Back to Work

TOPIC: Modern Media Management: iTunes Match

This week Dan and Merlin begin a 3-part series on Modern Media Management: handling your iTunes Library, iOS Devices, and iTunes Match without making you…

TOPIC: Creative Costumes vs. Pushing Out Product

This week Dan and Merlin talk about how the legends and mythologies around creative people and beautiful losers can become such a destructive MacGuf…

TOPIC: Those New Years When We're Not Actually Resolved.

This week, Merlin and Dan step back from resolutions and shooting yourself in the face with a wrist rocket to talk about what you're actually…

TOPIC: Yes. The caller is there.

This week, in celebration of their hundredth episode, Dan and Merlin do the first call-in episode of Back to Work.

A bevy of the beloved jackals and nerds ask quest…

TOPIC: Troubleshooting for Saner GTD

This week, Dan and Merlin wrap up their epic summer crossover series on David Allen's book Getting Things Done, focusing on the trouble spots, hang-ups, and occa…

TOPIC: Working Getting Things Done to stay current, complete, and creative.

This week, Dan and Merlin continue their discussion of David Allen's Getting Things Done system.

Learning how to leverage…

TOPIC: Using GTD to sanely and intelligently decide what to do, and when, and where.

This week, Dan and Merlin continue their discussion of David Allen's Getting Things Done system.

Hopping over th…

TOPIC: A Better System for Dealing with Life's "Stuff"

This week, Dan and Merlin continue their discussion of David Allen's book, Getting Things Done.

Links for this episode:

• Fractal Implementation,…

TOPIC: Intro to David Allen’s “Getting Things Done”

This week, Dan and Merlin start a long-overdue three-part storyline on David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done.[1]

How do you unwad that giant …

TOPIC: How to be a proper list-maker

This week, Dan and Merlin discuss the pros and cons of lighting your environment properly, how we fall into bad list making habits and how to solve these issues…

TOPIC: Florida, Education, and Peaking

This week, Dan and Merlin continue their purging personal odyssey through the state of Florida. Isolation, education, and a parting admonition not to throw you…

TOPIC: Florida.

Hinted at since Episode 1—and repeatedly threatened nearly every week since—here, at last: The Florida Episode.

The heat, the driving, the isolation, the driving, the white driveway…

TOPIC: The tech you want, and the tech you can live with.

On our second Last Show Ever™, Merlin and Dan talk about parenting, Gatsby hats, note taking and sharing, the Techno-Organic virus, and more…

TOPIC: Sleep and How to Get It

This week, Dan and Merlin talk about sleep—why we need it, why most of us don't get enough of it, and why we all strain to find a million excuses for perpetually walki…

TOPIC: Programming Your Kid's Danger Room.

This week, Dan and Merlin discuss the parenthood racket: the advice and expectations, the doubt and the fear, the assessment, the concentric circles, the s…

TOPIC: Finding Grit.

This week, Dan and Merlin return to a popular topic from last week: grit.

Why is it we stick with some things but totally abandon so many others? Why'd Merlin give up on learni…

TOPIC: Grit, Confidence, and Intuition.

This week, Dan and Merlin begin a conversation on what researchers and educators are learning about why students of all ages do or don't succeed. Yes, it's ab…

TOPIC: Anxious about the Change

This week Merlin updates Dan about his schedule changes. They're going to come, but it's probably the anxiety, not the change, that is the problem. Take heart, it may…

TOPIC: One Operational Paper Towel; One Safety Paper Towel.

This week, Dan and Merlin discuss how to use a public restroom.

There's some other stuff, too. But, yeah. Mostly Dan and Merlin discuss h…

TOPIC: Superpowers, Madness, and the Pursuit of Interesting Problems

Dan and Merlin talk about the superpowers you have and can't control as well as the demons and drivers that our heroes have and c…