
Merlin Mann eschews "productivity pr0n" and shifts the focus of 43 Folders - pius
http://www.43folders.com/2008/09/08/four-years
======
aasarava
_"If I’m not laughing at your joke, complimenting your insight, or leading the
Standing O for something you spent 10 seconds pecking up on your phone, it may
not be because I don’t get it; it may be because I think we’re both capable of
better and just need to find the courage to say so. In as many characters as
it takes."_

That's clearly a stab at Twitter. It'll be interesting to see if Merlin's new
focus will cause others to question their Twitter use (and interesting to see
if it makes any difference in Twitter's traffic.)

~~~
unalone
Can anybody on Twitter tell me how Twitter is at all a useful service? I've
read all the "Twitter is opt-in goodness" but every time I've used it it just
seems like another self-whoring arena.

~~~
mtw
half of my updates on twitter are replies to friends or coworkers, so it's
mostly about communication about current projects, discussing news, etc.

and I only follow people that I've met irl

~~~
unalone
Then I guess it's a matter of different social spheres. Where I am nobody uses
Twitter.

~~~
mtw
depends also on what you do. i work with many companies and many entrepreneurs
so that's where twitter is useful. solo-entrepreneurs, consultants, bloggers
might also find very it useful.

also, if you go to local programming/hacker meetups, you're bound to find a
few who use twitter.

~~~
unalone
But that's the problem. I dislike most programmer/hacker types. While I think
I've something of a hacker personality, I'm far more a critic than I am a
hacker. And most hackers are completely unpolished and unfocused. The people
who follow my account on Twitter, for instance, are the sorts of people who
constantly linkspam. I can't stand that. And I find some people on Twitter
funny, but that isn't productive and it's not thought-provoking. Blog posts at
least provide some thought: Twitter, I find, rarely does.

~~~
fallentimes
Wow that's a lot of generalizations.

What if you just stuck to following friends only? Or is it the chicken/egg
problem?

Just because they follow you doesn't mean you have to follow them. :)

------
fallentimes
_"...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."_

What's funny is: even though there is a ton of of things to criticize Tim
Ferriss for, he chooses something that is actually pretty awesome: outsourcing
repetitive, mundane tasks. The point of 4 hour work week is not to lay in a
hammock the rest of your life; it's to do what you enjoy. I think Tim's an
epic dbag (auto responder? - please.) and even I picked that up.

Sidenote: What the heck are those "digital nomad" ads? Those people sound like
they should be writing the sequel to the Secret. Ugh.

~~~
jraines
What I don't understand is why everyone who praises Ferriss feels compelled to
trash him in the same breath -- Merlin and yourself included.

It's like admitting that you like him or his ideas in front of the cool kids
means you're some kind of sucker.

"Epic dbag" because he recommends auto-responders . . .?

~~~
fallentimes
No. It means that I generally don't like him, but some of his ideas are good.
Like Ron Paul, or Michael Bloomberg or Jason Whitlock. That's all it means -
nothing more, nothing less.

And because he's polarizing, which he admits and actively tries to do. Also
he's a glorified scammy sounding pill pusher who is a master of PR and good at
articulating ideas. The pill advertisements for BodyQuick and BrainQuicken,
which he owns, are reminiscent of weight loss or penis pills.

Any time you praise someone who's done a lot of good and bad I think it's
essential to qualify the parts you like about them.

But I do understand your point and should have elaborated in my original post.
In addition, to the autoresponder (btw, what's hilarious is emailing him,
getting an autoresponse and then a reply from him a minute later), here's a
list of some of the other things he does or actively promotes that I think
qualify him as an "epic dbag" or rather take a lot away from his successes,
ideas and good qualities:

1\. Shady pills making ridiculous claims

2\. This is his world record: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9pWKB2D23k>

3\. He "won" Wired's greatest self promoter of all time

4\. Read about the Chinese kick boxing championship

5\. Self claimed "Advisor to more than 30 world record holders in professional
and Olympic sports (not substantiated)."

6\. Self claimed "Cage fighter in Japan, vanquisher of four world champions
(MMA)" and a "National Chinese kickboxing champion" (not substantiated)."

7\. Self claimed: "Actor on a hit TV series in mainland China and Hong Kong
(not substantiated)"

8\. Plagiarism? [http://www.johnwinsor.com/my_weblog/2008/04/was-another-
new....](http://www.johnwinsor.com/my_weblog/2008/04/was-another-new.html)

Ivygate (yeah, I know) has a pretty hilarious write up as well:
[http://www.ivygateblog.com/2007/05/timothy-ferriss-out-
vayne...](http://www.ivygateblog.com/2007/05/timothy-ferriss-out-vaynering-
vayner/)

<http://is.gd/2pjW>

------
snewe
Background:

<http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/48588149/better>

<http://www.43folders.com/2008/09/08/gears-shifting>

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JoelSutherland
I have never understood the concept of a "productivity blog." Assuming a
person can be maximally productive each post read would have diminishing
returns for the reader.

To put it more simply -- how can following a productivity blog make me more
productive?

~~~
antiform
Actually, a few years ago, after I started implementing a couple of tips I
found on Lifehacker and 43 Folders, like Merlin's great "Inbox Zero" talk, I
did become a lot more productive. I no longer spent several hours a day on
email. I never had to spend time wondering what it was that I had to do "now,"
because I had a list of ongoing projects in one central location listed by
priority.

The only problem is that the marginal returns on such implementations diminish
very quickly, so after you've got the big ones down--like breaking down big,
intimidating tasks into smaller, doable ones and realizing that you don't need
email to auto-update every 5 minutes at every hour of the day--there's not
much to gain from reading productivity blogs.

The big problem is that is it easy to get caught up in the huge initial
improvements and fail to realize that the time you gain from implementing
these marginal improvements is less than the time you already spent on
implementing the improvement itself. It's especially bad if you're the typical
geek like me and enjoy fiddling with programs and plugins and constantly
trying to solve "third order" problems, even when they don't actually do
anything in practice. However, exploiting this weakness is exactly what most
productivity blogs do to keep their traffic up, so I now have a lot more
respect for Merlin, who's actually trying to do something about this problem.

~~~
Hutzpah
That's what I found too: install 1-2 of those lif-hacks and you are way better
off. Fiddle around with more and you just wasted your time. Thanks, though,
for the (not very deep but stil profound) analysis.

~~~
silentbicycle
There are very rapidly diminishing returns, and keeping up with all the new
time-saving tricks takes a lot of time!

------
jraines
>> _more bullshit than a limo full of lifestreamers_

Love it!

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thomasmallen
Oh thank God. This needed to be said so badly. "GTD," "life-hacking" and
everything in between are just things to make feel like they're getting stuff
done without working. Plan, work, and learn, especially from your mistakes.
_That_ is the "life hack."

------
pius
Just to be clear, the phrase "productivity pr0n" is used in the headline not
because it's a direct quotation, but because it succintly describes a lot of
what Mann is eliminating.

~~~
greyman
Judging from his famous blog, he is also creating it. :-)

~~~
silentbicycle
That's what he's reacting to. He's found that after a certain point tinkering
with your productivity system is in itself a form of disguised procrastination
(as is reading the Internet, PS).

Also, once his "productivity" blog became so popular, others who smelled easy
money started their own blogs that seem to capitalize on keeping people caught
up in maya* to draw traffic rather than actually helping them solve their own
problems, productivity or otherwise.

* See: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_%28illusion%29#Concepts_an...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_%28illusion%29#Concepts_analogous_to_Maya)

------
swombat
Looking forward to part 2!

------
jwilliams
The thing I take from this is that productivity (in how these modes define it)
isn't a end in itself.

A useful hack is one that takes you from one mode of operating to were you
want to be.

------
Prrometheus
My God, there's a "43folders"? Are there any blogs not following the awkward-
two-digit-number-plus-a-noun naming convention nowadays?

86monocles.com is available, if anyone is interested.

~~~
Hutzpah
43folders is a name that actually makes sense. The one item of productivity
pr0n that is t unique to GTD is the tickler file. An arrangement which
consists of 43 folders.

~~~
silentbicycle
Just for clarification, it's a rotating file with 31 folders for calendar days
and 12 for months, 31 + 12 -> 43.

I'm pretty sure it also preceded the great majority of those domains.

~~~
unalone
Yeah.

The other big one, 37signals, is named after the signals sent into space in
search of intelligent life. No clue re: 43things. All the other numbers exist
because every other url was taken.

~~~
silentbicycle
Didn't know that about 37signals. That's cool.

I think the other 43 domains followed 43folders, they succeeded it by a year
or three IIRC.

------
ivankirigin
Mann's twitter stream is full of cock jokes.

------
DabAsteroid
To whom are the quotemarks referring?

~~~
pius
No one.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark#Signaling_unusua...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark#Signaling_unusual_usage)

~~~
DabAsteroid
Thanks for the link. I stand corrected.

