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.