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can stick with the traditional ideas — just make sure your boss hasn’t seen you reading this book.
    Third, this is the perfect time to adopt a new approach to the workplace. It has become a cliché to say we’re living in a transitional time. However, despite its becoming a hackneyed observation, it remains true. The workplace has clearly changed. Yet, the widely accepted approaches to finding and thriving on the job have not. Most people are still following the old patterns. This allows those who adopt new patterns to really stand out from the crowd. Think of it as getting in on the ground floor. I’m not saying everyone will be following my approach in the future. But clearly they will be following some new approach. Those who abandon the old, outmoded techniques first will be in the best position for the future.
    And fourth, I believe my approach offers an unprecedented opportunity not only to increase the size and security of your stream of income, but also to increase your chances of getting the emotional satisfaction so many of us currently lack. Increase your income. Make your job more secure. Find psychological satisfaction. All this is possible in today’s job market, as long as you’re willing to at least temporarily unlock any airtight compartments in your mind and consider some new ideas. Turn the page to break the seal and let in some fresh air.

Fire Your Boss…
and Hire Yourself
     
    In every one of those little stucco boxes there’s some poor bastard who’s never free except when he’s fast asleep and dreaming he’s got the boss down the bottom of a well and is bunging lumps of coal at him.
— G EORGE O RWELL
    ALL NATHAN WINKLE’S friends and coworkers think he’s a control freak. Nathan’s clothes closet looks like a display in a men’s store. His files at work are perfectly alphabetized, using color-coded labels and tricut folders in pristine order. He tracks his auto mileage and brings his car in for an oil change as soon as it has been driven three thousand miles. Nathan follows his investments online daily, and prepares his taxes on January 1. The tools in his garage are mounted on Peg-Boards. His wife jokes that she and the kids don’t stand still long for fear Nathan will use his labeling machine to label them on their foreheads. Yet despite his being a control freak, Nathan had his territory at work changed twice in the last year. Nathan’s boss had him change his vacation plans twice, to accommodate the boss’s changing plans. There were dozens of other things that all added up to Nathan’s feeling as if he had no control of his work life. It was as if he were a marionette, with his somewhat flaky boss holding the strings. But in the past year Nathan has changed all that. He decided when to take his vacation this year…and his boss rearranged his own schedule to accommodate him. Nathan was able to pick and choose which projects he worked on, which trade shows were worth attending, for how long, and where he would stay. His secret? He adopted the first element in my workplace philosophy: he fired his boss and hired himself. You should do the same.
    Americans are obsessed with taking charge…except when it comes to their work lives.
    I know people who obsessively take charge of their gardens, selecting where to place different perennials to ensure the colors and heights don’t clash and there’s a constant supply of blooms during spring and summer.
    Lots of parents today take charge of their child’s life, scheduling everything from sports to study. Some go so far as to plan out a complex social, cultural, and academic pattern to get the child into not just the right college, but the right preschool.
    Professions to help us take charge of our lives abound. There are professional tax planners, estate planners, investment planners, kitchen planners, landscape planners, even party planners.
    Yet when it comes to work, the element of our life that provides the fuel (money) for so