It’s our first Sunday Strategy newsletter of the new year, and we know the pandemic has messed with every marker of time because we actually started sending this thing back in 2019. Do you remember that? Back in the teens? Unreal. Anyway, we have a few recommendations to keep you occupied during these cold months.

Dust off your dictionary

After a charming story in the New York Times about how a software engineer created a game for his word-puzzle-loving partner, Wordle took off, littering our Twitter feeds with cryptic gray, yellow, and green squares. Give it one round, and you too will discover the rush of a 2/6 or the crushing defeat of being one letter off on your third guess. There’s a new game every day at midnight, UK time, but we recommend waiting ‘til you have a cup of coffee in your system.

Set the mood

It could be described as a cunning tool to get out of work, a fun little joke, or an instrument of psychological torment, depending on your perspective. Busy Simulator is a soundboard, not unlike “I Miss My Bar” we shared back in February 2021, but instead of clinking glasses and background chatter, it’s all the shock-inducing sounds of our digital workplace. Don’t blame us for your accelerated burnout after playing with it. (By the way, did you know you can make your Slack notification sound a voice saying “hummus” again and again?)

Speaking of burnout, try a book

Everyone we know has been rethinking their relationship to work over the past few years. None quite as much as Anne Helen Petersen (author of the hit book, Can’t Even) and her husband Charlie Warzel, who have a new book out on the future of work and the office. It offers not just a thoughtful diagnosis of the problems of modern work, but an evaluation of the foundational values that motivate and reward knowledge workers in the future of work that has, in fits and starts, finally arrived. Whether you’re back to spending your days in an office or have fully decamped for the woods, it’s worth a read.