Skip the Line
The 10,000 Experiments Rule and Other Surprising Advice for Reaching Your Goals
Big Ideas
- The 1 Percent RuleAggregate and Compund Tiny Gains.
- 10,000 ExperimentsAll Life Is an Experiment. The More the Merrier.
- Obsessions & The FundamentalsMake Them an Obsession.
- Plus, Minus, Equals & SuperpowersPlus, minus, Equal.
- Get Antifragile & Exit The LineBy Getting ANTIFRAGILE.
“‘You can’t just do that!’
You can’t just step into a new tribe and become the alpha!
But maybe you can.
I’ve been forced to switch jobs, careers, interests, purpose, and skills so many times I’ve made it a personal mission to get good at getting good as fast as possible.
I didn’t want to wait 10,000 hours. But I didn’t want to take shortcuts either. There’s no way to cheat the system. But there are methods for skipping the line, for achieving what you need to achieve using the techniques that I’ve painfully had to go through again and again.
Every time there’s a crisis, either societal or personal, people start talking about the ‘new normal.’
As if everything that was normal before is now going to completely change. What will that new normal look like? What will happen?
The key to skipping the line is to constantly live in the world of ‘not knowing.’ To constantly be curious but not threatened by what’s next. To live in the world where everyone else is scared but you are so comfortable with the land of not knowing that you can still navigate the rough waters.
Not only do you navigate these waters, but you become a beacon. It’s foggy outside. Many people—some old friends, some new friends—are trying to find their way to shore on this foggy and windy and rainy night. You are the beacon and the lights are on. You help them to shore.
This is not the end of the line. This is the beginning.”
~ James Altucher from Skip the Line
James Altucher is an entrepreneur, active angel investor, writer, podcaster, stand-up comedian, and chess master.
It’s that last part—chess master—that gave us an immediate thing to talk about when I joined him as a guest on his podcast. As you know if you’ve been following along, my 11-year-old Emerson, is REALLY into chess. In the opening chapters of my book, Areté, I talk about his ambition to be a Grandmaster and how we’re applying these ideas to his Heroic quest.
So.... James and I immediately hit it off and got to work on how to apply all these ideas to EVERY aspect of our lives. Our chat was one of my all-time favorites. Check it out here.
Now... I had read Choose Yourself First (which is also awesome!) forever ago but, for whatever reason, didn’t create a Note on it.
So... While I was still buzzing after our podcast chat, I went to Amazon to find James’s latest book—this one. It’s FANTASTIC—perfectly capturing James’s eccentric, iconoclastic style while challenging A LOT of the cultural norms we think are fixed in stone which, in fact, ARE NOT.
As per the sub-title, “Skip the Line” is all about “The 10,000 Experiments Rule and Other Surprising Advice for Reaching Your Goals.” If you like this Note, I think you’ll love the book. (Get a copy here).
As you’d expect, it’s PACKED with Big Ideas and, as always, I’m fired up to share some of my favorites so let’s jump straight in!
Download MP3
Download PDFWhen someone says, ‘You can’t do that!’ they are trying to be important. So important that they think they can tell you what to do with your life.
Get the BookThe 1 Percent Rule
“The first technique to master is the 1 Percent Rule. Understanding this principle shows how with a tiny effort every day, you can develop the tools needed to quickly become among the best in the world in any field you want. Here’s how it works.
If you have $1 in a savings account and the account pays 1 percent interest per day, then in 365 days you will have $37.78.
In other words, your ‘investment’ of $1, compounding at 1 percent per day, would make you almost 3,800 percent within a year.
I sometimes say this to people and they say, ‘Why wouldn’t it be 365 percent?’ That would give me just $3.65 at the end of the year.
A big difference from $37.78.
But compounding is like magic.
In one day, your $1 becomes $1.01 (1 percent more than $1).
But on the second day, it’s not $1.02, it’s $1.0201 (1 percent more than $1.01). And on day three it’s not $1.03, it’s $1.030301 (1 percent more than $1.0201).
And so on.
That’s compounding.
It starts off small, but the end result is enormous. …
It may seem trivial: 1 percent up or 1 percent down. But your decisions about how you spend each day sneak up until they come to define you.
Every day matters.
End of math class.”
That’s the FIRST technique James teaches us. It’s from Chapter #2: The 1 Percent Rule.
Chapter #1? That’s all about establishing the fact that you CAN do what you want to do and do it a LOT faster than you may think you can. We need to START there because, without that belief, you won’t even try to “skip the line” and accelerate the speed with which you optimize.
We’ve talked about the INCREDIBLE power of tiny gains aggregated and compounded over an extended period of time MANY MANY times.
Darren Hardy wrote a whole book on it called The Compound Effect while James Clear walks us through the incredible math in HIS great book Atomic Habits.
Check out this +1 on +1% Math for more. (Seriously. Check it out. It’s INSANE.)
It’s because of the exponential power of those TINY little daily 1% gains aggregated and compounded over an extended period of time that I am so committed to creating and sharing a new Heroic +1 EVERY.SINGLE.DAY.
Fun fact: Yesterday I had the privilege of connecting with the Commanding Officer of the oldest warship in the U.S. Navy—Captain Nick DeLeo who commands the USS BLUE RIDGE. I gave him a walk-through of our app and he asked: “So, you share a new Heroic +1 every day?”
To which I said: “YES. And if we miss one, assume I’m dead. If I live long enough, I plan to do one every day until I’m 75 and hit 10,000.”
1% gains. They matter. A LOT.
P.S. As I was creating this Note and typing out the above passage, I reread the example James used to make his point. It was related to chess.
Quick story: One of his friends was very good. He could have been a LOT better if he, as James suggested, spent just a little bit of time every day doing some puzzles. Do a few chess puzzles. Get 1% better. Every day. For a year. And he’d be a LOT (3800%!) better.
Here’s what’s fascinating. Emerson’s coach just had him do EXACTLY that. He challenged him to do ONE HOUR of puzzles EVERY DAY. He just hit the THIRTY day mark. And... Goosebumps... After THAT short of a time focused on a high-leverage prospective skill-building activity, he went from a 1600+ Chess.com rating to a 1900+ Chess.com rating (putting him in the 99.6 percentile of ALL Chess.com players!)—which is an INSANE level of improvement.
Spotlight on YOU... What’s YOUR highest-leverage 1% better thing you can start doing and do every day starting TODAY? Get on that. Let’s go, Hero!
Ironically, your ability to say no to opportunities, even good ones, is necessary to live an extraordinary life. ‘No’ is a lot harder to say when you don’t respect yourself. This is because it’s easier to go along with what other people are asking you to do. You need enough self-authority to say no and even more to follow through when you do say it. Both are hard if you don’t respect yourself. You also need to prepare your ‘no.’
10,000 Experiments
“Anyone can do experiments. Read a story like Galileo’s and ask, ‘Why not me?’
With every experiment you do, at the very least you increase your knowledge. Ideally, you increase your knowledge by 1 percent. Yep, it’s the 1 Percent Rule in action.
Thomas Edison, of course, is famous for experimenting with 10,000 different types of wires to create the first light bulb. This story is actually false, but it’s the one repeated in schools. He was trying to invent an improved battery. He tried more than 10,000 different battery cells until he found one that worked.
Each experiment has little downside but enormous upside. Edison was able to create General Electric, one of the biggest companies in history, all because of experiments. When a colleague asked him how he persisted after 10,000 failures, Edison said, ‘Failures, I didn’t fail. I successfully found 10,000 ways a battery won’t work!’”
That’s from Chapter #3: “10,000 Experiments.”
We start by KNOWING WE CAN accelerate our process of mastery. Then we see the power of the 1 Percent Rule THEN we see the power of EXPERIMENTS to fully leverage the 1 Percent Rule.
As per the sub-title of the book, James is much more interested in the 10,000 EXPERIMENTS Rule than the 10,000 HOUR Rule.
We have Thomas Edison and his 10,000 EXPERIMENTS. He didn’t fail. He successfully found 10,000 ways that DIDN’T WORK. Perfect.
All of which makes me think of Ralph Waldo Emerson. He once said: “Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”
James walks us through how to keep it simple and run experiments ALL DAY every day. Ultimately, we want our ENTIRE LIVES to be one big experiment after another.
So... Put on your lab coat and adopt a growth/EXPERIMENTAL mindset as you go shine the spotlight of curiosity on your life—seeing what’s working and what needs work as you have fun seeing how many +1 gains you can aggregate and compound TODAY.
Kevin Kelly, former editor of Wired magazine, told me, ‘Don’t be the best, be the only.’ Finding your own unique perspective is what separates people who have skills from people who will be in the top 1 percent of their field and who will eventually find great success in that field. ... Uniqueness plus new knowledge helps you reach the top 1 percent of any field you choose.
Obsessions & The Fundamentals
“Obsession is the first clue toward finding your purpose. And doing this helps you find what you are obsessed with.
I have spoken to hundreds of people who have found their purposes—everyone from Richard Branson to Tyra Banks to race car driver Danica Patrick to former world chess champion Gary Kasparov to writers Ken Follett and Judy Blume to self-help gurus Tony Robbins and Wayne Dyer and many more.
First, all of them had some version of a daily practice to help them improve 1 percent every day. What are the essential types of components of a daily practice?
Physical: Eat, move, sleep. If you’re in bed sick, then a purpose will do you no good.
Emotional: Trim the toxic people (even if they are ‘friends’ or family) and be with the people who love and support you and whom you love and support. …
Mental: Exercise your creativity muscles every day. …
Spiritual: Surrender to the things you cannot control. …
I do this daily practice every day to keep my foundation strong and active. Without it, there’s no way to find purpose. If I don’t do it, within a week or so the first thoughts of depression, anger, resentment, or worse start to take hold.
You don’t want the building to collapse.”
Want to see just how much you can tap into your potential?
START BY DIGGING A DEEP FOUNDATION.
As you know if you’ve been following along, this is Objective VI in everything we do together—our Heroic Coach certification program, Basic Training in the Heroic App, the Areté book, etc.
We must DOMINATE THE FUNDAMENTALS.
As I like to say... Want to see how tall a building is going to be? Look at how deeply they’re digging the foundation.
Eating. Moving. Sleeping. Breathing. Focusing.
Dominating those fundamentals gets our Energy to Heroic levels. We need to know that our PHYSIOLOGY drives a LOT MORE of our PSYCHOLOGY than we may realize.
When we optimize our Energy, it’s a LOT easier to get a LOT more clarity on your purpose than when you’re feeling sluggish and burned out.
All that to say...
Want to create more meaning in your life?
Start by OBSESSING about your fundamentals.
Practically speaking...
What’s ONE THING you KNOW you could START doing TODAY that, if you started doing it consistently, would MOST CHANGE YOUR LIFE?
And... Perhaps more importantly, what’s ONE THING you KNOW you could STOP doing TODAY that, if you STOPPED doing it, would MOST CHANGE YOUR LIFE?
It’s Day 1. We’re ALL IN. Let’s go!
P.S. I like to quote another chess master to establish the power of knowing who we are at our best and then DOING those things all day every day. In The Art of Learning, Josh Waitzkin puts it brilliantly. He tells us that we need to make our PRIOR BEST our NEW BASELINE.
Let’s do that. TODAY.
Muscles atrophy quickly. If you lie in bed for two weeks, you might need physical therapy to walk again. That’s how fast leg muscles atrophy. The idea muscle is the same way. Use it or lose it.
Plus, Minus, Equals & Superpowers
“Reading is the most important superpower. It turns you from a normal mortal civilian into a supernatural vampire.
Someone might spend thirty years of their life developing a skill and then share the knowledge learned in those thirty years by writing a book. If you read the book carefully, take notes, reread, repeat, then it’s as if you are absorbing thirty years of that person’s life into your mind.
Reading lets you absorb not just one life but thousands. You have all the memories and even some of the skills of every author of every book you’ve ever read if you go through the process of reading carefully, taking notes, rereading, repeating. Reading turns every author into a virtual mentor, and, trust me, virtual mentors are sometimes even better than real-life mentors.”
That’s from a chapter called “Plus, Minus, Equals” in which James walks us through the incredible origin story of two of the greatest UFC fighters in history: Ken and Frank Shamrock.
The two brothers were adopted (along with a bunch of other boys) by Bob Shamrock and his wife. They gave these troubled kids the love and wisdom they needed to flourish.
James and I chatted about how Frank Shamrock became one of the best fighters in history. (I captured the wisdom in this chapter in this +1 called Mastery Math.)
Here’s the short story... James told me that when Shamrock was learning a new martial art, he’d try to do THREE things to accelerate his path to mastery.
First, he’d find someone better than him who could train him to master the new art. Then he’d find someone at about the same level as him so they could train and improve their skills together. THEN he’d find someone who was less skilled than him so he could teach them what he was learning.
He had a handy-dandy way to capture those relationships. The teacher was a “Plus.” The sparring partner was an “Equal.” And the student was a “Minus.”
Plus, Minus, Equal. ← That’s some Mastery Math right there, my friend.
Spotlight on YOU...
What are YOU trying to master?
Do you have a Plus, Minus, and Equal?
P.S. The fastest way to get a “Plus”? Read a book.
Or, of course, get EVEN MORE Wisdom in Less Time by reading these Notes. :)
I get emails: ‘I have a correction for you. I think you meant ‘underpromise.’ No, underpromising is lying. Don’t lie to your customers. Don’t lie to anyone. If I say I can get the job done in twenty days but I know I can do it in five, then I say five and deliver it in four. First off, everyone else is lying and saying twenty. You win the job by saying the truth (five). And you push yourself and challenge yourself to do it in four. You become a better person. The client is with you for life. And you exercise the muscle that pushes you to exceed your own expectations. Otherwise, you’re mediocre like everyone else. Don’t be mediocre.
Get Antifragile & Exit The Line
“To borrow a phrase from Nassim Taleb, investor and author, you need to be ‘antifragile.’
‘Fragile’ is when you are fired and you crash and burn and get depressed and go broke.
‘Resilient’ is when you are fired but you have six months savings and you dress up in a suit and apply for new jobs and after four months you find one. It’s a slightly lower salary and longer commute, but you’ll survive and live to fight another day.
‘Antifragile’ is when you are hit hard and you recover even stronger than you were before. …
Antifragility is the essence of skipping the line. If you build up the skip-the-line techniques, it allows you to reach for higher and higher stakes, knowing that you have the ability not only to recover quickly from setbacks but to bounce back even stronger.”
That’s from a chapter called “Exit the Line” in which James walks us through the power of being ANTIFRAGILE.
As you know if you’ve been following along, I’m a big fan of the idea of moving WAY PAST being “Fragile” and/or merely “Resilient” all the way to being ANTIFRAGILE—such that the things that used to break us LITERALLY (!) make us stronger.
To make that more than just an inspiring bumper sticker (or, in my case, TATTOO!), we need to find a way to OPERATIONALIZE that wisdom. Here’s how...
Know who you are at your ABSOLUTE best. Who are you? What virtues do you embody? And, most importantly, what, specifically, DO YOU DO?
Make a checklist of those behaviors you engage in when you are at your ABSOLUTE BEST. We call that your protocol. Then... When life (inevitably!) hits you, rather than spiral out and do all the dumb things you tend to do when you’re overwhelmed, DOUBLE DOWN ON YOUR PROTOCOL. Use that challenge to PRACTICE YOUR PHILOSOPHY at an even higher level.
Then what happens? Then you LITERALLY get stronger. That’s how we Forge Antifragile Confidence and get as close to invincible as we’ll ever get. Not someday. TODAY.
Being resilient is fine. And many people go through hard times, grit their teeth, and bear through to get to the other side. Taleb’s example of being ‘antifragile’ goes one step further. If something hurts you, it should make you stronger.
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