The Tuning Up Book

Improve Performance and Reduce Stress
This book will help you improve your performance at work and reduce the conditions causing you stress. By transforming the way you think about responsibility and control, it will help you manage all your relationships better: in and out of work. It will keep you tuned up.
*Pre-printed with dust cover. Usually arrives within one working week (UK only, non-UK orders may take longer). Shipping charges outside UK applied at checkout.
** Print on demand. Usually arrives within two working weeks via Royal Mail second class (UK only, non-UK orders may take longer). Shipping charges outside UK applied at checkout

“What took me three decades and a series of panic attacks to understand, David’s book will teach you in a few hours.”

“Tuning Up is a fantastic handbook full of lively stories and helpful tips for anyone working in the advertising industry who manages people and cares about their wellbeing.”

“This is an excellent book to help navigate the often highly pressurised environment that those working in the advertising industry encounter. Tuning Up is frank and honest about these challenges but also provides invaluable tools and insights to help navigate the modern creative workplace whether you’re new into it or have been in it for many years like me.”

“This book is a gold dust if (like me) you believe in the concept of freedom, and you have the confidence to believe that businesses perform better when they give people autonomy to excel.”

Perform better – stress less
Throughout my advertising career, pressure and stress were consistent themes. They were a common occupational hazard but considered normal. As my responsibilities grew over the years, so did the pressure. In 2001, during a grueling six-week long TV shoot “from hell”, I hit my peak stress – it felt like a permanent heart attack. After various and repeated failed attempts to de-stress, I finally saw a doctor. He told me something that stayed with me ever since: ‘Your problem is that you have responsibility without control…which is a clinical definition of stress’.
As I thought through what that meant to me and my business relationships, not only did my stress symptoms dissipate almost immediately, but I began to see every relationship through the lens of responsibility and control.
At the time, I hadn’t realised how many others were dealing with stress like mine. Once I understood how widespread this problem was, it became my mission to share what I’d learned to support others in similar situations. That’s how Tuning Up came to be.
For some, like me, Tuning Up itself acts as both the diagnostic and the treatment for stress. For others, it is a practical guide to creating a work environment that fosters better performance, greater satisfaction and much less stress.