How to Be a Genius

Every day I have to do this or I think I’m going to die. July 27, 2021 [UNSUBSCRIBE]( | [WEBSITE]( [Altucher Confidential] [Warning] Do you enjoy receiving Altucher Confidential? Please [Click Here Now]( so we know to continue sending you Altucher Confidential for free! “Every day I have to do this or I think I’m going to die.” [Email Masthead] How to Be a Genius By James Altucher FDA Calls Controversial New Therapy “Breakthrough” [This molecule]( was BANNED by medical science for 70 years… But after trailblazing research, the gates are open and investment dollars are starting to pour into [a controversial biotech niche.]( It’s not cannabis or stem cells— you won’t believe what it when you see it. [Click here to see what might become “a $100 billion investment opportunity,” according to analysts.]( Someone asked this on Quora. I decided to give my sage advice on the topic. One time I had $2 million left. You have to be pretty damn smart to make $2 million, I thought. And then I had an idea. Or rather, an opportunity presented itself. I needed to make a lot more than $2 million. There were people running around (idiots!) with $10 million, or even $100 million. I was smarter than them! So I put the $2 million dollars into a single company. It made “wireless devices for deaf people.” If you ask me now what that meant I would not be able to tell you. The company went public. For about a day, my $2 million dollars was worth $2.2 million. In one day I was $200,000 up! This will keep going and I’ll be RICH! Then it went down. Suddenly it was $1.9 million. I better hold on. I need to get my $100,000 back. The next day it was at $1.8 million. Then it kept sinking. My $2 million was worth $1 million. Then $800,000. I had a huge mortgage. Plus two babies. $400,000. I put my house up for sale. At 3 a.m. I’d sit on this big couch looking at my two-story bookcase and thinking about how it was all over. I never slept. I sweated all the time. $300,000. The real estate agent begged me to lower the price of the apartment. I did. Then he begged again. I did. Then he didn’t have to beg anymore. I kept lowering the price of the apartment. Nobody was buying. “I can’t understand,” I told him. “This house is worth more.” Now he was cocky with me because he could be. He said, “This house is only worth what someone is going to pay for it, and it’s a lot lower than what you have it at now.” I said to my wife, “Let’s see if we can borrow more money off of it and then we’ll just stop paying and keep the money.” We dressed up the babies and went to the bank. They laughed at us. “We don’t do THAT kind of loan.” So I lowered it to less than what I had paid for it. Then I had to lower it to less than what I owed the bank. I couldn’t afford the mortgage anymore so I stopped paying it. I ignored all the calls from the bank. I ignored all the calls about the housing taxes. The true owners. I’d pay these people after I sold the house. Finally we got an offer. I went to the movies to celebrate. I forgot what I saw. But I remember going to the ATM machine to check and see how much money I had left. $143. I called my parents. “I need to borrow just $1,000,” I said. “I’ll return it in a few days.” They said no and I hung up the phone. It was the last time I ever spoke to my dad, who had a stroke a few months later that left him paralyzed and looking at the ceiling for two straight years. “He has no brain left,” the doctors all said but I think he was just locked in there. I put myself in exile. We moved 80 miles north to a broken-down house a quarter of the size in the middle of nowhere. I never left the house. I gained 30 pounds. I spoke to nobody. I was trying to think of even smaller places we could live. Nobody returned any calls at all. Everyone wants to be your friend when you have money. “I always knew about that guy,” they all would say later. But then I slowly got out of depression. I started waking up early and playing basketball with myself at a court right next to the Hudson River while the sun rose over the mountains. A train would pass at 5:05 every morning and I’d see the faces blinking at me. I lost the 30 pounds. I started to sleep better. --------------------------------------------------------------- [Recommended Article] [How to Write a Book in a Weekend | Laissez Faire Today]( --------------------------------------------------------------- 5G: Buyers Remorse [Buyer's Remorse]( people with 5G phones are facing the harsh truth - their phones aren’t receiving 5G signals consistently… and keep slipping back to 4G. The good news is there is a breakthrough new technology that will work with 5G phones, 4G phones, and even outdated 3G phones. And it has advantages that 5G can never have. [To know more about what the future of smart phones and internet, Click Here.]( --------------------------------------------------------------- [Recommended Article] [Crypto Fools: Storm Clouds Gathering? | Laissez Faire Today]( --------------------------------------------------------------- I’d read for two hours everyday. I read from one fiction book, one nonfiction book, one self-help book, and one book about games. I love games. Then I’d take out a waiter’s pad. To remind me of humility. And because they were cheap. And because for thousands of years waiter’s pads were used to make lists. And I’d make my own list. The list might be “10 businesses I can start.” Or…”10 books I can write.” Or…”10 ways XYZ company could be better.” Or…”10 articles I could write.” And on and on. Some ideas would bubble to the top and I’d come up with deeper ideas about those. And some ideas would disappear. Some ideas I’d try for a short time and either give up or pursue further. Some ideas I did nothing with. It was all practice. It was all experimenting. It was all about getting more creative so I could get myself out of the swamp of regret. I did pray to God a lot. But mostly because I wanted the stock market to go up. I’d go to the church across the street and pray to Jesus. But I was Jewish and I don’t think he listened to me. So I can really say that at first it boiled down to three things: - Get exercise and eat well. - Read A LOT. I’ve read 2–3 books a week for the past 15 years. I remember maybe 1–2% of what I read. And it doesn’t add up. It multiplies. Because when I learn one new thing, I connect it backwards to all the things I learned before. So every one new thing is like 1,500 new things. - Be creative every day. Because the more you know, the more ingredients you have, the more recipes you can make. Writing down 10 ideas a day is like a recipe. I noticed within six months my recipes took on a different flavor. They started to have elements of good in them. I’d surprise myself: “This is a good idea!” And I’d try it for a while. Some I’d try for more than a while. Some would change my life. And every six months, the ideas would get better and better. It was like I was graduating through classes and grades and schools and getting the graduate degrees I had never gotten. I was constantly connecting more and more ideas backwards and forwards to each other. Songs, books, people, companies, ideas would connect more and more like this thick matrix. Connections and connections. It was (and is) like my brain was on fire constantly. This was the secret for me. I don’t know if it would work for anyone else. Every day I have to do this or I think I’m going to die. I just did it today. I did it yesterday. I’ll do it tomorrow. I’ll do it a year from now. Since that time I’ve started about 20 different businesses. 17 of them have failed. That’s OK. I’ll always have new ideas. I’ve written 18 books. Some of them were horrible. Maybe most of them. That’s OK. I’ll write more. I don’t think I’m a genius. But I know the important thing is not the destination but the direction. I’m going in the right direction. After my dad had his stroke I had an idea. My dad loved chess. He was only able to lie in bed on his back and stare at the ceiling. He couldn’t talk or move. He’d stare at the ceiling for 10 hours a day and sleep for 14. I found a fun chess position in a book. White to move and win in two moves. It involved a queen sacrifice. He once told me, “Take the most powerful piece on the board and try to give it away. Do the unexpected and you’ll win.” So I took that position and I went to the local printer and printed it up three feet by three feet. Then I went to his room in the medical facility and got on a chair and taped it to the ceiling right above his eyes so he could look at it. He knew 10 languages. He was a chess master. He could play every musical instrument. He had read every book. And when I was a kid he knew every answer. He would stare at the position. I could see his lips trying to move. I knew he knew the answer but the doctors would shake their heads and walk away. Then he died. Someday you and I will too. OK, Josie, my daughter, get a good night’s sleep. Sincerely, [James Altucher] James Altucher Urgent Warning: America’s Death Spiral [Senior couple]( we needed to trigger an epic financial meltdown was a pin to pop this massive debt bubble. Well, we just got it with the Coronavirus pandemic… And that historic event sent us into the first stage of America’s death spiral… Make no mistake. What’s to follow is much, much worse. 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