“Oh, Egbert, you are so funny! I'm in stitches everytime I read your newsletter. To take an unvarnished truth and make it funny is one thing, but you are completely off the charts in driving home a point with such alacrity and humor! You hit the bull's eye and drive the arrow clean through the wall!” --L.C.

"I'm dumbfounded, awestruck, perplexed, befuddled. I'm a miserable bastard going through a divorce and unemployed, who at 35 doesn't know what to do for peace of mind or soul. I'm not looking for you to solve my problems - I just find your writings fascinating." --B.T.

"Wow, your site has an attitude. Every god damn site I go to is so politically correct, other than porn sites. You say it like it is. Thanks." --C.

“I totally appreciate your reminders and insights. I need the wake-up call. It's comforting. I do print them out from time to time and read them out to my mother, and she loves it too. It lets us know it's ok to be more ... human. God bless U.” --P.

"Did you know that you belong in the loony bin, you screwball? No one can help you anymore, you idiotic imbecile."
Anonymous, Schweinfurt, Germany

“You have unconventional wisdom that's unique to you. I'm not sure what the mainstream would think of what you have to say. I've noted when I talk to people along the lines that you lay out, they tend to get turned off or even a little pissed off. I think the reason for this is it tends to go against everything they have been taught and believed all their lives.  Well, I'm going to go back and read some more of your rants as I find them quite refreshing.” --K.B.

"To me the ideas as published on your site are new and refreshing. I have done a lot of the other motivational stuff such as goal setting etc., and it is time to break out of that and get a life! Your approach seems much more natural and I would like to learn more about it."
R.S., The Netherlands

"I have not laughed as much as I have reading the information on moneybymistake.com. Laughing is something I have needed to do right now because I have been taking life all a bit to seriously over the last couple of months. I have been able to laugh at myself and the mistakes I have made with money as I read through your website. You know what? The sun will rise tomorrow whether I have money or not and it is up to me to choose the attitude of how I will greet the day and others around me." --M.P., Australia

”Oh, by the way ... I really enjoyed your newsletter on 'will power'.  It opened my eyes on how habits come about.  I'll drink to that! You've been the highlight of my day.” --B.A.

Freaks and maniacs rant about Egbert Sukop’s ballsy and irritating new book: ‘How to Better Hate Your Job:’

”Perhaps Egbert's new book ought to be titled, The Power of Pain, and come with a warning, not intended for wimps. It is not an easy read--it will incite you, challenge your thinking and slam many of your fundamental beliefs about work, money, life.  His tone is irreverent, crude and sometimes even offensive, but at the same time it offers brilliant and powerful insights on the paradox of the human condition. Hate it or love it, if you can suffer through reading it, you may just find gold under the mud--I did.”  --Claudia B.

”We all have any number of umbilical cords  connected to our most cherished beliefs, opinions,  assumptions and folklore about any number of subjects, varying from money to bosses to jobs to work to wealth to poverty to  freedom to individuality to love to hate to self improvement to what it means to be alive, and more. Egbert Sukop is about to cut a few  of those cords. All of them, if you're lucky. No anesthetic, no nurse to gently squeeze your hand and wipe your brow. Fortunately he cuts  fast and precise. His weapons of choice are wit, humor, irreverence, keen observance, smartness, ruthlesness, and tons of life experience, no  doubt. This leaves you with clean wounds you can be proud of once healed, just the way you can be proud of your cute little belly button that  tells you you actually made it through the birth channel. You're a  survivor. I guarantee you'll make it through this book. If you're lucky like me, you'll laugh a lot, grin, smile, frown, ponder, go "damn! how could I  have missed that!", and most of all, you'll be curious what will be on the next page every time you'll flip one! After that it's up to you how  you choose to live your life. Just like it has been all along. If you like rollercoasters, 'How to Better Hate Your Job' is your ticket to a fast, fun, exciting  and brainflipping ride!” --Jan Frijters, follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Sekoja

“Shocking. Fearless.  Revolutionary.  Every page is an Aha! moment."   --Ray Schiel

“You will undoubtedly love to hate this book and its author long before you finish reading it, and you will never be the same after being exposed to this cynical masterpiece. Beware - Sukop offers no chicken soup for your sorry soul nor does he coddle your inner child.  Rather, he cleverly and comically implies that you should build your own unique individual ass-kicking machine to snap you out of your habits, patterns, and beliefs so you can finally start having some fun and actually enjoy your miserable existence. He pretends to write about money and jobs, but in fact he is writing about life in general.  You may love to hate this book so much that you find yourself re-reading it over and over again, and buying it for your enemies that you love to hate so much.” --Tera Crisalida

“Provocative? PROVOCATIVE??? Deliciously so. Thank you, Egbert Sukop, for this book. I am definitely talking about it, and want everyone I know to read it. Some I could only take in a chunk here and there--and this writing definitely snuck by my mind--most of what was said STILL hasn't registered there! Or like a friend I loaned it too--she couldn't sleep. I think that a good thing. Egbert "approaches/ attacks/plays with" major assumptions Americans make about making a living.  The concepts offered are so "other." Short, sweet, not-so-sweet--a definite wake-up call to anyone who values out of the box living.” --Vinnie Rose

“Shockingly rude, captivating, a prying inquiry into unhappiness.  Serious yet funny, this book reminds me to wake up even more and not to let myself of the hook. A compelling read.” --Tanya O'Connor

”Mr. Sukop, as far as I'm concerned, you've already earned much more than $10 by all of your provocative twittering binges.  I feel better having finally given you something for what you've already given me.  I'm looking forward to a long lapse into silence as I read your book.  I'm already thinking I should have gotten the physical, in your hands book. Perhaps in the future I will. Keep going.” --Jim H., follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/1awakening

How to Better
Hate Your Job

hating what we do is what we love to do the most

You better get Egbert Sukop’s irreverent new book, or else ...

Employees hate their jobs almost by definition. According to Forbes Magazine, 87% of Americans don’t like their jobs. We may dread our back stabbing colleagues, the alcoholic superior, or erratic bosses, but it is not necessarily the job per se we hate.  Our actual work is not that bad, rather it is the job environment that is so annoying. Insipid rules and regulations are foisted on us and patronizing company policies that defy logic and common sense. We are being treated like children, watched, policed, and supervised by characters whose job description includes and demands distrusting us.

Yes, we despise our jobs and we don’t like at all that we are underpaid. As if that wasn’t awful enough, we hate the missed opportunities of our lives. It is depressing to miss out on a self-determined life, yet more so do we hate ourselves. Why? For lacking the balls to do something about our miserable status quo! 

Work and jobs are not as much of a problem for us as we are. We are bloody mad at ourselves.  We hate the inconsistency of our thoughts:  ”I hate my job” and “I hate losing it.”  What?

Ultimately we know that we deserve to be treated like immature wussbags, because that is who we are. We abhor the fact that we don’t have the guts to get up, leave the cubicle, and ride into the sunset.

We are not really longing to enjoy our work. That is not the issue.   We desire to somehow muster the creativity and the gusto to establish a productive niche in the marketplace called life. We aim to shed the lethargy of employment and to seek adventure. And that may not be as difficult as you think ... 

You must read ‘How to Better Hate Your Job!’ You have never come across anything like it.  Order a copy for yourself and make sure to tell your friends, enemies, and your hunchbacked relatives about it.  So? What are you waiting for?  Do something, will you! It is important to do at least one regrettable thing every day ...

“Yes, but I am self-employed.  I don’t need this book!” Right, except for the fact that you are dealing with employees every day, everywhere: we buy from them.  We sell to employees.  They work for us. Employees certainly govern us! Our parents are employees, perhaps, or our children. We may even find one in our own bed. And, in case you are self-employed:  do you really enjoy 100% of the work you do?  I am having a hard time believing that. 

What do employees think about their jobs, in secrecy? How do they feel about their lives spent in partial and temporary “slavery?”  Discover psychological secrets and inconsistencies employees will never admit to themselves. 

Employed or self-employed, you must read this provocative and outright shocking material.  Your human environment will never look the same.  Disturbing insights and irritating truths will push you to discover new answers for yourself.  This book will not tell you what to do or what not to do:  it will inspire you to formulate your own answers to questions that jobs and employment challenge us with.  'How to Better Hate Your Job' invites you to experience an unimaginable adventure in all too familiar environments.

No, this book is not for average people. Mediocrity is waiting to become extinct, anyway.  And no again, I did not write about positive thinking.  You have thought too positive for too long already. This material is utterly cynical.  Funny here and there, but that doesn’t make the subject less serious.  It’s probably a bit too honest for you. And it’s not motivational. Motivational claptrap is revolting and triggers gag reflexes in sane people. Do I look like another sucker to you, trying to brown-nose my way into your wallet?

Employed or self-employed, these Slap-in-your-Face ideas will rip you out of the ordinary! You will look at your work life radically differently, and you will change the way you perceive other people. You will not go back to yesterday’s monotonous thought patterns.  You can’t.

You won’t find simplistic recipes in ‘How to Better Hate Your Job.’ Who am I to tell you what to do or how you should not live? But I promise, I will disturb the way you think today. I am confident I will piss you off.  This stuff will shake you out of the slumber common nonsense has lulled you into.

And when I am done bombarding innocent you with irritating thoughts, when the dust settles, you will see your work from a different perspective and in a new light.

You have the chance to discover new answers that I refuse to provide.  ‘How to Better Hate Your Job’ instigates a revolution of thought.  You are the only one who can give form to the life you want to invent for yourself. But, if I don’t tell you what to do, WHAT the hell can you DO?

Whenever we feel tension or when something is out of balance--that’s true pretty much all the time, isn’t it?--we feel compelled to ACT and to DO something about it.  We want to fix it.  We are obsessed with trying to make uncomfortable feelings go away as quickly as possible.  This constant reaction to 'what is' turns into a permanent and unfortunately futile rat race we cannot escape even when we retire.

We hate our inability to satisfyingly respond to the things we hate MORE than we hate the stuff we hate.  That sense of helplessness ("Why don't you tell me what to DO?!") is not caused by the things we hate, originally.  Our helplessness stems from our compulsive response to fix every damn thing.

What we hate in life is not what we hate in life.  Say wha...?  In somewhat less radical terms, the things we hate may or may not be what we really hate.  In all likelihood, things that annoy us to no end are only SYMPTOMS of what's really out of whack.  And if we respond to and try to "heal" only symptoms without paying attention to the roots of our problems, you know what happens.

'How to Better Hate Your Job' is an invitation. My book is to a large extent about the brick walls in our lives, teaching us that we CAN'T always DO something to better our lives.  Some things virtually disappear when we give ourselves permission to experience what is, the moment of discomfort with all its painful properties.  Then, we may do something if we so desire, but we will have the advantage of acting from within the state of relaxation instead of reacting to an emergency.  Reactions often bypass our rational thought processes.  Action on our own terms widens our range of options:  outside the limited fight-or-flight reflexes, we gain the ability to use our intelligence and experience as resources.

I use ‘money’ as a metaphor.  It is about money and it's not just plain money I am referring to.  Money stands for a bunch of things in life.  Here, 'jobs' are to be seen as a similar variable, an equivalent for the way we approach our lives.  Jobs, or work itself, is a relatively small portion of what my new book ‘How to Better hate Your Job’ is about.  Jobs are just the hook and almost negligible for the true purpose of this book.

We despise plenty of experiences in life, but the hatred for jobs appears to be one of the few that unify so many of us.  It is a common experience.  Hence I chose the common idea that jobs suck, to work on a couple of psychological issues each one of us  must deal with daily, in different departments, on varying levels of intensity.

My book will rattle your cage and make you feel highly uncomfortable.  You’ll have to crack the door open and escape into what you call freedom and happiness.

Good Luck to you,

Egbert Sukop

P.S.:  Go and buy your Paperback copy on Amazon.com!  What are you waiting for? The tooth fairy?
P.P.S.:  You don’t care for a Paperback hardcopy?  You’re cheap? No problem, get the e-Book version, FREE.  Pick up your e-Book download for FREE until January 31st, 2010.  It will burn and tear through the common nonsense we have been spoon-fed about jobs, one of our most holy cows. Enjoy!

... and on to Egbert’s “normal” material, as if normal could describe this impertinent bastard:

Money by Mistake

Don’t learn from your mistakes. Repeat them frequently.

chance and lucky breaks: Measured over hundreds of millions of years, "Ninety-nine point nine nine percent of all biological species which have ever existed are now extinct." (Paul Ormerod, Why Most Things Fail)  That's nothing to mope and mourn about, because thanks to myriads of mistakes and random selection, you and I showed up. What on Earth rides you to think that you have the slightest chance to survive and thrive WITHOUT making mistakes frequently?  Evolution is mistake-driven.  Duh, and so is your individual and personal development.

Hey Schlemiel, how about my book:
have you bought the damn thing yet?

And if not, why? Go and get it, will you!   I don’t have all day. On second thought, I guess I do have all day and the patience to wait even for you. But it’s painful and I don’t have anybody but you to blame for it.  So, buy Baby, buy, buy, bye ...