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Back to Work

Episode 97: Pope of the Office

Back to Work

5by5

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

4.7 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 11 December 2012

⏱️ 104 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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 the basic workflow and setup (you'll definitely need the book for that), this is all about doing—leveraging the horizontal and vertical axes of GTD to intuitively choose exactly the right task at any given moment.

Regardless of interruptions, regardless of unexpected change, and regardless of what you're mindfully not doing.

David Allen calls GTD, "The Art of Stress-Free Productivity," and this is the episode where you'll find out how having put this system in place can yield astronomical improvements in how your actual things get done.

Also included: a teaser for January's "iTunes management" series, plus recommendations for the three best comic series Merlin read this week.

Links for this episode:

This week's episode of Back to Work is very kindly sponsored by Smile's PDFpen, Squarespace, and Hover (use code DANSENTME for 10% off),

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Can I ask you a question?

0:02.0

When you got in your coffee, does it not bloom because of lack of freshness?

0:06.9

I hope you know I'm on my too. I just assumed you were slapping your you saw Gideon Bill.

0:10.4

I yeah, it's I haven't seen it. That's all slapped up. You get it slapped?

0:14.0

Yeah, I'm waiting for the next 47 Ronin issue to come out.

0:17.4

He shuts what it's called. It's just not five Ronin.

0:20.8

I found a five Ronin, but not a 47. I think I think I got a different internet.

0:25.4

Yes, I am convinced. You call me convinced.

0:30.0

Okay, first time, convinced her.

0:33.2

How are you?

0:34.3

I feel pretty good. Yeah, what were you doing?

0:37.5

We went to see a you know, we're still looking for the kind of office space we want.

0:43.3

We're in this sort of shared facility and we were invited to go and tour a a acquaintance.

0:53.6

I guess you would say a friend of mine's friend is looking at buying a building and wanted to see

0:59.7

if we would like to be one of the anchor tenants or in some other way involved.

1:04.4

So we were down and it took us a little bit longer to get back than we expected because everybody

1:12.9

can't drive. You don't have to drive up there in San Francisco.

1:17.2

Do you don't have to drive? I drive absolutely as little as possible.

1:20.2

Gosh, and yet you still have that M5.

1:24.6

That's my car. Yes.

1:26.8

I know what you don't want you drive around.

1:30.0

Yeah, it's German, right?

...

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