Hello! I'm Tim from Make Work Work Better, and this is the first edition of my brilliantly-named newsletter, The Make Work Work Letter.

Make Work Work Better exists to transform Workplace Wellbeing, by focussing on the working practices and processes that lead to stress and burnout. I'll be using the newsletter to compile thoughts, material and links around this mission as well as recommendations and tips on working and living smarter, not harder.

If there's been a theme to the conversations I've had this last few weeks, it's been the Return To The Office. The Nowhere Office is an ambitious attempt to "describe the future of work, the revolution we find ourselves in, and ask both what it means and where it is actually going to end up", while this article at Workplace Insight challenges some of our fundamental assumptions about work. I like this bit: "Leonardo da Vinci once proclaimed that a piece of art was never finished, but merely abandoned. For the majority of people that is now the ultimate outcome of each day at work."

This optical illusion made me think about this mindblowing twitter thread from a few years ago. Our brains lie to us, all the time, in an attempt to turn the mish-mash of overwhelming stimuli taken in by our imperfect senses into something coherent. It's unconscious bias in its purest form - our brain filling in the gaps based on previous experience to make reality conform to our expectations.

An idle observation from someone at a networking event has really stuck with me. I have met a lot of people in the last year through online networking, and I have no idea how tall any of them are! I'm not sure it's really their height which is important to me, but rather a nagging sense of dissonance between the strength of the relationships with these people and my lack of physical context for them.

I'm doing a free Getting Things Done Masterclass on the 21st May, about how GTD works for people who aren't naturally organised, but can also add a ton of value for more methodically-minded folks. I made a trailer!

To sign up, visit the Next Action Associates website.

Do Yourself A Favour...

📖 Slough House by Mick Herron

I've been reading a lot of business books lately, so was very pleased to be able to squeeze in some fiction over the last week. Mick Herron's Slough House novels are masterpieces - taut spy thrillers with a beautifully written British pessimism - and the most recent entry in the series is no exception.

💻 TextSniper

Insanely useful utility that converts screen-grabs into text on the fly. Particularly handy for all those screenshots of webinars that you took.

🕸Movie of the Night

We've all been there, scrolling through the hundreds of options presented by our streaming service of choice, finding nothing we really want to watch. This web app allows you to search the major streaming services by genre, director, cast, year and so on to find the hidden gems.

Digging In The Shelves

Each edition, an LP is going to be randomly selected from the record shelves that make up my backdrop and will be the soundtrack to the compilation of the newsletter.

Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man - Out Of Season

I'd forgotten how very good this record is. This was the first time I heard Beth Gibbons' vocals outside of the claustrophobic wrappings of Portishead, and they soar. It takes in folk, swing, jazz, and even has a crack at a Bond theme.

That's all for this first edition! By next time, this newsletter's sister podcast should also be out in the wild, so keep your eyes peeled for that.

Cheerio
Tim