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| 1 | Dedication Dedicated to Robyn Altucher: I'm so glad I met you in time to be quarantined with you. Contents Cover Title Page Dedication Introduction Chapter 1: You Can Do That Chapter 2: The 1 Percent Rule Chapter 3: 10,000 Experiments Chapter 4: Become the Scientist of Your Own Life Chapter 5: Borrow Hours Chapter 6: Build Microskills Chapter 7: Plus, Minus, Equals Chapter 8: Who Are You? Why Are You? |
| 2 | Why Now? Chapter 9: Exercise the Possibility Muscle Chapter 10: Learn Idea Calculus Chapter 11: Frame Control Chapter 12: Find the Conspiracy Number (or How to Know if an Idea Is Good or Bad) Chapter 13: Microskills Everyone Should Learn Chapter 14: The 50/1 Rule (or How to Be Infinitely Productive) Chapter 15: Take Two Steps Back Chapter 16: Wobble Without Falling Down Chapter 17: Exit the Line Chapter 18: Become an Entrepreneur Chapter 19: The Spoke and Wheel (or How to Monetize Anything) Chapter 20: Three Ways to Make a Billion-Dollar Business Chapter 21: The Incerto Technique Chapter 22: The 30/150/Millions Rule Chapter 23: What to Tell Your Kids (or 10+ Rules for Living a Good Life) Acknowledgments About the Author Also by James Altucher Copyright About the Publisher Introduction "You can't do that!" She's the head of marketing at HBO. |
| 3 | I'm walking toward the CEO's office. It's 1995. The CEO is my boss's boss's boss's boss's boss's boss. My official title at HBO is junior analyst software developer. If I worked hard, I'd get a promotion to senior analyst software developer. Cindy says, "You can't just walk into the CEO's office and tell him an idea! Do you know how many people have ideas for a show who have been in this business for decades? |
| 4 | And you can't just go over your boss's head. You can't skip the line!" But I want to change my life. I'm unhappy. My career feels stagnant. I'm not interested in being a junior analyst . . . whatever. Being comfortable in my nice little cubicle. Six feet by six feet. Even in a jail, prisoners often have an eight-by-eight cell. They have their own bathroom. I don't like going to the bathroom and thinking my boss might be in the stall next to me. |
| 5 | I've ruined my stomach forever by holding it in until work is over. Can I skip the line? "I'm going to try," I say. "What can I lose?" "You can lose your job," she says. "Nobody does this." But I want to. I want to skip the line. I'm not taking an easy shortcut. My idea is good. Who made the rules that you can't skip the line? I go to the CEO's office . . . *** Twenty-five years later, a pandemic shuts down the planet. |
| 6 | Forty million people in the United States file for unemployment. The world feels over. People start to riot. There are protests everywhere. As the economy reopens, as the dust starts to clear, we can see the results: Many businesses are not coming back. Many industries are upside down. Many people are lost in this new world. The ability to change, to find your passion, to get good at it, to make money from it, to feed your family, to be excited . |
| 7 | . . again, to want that excitement about getting up in the morning-this has never been more important. They never taught us the "skip the line" skills in school. They never told us that the world can suddenly become very terrifying unless we know how to live in the land of not-knowing. Maybe I'll change my passion again. And again. It's never too late. Everyone is walking around shaken with some kind of societal PTSD. |
| 8 | I want to change, people say. I've always wanted to do X but I thought I had to do Y. From birth we're told which holidays to celebrate, which schools to go to, which promotions to aim for, which awards to strive for. I kept believing this until I was on the floor, flirting with the worst, no optimism left. The time to learn to skip the line is now. But the time to learn to skip the line was always now; we just forgot that. |
| 9 | *** I lived four blocks from the World Trade Center on 9/11. It was such a beautiful morning, around 8:30 a. m., September 11, 2001. The markets had been down for several days in a row and I had made a big bet the night before that the markets would bounce back. At that moment, the stock market looked like it would open up big, and I was excited to make money. I'm having breakfast at the Dean & DeLuca on the bottom floor of One World Trade Center. |
| 10 | Then my business partner, Dan, and I start walking back toward my apartment. Dan turns to me and says, "Is the president coming in today?" He points up in front of us to a low-flying jet cutting through the sky right toward us. A second later-a microsecond-a second that will never repeat, everyone on the street instinctively ducks. My eyes open. I see the plane scream straight into the building, accompanied by the loudest sound ever-imagine a god opening up the door of a giant attic. |
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