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Back to Work

Episode 493: Flimsy, but Useful

Back to Work

5by5

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

4.7 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 1 September 2020

⏱️ 71 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

DISCUSSED: Rabbit, rabbit!; Dan wants to be sedated; at some point, Merlin had most of the optimism bred out of him; a lot of problems and small beefs get overlooked for survival and sanity reasons right now; Dan shares listener recommendations for movies like the Missions Impossible; time was, you went to the weird video store and just hoped you got the good guy; Dan wants to remind you that he signed a letter of agreement—a CONTRACT; maybe it's time we abandon that increasingly meaningless term, "screen time"; Merlin thinks you can give a baby a name that's funny in only one way, but never in more than one way; every generation demonizes a new technology that they're sure will corrupt the youths; Dan has strong thoughts on the Indiana Jones trilogy (yes, there are exactly three and only three); no one is as persuasive as Sean Connery; Merlin made some movie lists; sometimes you get something that's "mostly for your kid" when it's totally not for your kid; Dan draws inspiration from Roald Dahl's work setup; this is probably a pretty good time to be risk-averse; a reminder that there are still always opportunities to improve how you operate; this leads to an examination of "desire paths" and learning from what your intuition and previous behaviors are trying to tell you; Merlin's Infrastructure Week is extended as he goes ham on speeding up his Mac; and, finally, Merlin discusses a useful Mac utility before putting it on blast.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello. Oh hi Marlin. How are you? Rabbit rabbit rabbit rabbit. First day of

0:05.9

September new new new to the new month. New month new quarter. New quarter. New

0:11.2

world. Everything's gonna change this month. Dan it's gonna be huge. I I want to

0:20.2

believe that. I want to hear you. I want to hear that. Yeah. I don't feel that. Okay.

0:24.0

Yeah. It's gonna be huge. Yeah. Yeah. I can feel my bones. Big turnaround.

0:30.2

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. So here we are though. It's the optimist of day. It's Tuesday.

0:35.0

It's new month. It's new quarter. It's a new you. And we're heard of just talking through

0:39.2

that. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. I do. You doing okay? I mean, it's like you've been

0:44.3

insta-dated. Yeah. I want to be such. You know, that's how I think when he said that. I mean,

0:54.0

it's it's just it's not it's not really like like I'm you know, I can find in the day and the

1:00.3

course of the day I can find bright spots and things like that. But I feel like it's like any

1:05.9

aspect of your life that you examine closely right now. You can find some good things but

1:12.3

there's so much it's so easy to find the bad things right now. And that's that's I think the

1:17.4

struggle. You know, it's so hard not to. I mean, it feels there's I do not want to make every

1:25.3

upset about how horrible the world is. Let's do that. Let's rename the show and just call it the

1:29.5

horrible show. The world is horrible and the show is about that. And we can't we can't help you.

1:36.4

And it's never going to end. Well, until it does, and then it will be too late.

1:42.0

Right. So that'll be fun. I agree with you. And let me let me just pal a little bit

1:50.5

more salsa on that taco. Yeah. Okay. What I don't know who's failing or work this is apart from

1:58.5

perhaps our Lord. Okay. But I feel like it hasn't taken that long for anything like actual

2:07.5

optimism to have been bred out of me. I could say since March, I could say it's since January.

2:16.0

I could say it's been since January to 2017. I don't know exactly when it happened. But I know

...

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