I didn’t do this, but I wish I had. I’ve just been re-reading Tina Fey’s Bossypants – read my bubbling enthusiasm for it from when I first read back in 2011 – and I was really looking for a way to tell you the best bits. Or at least to say: read Bossypants (UK editions, US editions).

But a blog called Scrubly has parsed the whole book and come up with advice we can apply to everything. I’m not surprised, I admire her book just as much as I relish it: there is huge strength in the wit and the cleverness. That makes it sound technical or contrived, I think, and that’s not at all how it reads. It reads like this smart woman is two inches in front of your face and talking directly and only to you. But it does also have these great nuggets, such as the one Scrubly picks out first:

“You can’t be that kid standing at the top of the water slide, overthinking it. You have to go down the chute.”

Tina Fey had to learn how to stay productive and get things done on deadline mainly because of her work on SNL. When a show is done weekly there’s no time for fooling around with work. There’s no such thing as being a day late when a show airs live at the same time every week — you get it done.

And keep in mind, as Fey said, “You can’t control things by being nervous about it.”

Do take a read of Scrubly’s article but, really, Tina Fey’s Bossypants. That’s the thing to read (UK editions, US editions).