A Five-Book Series by Tony Larcombe

The 30-Day Micro-Pivot
PlayBooks

Practical, sardonic roadmaps for mid-career professionals who have realised with the quiet, dawning horror of someone who has just checked the petrol gauge, that they are probably in the wrong career.

// 5 books  •  30 days each  •  zero macaroni art

5 Books
30 Days per pivot
5 Parts per book
0 Toxic positivity
The universe, as has been observed before, is an unsettlingly large place, and mid-career professionals who have been sensible enough to develop a useful skill are nevertheless frequently found staring at the ceiling at 2 AM, wondering if this is, in fact, the skill they meant to develop. This series exists for those people. It will not tell you that you are special. It will tell you, with considerable precision, what to do on each of the next thirty days. Which is, all things considered, probably more useful.

— T. Larcombe, Series Preface

The PlayBooks

Each book targets a specific professional pivot. Each one takes 30 days. Each one contains a HHGTTG-approved Panic Button for when things go sideways.

Vol. 1
The 30-Day Learning Pivot book cover
Teachers → Instructional Designers

The 30-Day Learning Pivot

Or, How to Supervise Adult Learners Who Won't Eat Glue

Public school teachers are leaving the profession in record numbers. They are highly skilled, perpetually undervalued, and sitting on a portfolio of transferable abilities that corporate L&D teams would pay considerably more for. This book is the bridge. It translates classroom expertise into corporate instructional design language, walks through the required tech stack, and gets you to a client-ready portfolio within 30 days.

"Nobody will ask you to supervise a toilet. The ergonomic chairs alone are worth the pivot."
Mindset Tech Stack Portfolio Strategy
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Vol. 2
The 30-Day Clinical Pivot book cover
Healthcare Workers → Health-Tech Consultants

The 30-Day Clinical Pivot

Or, How to Fix Healthcare Systems from a Safe Distance

Healthcare workers possess a peculiar superpower: they understand the precise moment the machine should have beeped but didn't. Health-tech companies pay extremely well for people who can translate that knowledge into software requirements. This book shows you how to move from the corridor to the consulting report, covering EHR systems, HIPAA/GDPR compliance, and how to package a decade of clinical wisdom as a revenue-generating service.

"You will still fix the systems. But you will do it from another zip code. Possibly wearing normal shoes."
Mindset Tech Stack Portfolio Strategy
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Vol. 3
The 30-Day Workflow Pivot book cover
Solopreneurs → Automated Operators

The 30-Day Workflow Pivot

Or, How to Make Zapier Do Everything Except Make the Tea

The fantasy of running an independent business was "freedom." The reality has turned out to involve six hours a day copy-pasting email addresses into spreadsheets. This book is a no-code automation guide for solopreneurs who have realised that being their own boss means their boss is an overworked person who takes no holidays. Covers Zapier, Make, AI integrations, and the construction of a self-healing client pipeline.

"Automation does not give you your life back. It gives you your evenings back. Which is, frankly, a start."
Mindset Tech Stack Portfolio Strategy
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Vol. 4
The 30-Day Financial Pivot book cover
Corporate Workers → Financial Minimalists

The 30-Day Financial Pivot

Or, How to Break the Loop of Buying Things You Hate

There is a fascinating cycle in which a human gets a promotion, buys a shinier car, realises they are still miserable, and concludes they simply need another promotion to buy an even shinier car to drive to the job they have now started quietly loathing. This book breaks that loop. It strips away the expensive coping mechanisms, identifies your exact "runway number," and funds the career pivot you have been postponing since at least 2019.

"We are going to find out exactly how little money you need to tell your boss to jump in a reasonably priced lake."
Mindset Audit Runway Strategy
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Vol. 5
The 30-Day Developer Pivot book cover
Developers → AI-Augmented Engineers

The 30-Day Developer Pivot

Or, How to Become the Person the AI Reports To

You spent thirty years learning to write code efficiently. You memorised framework APIs, optimised your development environment, and cultivated the kind of muscle memory that made colleagues assume you were slightly superhuman. Then the universe, with its characteristic indifference to personal inconvenience, developed artificial intelligence. This book is about the only logical response: repositioning yourself as the person who directs the AI rather than competes with it — shipping ten times faster, charging accordingly, and still understanding what is actually happening under the hood.

"The environment changed. The useful adaptation became the weight. This is not a personal failing. It is simply how systems work."
Mindset Tech Stack Portfolio Strategy
Buy on Amazon Companion Materials

The 30-Day Structure

Every book in the series follows the same four-week framework. The weeks are parallel across all five books, which means you can read multiple books simultaneously without losing your mind. Mostly.

Week One

Days 1–7

Mindset & Translation

Strip away the old professional identity and translate your existing skills into the language of the new field. Because what you already know is worth considerably more than you think — it has simply been labelled incorrectly.

Week Two

Days 8–14

Technical Tooling

Learn the non-negotiable software, platforms, and systems that the new field runs on. Hands-on, sandboxed, and specifically designed to feel achievable rather than like staring into a void.

Week Three

Days 15–21

Portfolio & Proof

Build the minimum viable asset that proves you can do the work. One deliverable. Publicly accessible. Sufficient to survive the scrutiny of a recruiter who is having a fairly ordinary Tuesday.

Week Four

Days 22–30

Market Strategy

Positioning, targeted networking, and landing the first contract or role. The final week is the deployment phase. Everything built in weeks one through three is now pointed at a real outcome.

The Chapter Formula

Every chapter across all five books follows the same five-section structure. This is not a gimmick. It means you always know where you are, what comes next, and exactly where the Panic Button is when you need it.

01
The Paradox

Opens by exposing a fundamental absurdity in the topic you have been taking for granted. Tone: philosophical, detached, faintly cosmic. Ends before you have the option to close the book.

02
The Translation Key

Takes the terrifying new concept and maps it directly to something you already know. Dismantles the industry jargon that legacy professionals have been using to protect their salaries.

03
The 7-Day Lab

The actionable core. A week-length micro-protocol you can execute immediately. Step-by-step, procedural, and specifically designed to produce a visible result before the week ends.

04
The Panic Button

Addresses the psychological collapse that occurs when something goes wrong. Printed in large, friendly letters. Contains a three-step triage protocol. Empathetic but strictly no-nonsense.

05
The Inter-Book Wormhole

Every chapter ends by connecting logically to one of the other three books in the series, because each pivot is easier when the adjacent pivots are also underway. The cross-references are mapped, not accidental.

Tony Larcombe

// CIO • CTO • Adviser • Educator • Author

Tony Larcombe has spent over two decades at the intersection of technology strategy, education, and organisational transformation, advising organisations ranging from global enterprises to early-stage ventures on how to build, lead, and occasionally un-break complex technology systems.

The 30-Day Micro-Pivot PlayBooks draw on that experience but are written for the professionals on the receiving end of all those transformations: the people who have spent years becoming excellent at something, and have recently started wondering whether that something is still the thing they want to be excellent at.

Get in touch  •  LinkedIn  •  Blog

Start Your Pivot

All five books are now available on Amazon. Follow along on the blog for excerpts, behind-the-scenes notes from the writing process, and the occasional meditation on why progress bars always seem to finish at 97% and then pause for a suspiciously long time.

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