I had breakfast with Merlin Mann and Irina this morning. I really need his help more than usual. I’m missing lots of appointments and screwing people. Not good at all. I’m gonna take a couple of days off and get a handle on it.

But, who is Merlin and why am I talking about this? He writes a blog called 43 Folders. It’s all about tips to make you more organized and more productive. Great stuff if you’re like me and just letting everything hit the floor.

He used a new term I hadn’t heard before, though: email bankruptcy. It’s where you get so deeply in trouble that you just declare email bankruptcy. In other words, you email everyone and say “sorry, I got your email but I just can’t deal with it/am deleting it, so if it’s important email me back.”

I’m very close to email bankruptcy. But my inbox is clean. I gotta get back onto David Allen’s program. Merlin inspired me to get back on.

Anyone have any productivity tips? Especially for dealing with 1,537 emails? (I have them all triaged in separate folders). The pain of it is I have other stuff I need to get done.

As to my calendar, the first folder I’m going to crunch on is my calendar/events folder.