James Altucher - Skip the Line: The 10,000 Experiments Rule and Other Surprising Advice for Reaching Your Goals

Dedicated to Robyn Altucher:

Im so glad I met you in time to be quarantined with you.

You cant do that!

Shes the head of marketing at HBO. Im walking toward the CEOs office. Its 1995. The CEO is my bosss bosss bosss bosss bosss boss.

My official title at HBO is junior analyst software developer. If I worked hard, Id get a promotion to senior analyst software developer.

Cindy says, You cant just walk into the CEOs 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? And you cant just go over your bosss head. You cant skip the line!

But I want to change my life. Im unhappy. My career feels stagnant. Im 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 dont like going to the bathroom and thinking my boss might be in the stall next to me. Ive ruined my stomach forever by holding it in until work is over.

Can I skip the line?

Im 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. Im not taking an easy shortcut. My idea is good. Who made the rules that you cant skip the line?

I go to the CEOs office...

* * *

Twenty-five years later, a pandemic shuts down the planet. 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... again, to want that excitement about getting up in the morningthis 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 Ill change my passion again. And again. Its never too late. Everyone is walking around shaken with some kind of societal PTSD. I want to change, people say. Ive always wanted to do X but I thought I had to do Y. From birth were 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.

* * *

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.

Im having breakfast at the Dean & DeLuca on the bottom floor of One World Trade Center. 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 latera microseconda 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 everimagine a god opening up the door of a giant attic.

Dan and I run to the nearest fire station. We want to help, I tell them. One guy throws us two suits to wear inside the buildings. Put these on. And then he asks, Are you guys firefighters?

No, but we can help.

Forget it. You have to be firefighters. And he and the other guys in the fire station put on their suits, get in the truck, turn on the siren, and leave. Many died less than an hour later as the buildings crashed in on them.

We go back toward the smoking buildings. People are throwing themselves off the top. From a distance they look like black squiggles twisting in the air. Up closer you see the more familiar outlines of bodies. Then the buildings start to shake, and then tumble, sending up enormous amounts of smoke and blackness. We run back to my apartment. The black cloud covers the entire building.

My little daughter had peed on the floor. Everyone is scared. People who had gathered in my apartment are crying. Everyone feels powerless. Nobody knows what to do. Announcements blasted over a bullhorn tell us to leave the area, but we dont. Is it safer outside or inside? we wonder. Our windows are pitch-black, all the dust and destruction trying to pound their way into the apartment. We stay up all night, taking turns listening to the radio, and the next day, Part Two of everyones lives begins.

A few months later, Im dead broke from day-trading. I knew nothing about day-trading, but I had gambled away millions of dollars. At night, I dream of enormous tidal waves sweeping over Manhattan, and I wake the moment I realize in the dream that I cant run fast enough to escape.

I want to sell my house. Ive already lowered the price three times, but there are no buyers. Every day I call the broker. He says, Move the price down again. I dont want to. I do it anyway.

More waiting.

I look in my bank account again: $143. How did this happen? I think Im smart, but Ive been the biggest idiot. I cry. What do I do?

I call my wife. Im supposed to get something from the store, but in my panic after I saw my bank account I totally forgot what Im supposed to get.

I go to a payphone (New York City still had them at the time) and start dialing. I dont hear a dial tone. I press the keys. No sounds. I feel something against my ear. I pull the phone away but its sticky and grabbing on to my hair.

The phone is covered in shit. Human shit? Dog shit? I dont know. And now its all over my hands and hair. When I was eight years old and thought my future would take me from success to success, I never wouldve predicted this moment. I drop the phone quickly. I yell out but people keep walking by.

Dead broke, shit in my hair, and I forgot what Im supposed to get at the store.

That night I go to my neighbor. Im desperate.

Do you think I can get a job investing at the fund you work for?

He looks down, maybe a little embarrassed, and hesitates. Im feeling red. Im feeling like Im going to cry again. I hate asking people for things.

He says, You might need a little experience. Like maybe a degree in finance, or maybe you need to work at a fund or a bank for a while and start from the bottom. You know, theres a lot of people trying to get into this business. Its hard to skip the line.

I really hate when people tell me that.

I had to change. Once again I had to change. I had to change everything. I had to find something I could be obsessed about. I had to get good at it. I had to make money from it. I wanted to feed my family.

And I needed to do it right away. I didnt have 10,000 hours. I needed to skip the line.

* * *

Ive woken up in the middle of the night, three in the morning, many times. Opening my eyes into the dark blue. So many voices racing in my head. You feel this and you wonder, whose voices are these? They wont stop.

The lateness of the hour, the dark, the voices... it seems that somehow my heart has taken a wrong turn. That I ended up in someone elses nightmare, running in the maze, captured by words conjured up from a horrible part of me. I cant believe that the young boy who was once so excited to wake up and play is now trapped here in the dark blue.