So a lot of people (including myself, late at night, staring at my ceiling) ask me – when are you going to finish off the Life Hacks site? After all, most of them don’t say, isn’t it a bit ironic that the guy who lectured people about how to be organised can’t even get around to putting up his notes?
My line here is what I’ve always said: Life Hacks was about the techniques of super-organised geeks, by someone who is spectacularly not one of them. But, you know, that’s not as helpful as a bunch of Perl scripts to tidy your bedroom, is it? So it’s really nice to be now point people to Merlin Mann’s new site, 43 Folders, which is clearly written by somebody is one of those geeks, and is really accomplished at describing and illustrating how he drives his life. It’s a bit of a relief to discover that it runs along the same lines as the Life Hacks talk indicated – text files, little scripts, Getting Things Done, index cards, all that jazz. And a bit humbling too, given that he’s uncovering stuff I never found out, even when I tortured people with hot tongs to find out their secrets.
So, hopefully I’ll be able to copy and paste enough cool tricks to get the fuller notes to Lifehacks up soon. In my continuing chasing of my own tail, I’ve now developed an unhealthy interest in the other side of the geek organisation equation: What motivates geeks? And given that, how can you trick yourself into doing stuff that you’d otherwise run screaming from, like paying bills on time and going to bed at a sane hour?
(Looks at clock.)
A-ha.