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Episode 44: Circuitous Bridge of My Own Design

Back to Work

5by5

Business, Society & Culture, Barriers, Dan Benjamin, Careers, Communication, Merlin Mann, Creativity, Work, Productivity, Constraints, Technology

4.72.3K Ratings

🗓️ 7 December 2011

⏱️ 74 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Topic: Moving from dumb nouns to awesome verbs.

This week, Dan and Merlin talk about the problem with Capital Letter Nouns; how real and specific verbs will always trounce Excellence, Effectiveness, and Mission Statements--even in the Best-of-Breed Pursuance of Five-Nines Quality Across The Enterprise.

They also look at transitive and intransitive flavors of "feasance," finding your keyboard's Excellence Key, opting-in for The Johnson Treatment, lancing that actionable boil, and (as ever) shooting the obvious fish in the obvious barrel.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

I'm doing fine. You know, you were marked as offline on my, uh, my Skype, Dan. I don't

0:12.2

know what's going on on my computer. I don't know. So I just, I ran you in line. I just,

0:16.1

I did an FSCK and I came back up and, uh, and it's being pokey. I think I might have

0:20.6

one of those Trojan horses. How do you know if you have a Trojan horse? Did you come

0:23.4

back, uh, stronger than ever? I looked at my crash reports today and I never felt more

0:28.1

stupid in my entire life. Do you ever look at crash reports? No. Oh, man. There's a lot

0:32.8

of things in brackets, Dan. I think it might be C or C plus plus. Is that cocoa? I saw

0:39.8

a video. You made a new video though. Which one of the thing? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:45.0

That's what we think of that. It's pretty funny. I love that. I look a little homeless.

0:49.8

No, you look really homeless. That's true. It's a good point. You should see what I'm wearing

0:55.4

right now, though. I should send you a picture. Like I thought you were sort of, you know,

1:00.3

playing things up a little bit to make the story funny, but no, doing a bit, doing no.

1:04.5

There's no bit there. You really, you look a little concerning homeless spot. Hmm. Why

1:11.8

lie? We need a beer. Failure beer. I, you know, I got a serious. That's called tequila.

1:17.0

By the way, why were you wearing the hat? Is it that cold in San Francisco? And do you

1:21.7

really want to see? Yeah. Send your photograph. Do it. It's not good. It's not good.

1:29.7

How you doing? Everything seems okay. Let's talk about it. Okay. Well, it's not waste any time.

1:35.8

Let's get right to it. I enjoy wasting time. Get right to it. Boy, I got a lot here, though.

1:41.4

Oh boy. I just I wrote on some, got some new cards, got three cards here. I got some things in

1:45.0

the text mate. Okay. So here's the reason I'm going to send you a photo. Are you ready?

1:51.0

Ready for the photo or ready for the reason? Well, are you on your ball or are you, uh,

1:55.7

are you airborne right now? I'm standing. Okay. We'll stand up for this one. Uh-huh. I think,

...

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