Merlin Mann on Time and Attention
December 23, 2008
2009 is nearly upon us. Y2K… err, IX. The New Year holiday is always a moment to reflect. Whether you’ll be pensively staring out the window from a comfortable easy chair or passionately throwing a whiskey bottle at your reflection in the mirror, the question remains the same: “What am I doing with my life?”
That’s a heavy existential question, and I don’t know what to tell you. Also, for certain legally binding reasons, I’m no longer allowed to tell you what to do with your life. If you’re searching for brilliant advice on how you manage your time and attention, however, I would recommend none other than Merlin Mann.
This isn’t the first time Mann has shown up in Instructify. I’ll just leave it at saying that he has a lot of solid advice on productivity, has built an impressive web presence and that I’ve swiftly become a fan. I recently discovered 43 Folders and I was hooked. I’ve been poring through all of his other websites and projects, too. You’ll just have to search for his other stuff on your own. I’m approaching my link limit.
Check out this presentation of his about managing limited time and working in a team in this video from the Google Tech Talks presentation series. One thing you should factor into this is that he’s speaking to an audience of Google employees so the translation to the education sector is a little rough. For example, you should mentally dub in the word “semester” whenever he says “cycle.”
This video isn’t going to provide you with direct instructions about how to manage your time, but it does frame the issue of how your time can sometimes get railroaded. Identifying the obstacles in your way is the first step to solving them—we all know that. Mann points out that you need to identify when well-intentioned helpers also turn into obstacles, like the “ding” noise your email makes to let you know you just got an email. -NICK YINGLING
Google Tech Talks: Merlin Mann on Time and Attention
