by Stanley Bing
|
| List Price: | $19.95 |
| Amazon Price: | $13.57 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. |
| You Save: | $6.38 (32%) |
| Average Rating: |  |
| Lowest New Price: | $9.97 |
| Availablitiy: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
|
 |
|
Product Description
People in the high flush of a successful but sometimes frenetic business career often look with envy at those who have entered their golden years. Ah! they think. To be retired! Free to wake when you wish, to have the time to reflect on the deeper things in life, play golf or quoits, or just go fishin' in the middle of the day. The stressed-out mind boggles at the prospect, and the lip cannot help but tremble and drool. At the same time, you may not be emotionally–or financially–ready to hang it all up. Which is why, whether you're a withered graybeard or a teeny young future hotshot in leather jodhpurs, you need Stanley Bing's global positioning system for a sane and pleasantly successful life: Executricks, or How to Retire While You're Still Working. Bing is the ultimate corporate insider, one who has attained nosebleed altitude and worked long and hard enough to lose his desire to work long and hard enough. Over time, he has watched the power players who have made their jobs into a waking festival of indolence and fun, and gleaned a vast range of executricks they have developed over the years, based around several core concepts: - Delegation, or getting other people to do the stuff you don't want to
- Absence, or the ability to get "work" done while not being physically on the scene
- Abuse of status
- Acting visionary when confused
- Intense engagement (used only in crisis)
A wellspring of executricks flow from these simple precepts, including: - The use of the cell phone and BlackBerry to establish a permanent state of simultaneous Omniscience and Not-Presence
- Roping off mealtimes as zones of defensible entitlement
- Travel as an alternative to work
- The art of the nap
- Golf–the ultimate dodge
- Philanthropy and social activism, a pleasant parallel universe
Executricks is the most precious of resources for those who work hard but would rather be hardly working: a secret handbook that lays bare the stratagems of those who have already ascended to the pinnacles of power. No office, home, or backpack should be without a dog-eared copy. Early adopters earn extra points.
Customers who bought this item also bought
Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Not Einsten? This book may be for you, 2008-09-29
At some point in my career (it might have been yesterday, a Sunday, as I read this book and contemplated my workaday status), I realized that I was never going to invent flubber, direct "The Dark Knight", or craft a clever and historically-lauded Wall Street bailout plan, all of these having been done and properly credited, and therefore that I would never make Trump-size money. So at that point, probably yesterday as I lay awake after reading this book, I realized that my career goals were beginning to align with Bing's as outlined in this book.
So its subtitle, "How to retire while you're still working", represents to me a realization that at 49, too old to be taught new tricks and too young to actually retire to golf and death, and incapable of any world-changing feats of finance, art, or history, what I really want is to work just enough to sustain a comfortable existence. So, with that realization, "Executricks", despite its too-precious title, is actually a serious career guide to how to manage just enough to look busy and not mess up, delegating work and taking credit where ethically possible, while navigating the necessary communications and image control in today's disconnected work world.
Seriously, while tongue, in cheek, Bing is dispensing good career and business advice here. Following his guidelines on meetings, for example, will lighten everyone's work schedule, improve productivity, and accomplish much greater results than you are probably getting out of your overmeetinged, underworked schedule today. His table listing the six forms of email (p. 38) and how to use them will at least help trim down the deep weeds of wasted email writing, reading, and responding, and in some extreme cases (you know who you are, about to hit send on that 1,000-word profanity-laced rant about why your manager is a knot-headed dolt, in a reply-all with 17 cc's including your knot-headed dolt of a manager, and HIS manager and . . . . ) may be career-saving.
Of course, Bing tells it all with a steady veneer of humor so that the serious advice sneaks into your brain in stealth mode, where it can percolate and do the most good later. Suggestion to managers: buy each of your team members a copy of this book, especially if your team is distributed and relies on conference calls, Blackberries, email, and instant message to be productive.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Not what I was looking for......, 2008-09-08
Fairly well written. Silly. Entertaining. But not what I was hoping to read when I ordered it. No real meat, or new ideas.
I rated it well b/c it is well written, and I blame myself for not checking deeper to see that it was a humorous book. I was hoping for something similar to 4 Hour Work Week.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
 Not for the Lay Man, 2008-09-05
I was very happy with the service I received in ordering this book. I was just disappointed after reading it, it wasn't advice for the common worker. This would only apply to those in management positions. It kind of proved the point of how managers do hardly any work and get paid the most.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
great on ideas, thin on details, 2008-08-15
its written in a gag like tone but it scares me that under the gag he is being serious. Makes me want to short sell all fortune 500 companies who are large enough for people pulling executricks to hide in...
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
 Do not waste yout time and money.., 2008-08-02
this was the worst book I have ever read... please do not waste your time..
it is full of garbage... somebody put together some words that do not make any sense at all.
Lewis
Price is accurate as of the date/time indicated. Prices and product availability are subject to change. Any price displayed on the Amazon website at the time of purchase will govern the sale of this product.
|
Store Categories
|