Before she was the bestselling author of Lessons in Chemistry, novelist Bonnie Garmus ran her own copywriting business. Early in her career, she realised one of life’s great time wasters is the meeting, so she came up with a clever way to minimise this aspect of her work by charging extra for every meeting she attended.

“I bid by the project, so there were no set days or hours, but I would say: ‘If you want me to come to a meeting it will cost you.’ I became a legend for that,” she says with a mischievous smile.