THE EASIEST WAY TO AVOID MEDIOCRITY AND BE A SUPERSTAR

The average office worker works for two hours and 53 minutes in a 8 hour work day. About 180 minutes.

On average they spend 65 minutes reading news websites.

And another 44 minutes on social media.

What do they do on social media? I guess they argue with people who are around the world also sitting in their cubicles.

Everyone typing: “I hate this X because of Y and you are an Htlr if you BELIEVE the opposite of me!!!!”

Or they Like dog photos. “Chi-chi might die today. He was born with no legs. I have to check on him.”

The world is run by people working, on average, slightly less than three hours a day.

If you want to shine and change the planet then the answer is very simple.

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Don’t read the news.

(read FAQ below if you think you will be less informed).

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There’s never anything in the news that will change your life.

Right now in the news (I’m assuming) there’s stuff about the Supreme Court nominee.

That might change my life but there’s nothing I can do about it at all. Zero.

There also might be local news. The UN is meeting in NYC. That won’t change my life. Maybe there was a murder or a robbery. That won’t change my life.

Maybe Tiger Woods won a tournament. That won’t change my life.

(it makes zero difference in my life if he wins or loses)

None of these things will change my life or make me a better person.

In fact, some of these things might make me a worse person.

I might decide to argue with someone. And during the 20 minutes we might argue, neither of us are doing anything to better ourselves or the world. We’re just fighting for the enormous privilege to say, “I was RIGHT” to argue with that other air-conditioned cubicle dweller.

I was RIGHT. I was RIGHT. I was RIGHT.

Wrong.

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This will change your life.

Stay on social media those 44 minutes if you want.

But stop the news.

That’s 65 minutes a day you can do something else.

Take 20 minutes of that and work.

Now, instead of working 180 minutes a day, you’ll work on average 200 minutes a day. Not so bad. Just 3 hours and 20 minutes in an 8 hour work day.

Hardly any difference. In fact, it might seem like no difference.

But it’s 10% more output per day than the average worker.

JUST TEN PERCENT DIFFERENCE!

What does that mean?

With the laws of compounding, 10% per day means your output, your productivity, your contribution to work, will be double that of your co-workers every seven days.

That’s enormous! Everyone will ask, “How is he so productive?”

What magic is he doing?

——

I know this because I don’t read the news and people ask me this question. I used to think I was fooling people.

I’m pretty lazy. I like to take naps. I like to have downtime. I like to take walks.

But just 20 more minutes of work per day and you can (if you are a freelancer)

• Write two books a year
• Do a podcast

( I love doing my podcast.)

• Learn a skill
• Connect more with friends.
• Exercise.
• Make more social calls that can turn into work opportunities.
• Write down ten ideas a day that can help people or form new connections.

And with 20 more minutes a day if you are a cubicle dweller, you can:

• help other colleagues with their work (and earn their later reciprocity)
• make more sales calls or follow up calls with customers
• think of more ways to improve the product or your sales efforts.
• build an extra skill that would be useful in the office.
• learn something new about your company or industry that can be useful in your job .
• Improve the skill you were hired for. For instance, I was hired to be a computer programmer when I had a corporate job. I spent a lot of extra time trying to improve. The difference between a “good” computer programmer and a “great” computer programmer is about 10 times. Meaning: a great computer programmer will complete a task ten times faster and with fewer errors than a simply good computer programmer. My guess is this is true for most skills.

Just 20 minutes a day and you dominate your world.

So instead of looking at the news for 65 minutes a day, look at it for 45 minutes a day.

Or even better…

You will be MORE INFORMED about the world if you look at the news…

ZERO.

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FAQ on the “Obvious life hack”

A) BUT WON’T I BE LESS INFORMED?

Ok, about what? I’m going to look at CNN – Breaking News, Latest News and Videosright now and see what I will be less informed about if I don’t look at the news today:

• Brett Kavanaugh
• Tiger Woods
• Chinese tariffs
• $18 million in cocaine hidden in bananas
• Bill Cosby to be sentenced this week
• Six brothers attack another brother in a political ad
• “You won’t believe what Goldie Hawn looks like now!”

 

 

(ok, I looked at that article)

None of these things inform me in any way that will help my life or the lives of the people around me. Nor will any of these things make my work better.

People say, “Don’t you care who is the Supreme Court Justice?”

I do. But reading the news won’t allow me to have a voice one way or the other unless I was in Congress.

Better to create the news than to read the news.

I create the news by bettering myself, making myself more productive, and having a real voice earned by my efforts at getting better at my craft and the things I am passionate about.

Then I can have a voice.

B) BUT HOW CAN YOU GET BETTER IF YOU ARE NOT INFORMED?

Remember, I said only 20 minutes extra work out of the 65 minutes.

But I still don’t look at the news.

This morning I spent my extra time (45 minutes + the average of 44 minutes people spend on social media) reading books.

A book is written by someone who has spent years of his or her life accumulating life experience and then spending another year writing and crafting it into a form I can learn from.

A news article is mostly second-hand gossip written in a half hour by someone straight out of college.

This morning I read from:

“The Dichotomy of Leadership” – by my friend and one of my favorite writers on leadership, Jocko Willink. Jocko has been in a leader in life and death situations and have used those experiences to understand and explain leadership in corporate environments.

I benefit a lot from reading his experiences and how he’s distilled them into general principles.

(Don’t mess with Jocko!)

“The Art of the Good Life” by Rolf Dobelli who presents 52 interesting ways to live a better life. This morning I read a chapter on “the authenticity myth”. That we are always striving to be authentic but perhaps there is no such thing as “authenticity” and we just need to do our best to be kind and honest.

And re-reading for the 5th time, “A Million Little Pieces” by James Frey, also a friend, and one of my favorite writers. I read that book to improve my writing.

So in that 45 minutes (or more) I’m actually getting more informed about things that are important to me and the people around me and I’m getting to be a better writer.

Reading books help you become a better person help you create the news instead of just read the news.

 

C) BUT AREN’T BOOKS OUTDATED COMPARED TO TODAY’S NEWS?

I’ve worked for five or six different news organizations.

I remember two things:

1) an editor gathering everyone around for the morning meeting: “Ok how can we best scare people”.

2) A TV news producer saying to me in the middle of a broadcast, “We’re just trying to fill the space between ads.”

The news is bad entertainment. Books and life experience is how you better yourself.

No matter what I think about Brett Kavanaugh and what you think, we’re either going to agree or argue. Nobody is going to change their mind. Nobody is going to improve their lives.

Ditto for Tiger Woods winning a golf tournament. Best case there is that I will get bored if we talk about it.

The past few days, with my extra time, I’ve also been writing down my “24 Rules of Wealth” (a friend of mine asked me “what is money?” and I made this list and I’ve been posting it on Instagram.

Follow me on Instagram because I’m posting it there.

Here’s a taste of it:

(6 of the 24 rules and I explain each one in the notes. Posting bit by bit).

And in those 20 extra minutes (or 65) I just might have time to kiss someone a little more than the average person kisses.

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tl;dr

• We ONLY spend 2 hours, 53 minutes a day actually working in an 8 hour work day.
• We spend 65 minutes a day reading online news.
• We spend on average 44 minutes a day on social media.
• If we spent 20 minutes of that news time doing just 20 minutes more work you will have double the productivity of everyone else every 7 days. That adds up to amazing career success. ( the math: 10% per day compounded is 100% in 7 days).
• If we spend the other 45 minutes reading books instead of news you will experience drastic life improvement.
• The news almost NEVER actually makes you more informed or betters your life.

I’m a lazy guy. I don’t want to be a billionaire. I don’t create new companies that will build rockets to Mars. Or drone robots. Or stem cell hamburgers. I like to sleep. I like to spend time with my kids, friends, and loved ones.

I like my down time.

But for some reason everyone asks me, “How come you are so productive?”

I’ve written 19 books (I have two more coming out soon) and I do a podcast twice a week.

(new book coming out soon).

I do standup comedy 3–5 times a week and I help run a very profitable business that will do over 50 million in revenues this year. Plus I’m an investor in over a dozen companies that I keep regular track of and involved in many charities.

I’m only productive because I don’t spend 65 minutes a day reading news and another 44 minutes a day (which is the average) arguing with people on social media.

I’m blissfully uninformed. And I’m living the dream.

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394 – Tucker Max: Speak Your Truth or Be Silenced [Part 1]

Links and Resources

Scribe Media – scribemedia.com

Tucker’s series of articles “Asshole to CEO”

“I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell” by Tucker Max

“Assholes Finish First” by Tucker Max

“Hilarity Ensues” by Tucker Max

“Sloppy Seconds: The Tucker Max Leftovers” by Tucker Max

Tuckermax.com

Follow Tucker on Facebook+ Twitter

 

Also Mentioned:

Billions

Rounders

My interview with Brian Koppleman

Hunter S. Thompson author of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”

Nassim Taleb author of “Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder”

My interview with Nassim Taleb

Jordan Peterson author of “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos” 

My interview with Jordan Peterson

The four great titans of psychological thought:
1. William James
2. Sigmund Freud
3. Carl Jung
4. Alfred Adler

“The Courage to Be Disliked: The Japanese Phenomenon That Shows You How to Change Your Life and Achieve Real Happiness” by Fumitake Koga and Ichiro Kishimi

“Tall Poppy Syndrome”

“The Last Black Unicorn” by Tiffany Haddish

My interview with Tifanny Haddish 

“Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?” by Seth Godin

Eric Weinstein

Sarah Jeong 

Candice Owens

“The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life” by Robin Hanson and Kevin Simler

JT Mccormick – CEO of scribe media

Alex Jones

Karl Marx

 

 

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392 – William Shatner – Live Long And … Lessons from an Intergalactic Legend

 

Links & Resources:

WilliamShatner.com

Live Long And . . .: What I Learned Along the Way by William Shatner

“Why Not Me?” (William Shatner’s Country Album with Jeff Cook of the group “Alabama”)

Shatner-Clause (William Shatner’s Christmas Album)

The Wrath of Khan

William’s One Man Show

 

Also Mentioned:

Aretha Franklin

The Brill Building

Captain Kirk

Mitzi Shore

Rampage

Star Trek (tv series)

There’s A Girl In My Soup

Star Wars

Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Robert Wise

Michio Kaku

Stephen Hawking author of “A Brief History in Time”

Edward Hubble

The Hubble Space Telescope

Jules Verne

The Big Bang

“Physics of The Impossible” by Michio Kaku

Waze

Presbyterian

Buddhism

“The Ultimate Guide to Self Publishing,” which you can get for free right now by visiting jamesaltucher.com/publish. William Shatner just came out with his book at 87 years old. That’s proof that you can write at any age. And I want to show you how. Because I strongly believe everyone has a book inside them. Trust me, writing it can lead to so many new opportunities (financially and creatively). I put all the details in this guide. Check it out by going to jamesaltucher.com/publish where you can sign up to get your free copy.

 

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391 – Yuval Noah Harari: 21 Lessons for The 21st Century

Links and Resources

21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval’s course on Coursera

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One-Minute Life Hacks

A) WAITER’S PAD HACK

There are two uses:

BUSINESS MEETING:

Everyone pulls out their fascist Moleskine notebooks and you pull out your waiter’s pad.

First thing that happens is the alpha male in the room says, “I’ll take fries with that burger”.

This bad joke happens 100% of the time. Homework assignment: come up with the best joke in response.

Second thing that happens: “Why do you have a waiter’s pad?”

Answer:

1. It’s easy to write notes.
2. Easy to keep track of the names around the table (since at the top of a check are tables which you can write names to remember).
3. They are cheap. 10 cents a pad with the right supplier.

This makes you the center of attention at the meeting. It says you are serious about taking notes.

And most important, it shows you are frugal and will care about not wasting people’s money.

A waiter’s pad is MONEY IN THE BANK.

Second use:

RESTAURANT:

When I sit down, I simply pull out a waiter’s pad and put it next to me on the table.

Now the waiters think I’m in “the biz” and I never have any problems with service.

This is not even a one-minute hack. It’s a 10-second hack.

B) LIE DETECTION HACK

If someone does not answer your question, they are lying.

Example: “Hi honey, where’d you go last night?”

Your honey: “I was out with friends.”

Notice: he or she did not answer the question. Which means somewhere in there is a lie.

Example: “Are all expenses included in this estimate?”

Answer: “Sure, unless we see something unusual.”

Did not answer the question. So you will be paying more.

This technique always works. Great for people who are paranoid (like me).

C) LIE DETECTION HACK #2

You’re sitting and one person has a rolling chair. You ask a bunch of easy questions. They answer and sit still.

Now you ask harder questions. Like, “Hey, where were you that night?”

“I was at home.” And they start to roll away on the chair.

Lying.

This works for anything with these two conditions:

1. It’s easy for them to move.
2. You can ask easy-to-answer questions to start to establish that they are sitting still when truthful.

This is a very common interrogation technique.

Both of these were told me by a former DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) interrogator who now runs his own private intelligence agency.

D) NETWORKING HACK

Even if you don’t smoke, always carry around a pack of cigarettes.

Situations where this works:

1. Smoking break. Someone you want to network with is at a restaurant and takes a smoking break. You can follow them outside and start a conversation.
2. The back-technique. You leave your cigarettes behind right before someone you want to network with is sitting down (at a restaurant, club, meeting, etc.). You go back, “Ugh, left my cigarettes here.” And you start to talk.

Believe it or not, everyone in the CIA carries cigarettes around all the time for this reason.

This was told to me by a former “black ops” soldier who wouldn’t tell me “yes” or “no” when I asked him if he was still in the CIA.

E) INTERVIEW / SPEAKING HACK

You start off saying, “I’m sure the others you’ve interviewed have all been great and qualified.” Or.. (for speaking), “Let’s give a hand for all the others before me.”

THIS IS AN IMPORTANT COGNITIVE BIAS:

This is called “choice ambiguity bias”.

When you say the word “other”, the audience lumps everyone into one aggregated being.

Or your potential boss lumps everyone into one aggregated (and forgettable) person they interviewed.

They literally won’t be able to remember anything about the others before you and you will stand out.

Related to this is recency bias. Try to be the last person interviewed or the last person to speak on the agenda. The most “recent” is always the most remembered and if you combine this with choice ambiguity bias, you will create the most memorable impression by far.

All of this was told to me by a professor of cognitive biases when I needed help winning a public speaking contest.

F) WRITING HACK

What’s great about this hack is that even if you know the rule, it still works:

After you write ANYTHING, take out the first paragraph and the last paragraph and it will 99% of the time be better written. I did it with this post, for instance.

G) EMAIL HACK

I do this every day.

I go back seven–10 years in my email history (I store everything).

There are many emails I haven’t responded to. In my inbox (not my spam box), I have 271,109 unread emails at this moment.

I go back to an email I didn’t respond to and I respond as if the email was sent to me five seconds ago.

Like: “Sure, I’ll meet for coffee on Tuesday!”

This almost always results in a new connection/fun meeting/whatever. Note: most jobs.

One time I did this when someone in 2004 sent me an email saying, “Hey, James, I bought you “jamesaltucher.com” for your birthday.”

I finally wrote him in 2010. We’re good friends now AND I own “jamesaltucher.com”.

The longest email response delay I did was 12 years.

H) THE ONE SECOND HAPPINESS HACK

Happiness = Reality / Expectations.

You can’t change your reality quickly. But you can change your expectations in a second.

When my wife left me, I couldn’t change the reality. I couldn’t make her stay.

I was sad, scared, miserable, depressed.

But I could change expectations. I could say, “perhaps this is for the best” and figure out the reasons why and have hope for the future.

I’m not saying it’s easy to do that in a second. But it’s possible. And that changes immediately how happy you can be.

We are all dealt a new hand of cards every few seconds. You play the hand you are dealt instead of whining about it. That’s how to win.

My therapist once told me this. She’s the best.

I) THE 5/25 RULE

This is from Warren Buffett.

He told me this when we were jet-skiing in Hawaii.

He said, “Take your top 25 things you want to do in life.”

Then, “Put the first five to your left and the next 20 to your right.”

“NEVER NEVER NEVER look at the bottom 20 again.”

Why?

Because the bottom 20 are all things you want to do. So they will distract you from the five things you want to do the MOST.

By the way, I was kidding about the jet skiing. That is clearly in his six–10 and not in his top five. And it’s not even in my top 1000.

J) THE LOVABLE RULE

There’s a saying that’s now cliché: “You are the average of the five people around you.”

Fair enough.

Harold Ramis also says, “Stand next to the smartest person in the room.” So he stood next to Bill Murray and made Caddyshack, Stripes, Ghostbusters, and Groundhog Day.

(Sitting next to the smartest person in the room)

Again, fair enough.

But not enough.

BE THE PERSON that people want to stand next to.

Everyone is looking for their five. Everyone is looking for the person to stand next to.

Seth Godin once asked me, “What books do people buy?”

I didn’t know.

He said, “They buy the books that are already on the bestseller table.”

Be the sort of person who is on the bestseller table.

Again, while kite surfing in the Mediterranean, I asked Warren Buffett, “How do you define success?” And he said, “By how many people love you.”

And then he said, before I could ask, “You get people to love you by being lovable.”

K) THE ADVICE HACK

This hack has helped me so much I’m almost afraid to share it.

Let’s say you want something (call it “X”) from a person (call the person “Y”).

Ask Y for advice on how to get X.

For instance, let’s say you get a job offer and you are negotiating a salary. Your new boss asks how much you want to get (he’s trying to get you to put a price first).

Now use the advice hack.

You say, “Listen, I’m good at what I do, which is why you are hiring me. But you are the pro at managing and negotiating. If you were me how would you negotiate here?”

You can even throw in an anchor bias by saying, “If you were me, how would you negotiate here, given that I’ve heard (say very high number) is a reasonable number.”

You’ve just done several things:

• Reaffirmed their status above you (everyone likes that)
• Anchored them on a high number (you won’t get it but the number you get is now going to play off a high “anchor”).
• Asked them to guide you specifically on how to get what you want. Since they are giving the advice, they won’t deny you once you follow it.

I’ve used this when negotiating with customers, investors, bosses, publishers, even getting podcast guests.

And if I get rejected for something important to me, I use this hack. (“What advice would you give me if I wanted to pitch this again to someone like you?”)

I’ve been using this technique for 25 years.

L) LEAVE THE SMARTPHONE AT HOME

Yuval Harari (author of Sapiens) told me he didn’t have a smartphone. I drilled him on this and then I’ve been trying it myself ever since.

The average person touches their smart phone 2,600 times a day!

The average person is using their smart phone for 4 hours and 40 minutes a day!

People think it might help with productivity but it doesn’t. Most of the time we’re checking mindless social media, liking Instagram photos, reading useless news, playing games, etc.

I take a book with me when I go out. So I’m now reading and thinking a lot more.

And when I get home I catch up on my emails and social media messages: since I’m focused on it at that point it takes me just a few minutes instead of spreading it out throughout the day.

I probably save two or three hours a day with this one hack. And I read a lot more and enjoy my downtime more (no pressures to respond to messages all day long).

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I have more.

Let me ask you for advice!

I want to build up my Instagram presence. Should I post one hack a day on Instagram? I hope you can follow me there because I post lots of hacks there.

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M) “BECAUSE” HACK

This is incredibly useful.

There’s a study that showed that if you say:

“You should pay me more because I will work harder” you are more likely to get a raise than if you just say “You should pay me more.”

BUT EVEN MORE INTERESTING….

People don’t even care what you say after the word “because”. This is the “because placebo”.

If you just say “You should pay me more because you should pay me more” then the results were EXACTLY the same as when you gave a valid reason and still handedly beat out the line “You should pay me more”.

So always use “because” when you are asking for something and you don’t have to have anything after the “because”.

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I don’t consider these “life hacks”.

I do these things every day. And I am constantly studying more ways to improve my life.

I love writing. I love doing stand-up comedy. I love succeeding at business and helping people.

I use these tools and many more so I can have more time and opportunities to focus on the things I love.

When I focus on the things I love, I can say I have FREEDOM. The more time per day I am making decisions based on my loves, the more freedom I have.

These “one-minute hacks” give me freedom.

Because.

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A Message To My Younger Self

I regret. I regret a lot. I wish I could have been different.

I wish I could be 17 again and know these rules.

There’s nothing wrong with regret. There’s nothing wrong with wondering how your life would have been different and better.

This is what I wish I knew:

A) DON’T DEPEND ON OTHERS FOR YOUR HAPPINESS

If you outsource your self-esteem, you’ll never be happy.

I outsourced my self-esteem to girlfriends. It was hard enough for them to handle their own self-esteem, let alone mine.

I outsourced my self-esteem to professors, thinking a good grade would make my life better. It didn’t.

Later I outsourced my self-esteem to bosses, thinking a promotion would make my life better. It didn’t.

I outsourced my self-esteem to anyone who had the power to “choose me” – publishers, TV, investors, customers.

I could’ve spent that energy developing the skills to choose myself. There is ALWAYS a back door to dreams.

When I depended on others for my own happiness I ended up trying too hard to make OTHER people happy. If they are happy, I thought, they will make me happy.

A waste of time and effort. People only cared when it was their own self-interest. I am fine with that now.

B) DON’T READ NEWS

I can’t even remember the news from when I was 17 but I always read three newspapers a day and every magazine.

Read books instead. The news when I was 17 was that Reagan was trading drugs for hostages and that Michael Jackson was going to release another album.

Knowing this has had zero effect on my life. I should have read another book about history, or a biography, or a good piece of fiction.

When you read a book, you absorb some of the 10,000 hours of expertise the author poured into the creation of that book.

When you read a news article, you are fooled into caring about something that will have zero consequence on your life.

News is about shock. Not about knowledge.

C) WAKE UP ASKING… “WHAT IF…?”

For instance, “What if I didn’t go to college and instead I wrote a book or learned how to program and started making money instead of borrowing it?”

Or, if you want to go to Harvard but were rejected: “What if I just showed up for classes there and nobody realized I wasn’t an actual student?”

“What if I took a job and started learning skills instead of arguing with my college girlfriend?”

“What if I stopped waiting to begin my life and started pursuing the things I love?”

When you start with “What if?” you start with Questions instead of Answers.

17 year olds don’t have Answers but I always thought I did. Start with Questions instead.

“What if…?” let’s you build a bridge between reality now and the desires you want.

“What if…?” let’s you step outside the path that parents, teachers, friends, society have planned for you and allows you to find your own path.

“What if..?” let’s you admit you are stupid but open-minded enough to be curious and explore the entire universe.

(Exercise: Ask 30 “what if” questions about your life. Like: What if I could make my own TV show and put it on YouTube. Or…What if I could be a professional sports anchor… what 100 steps would build that bridge? Or…What if I could invent my own cryptocurrency? What would make it unique? and so on.)

D) DON’T ARGUE

I would argue with my dad about Nicaraguan politics.

Who the heck cares now? And what change did I create by arguing? I thought I knew everything and so did he. So we wasted mindless hours arguing about something stupid and now he’s dead.

I would argue in classes about poetry or philosophy instead of learning for myself what life was like in the real world.

I would argue about the economics of poverty with other people who knew nothing about either.

Poetry is found by doing what you love, by scraping a knee when you fall, by lifting yourself up even when you’re dirty and bloody and tired and you have to start all over.

Philosophy is found when you find the edges of the comfort zone of life and make your first attempts to step outside of it.

Poverty is found when you do everything you can to succeed and you fail and you take ownership of your mistakes and you start again.

Opportunity is found not in the middle of an argument that has no outcome on life, but in the places that are least crowded, where you are exploring and finding out who you uniquely are.

E) EXERCISE THE CREATIVE MUSCLE

Nobody wants you to be creative:

“Ideas are a dime a dozen.”

“Ideas are not a business.”

“Execution is everything.”

Creativity is a muscle. You can’t have good ideas if you don’t exercise that muscle.

Every day I write down 10 ideas. Not because they are good. But because they are bad and I want to be better every day than the day before.

This morning I wrote down 10 ideas for books I could write.

Good books? No. (“The History of The World in Tweets from 2010–2018” is an example).

It’s probably the thousandth time I’ve written down book ideas. Another 2,000 times I’ve written down business ideas. Another 3,000 times I’ve written down ideas for others.

It doesn’t matter.

If I’m better at idea generation than everyone else then I will find the places that are least crowded.

F) THE BEST INVESTMENT IS IN YOURSELF… BUT DIVERSIFY

When I was 17 I had no skills. I was the high school chess champ in my state but that’s it.

When I was 23 I still had no skills and that was after college and graduate school.

When I was 26 I still had no skills and that was after a few jobs.

I finally found something.

I found “awe”.

I thought the internet was awesome. I was in awe of it’s potential. I wrote down all the things the internet could do.

So I learned skills: I learned how to program a computer (even though when I was 21 I had majored in computer science and then I went to graduate school in computer science, it was all theoretical and I never did anything that required a real skill).

But diversify your skills. Diversify the things that give you awe.

1. Read a lot to find the things that fascinate you.
2. Write down ideas every day.
3. Develop a skill that makes money NOW (like computer programming). Develop more than one of these if you can.
4. Develop skills for the future (like writing, communicating, speaking, entertaining).

I’m 50 now. I’ve invested in myself. I have skills.

But still every day I have to learn. I have to maintain. I have to keep up. I have to practice. I have to exercise.

Exercise: Start with these books. Read them:

1. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
2. Antifragile by Nassim Taleb (and The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness by him)
3. Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed
4. The Mastery of Love by Don Miguel Ruiz
5. Anything You Want by Derek Sivers
6. Mindset by Carol Dweck
7. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
8. “Sapiens by Yuval Harari
9. The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
10. Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
11. Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson (a collection of short stories, not a religious book)
12. The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley (and The Evolution of Everything by him)
13. Bold by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler
14. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
15. Peak by K. Anders Ericsson
16. The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer (along with The Untethered Soul by him)
17. Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist by Stephen Batchelor
18. Mastery by Robert Greene
19. Zero to One by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters
20. War of Art by Steven Pressfield (and Turning Pro)
21. Post Office by Charles Bukowski
22. Purple Cow by Seth Godin
23. Maus by Art Spiegelman
24. On Writing by Stephen King
25. How We Got to Now by Steven Johnson (and his book Where Good Ideas Come From)
26. Creativity, Inc by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace
27. Sick in the Head by Judd Apatow
28. Born Standing Up by Steve Martin
29. The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle (and Practicing the Power of Now by him)
30. The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman
31. How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World by Harry Browne
32. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
33. A Million Little Pieces by James Frey
34. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
35. What I Talk About When I talk about Running by Haruki Murakami
36. The Stranger by Albert Camus
37. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
38. The Blue Zones by Dan Buettner
39. The New Evolution Diet by Art De Vany
40. Poking a Dead Frog by Mike Sacks
41. Socrates by Paul Johnson
42. Small Victories by Anne Lamott
43. Meet Your Happy Chemicals by Loretta Breuning

G) LEARN WHAT MONEY IS

Money is not about having a higher income. Or about pleasing others. Or about the economy.

The economy is for everyone else. And it’s almost impossible to get rich on income.

Money is not about investing or spending or luxury or even freedom.

Money is about arbitrage. Seeing value where other people don’t. This takes practice.

You can practice by learning a money game like poker.

Get really good at poker and you learn about people, probability, statistics, selling, arbitrage, decision making, money management, emotional control, entertainment, creativity.

Games are a safe way to practice hunting. Games are a safe way to learn about money.

I wish I had learned poker at 17 instead of at 30. Then I wouldn’t have lost all my money at 30. Much safer to lose all your money at 17 before you have two kids and a mortgage.

H) PLUS, MINUS, EQUAL

To learn anything you need a:

PLUS: a mentor (real or virtual or books) to study and emulate and learn from.

EQUALS: people who are striving with you that you can compare notes with.

MINUS: You can’t learn something unless you can explain it to a three year old. Always try to explain what you are learning.

I) THE GOOGLE RULE

Google knows nothing.

If I go to Google and want to learn about “computer programming”, Google will say, “I know nothing but here are the ten best places you can go based on my extensive research.”

Then, when I want to learn about “motorcycles” the first place I will go is Google.

Google is worth almost a trillion dollars.

Because:

1. They are the source of information but not the actual information. They tell you where to go.
2. They give credit to everyone else. They don’t say “We know”, they say “These people know and they are GREAT.”

If you use the Google Rule you’ll have more value every day.

(The first Google home page)

J) THE 1% RULE

Whatever gives you AWE, improve 1% per day at.

1% per day, compounded, equals 3800% per year.

3800% per year will make you the best in the world at everything you are interested in.

Lose 1% per day (by relying on others, by depending on institutions to help, by arguing and trying to convince people, by following society’s rules instead of your own), will mean in a year you are 3% the person you were at the beginning of the year.

(The most important rule in this post).

K) LOVE EVERYONE AS IF THEY WERE YOUR DAUGHTER

Everyone is going through a world of s*8t. All the time.

Treat everyone the way you would treat a daughter.

Love their faults and flaws. Don’t try and change them. Be sensitive to their sadness. Listen to them. Hold them if they need it. Don’t control them.

They want to be happy. Just like you.

You don’t need to love God or society or even yourself.

Just love everyone as if they were your daughter.

---

That’s enough advice for myself at 17.

I regret a lot of things.

It’s ok to regret.

I’m fine with where I am in life. Doesn’t mean I can’t wish I had been a little more wise when I was younger.

Is my advice good?

I don’t know. I’m not going to argue with my 17 year old self if he disagrees with me.

He was pretty stupid. He was pretty gross. He was pretty insecure and selfish and lonely.

If I had just followed a tiny bit of this advice, maybe I wouldn’t have been so lonely for so long.

What if…?

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The Best Advice I’ve Ever Received

“The way you do anything is the way you do everything”.

My podcast producer, Steve Cohen, only speaks in quotes.

He remembers every quote from everyone. And he rhymes. He doesn’t speak in normal.

I told him to send me quotes every day and I will make a book out of it: The Tao of Steve. He’s sent me 475 quotes so far.

“If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.”

Amy Morin, author of 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do said to me yesterday, “mentally strong people don’t feel sorry for themselves.”

I’m an advice combiner.

Steve + Amy =

I won’t feel sorry for myself right now. So I’ll do something to move forward today, tomorrow, the next day, the next year, all my life.

The journey from desperation to destination.

—

Last week I stopped using my phone outside the house. It’s been seven days.

The pain has been unbearable. It’s like stopping carbs. It’s like stopping crack.

The average person touches their phone 2,600 times A DAY. The average person spends FOUR HOURS, FORTY MINUTES on their phone every day.

The average person checks their phone every 12 minutes.

I stopped when Yuval Harari (author of my favorite book, Sapiens) told me he doesn’t use a phone outside his house. “I read,” he said.

“What if you have to meet someone. How do you keep in touch with a romantic partner?”

He laughed.

“We just meet.”

Simple.

By day three I was having the shakes. I was on line to buy a cake for a dinner. It was a big line. WHAT WAS I GOING TO DO? Did they expect me to WAIT?

I was missing Instagram dopamine hits. I had tweets to make. I could take a PHOTO OF A CAKE! I could build a time machine and go back in time and tell Harriet Tubman she was trending on Twitter.

I could read mail, LIKE things on Facebook, send a text to a friend, send a Snap to my daughter (don’t break the chain!), watch a YouTube video of a comedian so I could be funny for the dinner.

I could LOOK AT A MAP and see where I fit into the universe. I didn’t know it would take me 47 days to walk to California given current traffic conditions.

I could read five sentences of A BOOK on my Kindle app. I could play Chinese Checkers.

I could use the PHONE APP ON MY PHONE.

Instead I just looked at the people in front of me. I thought about things.

Not very interesting thoughts. I thought about cake. And I thought about missing my phone. And I was bored. Probably I’ve become a boring person.

If you’re bored, you’re boring.

I stood, I waited, I watched, I listened, I stood more, I thought more.

I didn’t get the dopamine hits. Dopamine is the same neurochemical released when you smoke crack.

I didn’t look at furry dogs. Or funny memes. Or fancy cars.

I stood, I waited, I thought, I looked at cake. I stood. I daydreamed.

But I didn’t get stressed. Someone wants me, someone didn’t like my photo, someone criticized me on Twitter, someone argued with me on Facebook, someone asked a question I have to answer NOW

I didn’t get stressed. I wasn’t late. I bought a cake.

I ate it. I talked with people at dinner. I could hear their phones tingle and tinkle and buzz and vibrate and everyone looking and people feeling their phones. I ate a cake, I talked to people. I made a joke and someone said “That’s not funny”.

When I was home later I looked at my phone for the first time in 10 hours. But there wasn’t anything interesting on it.

I read a book. I spoke with Jasmine, I listened to Jasmine. I laughed with Jasmine.

I looked out the window. I read some more and some more until I fell asleep earlier than usual, woke earlier than usual, wrote the next day earlier than usual, laughed earlier than usual.

The way you do anything is the way you do everything.

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390 – Dan Roth: Do Your Skills Measure Up? I Ask LinkedIn

The days where your boss tells you what to do and you do it are over.

OVER.

“You’re expected to run your own operation. Figure out what the problems are, figure out the answers, and tell other people. This constant sharing up and down is an essential part of business today,” Dan Roth, Editor in Chief of LinkedIn told me.

He’s been on my podcast twice.

“How many podcasts have you been on now?”

“It’s in the multiples. Maybe three,” he said.

I was his first podcast. And now his fourth.

He knew all these obscure facts about the workplace…

• “Spotify gives employees six months parental leave”
• “33% of people would take a 10% pay cut to gain flexibility”

Then he talked to me about ghosting (this new phenomenon where people just don’t show up for work).

But I had a few core questions to ask him. This is what I learned.

1. “How do you change jobs if you’re stuck in debt?”

OK. Before I tell you what Dan said. I have to tell you how LinkedIn helped my career. And personal life.

I wanted to write about the misery of work. And about the anxiety I got from being married to money. I wanted to expose myself as a failure. I lost $15 million basically overnight because I couldn’t stop thinking I was poor.

And I’ve written a lot about how I bounced back from that depression. It’s a method I call “The Daily Practice.” And if you’ve read Choose Yourself you know what I’m talking about.

But there are a lot of people who are stuck in that mindset of not having enough. The bills pile up. The kids outgrow their clothes. Credit card debt and interest go up and up.

And everyday you ask yourself two questions:

“How did I get here?”

And “How do I get out?”

So I asked Dan Roth, “Let’s say you have $100,000 in debt, how do you change jobs if you’re stuck in debt?

Then the ideas came pouring out.

A) Skill development

“If you’re not keeping your skills up to date, you’re not going to be able to get ahead in whatever job you’re in,” Dan said.

This means invest in yourself. Read books, listen to podcasts, watch Google Talks on YouTube, take LinkedIn learning courses, or Lynda courses, etc. I even have courses that I make for people who want to learn how to self-publish a book or sometimes I make courses about finance.

Making a course is the No. 1 way to develop your own skills.

Here’s what I do:

Find something you’re interested in learning about. Then do some research, write an article or make a video.

Post it and then ask for help.

This is key.

Because it gives you that perfect feedback loop.

And if you’re posting on LinkedIn, you automatically have access to professionals in any industry. Use hashtags. And then repeat the process.

Dan told me that whenever LinkedIn puts out a course, they watch to see how that skill is changing in the market. “The data we get says, ‘Here are the skills that people are paying most attention to.’ And also, the instructors are constantly keeping up with what’s going on.”

For example, let’s say there are new changes to Adobe Photoshop. The instructor instantly goes back in to the course to you walk through the new version. Which is totally the opposite of what the tenured professor does.

The tenured professor makes a syllabus once and teaches it over and over again. Maybe they update it occasionally. But it’s never as new or ahead as it needs to be.

I always say, “Don’t go to college.” And this is why.

I graduated with a Masters in computer science. Got my first job at HBO. They thought I was so bad that they sent me back to REMEDIAL school for two months. Their goal? Get my skill set to be as good as their worst computer programmer.

B) Have a Plan Z

Dan was quoting Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, who says have a Plan A, a Plan B and a Plan Z.  

“Define Plan Z,” I said.

“Plan Z is the side hustle, which is the one thing you keep baking in the oven. It’s not making money right now. It might not make money for a few years. But it’s the thing you’ve got cooking.”

Getting out of debt or getting rich happens when you work outside of the 9-5. It’s the book you’re writing on the train. It’s the website you’re developing on your lunch break.

Dan and I talked about more ideas on the podcast. He actually had a lot of ideas for writers. Plus, we also both write about this on LinkedIn all the time.

And then I asked him more questions…

2. “How do you see people using LinkedIn to get out of their corporate job or to find that side gig?”

3. “What surprises you? Based on the data you’re seeing about workers?”

Then I asked for more obscure facts.

And I think the most valuable thing I learned from Dan Roth was about the endless possibility he’s seeing in today’s market.

And for some people, that could be really discouraging. Because it means you have a chance. And some people want to believe they’re in chains.

But this podcast with Dan Roth is proof…

Proof that your path today doesn’t need to be your path for life.

You just have to stay updated.

 

Also Mentioned

Dan Roth’s interview on ReCode 

My interview with Yuval Noah Harari (author of “Sapiens”)

Lynda.com(acquired by LinkedIn)

Dan’s article “LinkedIn Top Startups 2018: The 50 most sought-after startups in the U.S. (26-50)”

Beth Comstock

George Anders

Reid Hoffman

Quora

“The Daily Rundown” on LinkedIn

“The Martian” by Andy Weir

My interview with Andy Weir

Steve Case, founder of AOL

Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia

My interview with Ray Dalio 

“Principles” by Ray Dalio

“Ace the Interview” series on LinkedIn by George Anders

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 

Sally Krawcheck 

Uber’s TV series with Spike Lee

My top articles on LinkedIn:

How To Quit Your Job the Right Way 

10 New Reasons You Have To Quit Your Job 

 

Thanks so much for listening! If you like this episode, please subscribe to “The James Altucher Show” and rate and review wherever you get your podcasts:

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The Moment That Changed My Life…

I met a woman at a party. She was drinking red wine and just as she was taking another sip I told her a joke.

She laughed so hard she spit all over me.

She was horrified. She shouted, “Oh my god!”

I had red wine all over my white button down shirt. I tried to look nice for the party (impossible for me, but I tried) so I wore a nice shirt. Now I had a red stain all down the shirt.

She kept apologizing and I kept saying it was fine because I kind of liked her.

But she left me and I kept hearing her tell stories all over the party about how she accidentally spit wine all over me.

I eventually left because I was a mess and I couldn’t tell if people were laughing at me or with me.

I told her a joke and she couldn’t control her laugh so she spit all over me.

I changed the rules. There was no polite listening. There was no orderly conversation of “what do you do?” “what’s next?” “do you like your job?”

No small talk. No tiny talk. No nano talk.

Ever since then I knew what I wanted to do with my life.

I wanted to entertain people.

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My 10 Commandments of Freedom

At 23 I had all the bad habits.

I ate horribly. I could eat McDonald’s four meals a day, drink until I passed out, and then start again the next day.

I had bad relationships. And I was bad to my family, my professors, my girlfriends, and sometimes my friends.

I had horrible acne, cysts that constantly had pus running down my face, a huge nose, crooked glasses, tangled hair and I was too skinny and my head was too big.

I asked one friend of mine if a girl would ever kiss me. He said maybe smile more and just enjoy life.

Then I went to college and I became dependent on people liking me. I was so insecure I was convinced every girl was cheating on me.

Then I tried LSD for the first and only time when I was 22. After that I lost all interest in programming and I only wanted to become a writer.

Day and night I would write.

I stopped going to classes and I was thrown out of graduate school.

I changed my sleep schedule as an experiment but it worked.

I slept from 4 to 8 in the afternoon and 4 to 8 in the morning. I still got eight hours in.

Then from 8am to 4pm I’d read books and write short stories and novels. And then from 8pm until midnight I’d hang out with friends. Then start writing again.

I took an easy job programming so I could have time to write.

The World Wide Web was just starting and many of my grad school classmates quickly became 10, 20, 100 millionaires.

I had no interest. I thought people would only like me and respect me if I published a novel.

I wrote about 40 short stories. I wrote several novels.

Here are some of the titles of the novels: “The Book of Orpheus”. “The Book of David” (I liked “The Book of…”), “The Porn Novelist, The Romance Novelist, The Prostitute, and They’re Lovers”, and “How I Saved the World From Mutual Assured Destruction.”

None of them got published. I sent each one out to about 30 publishers and got form letter rejections back. Not a single letter saying, “Keep it up!”

I don’t understand why I continued writing but I did.

When I liked a girl (woman? I don’t know, I was just a boy) I would wait outside her apartment in the morning until she left her place for work and I would say, “Hey, I was just passing by”.

Yes, I was a living, walking cliché.

---

I indulged in every bad habit.

I learned how to hitchhike. To hitchhike well, you have to make your body and face and posture seem like the sort of person who won’t kill other people and will be entertaining at the same time.

I’d stand on the highway and I hitchhiked home from work every single day. I have many stories about the people who picked me up. Everyone had a story.

I got so good at hitchhiking that if my friends and I were going to go to a restaurant I’d race them: they’d be in their cars and I’d hitchhike. Sometimes I’d beat them.

I wish I had followed the 10 habits I’m about to suggest. I was 24 and didn’t know any better.

At 24 I thought I knew everything. I thought I had to immerse myself in my bad habits so I would have things to write about.

I was wrong.

At every age in life, the most important values are FREEDOM, CONNECTION, and IMPROVEMENT.

Trying to live the life of a hero will only make you a loser.

Below is the way I try to live now. But I regret not doing most of these things at 24.

Then again, the best time to start something is 10 years ago and today.

These are my Ten Commandments of Freedom.

First, Five Freedoms:

1.) Freedom from health concerns: Eat, Move, Sleep well. DON’T be a prisoner of your body.

2.) Freedom from money concerns: Spend less than you make. I’ve had 15 million dollars and spent more than I had and was suicidal. I’ve also had a salary of $27,600 and spent less than I made and I was free.

Don’t be a prisoner of your bank account.

3) Freedom from outcomes: Process > Goals. Don’t write to publish a novel. Write to become a better writer. Don’t try to get rich. Get good at providing value. Don’t try to be the No. 1 opera singer. Practice singing every day. Process is today. Outcomes are fantasies that are unpredictable and you have no control over.

Don’t be a prisoner of unreasonable goals or society’s expectations.

4) Freedom from validation: The need for approval is just a dopamine hit. Dopamine spikes when you get an Instagram like. Dopamine is the same neurochemical that spikes when you take cocaine. Need for validation is no better than a coke habit and I’ve seen it ruin careers and friendships. It’s a bad addiction.

Don’t be a prisoner of other people’s opinions.

5) Freedom from toxic people: Find your true scene of people who love you and who you love.

Don’t be a prisoner of those closest to you. They are often the ones who will bring you down.

This also means you can’t become toxic. Always be honest. Reach out to people instead of just “liking” their photo.

Be honest even if it means hurting someone. Because it will only get worse later.

Those are the freedoms. Now you need Processes to get those Freedoms. Process will always be the fire that will light your way when you are lost.

Five DAILY Processes:

1 ) Read every day: Quality fiction, quality nonfiction.

• • Quality fiction: because it makes you a better writer. A better communicator.
  • Quality non-fiction: because if you even learn 1% of what you read, that’s 1% more than everyone else.

2) Creativity: Write down 10 ideas a day on a waiter’s pad. This exercises the creativity muscle until your creativity is a super power.

This one process has changed my life 10,000% over the past 17 years.

It has made me millions. It has helped me change the lives of others. It has helped me be a better speaker, communicator, friend, spouse, parent, employee, manager, entrepreneur, advisor.

It has given me empathy – not an easy skill and I hope to always get better

3) Secret charity. Superman is anonymous and he saves people. Do the same.

It will make you feel good, it will amaze the people who get a glimpse of what you are up to, and it will save the world bit by bit.

4) CONNECT: Connect with friends, family, community. Positive connection is a life force that feeds us. We NEED it.

5) 1% improvement. Whatever you are interested in, try to improve 1% a day. Compounded that’s 3800% a year. Start at 24 and nothing can stand in your way ever.

——

The fastest way to achieve financial freedom is to follow the above.

But true freedom is not needing the validation of others.

Once you find this, and can really feel it, everything will unravel the way you want it. The courage to live your unique life will be yours.

Your life, not the life your parents, or peers, or romantic partners, or bosses, or professors want you to lead.

Only YOU are qualified to lead your life.

——

I wish I had started all of this at 24. Some people are mature enough to do this. But I wasn’t.

I failed too many classes and jobs, I was clingy in too many relationships, I was goal oriented and desperate to achieve those goals. I woke up outside my apartment lying in the grass too many times.

I hope I’ve learned better by now.

I often feel it’s too late for me.

But maybe that’s part of the process.

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The Silent Moderates

I cancelled a podcast because I heard from mutual friends that the potential guest had cheated on his wife.

I don’t like people who cheat.

Trump cheated on his wife. So there’s that.

I wish Obama had ended the two wars that are now entering their 17th year. Too many teenagers dying.

I don’t like W because he caused the two wars we are still in.

I don’t like Bill Clinton because he cheated on his wife.

I won’t like Bush I because of Iraq and raising taxes. I don’t like Reagan because of drugs for hostages.

Carter I don’t have an opinion. Maybe that coal miner thing was too much. And the sluggish economy. And Gerald Ford seemed decent but too short in office.

And Nixon opened up China but seemed really stupid when it came to not committing a crime.

And LBJ was corrupt and started the horrible process of backing student loans, which led to tuition rising faster than inflation. (By a factor of 10x and causing massive inequality with now 20 million middle class kids stuck with horrible debt.)

And Kennedy cheated on his wife.

Eisenhower ended the Korean War and dubbed the “Military Industrial Complex” but was a racist.

Truman dropped two unnecessary atomic bombs with the lie that “otherwise a million Americans would die”.

And FDR put Japanese Americans in cages and only solved the Great Depression by fighting a war. Plus Dresden.

And Hoover approved the Smoot-Hawley tariff which led to the Great Depression.

Calvin Coolidge wasn’t so bad.

Here’s a Calvin Coolidge story I like:

He didn’t like to speak.

One time his son invited a friend over for dinner at the White House. The friend said, “Mr. President, I made a bet with your son that you would speak more than two words during dinner.”

Coolidge said, “You lose.”

That’s pretty good.

—–

When writing this, someone said to me, “If you say ‘moderate’, it implies you aren’t passionate about anything.”

I’m passionate about being a moderate.

You have to be good on the inside to have impact on the outside.

—–

Oh, and George Washington chased an escaped slave, Oona Judge, until he died.

—–

Arguing with powerless people won’t change the world. It becomes only about “winning” and shaming. It’s a waste.

Figure out how to have impact on the people around you.

Here’s what we know:

THE GOOD:

The Economy

• The unemployment rate is expected to be 3.2% next year, the lowest since the 1950s. 
• GDP at 4.5% (7% when you add back inflation) is the highest since 2005. 
• Corporate profits grew at 7.7%, the highest growth EVER. (Is this good? I have to say “yes” because corporations are where people work and where people make a living.)
•  Corporate profits grew $100 billion but wages grew $200 billion, meaning corporate tax breaks were passed down to the middle class.
•  Wage growth grew at the highest rate in FOREVER. Am I talking about rich people? No. Wage growth for people without a high school degree grew at the highest rate ever. 
• Household debt / household assets is at the lowest ratio in the past 30 years (i.e. people are better able to pay off debts than any time since the 1980s).
• Stock market is at all-time highs.

Who is responsible for this? How about mostly 300 million Americans and no one person.

Maybe policies that started now? Maybe policies that started in 2009? Probably all of the above.

The BAD: 

Tariffs

We don’t know the results of a trade war.

If Apple made its iPhones in the U.S. it would cost $2,000. And the Dept. of Agriculture is getting record requests for emergency farm aid.

And historically, tariffs have not been good for the stock market.

But… maybe we shouldn’t subsidize the growth of the world.

I guess we have to wait and see what happens. I don’t know.

Hate crimes

Hate crimes have risen for the third year in a row in 2017 (so… 2015, 2016, 2017) after declining for the prior six.

So part of this is Trump, maybe part of this is Obama, and part of this is the entire world refusing to take the final steps into globalism (hence… Brexit, Trump, etc.) and reverting to nationalism.

How can we know? We can’t.

Be good to our neighbors and nationalism won’t turn into fascism.

Immigration

– Parents should never be separated from children. This is horrible.
– Open borders, though, are a bad thing and no country has ever had them and the U.S. has never had them.
– The Hispanic unemployment rate is at a 47 year low.

I don’t know what to do with this data (other than my opinion on parents).

Do what you want with immigration but don’t separate families.

—–

This is all facts from data. It’s not fake news.

Every time I write something political I get at least these two comments: “You’re an Obama-loving libtard.” And… “You’re a Trump-loving fascist.”

I am neither. I’m a moderate trying to figure things out.

I’m progressive on almost every social issue. I feel the role of government is to help people who can’t help themselves. I’ve had this argument with Ron Paul on my podcast.

I’m economically conservative because I think lower taxes creates more jobs and lower corporate taxes creates higher wages (e.g. see the data above).

I know when I have more money, I create more jobs (and then go broke!).

I think all drugs should be legal (both a liberal and libertarian issue).

I’m bullish on biotech and AI and cryptocurrencies only because the government doesn’t understand them enough to regulate them.

—–

This is what people are doing:

– They argue with other people as powerless as them.
– Or they only talk to people exactly like them so they can feel good.
– When they don’t “win” they resort to insulting the person.
– They use selective evidence and not all the data. MSNBC uses one set of data and Fox uses another.
– They try to impress their “team” with their knowledge, without causing any real new social impact.

I think most people are like me. Silent moderates.

Most people are afraid to say what they think if they are not on one extreme or other.

Like my friend accused me, “You’re not passionate if you are a moderate”.

I’m passionate about being good to my family and friends and being a force of good in the world. I only have a short time. I don’t want to be angry. I want to love and be loved.

This is what I try to do:

– Stay healthy so I am ready to have impact where I can.
– Have good, kind people around me.
– Be creative so when I need to be, I can have the ideas to help individuals.
– Don’t try to control things I have no control over. More time to help the people immediately around me.
– Be passionate about things I love. This is where I can create impact.

It’s hard enough to be a force for good for my family, my friends, colleagues, and people I care about.

On political issues I repeat this mantra: “I’m an idiot”. I say it over and over. “I’m an idiot idiot idiot stupid.”

I listen to people. And then I try and research facts.

The news does not have the facts. Always go to the source for the facts.

I never put down people who I might disagree with. Just listen.

And then I try to help people immediately around me.

And if I can’t help them, I try not to bore them.

Don’t cheat.

It’s hard enough to live one life, let alone a double life.

And don’t put people down just to have status over them.

The only way to understand the world is be a part of it, not read about it on social media.

Everyone always says, “Reach out and help someone today”. I can’t do that. Sometimes I need help.

So what I’m going to do is reach out and say “sorry” to someone today. And then go to therapy.

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