I blame Merlin Mann of 43 folders. He’s the one who popularized Moleskines years ago.

How else can I explain that right after I wrote about my analog blog that Brian Moon pointed me to the very next xkcd about that. Which caused my friends to point out the sequel article:

Journal 2 by xkcd

Which gave me this weird flashback to the Kubrick and Cupcakes Get Satisfaction/Songbird party, where I caught both Ramon and Dave McClure as being one of the few without hats.

Ramon
Terra
South of Market, San Francisco, California

Nikon D70, Tokina 16-50mm AT-X PRO f/2.8 DX, SB-800, ultimate light box
1/20sec @ f/2.8, iso640, 21mm (31mm)

Ramon is almost always styling with a hat. Since everyone else is with hat, I suppose he is doing without.

Dave McClure
Terra
South of Market, San Francisco, California

Nikon D70, Tokina 16-50mm AT-X PRO f/2.8 DX, SB-800, ultimate light box
1/10sec @ f/2.8, iso640, 18mm (27mm)

Dave wears 500 hats, but the only one he has on this day is his party hat.

[Why Merlin Mann is the anti-christ after the jump.]

Merlin Mann is the productivity anti-christ

I think if Merlin Mann never wrote 43 Folders, we wouldn’t be drowning in a mass of task list systems for the Mac: Anxiety, iGTD, Midnight Inbox, OmniFocus, TaskPaper, Things, and ThinkingRock. You think that’s too his credit but it is totally evil to someone like me who is curious about stuff like this. My twitter friends joked that I should write a meta-list manager.

I first read Getting Things Done in 2001, right after I quit my second startup. Three years later, someone at Plaxo bought a copy of the book for all the managers in the company. Adam was all excited, but I shrugged, I wonder how many of them will be using a tickler file in two months? Now with Macs gaining market share everyone is rediscovering GTD and tasklist apps for the Mac.

Productivity is a lot like software development: it’s a whole lot easier to talk about it than to do it.

Hey, how many of you are still using tickler folders? 😉

Be honest now. 😀