Back to Work
Back to Work is an award winning talk show with Merlin Mann and Dan Benjamin discussing productivity, communication, work, barriers, constraints, tools, and more.
- Update frequency
- every 8 days
- Average duration
- 83 minutes
- Episodes
- 643
- Years Active
- 2011 - 2024
Episode 223: Normal is Whatever is There
TOPIC: Interstitial time and why you want it back.
This week, after some preliminary discussion of smoking and the children who throw rocks and run track, Dan and Merlin answer questions from listen…
Episode 222: Full-Stack Obsessive
Merlin and Dan use The Aviator as a jumping-off point to talk about OCD as it relates to perfectionism, creativity, and drive in the workplace. They discuss rituals and their consequences, the import…
Episode 221: Minimally Viable Interruption
TOPIC: Time, Stones, and Giving Yourself a Break
Just…give yourself permission to not feel like a dick today. Especially if you think you don't deserve it.
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Episode 220: Canadian Gentle
TOPIC: Hopeless and Impossible.
This week, Dan and Merlin, delve deeper into the impossibly hopeless nature of email.
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Episode 219: At Sixes and Sevens
TOPIC: Jumping Over the Precipice.
This week, Dan and Merlin talk about what to be courageous about and when. It's rarely as easy or as simple as it seems.
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Episode 218: The Tigers in Your Kitchen
TOPIC: Fear, Anxiety, and Existential Whack-A-Mole
This week, Dan and Merlin talk about Color Guard, the science of binge watching, and the uncertain future of podcasts.
But, mainly, they talk a lo…
Episode 217: The Worst Most Advanced Teenager
TOPIC: Take it personal and make it personal.
This week, Dan and Merlin talk about culture, solipsism, hiring, and needle-moving things.
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Episode 216: Safety Sword
TOPIC: Kremlinology and Verbing
This week, Dan and Merlin follow-up on Dan's neighbor and The Trailer Incident. They also undertake a rather circuitous exploration of how little we understand about …
Episode 215: Legacy Cat
TOPIC: With great power comes…uh, uh, what-have-you.
This week, Dan and Merlin cover a lot of ground. What makes a great comics movie. What movies to show (and not show) your kids. The majesty of Th…
Episode 214: Destroyed by Farm Equipment
TOPIC: Youth as exception.
This week, Dan and Merlin talk about chess, the problem with SEO, and why getting old is normal (if you're lucky).
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Episode 213: That's Not Where Rogue Goes!
TOPIC: Thinking Patterns and Thinking Bias
This week, Dan and Merlin talk in detail about how our unconscious patterns of thinking can damage our quality of life and hinder our ability to grow.
Lin…
Episode 212: That Tuesday Feeling
TOPIC: A lotta ins, a lotta outs, a lotta what-have-yous.
This week, Dan and Merlin are all thrown off since they're recording on a Monday. Weird, right?
They mostly talk about the respective state…
Episode 211: Squeeze the Teabag
TOPIC: The weather is not the sky.
This week, Dan and Merlin talk about discovering the challenges that help you to thrive—and grow.
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Episode 210: Fighting with Garbage Can Lids
TOPIC: Less of an Island.
This week Dan and Merlin talk about time, negotiations, and what we want (and don't want) from our email apps.
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Episode 209: Habitual Ritual
TOPIC: Throwing Stars and Managers
This week, Dan and Merlin talk about working in a beehive and discuss whether they played D&D properly.
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Episode 208: Don't Touch Daddy
TOPIC: Illness, Late Night TV, AI in the home, and Talking Baby Dolls
This week, Merlin battles the flu to talk with Dan about late night television, binge watching, talking baby dolls, and the kind…
Episode 207: Vampires in the Wallpaper
TOPIC: Scoping the Minimally-Viable Me
This week, Dan and Merlin catch up on illness, Marvel comics, and what-have-you, but end up talking a lot about who we really are—who "I" actually am. Merlin e…
Episode 206: Talking to Santa
TOPIC: Work as Practice
This week Dan and Merlin chew on some of the numerous eternal imponderables of creative work—with a special focus on "work as practice."
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Episode 205: Obsolete, circa 1993
With Merlin on sabbatical, Dan is joined by John Roderick to discuss his recent visit to Africa, the military, corporate friends, strategic thinking, the Internet, digital books and albums, echoes, p…
Episode 204: Space Geisha
TOPIC: "I am NOT talking about bartending."
A kind of two-parter this week.
First up, a meditation on invasive thoughts, how they can take over our lives, and how we can maybe learn to deal with th…