My solopreneur Musk productivity checklist

My boss is also a nightmare

Jeffrey Denny

My LinkedIn profile was AI-curated to encourage the belief that I’m an amazing Forbes 30-under-30 CEO of a Fortune 500 global corporation leading an extensive team of highly talented industry experts.

Behind the scenes, my corporation [NYSE: MOI], which put DEI and people over profits until Trump 2.0, is just me, 37 years over 30, in a dank hovel churning out dreck to finance the rotgut and cheap cigars that help me churn out dreck.

You guessed it: I work for myself.

This sounds just a tick less awesome than entrepreneur, solopreneur, content creator, independent consultant or Millennial Great Resignation quiet quitter moving back home and milking parents as venture capitalists/cash cows to launch an instantly successful TikTok life-coaching-marketing-influencing enterprise. Yet a tick better than gig worker that evokes DoorDash with a dash of Dickens.

Worst is “freelance writer,” a slur that AI says “comes from the medieval practice of mercenaries selling their services to a lord.” For the big failing and flailing PR firms that need to farm out work for cheap, it means “indentured servitude.” For women desperate to meet one of the few good men left to procreate with before it’s too late, “freelance writer” says, “loser who won’t pick up the dinner check because he claims to be a feminist.”

Whatever you call me — please do — imagine my shock and awe when an email popped up from a “Captain Omniverse” asking for “approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager.”

Between us, since DOGE is listening, my manager is a pathological, sociopathic, insufferable, irredeemable narcissist who desperately needs therapy but lacks the revenue stream to pay someone to tell him what he already knows.

All that said, Musk’s productivity challenge made me crack another handle of Hennigan’s and ponder my Five Bullets of Accomplishment this week:

1. Got four hours of sleep each night like Musk, breakfasted on donuts, steak and sushi like Musk, lunched on pineapple pizza like Musk, had dinner at five-star restaurants like Musk, and spent so much loo time on X to see what Musk thinks I should think that my toes tingled. From love not gout.
2. Crafted imaginary responses to imaginary client emails begging me for my brilliant strategic insights and guidance that, like an architect or McKinsey, I’ll stand behind but not under when things fall down go boom.
3. Repeatedly stabbed myself in the forehead with an icepick while watching a stream of training webinars to use 27 different client email, HR, cybersecurity and invoicing software platforms. Learned that Zscaler is a cloud-based security platform, not a chemical solution that removes mineral deposits from plumbing. And Jira is a project management tool, not a Muslim high holiday. Also, Workday is not 9–5, Monday to Friday, but a recurring nightmare that “unites HR and finance on one AI platform to help elevate humans and supercharge work to keep business moving forever forward” — i.e., robots like Musk’s high-IQ, low-EQ DOGE team brilliantly found a way to make HR and the work day much, much worse.
4. Worked on my anxiety — the real thing, not Gen Z Instagram trauma — because I have too few great clients demanding very little for great money and too many bad clients demanding too much for bad money. When things slowed, I posted on LinkedIn, “Desperately Open to Work For Booze.”
5. Went to back-to-back client Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, Webex and Facetime meetings in billionaire-casual Musk Couture Wear (tee shirt and jeans woven from infant hair, not available at the Dollar Store). Followed 200 slide presentations, each with 80+ slides, and asked brilliant questions that impressed everyone. Such as, “Wait — I’m confused. Sorry, could we go back a few slides? I’m just curious, help me understand, what is a ‘KPI’? Please dumb it down and walk me through it.”

Most of all, Your Excellency, I moved fast and broke things I have no clue about, or the mayhem and destruction that might ensue. I also blithely trashed and ruined hardworking, experienced, expert middle-class professionals and dedicated public servants because I know nothing about what they do and couldn’t give a dogecoin, now 20 cents, about these tax-sucking leeches. Or the millions of Americans who depend on their work and voted for their Congress members, even Republicans, who promised to deliver it. Democracy is all just stupid liberal nonsense.

I also controlled the President of the United States by turning MAGA because you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. And renamed my children after the Russian letters буки, глаголь, живѣте, твёрдый to please the future President of Europe.

Finally, I leveraged climate-woke lib regret to corner the market on lightly used Teslas for a dime on the dollar and sell them to MAGAs who love Musk. Everyone is saying I know the art of the deal, but of course, not as good as the president.

Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer.