinite source of pointless procrastination in the bargain.

On those days, I rarely even bothered to type. I sulked and wondered what the hell “productivity” meant to anyone who wasn’t peddling some flavor of online addiction or, basically marketing a personality-based cargo cult.

One particularly gifted arrival on the productivity and self-help scene authored some of the most profoundly useful advice I’d ever heard about attention management — but, then followed it up by showing how those extra cycles could be used to game the system so efficiently that you can sit in a hammock for 164 hours a week while people in India write birthday cards to your friends. That one became a runaway bestseller and, perhaps unintentionally, formed the new template for how to market productivity as an extreme lifestyle. I also have to imagine that it singlehandedly revived our nation’s sagging hammock industry.

Finally, when I had the opportunity to really go off the grid last fall to be with my wife and our new daughter, I watched over the hill as my best-known site faded into an XML-enabled cacophony of voices that weren’t my own. Guest bloggers (albeit great friends and good writers); random forum posts; inane, self-linking comments; a wiki that greeted me with freshly replenished v14gRa spam each morning; my own sporadic non-content posts, containing more self-promotion and advertising than I liked; plus a handful of weird, legacy attempts to make an extra hundred bucks a month that, in retrospect, were frankly embarrassing.

My blog about making your life a little better suddenly had more chrome than a Chevy and more bullshit than a limo full of lifestreamers.

The brutal Catch-22? At about the point when I realized my site was no longer about what I really thought or really cared about, I also worried whether I had anything new and substantial to say. And, what I did have to say, I usually self-edited or watered-down, for fear of either adding to the noise, infuriating the dopamine-deprived “TL;DR” crowd, or provoking an exhausting internet feud with one of the web’s countless retardate man-children.

The ad money was still consistent, so I didn’t need to sweat niggling details like why the site still existed. But, by as recently as this past winter, I just wasn’t sure what to do with myself.

The site that had used to make me feel so good about my place on the web felt dry and brittle, and I started avoiding it like an oncologist’s waiting room. This feeling fundamentally sucked, and I had no idea what to do about it.

Then things got better. A lot better.

Tune in later this week for the [next thrilling chapter]([43 Folders: Time, Attention, and Creative Work | 43 Folders](http://www.43folders.com/2008/09/10/time-attention-creative-work)) in Merlin’s weird-ass bildungsroman, which series is explained in concept here.

Now available: 43 Folders: Time, Attention, and Creative Work

?Four Years? was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on September 08, 2008. Except as noted, it's ?2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

43 Folders: Time, Attention, and Creative Work

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 17:14:34 GMT

[“what is this?”]

Here’s something I wrote last week for this site’s new “About” page:

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

Call it a motto, or a charter, or — if you have to — a “mission statement.” But, for both of us, it’s a stake in the ground that keeps me focused on what I feel best suited to do for you with this site right now.

I want to help you identify and remove any obstacle that keeps you from making things that you love. And then I want to help you figure out how to make those things even better. That’s pretty much it.

R.I.P., Productivity Pr0n

Friends, I’m done with “productivity” as a personal fetish or hobby. There are countless sites that are all too happy to vend stroke material for your joyless addiction to puns about procrastination and systems for generating more taxonomically satisfying meta-work. But, presently, you won’t find so much of that here.

Except inasmuch as it can help move aside barriers to finishing the projects that you claim matter to you, “productivity” is often a sprawling ghetto of well-marketed nonsense for people who really just need a ritalin and a hug. So, for myself, random tips and lists that aren’t anchored to solving a real-world problem for a smart but flawed adult with a mind are dead to me. Pour a forty on ‘em.

From now on, I’m going to talk about how people make stuff. Books, art, code, buildings, ballets, companies, furniture, whimsical hats, songs, or what have you. But understand: this isn’t just for fancy people and fine arts majors.

You’re already “creative”

If the work that really matters to you involves understanding a relationship between a handful of seemingly unrelated things and then figuring out the best way to portray, magnify, or resolve those relationships, then you’re already doing creative work. Any time you make a connection between two or more axes that hadn’t occurred to you 10 minutes ago, yes, you’ve done something creative. Seriously. This does not require your wearing a beret.

But, then — and this is really important — if you want to actually make something out of all that insight, and if you have the will and desire to polish and improve the execution of all the things you produce, then we’ll have a lot to talk about.

But, if you want a “site about GTD,” “a blog about index cards,” or a wide-mouthed sluice of recycled links to lists of geegaws that will keep you momentarily distracted from how sad you are, then you’re wasting both of our time here. So, go. You’re stinking up the joint.

This is now a site for people who want to finish things that they care about — but who still occasionally need help, inspiration, and the courage to push all the bullshit off their work table. This is about clearing that space every day, and then using it to do cool stuff that makes you proud.

So. What, then?

Does this mean that Inbox Zero, Time and Attention Management, or advice on reducing noise will be going away from 43 Folders? No. Freaking. Way.

If I may say, that’s all great stuff, and you’re still going to need it if the mind is willing but the attention is occasionally weak (or under attack). No, if anything, you’ll be seeing more articles targeted at how to do this stuff well so you can get back into the studio faster.

You’re also going to see more material about the habits and patterns that have been demonstrated to work for makers who have had long-lived careers in the creative world. In itself, this is the direction I’m most fascinated with right now, and it’s likely one I’ll be returning to often in the coming months:

How do you fire your muse and learn to rely solely on working your ass off every day?

As I’m learning, it definitely can be done, but there’s no secret or silver bullet; it’s just work, work, work, combined with a personal commitment to editing and improvement that produces the best results of which you’re capable as often as possible. It’s the kind of productivity that’s about applying your time to frequent, high-quality “releases” — not laying in a hammock while people in Bangalore update your website.

But, what about all the cool notebooks, links to lists of “GTD resources,” and ponderously detailed tutorials on how to label a file folder? Yeah. From now on, maybe don’t expect a lot of that here. Unless I feel it has a direct link to helping you do things.

Here’s the thing

A notebook is basically the creative equivalent of the NFL jersey you picked up at Macy’s; unless you fill it with a lot of hard work and sacrifices, you’re just a dilettante with poor spending patterns. An aspiring something. A fan of the game. An existential cosplayer. And, that’s not what I want to help you to be. Even if you really love Moleskines or the Raiders, God love ‘em.

So, we’re going to talk about what goes in the notebook; not the fact that it’s pretty and has a little bookmark. Then I want you to leave here.

That’s the basic idea. We’ll see what evolves.

And, there’s these other things

I’m also working on some other stuff for the site that I hope will please more people than it annoys. In any case, they’re each important to me. Here’s the shape of the map.

1. Less noise in general

Less chrome, less noise, less blah-blah, and less unnecessary anything. On a given day in the future, you may notice this as fewer ads, lower (but higher-quality) post volume, and an ongoing attempt to make the site fast and easy to use. I’m working on this. With money and people and new relationships and so on. More as it develops and becomes worth highlighting.

2. Walking a truer productivity walk

It’s important to me that we both try to stay focused on the real goal: which is being done with a project that you care about. It’s not about hanging out, smoking cloves, and chatting about “Diff?rance” late into the Paris nights. I want you to visit here, get what you need, then get the hell back to work.

So, if you occasionally notice me smiling, and putting a firm but gentle hand between your shoulder blades as we begin a walk toward the door, it’s because that’s closer to where your work is. It’s not here, it’s not in your inbox, and, with all due respect, it’s probably not in a list of 5,000 links.

Like I said recently, if you’ve crossed the river, you should quit carrying the boat. And while I very much hope and desire that you make 43 Folders your first stop when you need to feel inspired and confident about making decisions that support your best work, I truly do not want you to waste time here. That would make me sad.

So, yes, please read this page: How to Use 43 Folders. It’s a new page that provides basic guidance on finding fast answers, and ultimately, on helping you figure out why you’re here.

I imagine the how-to will evolve as the site evolves, so I would be honored if you would trust me enough to bookmark that page, then consider making it the place where you begin your visits here. With any luck, it can also frequently be the page where your visits quickly end here. And, although I have to imagine it will vex the nice people who are kind enough to sell ads for my site: that’s okay by me.

3. Mostly firewalled self-promotion

While it’s my site and will always be used to promote my ideas and my business in the way that I think is most appropriate, I also don’t want it to turn into a glorified billboard for me — especially to the exclusion of the writing and ideas that make it theoretically useful. And, especially in the articles and content well. That space is getting more sacrosanct.

With much sadness, I’ve recently watched some of my most beloved and respected friends’ blogs degrade into a depressing slurry of pimping, random affiliate linking, paid (or pseudo-paid) placement, idiotic traffic boosters, and wholesale ego boosting about every bakesale, state fair, or mall opening that its authors plan to chopper into.

Here, except for The Monthly Pimp, I want the content well to stay clean, focused, and worthy of your trust and my credibility. Ads go in the ad zones, and anybody can buy one to sell pretty much anything. But it doesn’t buy placement in a 43 Folders post, and it shouldn’t buy my association or endorsement elsewhere. Maybe for a truly paid, public endorsement deal; but not for a banner ad buy. That’s just weird. Plus I don’t own a chicken suit.

This doesn’t mean that I won’t link to my own work and my other sites and projects whenever I think it’s appropriate. It also doesn’t mean I’ll stop linking to Amazon for products or A2 for web hosting when it’s germane to what I have to say. But, I do already have a site that’s purely self-promotional. And that’s where I’d like most of that that stuff to live now.

OT: If you’re a blogger I know and love, maybe at least consider joining me in your own overdue Superfund cleanup to the extent that you’re comfortable and able. Too much money can easily buy you a very dumb audience and an astoundingly influential cohort of ex-readers.

4. No more fake “conversations”

I’ve loved so many of the comments and forum posts on 43 Folders. But, for an endless number of reasons that you’ve probably seen for yourself across the web, the quality and care of visitor contributions everywhere has hit what I truly hope is rock bottom.

Stupid, venal, ignorant, self-linking comments from people who couldn’t be troubled to actually read the article. Angry forum posts full of personal attacks, giant avatars of Manga characters, and 4-vertical-inch signatures about which Golden Girl you are. Nonsense tagging, meta-commenting, ass-kissing, trolling, and…oooo!…video responses….neato! Please. It’s nuts and it’s pointless and it’s really cynical on the part of almost every publisher that allows that crap to go on.

“Conversation,” like “friend,” is a word that has a meaning to human beings with faces and brains. I will not abuse it as code for the surplus page views produced by someone with an afternoon to kill.

5. This is my site. There are many like it, but this one is mine

43 Folders is now, once again, about what I have to say about things, and I want that to be the sole reason that the idea of a visit here either attracts or repels you.

Yes, there will still be occasional guest posts, open threads, and of course, I’ll be linking to and quoting widely from the work of others. But I’m taking a cue from John, Andy, Jason, and anybody else who wants to own every pixel of their site. I’m buying back my own stock, even if it incurs a short-term writedown.

If you have comments about what I say here, post about it on your own blog. That’s what it’s there for, and it’s a place where owning your words will have gravity and, in most cases, will be associated with the name of a real person who doesn’t pinch loaves on his own couch.

And, then, there’s everything else

Over the next year, I’m going to do lots more speaking, more of my own independent video and podcast projects, and, yes, in all likelihood, I’ll finish one book and make progress toward a second.

N.B. In the case of that last thing, it’s likely to be the sole public remark I’ll have to share until I have a release date, an Amazon page, and a sample chapter for you to download. But, that’s getting ahead of myself. We’ll see what happens. Do wish me luck.

So, “hi.” Again.

I want you to know that I’m back. I’m here. And I’m thinking very much about how 43 Folders can become a focused resource for people who do work that they love and make things that matter to them — but who just want to do it better and with less bullshit and existential overhead on every conceivable front. And, if it’s not clear, I really want that same lack of bullshit and surplus of polish to be evident in my own work as well. It’s the goal, anyhow.

We’ll see how I do. As ever, it’s going to be mostly letters to myself. But, the material is out there, and as much as my schedule for other work and the time I set aside for my family and friends will allow, I want this site to be really consistently good. And, where it’s able, I’d love for 43 Folders to help you make your stuff even better.

So, that’s it for the throat-clearing and metatalk for now. Thanks for hearing me out, and I hope you’ll stop by sometimes if you think 43 Folders can help you make something cool today.

Now: back to work.

?43 Folders: Time, Attention, and Creative Work? was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on September 10, 2008. Except as noted, it's ?2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

The Wire: Writing Into Your Arc

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 13:46:14 GMT

Important

While this article about The Wire deliberately contains as few actual spoilers about the show as possible, it does contain numerous links to pages with information that will tell you critical spoiler information about the stories and fates of the show’s characters. The article also contains language and links that are very much not safe for work. Please proceed with caution on all fronts.

In the time since I gallantly announced what makes a good blog, I’ve had time to think more about the qualities of work that endures.

Not thinking just of personal blogs here, or solely in terms of the ways that we can improve online publishing and social media ?although clearly these are areas that could stand some improvement. I’m talking about the extent to which some of those qualities that I mentioned in that article relate to broader ideas around all creative work and the process behind how it gets made well and consistently by an auteur who’s only incidentally a merchant.

And it’s especially got me thinking about how any thing we choose to make today can contribute to, for lack of a better phrase, an arc.

So, naturally, I’ve been thinking a lot about The Wire.

First, understand that I’m an unapologetic superfan of and evangelist for The Wire, which is David Simon’s epic, 5-season HBO drama about the life and work of a lot of very flawed characters in contemporary Baltimore. This is neither the first nor last time that I’ll quote Simon’s excellent description of the show?s theme, which is taken from his DVD commentary of the very first scene of s01e01:

[The Wire is] really about the American city, and about how we live together. It’s about how institutions have an effect on individuals, and how … whether you’re a cop, a longshoreman, a drug dealer, a politician, a judge [or] lawyer, you are ultimately compromised and must contend with whatever institution you’ve committed to.

Much has been written about the dense, literary quality of the show (read Kottke for context and great links), so it may not surprise you to learn I’m one of the many people who consider The Wire to be the best series that’s ever appeared on television; my wife and I have watched the first (and, in my opinion, best) four seasons at least three times.

Yeah, that’s a plug for you to give The Wire a chance, but it’s not exactly my point.

Ok. So, why The Wire?

My point is that one big reason why The Wire was so good is its endlessly satisfying story arc, which is composed of many smaller, complementary arcs inside the big arc. That’s where a good story becomes a much more engrossing narrative that’s ultimately about more than itself.

Like any creative work that connects with the people who enjoy it, The Wire tells a story. And, to some extent, every story is about change.

Something happened. Or something is going to happen. Or something that everybody expected to happen hasn’t happened. But, it’s a change, and it’s having an impact on the lives of people we care about. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s basically the bones and teeth of every story from Adam & Eve through Harold & Kumar. Something changed, and now people have to deal.

How that dealing spins out over the life of a project, how the story is told, and what the story says about the world are the sorts of questions we’re only encouraged to ask about Big Important Things like very old books and Bergman films. Which, of course, is bullshit.

There’s no reason you can’t look at the lifetime of any good piece of story-telling — and, yes, why not, let’s say that could include blogs, Twitter accounts, and Flickr streams — and be able to see what the change is.

Yes: if it?s any good, I can look at one page or one photo or one 140-character post and enjoy it for its value as one independent thing in the world. But over time, all those potentially thousands of pieces can and do snap together, often without our even realizing it. The question is, what story is it that we?re telling? What is the arc?

And, that’s where I look to an example of middlebrow culture that falls somewhere between Bergman’s Death playing chess with Man on a beach and Scoble’s latest shaky video of a guy who likes golf speaking in press releases. But, The Wire is a piece of popular culture that beautifully illustrates how satisfying all those seemingly unrelated pieces of an arc can be — and how much richer they each become when the audience is engaged, challenged, and rewarded by the effort of giving the work 100% of their attention. Of course, it also helps if the creator is talented, tries really hard, and doesn’t treat the audience like a bunch of bored imbeciles. But, I digress.

Like any story, The Wire has characters, settings, and things that happen over time. Example? Let’s start with a single, one-minute scene from s01e05 — an episode called “The Pager,” that’s from right around the time when the series really started cooking. Which, not coincidentally, was also when the intersecting arcs started to reveal themselves.

The Scene

Meet Jimmy McNulty.

Jimmy’s a talented, politically deaf, pain-in-the-ass homicide detective and drunk who’s estranged from the mother of the two children he adores. One night, in the shitty little apartment he’s recently moved into, Jimmy’s too wasted on cheap scotch to properly assemble the Ikea furniture that he bought for his kids’ imminent visit. Jimmy is a mess, because he’s dealing with change. In his own inimitable way.

But, see, you don’t really even need to know all this to just enjoy the scene. (Please watch from 0:09-1:25)

One small scene of a guy who’s drunk and a little careless. There’s loud music playing in the next apartment. He has to make a few trips to get all of the stuff he bought into one room (bet he’s in a walk-up apartment, right?). Jimmy’s useless tonight, clearly more focused on the bottle than on assembling the parts of his new S?LI. Here’s a middle-aged man whose bedroom contains a green plastic lawn chair. Plus, the whole sorry scene is grimly lit by a single high-wattage desk lamp ? reminiscent of the unforgiving light flooding the interrogation rooms that Jimmy and his partner, Bunk, work every day. Painful already, right?

So, that’s just one very small bit of character, setting, and thing-that-happens. While it’s certainly not a story, in and of itself, it’s still an entertaining, well-made scene to watch. Not as famous as Jimmy and Bunk’s deservedly best-known scene from the previous episode (warning: very NSFW), but you get the idea. You can already tell a few things about this show.

It’s well photographed, the set is painfully realistic, and the man dealing with change seems convincingly Baltimorean and drunk (although the actor portraying him is stunningly British and, to my knowledge, mostly sober).

Even if you have no idea what else happens on the other dozens of hours of this series, past and future, you could watch this one-minute scene and think, “yeah, that’s pretty good.”

The Episode

But, if you were able to watch the whole episode — and it’s a good one — you’d see an atypically intense and complex police drama about cops in an understaffed bureaucracy trying to gather string about a case that seems impossible to crack. You’d see that some of the cops are brilliant (?Natural PO-lice?), some are dedicated, a couple are intoxicated by brutality, and a memorable pair with a Gaelic pun for a name are hilariously useless and corrupt. None is perfect, but none is without his or her interesting and redeeming qualities. End to end, it’s a very colorful bunch.

Same goes for the dealers and drug kingpins, who are struggling with their own related set of problems around bureaucracy, trust, and continuity inside a crumbling system. Theirs is a mature but increasingly vulnerable criminal enterprise that’s being menaced and robbed at will by a dangerous and unforgettable outsider with surprising tastes, ethics, and style.

Along the way you’d see a lot of beautifully shot scenes that show (without telling) why these people are so desperate. Plus you?d be introduced to secondary characters who are anything but stage dressing, such as a junkie informant who’s inked and filled-in with the complex texture of a Mercutio or a Fagin.

So, basically, if you gave this episode from June of 2002 about an hour of your time, and it was the only thing you ever saw of The Wire, you’d probably walk away thinking, “Wow, I didn’t understand almost any of that, but it was really interesting and well made. This looks like a great show that you have to actually watch and think about.”

But, here’s where it gets really good, and where we start to see a bigger arc that may not have been clear before.

The Season

Indeed, if you watched that whole first season of The Wire, you’d find yourself rewarded with a storyline — an arc — that I will not spoil for you.

But, you’d start to see that almost every character you meet ends up having some effect on at least a handful of other characters — even if they never knew the others existed. The decisions that people make early in the season have resonance throughout the story that plays out in unexpected ways. And the change that describes the generic arc of that first season (Antihero cops try to take down an antihero Baltimore drug crew) ends up telling a much deeper story than any typical police procedural that I?m familiar with.

Even in one season, we’re seeing a story that’s closer to Dickens or Zola than any styrofoam plate full of Law & Order. This is nothing short of a Greek Tragedy about broken people trying to stay alive in a broken system. Nobody’s perfect, and everybody is fucked in one way or another.

In my opinion, it’s a breathtaking set of 13 episodes. And if those hour-long TV shows were all you ever watched: again, you’d have enjoyed a real treat.

But there’s a lot more story, more change, and still more to the arc.

The Series

Finally, if you watched all five seasons of The Wire, you’d see a lot more going on than you imagined from one season, one episode — let alone one short scene of a drunk cop trying to build children’s furniture by lamp light.

You’d see each successive season turning to a different broken and dying institution: unions, government, public education, and print media, respectively. You’d see the same themes, and characters, and mistakes, and hopes, and horrible consequences brought back to life in different ways. Stuff that happened before still means something; possibly even more than you’d first realized.

This is a show that uses previous story arcs to deepen and expand on current stories. It uses things you’d never noticed from previous viewings as the centerpiece for a whole new story. It suggests grace notes that are barely audible unless you’ve been listening carefully for a very long time.

In sum, The Wire pays back the attention you invest in it like few pieces of art created in my lifetime. It’s vicious about telling every letter of the story with muscular precision — even when it chooses to do so at pace many would consider pointlessly deliberate: “dull.”

And, because the story rarely stops to explain what’s happening for the folks who just wandered in from the first segment of Family Feud, it demands that you bring the same care and thought to watching the show that its creators brought to making it. Thinking, on both ends of the art. That is engagement.

Like great literature, yes, you can return and enjoy this series on many levels and based on whatever you have to bring to it at a given time. It’s not only smarter than anything else that I’ve seen on TV, it’s also smarter than I am. Which I love.

Arcs Matter Because Writing Matters

I doubt that I’ll ever make anything one-tenth as intelligent, thoughtful, and engaging as The Wire, and, in all likelihood, neither will you. But, again, that’s not the point.

The inspiration you need to take away from this is the idea that every scene matters to some arc. Even the one minute with the drunk furniture assembly. Whether your given “scene” is in a screenplay, or an Excel spreadsheet, or the Tweet that you’re about to type about your flight delay: it matters. It all matters.

Like I said in the talk where I first brought up this thought about The Wire (video and slides of which below), if you think what you write about or otherwise choose to make doesn’t matter, talk to Stephen King.

He started writing a book I adore before he nearly died, then finished it in excruciating pain after it turned out he was still barely alive, let alone whole. The story he tells about what happened in-between may change your mind about whether this stuff is worth caring about. Just understand: it matters to the people who follow your arc and it really ought to matter to you ? long before some idiot with a rottweiler hits you with his giant van.

There’s already one arc that you began the minute you made something, called it “done,” then put it someplace where people could see it. How that very, very large story gets told may be too late for you to completely control. Sorry, but that ? as Omar would say ? is all in the game.

But you very much do have the power to design the arcs you make, starting today. And even if you haven’t figured out how your final episode ends, consider how the pieces you want to lay down might fit together. And how the string that you gather might crack a case you hadn’t expected.

Who do you want to delight? Who do you pray gets your references? Who will you flatly refuse to explain your backstory to? What’s the one goddamned thing that only you can make today ? and what arc might it fit into downstream? Which ?average reader? are you prepared to find the courage to tell: ?Fuck you.?

Above all: whose attention will you reward with the best thing you can possibly make today?

Good. Now go, and reward the shit out of them.

Supporting Material: ?How to Blog?

kung fu grippe - How to Blog

Here’s the presentation I recently did in which I talked about this Wire stuff for the first time (that part starts around the 53:00 mark in the video)

Video

Tip: Sean’s a nice enough guy, but his introduction in this very choppy video will redefine your personal concept of “headache-inducing.” With respect, skip to 5:20 to get to where my actual talk begins.

Update 2008-09-25 11:09:18 PDT

I apologize. I cannot get this busted-ass video embed not to autoplay, and if I hear Sean screaming about a scavenger hunt on my site one more time, I’m going to lose it. Video’s here. So sorry for the extra click.

Slides

?The Wire: Writing Into Your Arc? was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on September 25, 2008. Except as noted, it's ?2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

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Important Intermission

43 Folders: Time, Attention, and Creative Work

R.I.P., Productivity Pr0n

You’re already “creative”

So. What, then?

Here’s the thing

And, there’s these other things

1. Less noise in general

2. Walking a truer productivity walk

3. Mostly firewalled self-promotion

4. No more fake “conversations”

5. This is my site. There are many like it, but this one is mine

And, then, there’s everything else

So, “hi.” Again.

The Wire: Writing Into Your Arc

Important

Ok. So, why The Wire?

The Scene

The Episode

The Season

The Series

Arcs Matter Because Writing Matters

Supporting Material: ?How to Blog?

Video

Update 2008-09-25 11:09:18 PDT

Slides