I Lived Like James Altucher For a Month. This is What Happened.

I’m learning to skip the line.

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In March, I read a book called Skip The Line by James Altucher. After picking up my jaw from the floor, I sent a message to my beloved group of medium writers sharing how much I loved the book.

I also suggested an experiment to the group. You see, in the book, James shares the importance of experiments, and what makes a good experiment. (I’ll share it later in the article) So I thought I’d give it a whirl. The experiment went like this.

As a writer, I come up with article ideas for myself. But in the group, I suggested that we pair up, and come up with ten article ideas for each other.

I paired up with David Majister. And within a day, he came up with ten article ideas for me. And I, for him. One of those headlines was this — “I lived like James Altucher for a week. This is what happened.”

And I loved the idea. Because it was not just an article idea, it was a living idea. So for the month of April, I was a guinea pig, and I tried to live like James Altucher.

Now, James is a hedge fund manager, an author, a podcast host, and much more. So I have no idea what his day actually looks like. But I do know the principles that James uses to advance in his life every single day. I know them because he shared them in his book.

Among the many, I picked three principles and tried to live by them every day. In this article, I want to discuss what those principles are, what happened when I adopted them, and how you can adopt them too.

The 1 % Percent Rule Through Micro skills

I’m sure you’ve heard of this, but I’ll repeat it anyway. The 1 % rule says that if you improve yourself by 1% every single day, you’ll end up 37 times better within a year. And if you deteriorate by 1% every day, you‘ll end up with just 3% of the skills you had started with. This happens because of compounding.

https://jamesclear.com/continuous-improvement

This is the premise of James’ entire book.

And it’s a nice rule. Looks promising. But how do you follow it? How do you make sure that you get 1% better every day?

Enter, micro-skills.

Any skill is just a cluster of micro-skills. For instance, writing is a major skill with micro-skills such as —

• Writing great headlines.
• Using stories.
• Writing an enticing introduction.
• Writing memorable conclusions.

Every day, I wrote, I focussed on only one of these micro-skills. On Monday, I gave a lot of thought to come up with a great headline. On Tuesday, I focussed on writing a great introduction. And on and on.

This is what happened when I followed the rule

I learned two very important lessons.

• Within a skill, we are biased towards some micro-skills. This leads to asymmetric growth, which ultimately leads to hindrance in growth. Let me explain. For instance, for a long time, in the beginning, I focused on micro-skills that I like — writing enticing introductions, writing memorable conclusions, but I didn’t give much effort to the headline. Unsurprisingly, my views didn’t grow as fast as they should have. And hence, no matter how much I improve other skills, it still won’t help me increase my views because headlines matter. Hence, it’s important to give importance to all micro-skills. After all, a chain is only as strong as the weakest link.
• Some micro-skills are subtle, and they won’t manifest themselves unless you go looking for them. When I decided to work on my micro-skills, the first step was obviously to figure out what the micro-skills were. And hence, I decided to figure out 15 micro-skills in writing. That’s much harder than it sounds. After the first few obvious ones, you have to think a lot to come up with more. And that’s when you strike the less-obvious micro-skills. The skills that others won’t pay much attention to. For instance, I figured out that I can also try to add one doodle per article to help simplify what I’m trying to say. Not many writers do this, and hence, it puts me at an advantage.

Here’s how you can follow this rule

Here are four steps you can use —

1. Decide the skill you want to work on.
2. Write down ten micro-skills within that skill.
3. Write down ten more. And then, ten more. And then some more. Do this until you’re completely squeezed out. The point of this is to dig the mud for those micro-skills that other people won’t care to think about. This puts you at an advantage over the long term.
4. Prioritize seven. Among the many micro-skills you can think of, some will be obviously stupid. Delete those. And among those that remain, pick seven for seven days of the week. And focus on improving that one micro-skill every day. Then, after a few weeks, you can focus on another set of 7 micro-skills. This will lead to symmetric growth over the long term.

The 10,000 Experiments Rule

Like I mentioned before, James says that experiments are one way to skip the line. Fancy some examples? James shares two profound examples in his book.

Years ago, it was a common belief — propagated by Aristotle — that heavier stuff falls faster than lighter stuff. But a famous experiment by Galileo put an end to this belief. He went on to the leaning tower of Pisa and dropped cannonballs of different weights to see if they would fall at different times, or at the same time.

The result? All of them reached the ground at the same time. With the results of the experiment, Galileo overturned two thousand years of thinking, corrected the flaws in Aristotle’s knowledge, and later came to be known as the Father of Modern Physics.

That’s what experiments help you do.

One more example?

Dick Fosbury was a high jumper in the 1960s. At the time, the sport used the upright scissor technique of the jump. It involved running toward the bar, jumping over while facing it, and then lifting your legs higher than the bar. But since Dick had long legs, he couldn’t reach heights that other players did. He was mediocre at best.

Then, Dick tried something. He approached the bar with his back facing towards it, then jumped over while his back still faced the bar. People around him thought he was stupid. His coach begged him to stop. But eventually, this method showed results. Dick went from mediocre to winning Gold in Olympics a few years later. And eventually, every high jumper switched to his method. With a single experiment, he literally changed the sport.

That’s the power of experiments. Hence, James claims that experiments help you skip the line. So, I decided to run experiments every day.

This is what happened when I followed the rule.

As I mentioned in the intro, the first experiment I tried was to pair up with another writer and come up with article ideas for each other. Due to that experiment, David Majister came up with an article idea for me titled — “I Live Like James Altucher for a Week. This is What Happened.”

That idea led to this month-long experiment I am now writing about. Do you see how my one experiment served as a domino for other experiments?

Hence, for that experiment, I conducted many experiments over the month of April. Many of them bombed and yielded nothing. But that’s okay. Experiments only have to work a few times anyway. Let’s talk about some of my experiments.

• I decided to read seven TED books in 7 days. I learned so much about a variety of topics, and also ended up writing an article about that.
• I decided to invest 100$ in cryptocurrency. I’m a student. That’s all I can afford to risk as of now. Time will tell if this experiment works.
• I decided to start using flashcards for my studies. I’ve known about them for a long time but was always too lazy to put in the work. But I did, and they’ve changed the way I study.
• I decided to add illustrated graphs in one of my articles. It helped me convey my point much more easily.
• Before April, I conducted another experiment. I read on my kindle while listening to the audio version of the book at the same time at 2x the speed. This turned me into a voracious reader.

These are just some of the many experiments I conducted. And I’m still conducting them. For the next week, I’m gonna wake up at five AM for a week, and see what happens.

I’m not really an early bird. I want to be, but that identity keeps eluding me. But I’m excited about this experiment. We’ll see what it yields. It may work. It may not work. But what I am sure of is this — that if I keep conducting experiments, some of them are bound to work — and those alone can change my life.

Here’s how you can follow this rule:

According to James, here are the five components of a good experiment.

1. It’s easy to conduct. This is essential because you want to conduct a lot of experiments in your lifetime.
2. There’s little downside. For instance, investing all of your money in crypto is not a good idea. The word you’re looking for is stupid.
3. There's a huge potential upside. Why would you do it otherwise?
4. It’s never been done before. By anyone, or at least by you.
5. You’re learning something.

Galileo’s experiment was the perfect experiment. Nothing’s easier than throwing something off of the terrace. If he was careful not to hit anyone, there’s no real downside. There’s a huge upside. He could (and did) change the face of physics. No one had done it before, otherwise, they’d know Aristotle was wrong. And even if his experiment failed, Galileo would have learned that Aristotle was right.

Do yourself a favor and make a list of 10 experiments you can conduct in the next 10 days, or the next month. You don’t have to move mountains, just do something new every day. That’ll help you skip the line.

Exercising The Possibility Muscle

This is James Altucher’s most famous rule. It’s simple — write 10 ideas every day. He calls it the possibility muscle because ideas increase the possibilities in your life. What kind of ideas? Anything. Absolutely anything.

• 10 ideas for my business.
• 10 article ideas.
• 10 ideas for chapters of my book.
• 10 ideas for making my girlfriend happy.
• 10 ideas to save my time.
• Even, 10 TV show ideas for Disney+. (James did this. He came up with ten ideas and email them to a friend who worked there. They eventually traveled ears and the next thing he knew, he was pitching ideas to executives at Disney+)

Like any muscle that’s not exercised for a while, the possibility muscle also atrophies. As it has for many of us. Because the only time ideas come to us our in showers. But by coming up with ideas every single day, you train your muscle.

James has been coming up with 10 ideas a day for eighteen years. That is about 65,700 ideas. For good measure, let’s assume that 65,000 of those ideas are shitty. Even if just 700 of those (a little over 0.01%) ideas are great, he can live a truly exceptional life. As he has.

This is what happened when I followed the rule.

Straight away, I started writing down 10 ideas a day. That means, for the month of April, I wrote down 300 ideas. Here are some of those ideas.

• I wrote down 10 chapter ideas for my first book. Before having done this, the idea that I might someday write a book seemed ludicrous. But when I wrote down these ideas, it seemed doable. Now, the idea is not so ludicrous. So if, wait. Not if. When. When I write a book in the future, I’ll know that I can trace it back to that moment.
• I wrote down 10 ways I can study better. As a medical undergraduate, I’m preparing for one of the most competitive exams in the world — NEET. And hence, it’s essential that I constantly reinvent the way I study. And these ideas helped me do that.
• I wrote down 10 ideas I can practice minimalism. The next day, I ended up emptying half my cupboard for donation. It feels good. I don’t want to be a hoarder anymore.
• I wrote down 10 ideas I can build better consistency. Since then, I’ve been writing, studying, exercising, writing 10 ideas, and reading every day for 19 days now. And that number is only going to grow. I’m never going back to zero.

This is just a tiny snapshot of what this habit has done for me. I came with so many, so many other great ideas. It’s crazy. This habit is hands down the most life-changing of all. I’m gonna stick with it for sure. And in 18 years, I’ll too have come up with 65,700 ideas. It’s only absolutely certain that some of those ideas will transform my life.

Here’s how you can follow this rule:

Start writing down 10 ideas every day. These ideas can be about anything. 10 ideas for making your husband happy. 10 ideas to stop wasting time. 10 ideas for Netflix Originals. 10 product ideas for Apple. 10 ideas for million-dollar businesses. Anything. Absolutely anything. Here are some tools by James that you can use to follow this rule —

• Idea addition: Take something that’s already a good idea, and add something to that idea. For instance, if you’re a regular reader or a writer on medium, write down 10 functions you’d add to medium to make it a better place. Send them to Ev. Maybe he’ll like them.
• Idea subtraction: Take an idea that’s not working for some reason. Try to remove that reason, and see if you can work with what’s left. For instance, you wrote a book but cannot find a publisher. Remove the publisher. Self publish.
• Idea multiplication: Let’s say you have had a good idea that yielded results. Can you replicate those results? For instance, as a marketer, you did some unique work for a company and they liked it. How about approaching 10 other companies and tell them what you did for the first company, and ask whether they’d be interested in something like that?
• Idea division: Make a big idea smaller. That’s what we did when we divided a major skill into many micro-skills.
• Idea sex: Combine two good ideas. Example — iPod + phone = iPhone.

Obviously, not all rules apply everywhere. And they’re not that easy to use as well. Because your idea muscle has probably atrophied. And that’s okay. It’s time to build it back up. Keep exercising it every day, and you’ll get better at it with practice. Then, I promise you’ll soon be an idea machine, pumping out good quality ideas.

Final Thoughts

It won’t come as a surprise to you but I’m extending this experiment. I’m going to keep living like James Altucher. Because I feel it’s going to freaking change my life. After all, these are some of the smartest habits I’ve ever come across.

I’m going to keep focusing on improving myself in one micro-skill every day. I’m going to conduct as many experiments as I can. Daily experiments. Weekly experiments. Monthly experiments. And yearly experiments. And I’m also going to keep exercising my idea muscles.

If you too are willing to adopt these habits, I’m positive that soon, I’ll see you on the top. However, the top is still quite far away. Hence, it’s important we start the journey today. Now. So… shall we?