Work Backwards
Work Backwards
Introducing all of the details of the ultimate useful thing: my brand new book to help you work smarter and live better.
For the past few years I’ve been obsessed with a very big question: how can we fix work?
We spend around a third of our lives working, but almost every indicator we have for the health of how we are working is flashing amber right now. Too many of us are overworked with increasing work hours, most of us are disengaged and don’t derive much meaning from our jobs, and rapidly evolving new technologies are making us apprehensive about what’s around the corner. Something's about to break, and if we don't change direction soon, it's going to be us.
That’s the big challenge that’s been driving me forward as I’ve travelled the world speaking to experts, spent time with dozens of everyday workers and experimented with every style of working to try to find a coherent path through all of the noise. The end result is the most personal, ambitious and important thing I’ve ever written.
Writing a book is like assembling a jigsaw puzzle by candlelight. You fumble through the dark and can only hope that it all comes together in the end. But now, after multiple redrafts to get it just right, I am so damn excited to introduce you to my new book, Work Backwards.
I first began thinking critically about how and why we work in 2020, prompted by the once-in-a-generations shift brought forwarded by the Covid years. Everywhere you looked, trends that we had been cautiously experimented with, like remote working, hybrid working and four day work weeks exploded into reality. The jolting death of my dad a few years later really deepened the importance of this mission even further.
As the world re-opened, I sought out many of the world’s leading experts on the future of work, burnout, meaning and happiness to try to better understand where it’s all heading. And in doing so, I became pretty dismayed. I discovered that hundreds of independent research studies are all warning us that our current approach is broken.
The conclusion I have slowly come to is that the way we are working is not working because we are approaching work and life in the wrong direction, and we need to radically rethink it, one person at the time.
One Useful Thing for January 2024: My new book Work Backwards.
The aim of everything I write is to inspire you with insights and stories, and then show how you to can apply the learnings to your life straight away so they can have the biggest impact. Work Backwards is structured in a similar way, with three main sections followed by practical exercises at the end of them so it’s as useful as it can be to you.
Something that is very useful to myself and my book publisher is pre-orders. It is so important as it tells booksellers they should to prioritise this book, so it would really mean the absolute world to me if you are able to pre-order Work Backwards before it’s published on April 3.
I firmly believe this book can be so impactful to you and other people in your life that you care about, so I’m running a very special limited offer. If you pre-order 2 copies of Work Backwards - one for yourself and the other to gift someone else - you will be get a bunch of awesome benefits that I’ve never offered before.
You’ll get:
The first chapter of Work Backwards to read before anyone else in the world.
A complete 100-page Ultimate Workbook that contains all of 35 exercises (including 10 brand new ones) and worksheets from Cult Status, Killer Thinking and Work Backwards together in one place for the first time.
An 8-hour Work Backwards Spotify playlist that's been expertly curated to help you focus during your working hours. No distracting lyrics and scientifically-proven beats to become your new soundtrack to help you power through work.
A 50% discount on live events happening around the country this year so you can workshop some of the ideas in the book directly with me and others (limit 2 per person).
The first edition of Work Backwards delivered directly to your house or office in April.
A warm, fuzzy glow when you gift a copy of the book to someone you think would benefit from learning how to work smarter and live better.
Lastly, genuine love and appreciation from me for helping this book reach as wide an audience as possible.
It’s easy to get all of these benefits, just:
Pre-order 2 (or more) copies of Work Backwards.
Screenshot the proof of purchase and upload it here.
You can pre-order it from anywhere you’d like, but I’m encouraging everyone in Australia to use Booktopia as a) they are a great independent company who really support local authors, b) there’s real power in combining pre-orders through one vendor, and c) I make a tiny commission if you use this link, and transparency is always the best policy.
Thank you in advance for your support and kindness. I seriously can’t wait for you to discover all of the goodness inside Work Backwards when it comes out in April.
Yours is usefulness,
Tim