The red pill or the blue pill? That was the stark choice offered by Morpheus to Neo, the characters played respectively by Laurence Fishburne and Keanu Reeves in the first instalment of The Matrix trilogy.
The blue pill would have left Neo where he was, believing whatever he wanted to believe. With the red pill, Morpheus would show Neo how deep the rabbit-hole went in a post-apocalyptic Wonderland.
Like Neo, very few would go for the red pill, wilfully abandoning their careers to tumble into the rabbit-hole of professional uncertainty. Instead, most would probably choose the blue pill, even if that means being stuck in a career rut.
In his book, The Leap, former headhunter Rick Smith offers a less daunting option: a series of minor career and life changes that could propel workers from good to great in their professional and private lives, essentially breaking up the red pill into little palatable bits.
The book, dubbed by the author as an 'invitation to stop working and start living', is the culmination of five years of interviews and research involving some very famous people and several obscure ones who somehow made it big.
Not happy with his day job as a headhunter, Smith decided to feed his voracious appetite for business-themed books at weekends. In August 2003, The 5 Patterns of Extraordinary Careers was born and became an instant hit. In the process, however, Smith lost his job.