1613: [Part 1] The Magic of Idea Math by James Altucher on How to Be More Creative

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[00:00:28] This is Optimal Work Daily. The Magic of Idea Math, Part 1 by James Altucher of jamesaltucher.com In mid-2002 I was so depressed I simply ran out of ideas. Depression scorches the earth of your brain. I would sit in it at 3 in the morning in the dark. Lord of my crumbling kingdom.

[00:00:50] Every day I went a little more broke and there was nothing I could do about it. Going broke is very scary. I would drink to help me sleep. Then I would refuse to wake up. Then the fear would repeat until I fell asleep again. I pretended to smile at my children. I pretended to smile at my wife. People say when you pretend to smile it often triggers happiness because you fool your brain into thinking you are happy.

[00:01:13] I can tell you, my brain was not fooled. If anything, fake smiling made me more depressed. I started to take walks because I was so sick of sitting in the house I was losing. I would walk through Chinatown and think, I can just rent some tiny apartment here and work in a restaurant and disappear forever. Nobody would find me. I imagined sometimes my old friends wandering into the restaurant and I would serve them. The thought of that made me happy. Disappearing. Starting over.

[00:01:39] Maybe I would be a janitor and meet a cute janitor and we would fall in love and live together forever in our tiny apartment. I would walk from 3am to noon and then walk again at night. Walking was the secret trick. It got my blood moving. It got me seeing thousands of people a day. Seeing rooftops where architects went crazy with fun putting on their final flourishes. Relating again to the world. I'd bring a book about games. A non-fiction book and a good fiction book.

[00:02:05] One time on the Bowery, I passed a restaurant supply store. I bought a box of waiter's pads. I started bringing the pads on my walk and writing things down. I didn't have any good ideas. Not for a long time. But that's okay. The idea was, write a book on how to win at every game of the universe. I ran it by Stephen Dubner, who later wrote Freakonomics. He said, that's great. You can even make a series out of it. A new book each year. But I never did it. Instead, I kept coming up with more ideas.

[00:02:34] I was buried in quicksand. Ideas were tied together like dirty rags that were slowly pulling me out of the quicksand. Or at least preventing me from sinking further. Eventually, one idea turned into a meeting. A meeting turned into a dinner. A dinner turned into a network. A network turned into an opportunity. An opportunity turned into a small amount of money. Then more money. Then I had more ideas. People say to me, I get stuck when making the ideas. Or they show me their list of seven ideas and say, is this good?

[00:03:03] No. No, it's not good. Because seven is the hard part. Eight, nine, ten is where you exercise the idea muscle. Someone asked Muhammad Ali, how many push-ups do you do a day? He said, I don't know. I only start counting after it starts to hurt. The same thing with coming up with your ideas per day. Yes, I just compared myself to Muhammad Ali. Idea addition. Take an old idea. One that is big and popular. Maybe millions of people love it. Believe it. It's like a religion. Add something to it.

[00:03:33] Example, the paleo diet. The idea that you should eat like paleo people because that's what the human digestive system has evolved over 200,000 years for. Processed foods are only about 100 years old. An evolutionary blip. Hence the reasons for obesity, kidney failure, diabetes, and so on. Here's the addition. Paleo people didn't eat at regular intervals. They didn't eat three meals a day. New idea. Today's paleo plus how people really ate 200,000 years ago. The multi-phasic paleo diet.

[00:04:03] Eat at random intervals and vary up the diet considerably. In other words, sometimes eat one meal a day, sometimes four. Mix nuts, legumes, meats, plants into every meal so nothing can be considered a breakfast or dinner. Idea subtraction. Take an idea that seems impossible. Take the execution. Subtract the reason you can't. Subtraction is money. Trust me. I saw this in a meeting. We were pitching a very wealthy guy. He represented a company worth over $100 billion.

[00:04:34] We wanted his money. We wanted a lot of his money. We were hungry for money. Our desire for money was thicker than the air. He was very blunt. He was like a hammer. He said, don't count on me for a single dime of money. The guy leading the meeting on our side was smart. He did idea subtraction. Take money off the table, he said. We don't want any money from you. That's covered. Then he said, assuming we do not need a single dime from you, would you be interested in doing a collaboration with us where we work with your team to see if this is a

[00:05:03] viable product? Answer. The CEO of the wealthy company said, of course. Why wouldn't he? And suddenly we had a joint venture with a multi-billion dollar company. A company that led to millions of dollars eventually being contributed by that company. Idea subtraction is, have a good idea that seems impossible, find the exact can't in the idea, and remove it. See what's left. Remove the obstacles. Another example. I wrote a book, but can't find a publisher. That's okay. Self-publish.

[00:05:33] Or, I have an idea for an app, but can't program. That's okay. Go to freelancer.com and for about $600, you can outsource to a good programmer. To be continued. You just listened to part one of the post titled, The Magic of Idea Math by James Altucher of JamesAltucher.com. And thank you to James, who has founded or co-founded over 20 companies and published 20 books.

[00:06:02] He's also a contributor to the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, Tech Crunch, and the Huffington Post. And you can hear him interviewing a bunch of talented people on his podcast, The James Altucher Show. Speaking of podcasts, if you like this idea of blog posts being read to you every day for free, definitely check out our other shows covering personal development, finance, health, relationships, and more. Just search for Optimal Living Daily wherever you're hearing this to find all of those shows, or you can always come by oldpodcast.com to learn more.

[00:06:31] That's oldpodcast.com. And that's going to do it for today. Hope you have a great weekend, and thanks so much for being a subscriber to this show. I will, of course, see you tomorrow where we're going to finish up this post and where your optimal life awaits.