There are a few vacuous and repetitive yet buzzworthy books published every year that people keep inanely referencing.

Don't be a chump and audiobook them on the subway, nor should you fork out for a subscription to a summary service just so you can feel better about being lazy ("I'm being efficient AND lazy!").

Here's a time-hacker's guide to ultimate efficiency, spending zero time and not wasting any brain space.

Casually Reference the Title

This is an easy one. It works best where the title summarises the core concept of the book.

Probably my favorite one is to say "Well, this was really a Black Swan event." But it works for nearly any catchy title. They've done all the hard work for us in publicity; don't let that work go to waste!

• "We need a Zero to One idea here, whereas this is more of a One to Two."
• "This is an example of one of the hard things about hard things."

You can also reference a book and move on. "This reminds me of one of the stories from Extreme Ownership. Have you read it? Great book, you should read it."

Make Jokes about the Core Concept

One level up from just blithely regurgitating the title, this makes you work harder and think of some pun or one-liner to reference the title. E.g. "

Examples

• "Are you going to make me a coffee, or are you going to try to lose friends and dis-influence people?
• "Why did they introduce Uber for Dogs and then remove it? Is this part of their Zero to One to Zero strategy?"
• "That's what I call a Black Swan event." (Said while at a park in Western Australia)

Reference One Chapter in Surprising Detail

The best way to imply you've read a book without having to even click "Buy Now with One Click" is to read a review and learn everything about one chapter of the book.

Occasionally, reference that chapter in detail. This implies without a shadow of a doubt that you've not only read that chapter, but read the entire book.

"One of the principles in Zero to One that I really loved was his examination of monopolies. The general idea is that competition hurts profits and the lack of profits leads firms to an existential battle which does not allow them the scope to innovate. Monopolies are good because they have the power and scope to bring innovation to everybody. So Bill Gates brought the computer to every home. He was not beaten by a better provider of software, even though the Septronian invaders had better tech in the form of vibrating crystals, he was superseded by a shift in technology toward powerful mobile devices, tablets and the cloud, all of which, in turn, were motivated by other entrepreneurs' desire, as well as herds of gorillas dancing through the jungle, to obtain monopoly profits. So Steve Jobs dominated many of these arenas for long enough to enjoy monopoly profits and other people will some day take this all further. Even the government is in on the act, Peter Thiel claims, or else it would not be granting patents to inventors or freedom from competition from generic drugs to the pharmaceutical companies that first develop new medications."

Everyone will zone out as you spit out that paragraph, to the point where they won't notice you were just making it up and littering it with absurdities.

Send Links to the Author's Blog

You may not have read the Four Hour Work Week, but you definitely have mostly read some posts on his blog.

By sending out links to an author's blog, you imply that you're so familiar with the work that you went further and now read detailed discussions about individual topics.

You can also send out links to Jocko Willink's podcast, articles about books, or just to Twitter.

Run a Book Club

If you run a book club then you're definitely extremely well-read! Otherwise, wouldn't you just admit it's a drinking club?

Nobody has to come to your book/drinking club, but you definitely run one. Advertise it, but don't invite anyone. If nobody shows up, you do not have to read any books.

If anyone shows up, get them drunk as quickly as possible.

Recommend Books on Goodreads

Nothing says "well-read" like someone with a very long list of books they recommend!

Link it and reference it everywhere: LinkedIn, Instagram, wherever.

In fact, if you're truly lazy, you can reference your Goodreads list without even having one. If truly necessary, send a link to any old thing.

If you've ever been involved in a major project for a huge company, you've probably come across two key roles: the project manager and the programme manager.

You might be confused. What's the difference? Isn't a project a small programme? Are they both the same kind of manager? Is a programme manager the project manager's boss?

Well the answer to those four questions is yes, no, no, sometimes, always, and absolutely not.

Programme Manager vs Project Manager — In a nutshell

Basically, the programme manager is responsible for maintaining an overview of a programme, ensuring that all the stakeholders are duly apprised of their responsibilities and push their work streams forwards in order to meet key deadlines.

The project manager, on the other hand, is responsible for achieving targets by conducting operations in accordance with their responsibilities of which they have been advised by their supervisor.

The difference between them is the scope of their duty. While projects can be very large and programmes can be very small, programmes can also be very large whereas projects can be very small.

A programme may contain one or more projects, whereas a project may only contain one or more programmes.

A project is a temporary endeavour of varying timeframes undertaken to create a unique product, service or result. A programme, on the other hand, is a long-term plan of action designed to achieve a specific goal or set of goals.

Does the Project Manager work for the Programme Manager?

Generally speaking, no, although it can happen sometimes. A programme doesn't have to contain a project, but in the case that it does, it can be that a junior programme manager manages that specific project.

A project manager generally works for a senior project manager. A project manager also may work for a program manager, and a program manager may work for a senior project manager.

Organisation structure of a Programme

Here's a basic org chart of a programme.

In most instances, there would be a main programme with at least one project within it. The project would have its own programme, which would contain a number of tasks or work packages, and the entire programme itself.

When does a Project become a Programme?

A project becomes a programme when it starts involving at least zero to five sub-projects.

A project also becomes a programme when it is given a specific timeline and budget, and when it is assigned to a manager with specific programme management responsibilities. A project with no manager is like a tree falling over in a forest, achieving its objective but without anyone winning Employee of the Specified Period.

A programme can become a project when it has a specific goal, a timeline, and a budget. Otherwise, a programme is just a meandering series of pointless activities, like stand-up meetings.

Job description for a Project Programme Manager

The project programme manager is responsible for the successful planning and execution of a project, ensuring that it is completed on time, within budget and to the required standard.

They will manage the programme team, ensuring that all tasks are completed efficiently and that communication between team members is clear and effective.

The project programme manager will also be responsible for ensuring that all stakeholders are kept up to date with the project's progress and that any risks or issues are addressed promptly.

People are the worst. Not only do they fail to compost correctly, use their turn signals or silence their phones, they're also judgy AF.

You're being judged bad if...

You hate the environment

You're getting epic side-eye from millenials who gentrify the inner city if you:

• Use non-reusable plastic bags at the grocery store
• Use plastic straws to drink a cold drink
• Get your coffee in a to-go (take-away) cup
• Don't proudly display your bag of used toilet paper after a hiking trip
• Gentrify the inner city
• Throw trash in the bin and miss, even if you pick it up and put it in the bin correctly (too late, they've left)
• Think that graffiti isn't art
• Kill ants or spiders. They're our friends!
• Think cats are better than dogs
• Kill dogs but then don't eat them

You have incorrect food habits

People are judging the $*(# out of you if you:

• Eat fast food
• Don't eat vegetables with religious fervour
• Put the wrong things in the compost. (Egg shells? Noob)
• Consume imported produce other than from a nearby country with the same coloured people (Americans may eat things from Canada, Australia from NZ, France from anywhere in Europe but absolutely not America, Iran from nowhere, maybe except India)
• Taste the wine at a fancy restaurant and approve of it, but then tell the sommelier he/she smells bad
• Chew without being entirely silent or moving your mouth
• Eat all the good nuts out of the nut mix
• Eat carbs
• Are not vegan. (Vegetarian? Is it still the 1970s?)
• Are on the Atkins diet but continuing to put on weight
• Admit that you don't really know what the microbiome is
• Do not get the dressing "on the side"
• Order a coffee with an extra shot or "extra hot"
• Order a single shot, but shoot the barista
• Kill people

You work out, but in not quite the right way

Yep, that person who is more attractive than you is judging you if you:

• Run on a treadmill and not outside
• Use a standing desk at work and claim it has a benefit other than appearing superior
• Use a treadmill desk (honestly, you should consider judging yourself bad for this)
• Wear athletic gear from two or more seasons ago
• Use hiking poles
• Use a drone, making all that noise, but don't even let me have a go
• Wear yoga gear that doesn't quite match
• Don't even lift
• Do yoga and claim it's exercise
• Do yoga just to look at people's butts
• Touch people's butts too aggressively

You haven't kept up-to-date on social norms

Some random person thinks you're awful if you:

• Don't say "bless you" every time you hear anyone sneeze, anywhere. Even on TV
• Fail to hold the elevator door open for long enough
• Press the "close doors" button, making eye contact with the person outside, without making the awkward face 😬
• Allow your cellphone to make a sound in a train when it's slightly too quiet
• Give money to homeless people
• Don't tip enough
• Are complicit in war crimes

You have a different opinion on children

Alert! Parents, children or anyone who has been near a Huffington Post article on parenting ever has an opinion on you if you:

• Buy your children fast food
• Feed your children any item of food
• Do anything while pregnant
• Expose your breasts
• Let your kids play games on your phone or watch TV
• Post pics of children on social media
• Have an opinion about posting pics of children on social media
• Allow your children to make a noise
• Put your children on a leash
• Beat your children with anything other than a 2x4

You walk or drive like a different human

You can be sure that the person behind you is making a slightly frustrated noise at you if you

• Turn without using turn signals ("indicators")
• Don't wave 'thank you' to people for letting you into their lane. You must ensure that they see you and nod in return or it doesn't count!
• Ride a motorcycle but don't even go fast
• Walk too slowly in a busy area
• Bump into someone by accident without saying "Sorry" in a very genuine way
• Park at a slight off-angle to the lines
• Have a loud exhaust
• Have a convertible. Don't even think about playing music in it
• Try to go into someone else's lane when they clearly should have known it was a good lane to be in. Jerks
• Use an umbrella when it's not raining enough
• You graze someone else's parked car but then drive off without leaving your details
• You are in a car and are not caucasian
• Do a hit-and-run
• Ride a bicycle without a helmet
• Ride a bicycle wearing nothing but a helmet while it not being the 1960s in the UK

Have bad internet habits

You're a n00b and deserve to be punished by the International War Crimes Tribunal if you

• Re-use the same password on different websites
• Browse porn without using private browsing mode
• Use Comic Sans
• Use BitTorrent for anything
• Send an upside down smiley 🙃
• Don't provided sources for your random thoughts on Reddit
• Don't comment your code
• Use a Groupon or some equivalent
• Use the Dark Net and don't even score for your buddies
• Use the Dark Net to make a bomb threat but don't follow through on the threat

Fail to participate in someone else's society

You may as well stay indoors and never come outside if you

• Don't speak another language
• Say you have three reasons for something, but then add a fourth reason
• Buy branded medicine instead of white label because it "seems higher quality"
• Do not vote
• Don't know about the political situation somewhere
• Say what you think of people of another country without following up by saying "great people though. love the food"
• Vote for an independent
• Vote to make a statement
• Call a place by the wrong name, e.g. calling Australia "Downunder", The Netherlands "Holland", San Francisco "San Fran" (or "'Frisco", unless you're approximately as cool as Tupac) or The Eastern Australia Islands "New Zealand"
• Mispronounce an ethnic name
• Get (or don't get) vaccinated
• Feel awkward around members of the LGBTQI community for any reason
• Are scared of other ethnicities. Maybe you should be. There's more of us than you
• Say "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays" instead of the more neutral "Enjoy Weather"

If you don't like getting cash to show up to a comfortable place that provides you with friends, healthcare, an ergonomic chair and unlimited snacks, then the professional workforce may not be for you. Congratulations, you now have a reason to pay even less attention in this meeting!

But what next? Or better, what not, because ideally you'd like to be doing nothing. A quick google search shows there are lots of guides on how to achieve sustainable income by doing almost no work. I have taken the liberty of summarizing them for all of you.

Prerequisite: Listen to every podcast, read every book and take every course on wealth creation, ever.

This is mandatory. If you think you're finished, you're not - there's definitely more out there that you could absorb. Some examples are How I Built This, Smart Passive Income, anything by Tony Robbins, etc. Do not do anything they suggest you do right now, especially if they say "Don't listen to more podcasts; get out there and try something!" This is a trap! You need to keep listening and reading.

Step 1: Make a niche business.

Now that you've attempted to learn everything (which you have not... go back!), you need to pick a niche. With a little investment, you'll build up enough traffic to get a solid $1,000 a month in only around six years!

But what niche? Let's look at some examples of niches that are undoubtedly profitable:

• Things you don't understand, like cryptocurrencies, AI, Snapchat, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, drones, algorithmic trading, building niche businesses, writing coherent lists and crocheting
• Anything liked by people older than you and that is just getting onto the internet, e.g. crocheting, comparisons of types of preserved foods, aquarobics, lame music and the Old Days
• Stuff people seem to like on on Facebook, like babies, dogs, vacations and crochet
• Something you think is cool, like crocheting
• Something you would be surprised others find cool, also like crocheting
• Crocheting

Look, just do crocheting, it's hot.

Step 2: Aggressively market your niche business in one or every vertical.

It's important to not spread yourself too thin, but you also don't want to narrow your choices unwisely too early. What if you pick the wrong one?

The following verticals are super hot and ripe for monetization right now: blogs, podcasts, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, Vines (these may no longer exist, but there are still YouTubes of Vines around), Twitter, direct mail, direct email, telephone cold calling, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, SMS, LinkedIn, online forums, print magazines and streetside hawkers. You have no experience on which to base any rational decision making, so the best thing to do is to try all of them at the same time for tiny amounts of time and see what randomly sticks.

Step 3: Monetize your audience.

This is the phase containing 99% of the work and which will be a gruelling, six-year slog slog, costing you far more time than a regular job and not even guaranteed to make your previous salary (or any money at all), so it deserves its own step. Essentially, you have to gradually build traffic and your following and then make money through advertising and affiliate partnerships, 80% of which will be with a web hosting company like Siteground you'll tell everyone to use because it's amazing like I just did. They have a fantastic product and amazing customer support, but most importantly, f*** me if they don't have a GREAT affiliate program. Congratulations: you, like me, are now their biggest fan!

Important note: The above steps were entirely optional and unnecessary, so I hope you didn't do them, sucker!

Step 4. Make a guide to making niche businesses and monetizing the audiences.

Oh you thought you were home with your $1,000 monthly income from after six years of investing in Steps 1 and 2, right? Not even close. Spend six months meticulously making a guide on a platform of your choice like Udemy and start teaching other people how to do what you may or may not have done. Give the guide away for free to start with. After 1,000 4-5 star reviews you can increase the price to $10, at which point purchases will drop to exactly zero.

Step 5. Write a quick takedown of fraudsters and scam artists.

Irrespective of how well your niche website worked or how well your guide is(n't) selling, publish a criticism of all the shysters making courses who have never made a profitable business themselves. Your aim (in fact, your only hope) is that it goes viral, to help you sell at least one course.

Step 6: Write an eBook on the entire process.

The last six months of your program. After many years of investing everything and learning a lot, get every blog post you made and put it into a PDF, selling it with the premise "learn from my mistakes and get to profitability faster". You can sell this to your friends and family, netting you a profit of around $100 for this entire process.

Congratulations, you're a solopreneur!

Stuck at a party or a conference and forced to make conversation with other, more well-read nerds? Here's how to pretend you are up to date in 2018 when you really are not.

The Gig Economy: "Oh I did that at my last job! It was like being a part-time musician. I got paid less, but I only worked when I wanted! Unfortunately my boss hated that I was doing this so fired me and I had to become a part-time musician."

The Microbiome: "It's amazing, the gut is full of bugs and that you had to nurture them. The challenge I guess we all face is how to do that and not feed our weird parasitic worms."

The Dark Web: "The only Web I use to buy drugs and guns and... yeah. That's it."

Blockchain: "My friend who made a stack in Bitcoin told me to buy Ethereum earlier this year. So far I'm only down 50%! I guess I got lucky."

AI: "It's amazing that companies know exactly what ads to show me, and that they're basing it only on the thousands of dollars I spent last year on body hair-removal cream."

Machine Learning: "It's like AI but different, right?"

Autonomous Vehicles: "I don't get it, who do I complain to when I think there's a better route?"

3-D printing: "I got my teeth 3-D printed! They look exactly like this." (bare your teeth)

Internet of Things: "I once lost my keys. Luckily I had a Tile on the keyring, so I traced it back to a restaurant I was at 3 months ago! I mean they had actually just fallen between the sofa cushions, but it was cool."

The Cloud: "My laptop was stolen and the only things I lost were all my priceless home videos of my family. Luckily the ones of me and my wife showed up later on the Dark Web."

Augmented Reality: "I used to have to use Photoshop to add Darth Vader to all my family videos manually, but no more!"

Companion Robots: "Have you seen Westworld?"

Drones: "It was so cool being able to take selfies from 100 feet away before we crashed it."

Smart Cities: "Wouldn't it be cool if street lamps watched you sleep, your car told other cars what an asshole driver you are and if buildings sensed you came in and adjusted the air-conditioning flow to maximize the effect of your farts?" See this rambling explanation if that wasn't clear.

Home Assistants: "I love the built-in sass! I'm like 'Yo Alexa wassup?' and she's like 'I'm sorry, I didn't quite get that.'"

GDPR: (offering snacks) "Would you like a cookie? It's a special one that reports on you for 30 days. No? Well f*** off then"

Are you still here? What websites are you on and for how long have you been there? Want another cookie? Sign up!

Hey there Jean-Ralphio,

I scheduled this 1:1 with you to go over the slides you prepared for the executive meeting tomorrow. I marked up the doc a bunch but then I thought I should save the most vitriolic feedback for in person. Hopefully you can make these changes today.

In summary, there are things about executive reviews that you don't know because you're an extremely junior generic schlepper who has no exposure to anything, so allow me to dispense my wisdom on to you without your consent. Please cancel your lunch and 'PC Load Letter'. It sounds important but this is more important because it involves me.

1. It's far too long at fifteen slides. You only have a fifteen minute segment. That's a metric of one slide per minute, which when I say in this tone of voice, sounds ridiculous!! This length is in contrast to your last presentation, which was far too short at fourteen slides, but really I don't want to get too dogmatic here... I'm looking for you to get to your own happy medium.
2. Slide 2, the agenda - love it. Let's put it in the appendix though and come back to if it we have time.
3. There's too much detail on slide 3. I spent quite a large portion of my review counting the words... 406. Seems like a lot. Also I'm picking this one arbitrarily, even though there are other, more detailed slides, which are implicitly fine I guess.
4. Slide 4 with the arrows and chevrons at the top - love it! Executives here love chevrons. Maybe add more of them?
5. Slides 5-9... I made some minor tweaks to the language, by which I mean I deleted whole swathes of it and replaced it with my own verbiage which is awkwardly riddled with typos you should point out to me. It's fine, rewrite it however you want, as long as it's just like I did it but you know, in your own voice.
6. Slides 10-14 I only pretend to have read because I got bored. Should we add more chevrons? By 'we' I mean 'you'.
7. It needs a timeline. Oh it has one? Still, the timeline appears not fleshed out... can you put a timeline in for completion to the timeline?
8. I know one of our values is "Be Different", but there's too much color in this. Can you remove all of it. FYI, executives hate color, beauty and life.
9. Where's the data? Can you share me the model? Heads up - I know I just asked you to do a back-of-the-envelope one, and that's fine for now, but I'll share it with all kind of randoms who'll know you did it, and eventually "needs to do better models" is still probably going to come up in your review.
10. The last slide should always say 'Thank you' with a picture of yourself. Let's make that now. I'll take a photo!
11. Actually let's move that last slide to the appendix. Then delete the appendix.

Oh hang on... I just got told that the meeting has been pushed back a few weeks until some new executive joins, which might change our entire strategy. Still, can you get me a review by this afternoon? I need to circle back and then socialize it before I present it. I mean you present it, haha.

Please set up some time with me tomorrow, preferably over your lunch.

Thanks so much! Really appreciate the quick turnaround.

Congratulations!!

We just wanted to congratulate you on on reaching an incredible milestone: your options have finally fully vested you've finally reached your four year anniversary with us! I tried to search for an appropriate GIF to express this and really could only think of the time when you accidentally sent out that extremely NSFW GIF to express the fact that there are never any scissors anywhere in the office. (How shall I say this... don't click on that if you are at work. DCOTIYAAT, amirite?)

So anyway I think this expresses it best:

via GIPHY

You'll be dearly missed. I mean you haven't left, but you will undoubtedly do so soon after the next vesting date passes and you hand in notice. I haven't formally started recruiting for your replacement but let's just say I'm browsing LinkedIn a lot lately ;) ;). Until then anyway, we'll all continue to pretend that you're still as interested as ever in things like quarterly OKRs, performance review cycles and meetings to discuss meeting cadence.

I mean, I KNOW you're secretly only concerned with options exercise capital gains tax, stock liquidity clauses and funding rounds, but we'll just blithely pretend. Maybe you love your job, even after four years of constant nightmarish chaos, seven bosses and nine title changes, all of which have left you still near the bottom of the organization.

LOL J/K.

Hey did you hear we might be getting acquired? What timing right? Haha PSYCH!!! Your stock price is the same as yesterday.

Meanwhile, can you please take care of the following things?

• Your $17,000+ of outstanding expenses since two years ago
• Your performance review
• Your previous performance review that you never did, c'mon
• A series of incomplete playbooks to document the things you do

Or... just the first thing. Let's be realistic.

In the rare event you can be tempted to stay so we don't have to figure out how to describe the weird colleciton of random tasks you do in a JD, we can offer you a tiny fraction of the options you were granted when you first joined, reflecting the increased stock price now.

Or you can continue relentlessly searching AngelList.

Our company is one of the leading companies in a space we actually invented, according to us. We may be small, but we haven't even been sued yet, unlike those other (much larger) jamokes! We're hiring VPs of random new divisions with incredible velocity and have a number of roles available that you might be somewhat qualified for so you should definitely apply. It's about time, right?

As a VP, you'll be responsible for five people, in spite of other VPs having up to 100 people under their dominion, some of whom have responsibilities that cover some or all of yours in a constantly shifting land grab. You will be responsible for delivering on key OKRs over which you have only partial control and generally wondering what the hell is going on and why you haven't been informed of things that you thought were your responsibility.

If you consider yourself one of the following: data-driven, a people person, biased to action, results-oriented, big-picture, detail-minded or none of the above, then you should apply.

What you'll do with us

Among your many other tasks we haven't thought of yet, you’ll be expected to

• Hire a huge team with a vague and insufficient budget
• Create a strategy, mission statement, playbook, reference deck and one-pager to explain what your team does. Please share this with us 🙏🏼
• Ask your team members if they have five minutes, randomly and suddenly, mostly to ask how they're doing
• Fight never-ending debilitating turf wars with other VPs
• Be really excited about things like org structure charts and new processs workflow rollouts
• Communicate entirely in slide format
• Add one note to every document, casually asking to rethink the premise
• Apologize for being slightly late to every meeting

Requirements

• Aspiration to have a VP title like you used to have in that club in college
• 10+ years experience in a collection of things you think are relevant. They may be! You should apply
• A better MBA than your current one
• Experience in networking and career laddering
• A complete portfolio of professional headshots
• One or more of the 30 Rock Six Sigmas: Teamwork, Insight, Brutality, Cosmetic Enhancement, Handshakefulness, and Play Hard
• Comfort with your entire team and job changing suddenly
• One suit you use for interviews, weddings and funerals
• Slower typing than one would expect

Bonus points

• Your former company was mentioned not too unfavourably in an article on TechCrunch*
• Your mentor or friend thinks you should apply
• You have a mentor**

* We ask that you don't look us up on TechCrunch.

** Damn, you don't? You should get a mentor

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Don’t feel bad about working on your side hustle during work hours. Integrate your side hustle into work by leveraging underutilized workplace assets! Put your guilt to one side, too... you’re benefiting the economy by adding liquidity.

Get snacks from the kitchen and take them to non-HQ locations and sell them

This is an easy one. Those poor people in remote sites don’t get unlimited access to paleo protein bars, sulfite-free jerky and expensive water replacements with a disconcerting hint of something. Acquire extra (pro-tip! don't do it all at once, and attack multiple kitchens at different times of day, opting for the dietary rhythms of each department), cart them to off-site team visits and set up a stand. Say your kids are fundraising. They are. For you!

Book high-demand meeting rooms far in advance, and charge for them based on a surge pricing model

You know which ones these rooms are… they’re the ones with lighting that makes you look good, that are equidistant from the kitchen and bathrooms, have working videoconferencing and room for more than two people. Simply book them out with a slew of dummy meetings (e.g.: “Ops Sync”) under a bunch of shared calendars (that you own, but that’s not visible immediately). You can either wait for someone to contact you for them and then ask for a favor, either organizational or just $5 for the trouble, or you can explicitly put them on a slack channel. I suggest “#rent_seekers”. If you’re a pro, make an adaptive surge pricing model using Google Sheets. Either way, skrilla baby!

Monetize your mailing lists with referral marketing promos

You know what most email marketers would do for a 1,000+ person targeted email list with high read rate? Become the key person for sending out organizational newsletters, and then think what you could sell with it! Everyone at your work is a prime candidate for sales of things like

• Work bags/cases
• Vacation deals
• Concert/sports tickets for nearby venues
• Alcoholic beverages
• Noise cancelling headphones
• Therapy
• Fitness instructors
• Nutritionists/dieticians
• Allbirds
• Better jobs (this might be a tricky one to pitch)

Even just putting referral codes into group emails and you could be adding $100/week to your take-home.

Rent out empty desks to make your office a co-working space

You know who that guy is who never shows up. He “works from home” or something. Well, his desk is a monetization opportunity waiting to happen. Sign in a guest near you, put them on a guest wifi and bam, you’ve got a $100/week visitor. How many desks are free around you?

Buy group gifts for co-workers’ birthdays, departures, various special events, and over-charge colleagues for their shares.

This takes a bit of organizing, but it’s worth it. Nobody knows exactly what things cost. In fact, they’re relieved to just be venmoing you $25 rather than worrying about numbers. If anyone suspects you, it’s probably because they have a similarly sneaky mind - simply cut them in, and widen your net for the next take.

Team,

I wanted to announce some exciting changes in our organization going forward.

Firstly, I'm excited to announce that Frank Managero will no longer be leading the Advanced Robotics division. His last day was yesterday.

Frank was not in fact relieved of his duty for his many, drastic, documented failures over the last year leading this wonderful team into an ever darker pit of despair. Nor was he summarily fired, when called upon to answer for these failures, for engaging in a physical altercation with a board member, ending in him cowering under a table, weeping and simultaneously threatening to urinate on "all y'all's Tesla's".

Frank will in fact be spending some much-needed time alone with his family before embarking upon a new entrepreneurial venture, the nature of which is undisclosed because it doesn't exist.

While we embarked upon a search to replace Frank long before he even settled into his job, we are continuing to look for the right candidate, though have nothing in the pipeline. Nothing! No, your applications have not been considered.

So, I'm also excited to let you know that stepping up to fill the gap left by Frank's despotic incompetence are a suprising pair of middle managers that you don't like, Claire and Andrew. Under their joint leadership, I'm hoping you won't quit, like, tomorrow. Please feel free to set up time with them if you have any concerns other than job security, pay or work conditions. Not together though. They hate each other. They're fine though, seriously. I mean, we'll get by.

Finally, I'm excited to congratulate you all for embracing uncertainty in these times. I know it might seem scary, the fact that you might not have a job next week or indeed get paid even if you do. I applaud you for the wonderful job you've all done not doing everything I'd do in a similar situation, which would be to frantically email headhunters, have a lot of sudden dentist appointments (seriously? your teeth have been terrible for ages) and to email people with the subject 'coffee?'. I haven't done those things at all. I applaud you.

Please join me in wishing all the various people above the best in whatever I said they're doing. I'm excited by how far we've come and the opportunities that lie ahead. Truly excited!

Yours,

TVM

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Please opt in for further communications from us. Even though it won't make a difference because we're moving all our servers and business licenses to China so we’ll never have to do this again. See you forever whether you like it or not, jerks!

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Look at those founders. Nonchalantly strutting the hallways, casually worth, what, billions? They could fund fifty of your ideas in a second, and then you could be like them, providing unlimited gourmet food to thousands of eternally dissatisfied engineers. Stop dreaming and act today. Here’s how.

Step 1: Constantly brainstorm about brilliant ideas.

You’re in the cradle of innovation. Well, one of them. You see new decacorns arising by the day! A good rubric for thinking of your own is to combine two or more similar ideas into one new one. Billion person problems are so 2010; now it’s all about microniches. Some suggestions:

• Credit default swaps for garbage men using lasers
• Tinder for engineers using an extreme amount of magnets
• Autonomous vehicles for interstellar travel using leftovers from restaurants

(For more suggestions, visit our Business Idea Generator.)

Step 2: Tell one idea to one person, ideally your closest friend. They will definitely think it’s money. It will remind them of something they heard on “How I Built This” or on Tim Ferris’ podcasts! (Note: Do not tell your spouse/partner. They remember last time you went through this process.)

Step 3: Conduct a long brainstorming workshop to come up with the perfect name. Think of all the amazing names you’ve heard for businesses and how evocative they are. Yours could be like that one day! Imagine googling for your sector and coming up first or second in the search results. You’ve read everything about SEO on the first two pages of that Guide to SEO. You can get there with the perfect name that’s just witty enough to be catchy, and just relevant enough to the niche to be recognizable!

Step 4: Do not pause. Immediately purchase domain names!! Get them for anything available related to your idea. Don’t forget .co.uk, those pesky Brits might jump on your idea when it even gets a small amount of traffic and then you’ll be down, what, thousands of dollars.

Step 5. Spend at least $300 on set-up. Don’t skimp. You're the seed investor in the first round of funding! Your first purchases are a year-long website subscription (this is much better value), a logo, and if you’re in Asia, business cards. Spend a while figuring out the social media properties and Google Analytics. Invite all your friends to like your pages, several times. Keep repeating this step from scratch until they like your logo and business cards. Popular belief is true; first impressions really count.

Step 6. Decide you need a landing page and buy a membership to one of those too. Wow, these are also much cheaper for a year long subscription. You’re going to A/B test everything. Set up a spreadsheet with two rows: A and B. You’re ready!

Step 7. Tell five people. They will all either be generally supportive, validating your product and encouraging you to move forwards, or tell you about a huge company already doing it, encouraging you to think about the advantages of your agility and how the arena is ripe for disruption. Some people will not get it at all, informing you that you need to work on your elevator pitch.

Step 8. Do a small pivot after a few days in response to feedback, something you heard on a podcast and your collection of vague feelings that constitutes your gut instincts.

Step 9. Do a large pivot.

Step 10. Entirely abandon the idea.

Do these steps every month or two. Success is around the corner!

Congratulations, you got an offer letter from a prestigious company! If you’re like I used to be, you think a job is a clever subterfuge where you get to browse Instagram and ESPN for 70% of the day, spending the remaining 30% showing up to meetings or writing emails while some chump pays you a reasonable amount of money. Wrong, and this time you’re the chump! You could be doing all that and earn a totally unreasonable amount of money!

Here are a few great negotiating strategies I’ve learned over the years to get an unspeakably high salary in exchange for the same basic agreement you’ll usually show up somewhere.

• “How about more money?” Always start here. Then “How about even more money?” Continue in an infinite loop until this strategy is exhausted and only then move on.
• “How about more equity?” This makes you sound committed for the long haul! Note: If they offer you this, do some math (j/k, find some other jerk to do it) and convert it to money. You want more money. Equity is for chumps who have to stick around when they could be earning more money elsewhere.
• “Great! For that amount, which two days a week should I show up? Or alternatively you can pay me 2.5x that amount and I’ll show up on all five days.” Don’t panic when using this seemingly crazy strategy — you are only going to show up max four days anyway.
• “Is that just the value of the included health membership? What’s the base salary?” Jokes aside, there better be a fat health membership included.
• “At my old job I had one personal assistant, so I’m going to need at least two to make this a compelling offer.” They’ll never know that it was in fact YOU that was employed as a glorified personal assistant. (Words from the wise: don’t specify the desired race or gender of the personal assistant until you’ve closed)
• “Can I get a relocation bonus?” Fair enough. Who the heck knows where you live anyway? Be honest though and use this to relocate something, e.g. your family to a resort for a vacation.
• “I remember a guy we used to pay too little. He was pretty grumpy. How do you guys feel about a constant barrage of obscene expletives and casual racism?” Bonus: now that you’ve primed them, you can let loose with this no matter what the outcome of the negotiation.
• “I can’t leave until three months from now, because I’m getting a fat bonus. What’s your bonus situation?” No matter what they say after this, scrunch up your face like you just smelled something terrible. Lean slightly closer to them. Sniff. It’s them. They smell bad.

In all seriousness… never accept a first offer. It doesn’t matter if it’s your first job and you think you have no leverage. No more money? No more equity? Well how about a delayed three month start date? ‘Coz you’re going to Hawai’i, baby! Our study showed that 90% of people leave at least 5% on the table*.

*Not a real study, but it sounds plausible, right? That’s why we didn’t waste anyone’s time with a study. Because it is roughly true. Consider this a tip!

Credits: Two amazingly handsome and also anonymous friends