PM Dead Mentors

Audit a week the way Arnold Bennett's 'How to Live on 24 Hours a Day' (1908) prescribes — time as the one income that cannot be increased, the day-within-the-day, and starting with 90 minutes, not a life overhaul. Use when someone says 'I have no time', 'work eats everything', 'I want to learn X but can't fit it', or asks for a time audit or evening routine. Produces a time ledger, one reclaimed 'inner day' block, and Bennett's own warnings about overreach.

Analyse a workplace power situation the way Machiavelli's The Prince (1532) would — who holds power, whose support you need, what fortune can take from you — then give both the Machiavellian read and the honest modern counterweight. Use when navigating a reorg, a new leader arriving, stakeholder politics, a territory dispute, or 'my project is caught in politics'. Produces a power map, a Machiavellian assessment, and an ethical playing-it-straight plan.

Recover from a professional setback — a failed launch, brutal feedback, a public mistake, a lost deal, a layoff — using the actual exercises from Marcus Aurelius' Meditations: the control sort, the evening review, and turning the obstacle into the task. Use when someone says 'today went badly', 'I blew it', 'the launch failed', 'I got torn apart in that meeting', or before replying to something that stung. Produces a structured debrief that separates what happened from the story, and ends in one next action.

Prepare for a specific contest — a competitive deal, a negotiation, a market entry, a turf fight — using the actual planning framework from Sun Tzu's Art of War: the five factors, the calculations before battle, and winning without fighting. Use when facing a competitor head-to-head, preparing a bake-off or RFP, entering a rival's market, or picking which fight to have. Produces a strategy brief with a fight/no-fight verdict.

Run a hard two-option decision through Benjamin Franklin's 'moral or prudential algebra' — the weighted pro/con method he described to Joseph Priestley in 1772 — including the part everyone skips: striking out reasons that cancel, and letting the ledger sit before deciding. Use when weighing job offers, relocations, build-vs-buy, take-the-promotion, shut-it-down decisions, or any 'I keep going back and forth'. Produces a completed decision ledger with a leaning, its strongest counter, and a revisit date.