Executricks Contest: Everybody's A Winner! (Until I Make Up My Mind)

Several weeks ago I began a contest to search out which of you could offer the best tricks that might enable he or she who is serious, crafty and determined enough to retire while one is still working.

The response was highly satisfactory from two standpoints. First, quite a few of you responded. Second, and perhaps most important (this being the Internet), none of you replied with messages like "You rule!" or "You suck!" or employed emoticons. Answers, in fact, were quite extensive and pretty darned impressive.

Over the next few days, I'm going to publish a bunch of them here on my way to deciding who will win the Grand Prize – lunch with me at the home of those who are gainfully retired on the job: Michael's Restaurant in New York City. If the winner should come from somewhere other than New York, I'll come up with something different and just as fatuous.

In citing these, I'm going to use initials and the general location. Quite a few of you requested anonymity, and I'm going to honor that, since these Executricks of which we speak are sometimes subversive and always predicated on a certain amount of legerdemain and just plain luck.

FD from a respected California university town writes:

"I establish professional contacts in the appropriate department at the nearest university, often just across town. "I'll be on Campus" is good for however long I need/want it."

This articulates an important concept: diversion as a means of creating a vacant time/space bubble around oneself. It is no surprise that major work is being done on this issue in academia.

E-mailer IB works for a food services firm in the state of Washington. He demonstrates, in his reply, that the use of snarkiness is not limited to major urban areas. "My recommended Executrick," he writes...

"... is to run contests, or other forms of intra/extra office promotions wherein the sponsor solicits ideas so he/she doesn't have to think of any themselves, in return for token recognition or a modest honorarium. I will be pleased to join Mr. Bing at Michael's at a time of his choosing and convenience."

That's the spirit. IB! We'll be back tomorrow with some more cool replies to this contest, which is being conducted, coincidentally, as I launch the new book, Executricks, or How To Retire While You're Still Working (Collins). I note, by the way, that virtually all of my incoming was submitted from office computers and business domains. Way to go, people! See you tomorrow!