Getting to the top without working too hard is an eminently sensible strategy for those who want success and riches without stress. The good news is that it’s actually possible to achieve this and this is what this Blog is all about, most of the time.

There are two ways of achieving this, you can follow the edicts and philosophy of  the Institute of Mediocre Management, an organisation dedicated to getting rich at the expense of others hard work and sacrifice or you can use a little bit of guile and cunning to work smarter rather than harder. The former is practised by many of the richest and successful people in business today. The latter by those who try to survive whilst working for the former.

Other much lauded strategies are almost always bound to fail…

The cliché win at all costs camp will always point towards the hundred or more quotes that echo the sentiments of the 16th President of the United States, when he stated:

You can have anything you want, if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, do anything you set out to accomplish if you hold to that desire with singleness off purpose. (Abraham Lincoln)

 

And well done you. Abe, you got there, although the assassination was a bit of a downer.

It’s of course a well known truism that this ‘try hard enough and you will succeed’ concept is most often quoted, after the event, by those who did prevail because it’s easy to say then. But the problem with this mantra is that it seems very harsh on the also-rans.

There are an incredible number of focused, hardworking and dedicated people that never gave up, who maybe wanted to be President or Prime Minister or play for Manchester United or win an Olympic gold but then failed to do so. Do we therefore assume that in all these cases they didn’t achieve their goal because they didn’t try hard enough? Is Vice President, Olympic Silver, playing for a Championship team a mark of failure? It seems so.

So a better code to follow maybe be:

However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. (Stephen Hawking)

It follows then that none of the paths you might choose are wrong so long as you are happy and don’t hurt anyone along the way. So you could:

• Try and succeed and pursue a dream until you achieve it or or you die (very hard work)
• Try to win, fail, and then take up something else instead (quite hard work)
• Potter along doing what makes you happy and treat winning and losing to misquote Kipling as ‘imposters both’ (not hard work, but you’ll be poor)

Or follow the tenets as espoused on: How to Get to the Top Without Working Too Hard (not a lotta work and riches beyond your wildest dreams)

So switch off the emails, pour yourself a beer or wine, chill and let me do the work thinking for a while.

And finally……this is satire and occasionally humourous! Don’t take anything too seriously.