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January 11, 2015 at 12:15AM • 32 minutes
On the Grid accidentally records an episode of Back to Work. Follow up on home automation plus some review and productivity talk.
July 25, 2014 at 3:00PM • 59 minutes
This week on Supercharged we’re talking about how to keep track of your gadgets and recover them when they’re lost or stolen. We’re also answering your questions about re-programming your Mac’s function keys, the best apps for the “don’t break the chain” productivity method, and tricking an Android tablet into conserving data. This week's guests: Whitson Gordon (Lifehacker) and Ken Westin (GadgetTrak).
Got a question? Email it to supercharged@toasterdog.com!
October 15, 2013 at 4:30PM • 1 hour 13 minutes
TOPIC: Learning the Wheres and Whens of Productivity
This week, Dan and Merlin talk about learning from how you work to improve your basic productivity infrastructure, with specific attention to using Perspectives in OmniFocus.
Whether it's consolidating shopping lists, eliminating task rot, or leveraging geolocation, there are innumerable tricks for lightly tweaking a system in powerful, non-fiddly ways.
Also: learn Dan's Unified Field Theory of Grocery Shopping.
September 3, 2013 at 3:30PM • 1 hour 20 minutes
TOPIC: Joss Whedon GTD; Meeting Redux
This week, Dan and Merlin talk about getting specific with your productivity and why every meeting needs an agenda.
Now, take a drink.
July 23, 2013 at 3:15PM • 1 hour 32 minutes
TOPIC: Lists
This week, Dan and Merlin talk about 3½ kinds of lists that can change your game.
Merlin knows a lot about Productivity.
May 19, 2013 at 8:00AM • 1 hour 29 minutes
Merlin Mann is interviewed by Erik Fisher on the Beyond the To-Do List Podcast and talks about what the word ‘productivity’ really means, Merlin’s super-hero origin story as a student of productivity, The creation of 43Folders, what Inbox Zero started as and what it really means, David Allen and Getting Things Done, Opportunity Cost, the Sunk Cost Fallacy, and a deeper dive into Merlin's prequel story of how the Back to Work Podcast began.
Special guest Merlin Mann.
May 3, 2013 at 4:30PM • 1 hour 36 minutes
Dan is joined by Associate Producer Danielle Moser to discuss dressing up for work as it relates to interviews, productivity, and how it can affect the way you think about yourself and your outlook. They also address the problem of having CEOs dress down during keynote addresses and, later, Dan takes calls and discusses job-seeking, dealing with a bad boss, whether or not to work while going back to school, using a cool idea as the basis for a Kickstarter, and more.
February 26, 2013 at 4:00PM • 1 hour 28 minutes
TOPIC: Shaving a Yak
This week, Dan and Merlin talk about The Hierarchy of Fiddling. When does self-improvement silently shade into navel-gazing, and how do we realize that it's happening?
Some fixes mean applying a fast change that produces outsized results (a true "life hack"). But, most of our more circuitous excursions into the world of ““productivity”” lead straight into a recursive black hole of lost time, sheer frustration, and soul-sucking existential onanism (let's call that one a "life whack").
Learn how to live with your dirty debit card, just satisfice with your dish-washing skills, and quit trying to solve non-problems with non-solutions.
Yes, learn the key commands, but, don't feel like you need to learn all the key commands. Iterate with mindful sanity.
And, like it says on the tin: always focus on how you'll get back to work.
December 19, 2012 at 11:15AM • 54 minutes
We discuss three people being arrested in the massive maple syrup heist, Instagram backtracks after mass exodus, the various ways to export your Instagram photos, iOS 6.0.2 release today (12/19/2012), Mark Sanchez benched for McElroy, Chinese villager builds floating disaster pods, Samsung is top cellphone brand of 2012, Kodak sells patents for $525 million, Merlin Mann's productivity discussed in The New Yorker, a video of a Golden Eagle trying to snatch a child from a park in Canada, and Freaky the scary snowman video is back again this year.
December 11, 2012 at 4:00PM • 1 hour 44 minutes
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.
August 20, 2012 at 3:30PM • 1 hour 29 minutes
TOPIC: Honesty and Sociopathy Go to Work
Merlin and Dan talk about the cultural divide between you and your work. Coping with work is a little like being a sociopath so you better make sure you're taking away the right lessons and being honest about the right things. Anything else is a little dishonest.
You don't need to quit your job, but you made want to at least resign your certainty.
Nice!™
November 1, 2011 at 5:15PM • 1 hour 20 minutes
On strength and tolerance.
Dan and Merlin talk about the many facets of strength, including the complexity of knowing what to be strong about, to whom, and when.
It's about way more than nailing the "clean and jerk" or yelling at Sips-His-Coffee-Really-Loud Guy. It's also about accepting all the things they just can't stand about you.
Also covered: the inescapability of Italian disco, maintaining an unassailable lawn, confronting skinny ladies in heels, negotiating D-minus hip-hop, and finding the will to spelunk all the way down the personal productivity stack.
