Merlin Mann

“Joining a Facebook group about creative productivity is like buying a chair about jogging”

-Merlin Mann (@hotdogsladies) via Twitter

Perhaps the most compelling thing that drives people to reading things about, by, for, and involving Merlin Mann is his personality. He has made a career as a nerd that delivers talks, cooks up media like movies, music, podcasts and even writes blog posts about issues like productivity and time management. Somehow, in other words, Merlin Mann has made a career about time management by preoccupying peoples’ time with his media barrages.

This isn’t to say that Merlin Mann’s tweets, blogs and talks are devoid of real content.  Quite the opposite, there’s a great deal to ponder for he is relentlessly self-critical and sarcastic, frequently punctuating his fast-paced talks with profanity, comedic stock images, nerdy jokes, images of himself and his family, and links to interesting reading material on related topics. Moreover, Mann’s philosophy on productivity and distraction is a relatively simple one that can be broken down into a five-point system that he discusses at length on his productivity blog, http://www.43folders.com/

Like a lot of brilliant Silicon Valley nerds, Mann is from far away.  He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio some time in the latter half of the twentieth century, was raised in Florida and attended the prestigious  New College of Florida (http://www.ncf.edu/).

Launched in September of 2004, 43 folders has the largest internet-audience of any of Merlin’s projects.  Through 43 folders, Mann approaches “finding the time and attention to do your best creative work.”  A creative himself, Mann exhibits a disdain for highly corporate or technical methods of producing work.

Primarily for Mann, humans generally suffer from a problem of organization which is poorly suited for creating tasks for themselves, and once they create those tasks, they find that the tasks are far too complicated.  For Mann, “old-fashioned” tasks are those which are actually mini-projects.  In order to make a list actionable, one must break these mini-projects into their component steps and ruthlessly eliminate these steps. If this particular approach sounds familiar, it’s likely because you’re already acquainted with the “Getting Things Done” (GTD) philosophy from an evangelical friend, or the book which started it all, Getting Things Done by David Allen.  Mann’s blog post about how to get started with GTD remains the most-read piece he’s written and serves as the basis for his increasingly illustrious consulting and speaking career. Mann however prefers to be referred to as a writer.

Merlin Mann also works on a number of different other popular products, including: You Look Nice Today, an “audio-based Journal of Emotional Hygiene;” as well as his podcast on the 5by5 network, Back to Work where he and Dan Benjamin of 5by5 Studios and Hivelogic discuss “productivity, communication, work, barriers, constraints, tools, and more.”