Jason Brennan, the Robert J. and Elizabeth Flanagan Family Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, is one of the most productive scholars I know. He earned his PhD in 2007, and since then he has written nineteen books that are either published or forthcoming as well as 46 journal articles. On top of that, he’s a guitar aficionado who plays in two bands.

Nice Work if You Can Get It is a summary of “unpleasant truths about the world’s best job.” And it is the world’s best job: what professors call “work” is what most of the world calls “leisure.” Make no mistake, the intellectual tasks are demanding, but for a lot of professors getting paid to do research is like getting paid to play video games. Most of the rewards aren’t material, and naturally this means lower earnings—but the pay, while not eye-popping, is enough to put most academics comfortably within the middle class or lower-upper class.

Academia is also a “cult of busy” because competition for these plum jobs, especially in the humanities, is pretty fierce. Every year, there are more newly-minted humanities PhDs than there are humanities job openings. You differentiate yourself by out-producing the other people interviewing for the job you want. Should the world be that way? Maybe not. Is the world that way? Yes, it is.

Brennan wants to help you succeed by doing the things that make it more likely that you will successfully complete graduate school, get a job you want, and get tenure. He notes that academia is neither a perfect meritocracy where only the most able and deserving get the jobs and plaudits, but he also notes that it’s not a lottery, either. As he argues, one of the most important things you can do is show a hiring committee that you are absolutely and unambiguously a diamond: perhaps this is unfair, but a hiring committee with a pile of CVs from certified diamonds probably isn’t going to spend a lot of time hunting diamonds in the rough.

The goal, he writes, is not to graduate. It’s to get a job. Borrowing from his advisor David Schmidtz, he asks you to think about someone who says they’re training for the Olympics. Someone who says “I’m training for the Olympics” and follows a strict regimen is increasing her chances of success. Someone who says “I’m training for the Olympics” and lives on a steady diet of cigarettes and little chocolate donuts isn’t—no matter what John Belushi or your cynical classmate tells you. Think of the aphorism “dress for the job you want, not the job you have.” Similarly, work for the job you want, not the job you have.

He suggests some specific things you need to do to have a shot. If you’re a graduate student, start now. You should put together a course prep for every class you TA. Write regularly—as the economist James M. Buchanan pointed out, success is achieved by applying the seat of one’s pants to the seat of one’s chair. Don’t edit as you go: Buchanan also said “writing is research,” and your first task is to get it on the page (cf. Brennan. p. 101).

Importantly, Brennan stresses that overwork is the enemy. Think about the quality of the decisions you make when you are tired. If you’re like me, you’ve probably had to waste time at least once going back and fixing something your sleep-deprived, bleary-eyed self from last night or a few days ago messed up. I’ve heard that it’s said around MIT “why put off until tomorrow what you can do at midnight tonight?” Brennan would give a simple answer: because it’s probably going to be garbage that you’ll want to discard or redo. As always, your mileage may vary—but it’s important to know when you’re at your best. If you’re exhausted, stop. If you hit one of your goals, reward yourself. You’re in this for the long run, and avoiding burnout in a cult of busy is very difficult.

Good Work if You Can Get It is a frank, realistic, and data-driven discussion of what it takes to succeed in academia. It’s the kind of book every aspiring scholar should read. Some of those “aspiring scholars” will decide that academia isn’t the world for them without wasting two years of their life in a graduate program they’ll eventually leave. Others won’t take as much time to finish and will also publish more and teach better because they internalized Brennan’s lessons. Some people will do everything right and still slip through the cracks (recall what Brennan says about academia not being a perfect meritocracy). Still others will sneer contemptuously at Brennan’s advice throughout, steadfastly ignore it, and struggle mightily. They will have only themselves to blame when they fail.

This article is adapted in part from a longer review for Regulation available here.