just a minor nit but you don't even need to do `remotes/origin/master`, just `origin/master`.

Alternatively you could do `git switch -c new_work && git pull -f origin master` which will create a new branch (you could use `git checkout -b` as well but like you said, more bytes to type) and then force pull from master on origin into the current branch (which is now your new branch) replacing the history with origin/master.