Just Start: The simplest single thing that's changed the way I work

Hey all,

The single simplest* thing that’s changed the way I work is…

Looking at the work before I have to do the work.

Over the last year or so, I’ve become a big cheerleader for percolation — or letting my brain do its thing in the background while I go about my day. On bigger projects, this means starting as soon as possible: doing all the reading and making a start on the structure, so that my brain can start working on stuff in the background and the pieces can click together while I’m walking somewhere or having a shower. But increasingly, I’m doing it with everything: not just multi-day projects, but small jobs and one-offs.

For instance, looking at the work might also mean:

• If I get some interview questions back via email, I read them straight away: not when I’m working on the piece they need to go in.

• If I get a video V1 back from my editor, I watch it as soon as I can: not when I have time to actually suggest changes.

• If I finish one thing I have to do at work and I’ve got another one lined up, I look at the brief for that first: not after the break I’m going to take for a cup of tea.

Written down, this sounds like a recipe for stress: doesn’t this just mean I’m thinking about work all the time? Actually, I’ve found it’s pretty much the opposite. Looking at the work before you have to do the work helps with a whole bunch of things, including making you less stressed. For instance:

• You don’t have to go about your day worrying about what’s waiting in your inbox, and whether it’s good or bad.

• If there are problems with whatever the work is, you can address them when there’s still loads of time to do it: not when your deadline’s rushing up and time’s getting horrible short.

• Also if there are problems with the work, you have time to go and get a cup of tea, maybe have a little walk around the house or some greenery, and think about dealing with them in a constructive day, rather than dashing off a quick email that isn’t going to make anyone’s life easier.

• And finally, as a bonus, sometimes your brain just comes up with the perfect answer for a tricky question while you’re doing something else. It’s like work, without sitting at a computer.

Have a great weekend!
Joel x

* The thing that’s probably made the biggest difference to my work overall is keeping a couple of notebooks and writing everything down, but that’s a bit less simple.

Stuff I’ve made

Stuff I like

📖 Book - Fire Weather by John Vaillant

John Vaillant’s books are full of effort — the effort of logging, tracking tigers, hauling bitumen out of giant scars in the earth and fighting disaster-level fires, but also the effort of Vaillant himself trying really hard to write something compelling. Here, he’s on incredible form: explaining how fires and mining work from first principles, with fresh metaphors and memorable phrasing on every page.

📝 Article - Watch Apple Trash-Compact Human Culture

Like pretty much everyone else, I hated the Apple iPad ad that dropped this week, and this Atlantic piece does a great job of articulating why: not only is hopping onto the hydraulic press trend with a billion-dollar budget a bit try-hard, it also strikes completely the wrong note when everyone’s worried about AI taking their jobs. I actually winced when they broke the piano.

🎙️Podcast - The Sea Change / Reflector

I’ve been a fan of Blocked And Reported’s Katie Herzog for a while — she’s a brave, funny, dedicated journalist — but that fandom kicked into a higher gear when I listened to her talk about how she struggled with alcoholism for decades before finding a drug called Naltrexone. She could have kept her addiction quiet, but she’s sharing it — I think — because she thinks there’s a chance it could genuinely help other people, which I hope you’d agree is a pretty impressive thing to do. This one’s worth sharing.

🧐 This week I learned

That a French artillery officer called Jean-Baptiste Vaquette de Gribeauval was one of the first people to advocate for the idea of interchangeable parts in machinery (specifically, muskets) — helping us down the road to Henry Ford’s factories a couple of hundred years later.
From Linchpin, by Seth Godin

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