Ep. 243 - Shawn Stevenson: The ONLY Health Podcast You'll Ever Need to Hear

I tried to ruin Ryan Holiday's life. Fortunately, I failed. I told him to start an agency, build it up, sell it for 10 million dollars and THEN start writing books. "It's a good thing you didn't listen to me," I said. But I was wrong. It turned out he took my advice. "It made me super unhappy and it cost me a bunch of friendships," he said. "But it's not your fault. I know there are a lot of things that could make me money, but what I really like is writing. That's what I want my life to be." "So what if you don't know what you want your life to be?" I asked. "What should you do?" "That's the essential question," he said... A) SELF-WORTH IS NOT NET-WORTH Most writers die penniless. I can't think of a profession where I can name as many suicides as writing. I'm jealous of the people who don't write actually. Making business deals and going to work is so much more profitable than trying to tear your soul apart and put words on a piece of paper most people won't read. There's only one writer in history to become a billionaire. (J.K. Rowling, if you're reading... come on my podcast!) So why does anyone do it? I don't know. I do it because it's what I would do if I had nothing again. It's what I would do with everything. It's the one thing that makes me feel like I am going places without moving. B) VICTIM OR HERO Everyone wants to be the hero of their own story. I do. But I chose victim for years. I lost everything and I wanted the world to pick me back up. I'm not mad at the world for leaving me on the floor. I'm grateful. Because it let me pick myself up. It let me choose myself. "Stoicism is a practical philosophy and it works," Ryan said. "Define 'works'." "At its core, it says you don't control the world around you. You control how you respond to the world around you." He told me about the two most prominent practitioners of Stoicism. One was Marcus Aurelius, a Roman emperor. He had all the power in the world. His favorite Stoic was a slave, Epictetus, who was banished from Rome by a past emperor. "You have extreme wealth and power using the philosophy, and it's helping them," Ryan said. "And then you have extreme adversity, difficulty and powerlessness using the philosophy and it's helping them. To me, that's working." C) LOOK FORWARD TO THE BAD THINGS People are losing their jobs. And they're afraid. I asked Ryan if the Stoics have a practice for fear. He said, "The Stoics call that amor fati, which in Latin means 'a love of fate...' You look forward to the bad things because they were made just for you." D) MAKE YOUR JOB IRRELEVANT This is the key to all advancement in life. Make your job irrelevant. Burn the bridges behind you. "You should be trying to make your job or your role irrelevant because what you're actually proving is that you know how to do things, you know when something is working, and you're able to come up with the next thing," Ryan said. "When an employee comes to you and says, 'I know my job was to run this marketing department, but over the last 6 months I've automated X and Y. I've hired someone who's incredibly talented, sales are up X percent and I don't have that much to do.' Your boss doesn't go to their boss and say, 'Well how do we get rid of James?" They go, "James is f**king killing it.'" "That's how you work through or up an organization," he said. "No one says, 'Your book was so amazing Ryan, we don't need anymore books from you.' They go, 'What are you writing next?'" E) DON'T BE AN ADDICT I was listing the pillars of Stoicism. I wanted to know if I understood. So I said, - Integrity, (universal integrity, for example: never lie to get what you want) - Fairness (Help the people around you. Even if it hurts you. If it helps someone more than it hurts you, it's just.) Then Ryan jumped in. "Temperance," he said, which means don't be an addict to some other force. Don't be an addict to anything. F)... See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

4 Apr 20171h 34min

"You and I both know what happened to you 18 months ago," he said. "If you don't write about it, you will die as an artist." Tucker's sold over 3 million copies of his books. I know I'm going to have to listen to him. Maybe later. ----- I've known Tucker many years. I can safely, say, I've been in the trenches with Tucker. We've both started businesses since then, published books, invested together, and cried (well, I did) together since we've met. In one of the worst personal disasters of my life, Tucker was there. He was there for the beginning, middle, and end. I always ask myself 'who is in my scene'? What's a Scene? I consider it: - the people I learn from - the people who I can count on - the people who challenge me to work harder and rise to my potential (and I can do the same for) - the people I can call when I am confused or troubled, and the people who are there for me no matter what. Ask yourself: Who is in your scene? --- Without a scene, it is much harder to succeed. Ask Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Jack Kerouac, Andy Warhol, Sara Blakely and many many others who have risen to the top of their fields throughout history. Tucker and a few others have been in my scene for years. So I visited him. Talked reinvention, writing, and his current business success. Here's the top five things I learned: A) THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PEOPLE WHO SUCCEED AND PEOPLE WHO DON'T "No one has ever replicated anything I did because they looked at the surface. They didn't actually understand the underlying input." "What do you mean by input?" I asked. "People look at my writing and they say, 'I get drunk, I fall down, I yell curses... I'm going to write really arrogant things. Then I'll get the same attention Tucker Max gets.' But that never works." "I was opening my soul," he said. "I was being honest. Anybody trying to mimic me forgot the honesty part." That's the work. That's the input. "If you want to boil it down, people who succeed are worried about input. People who don't succeed are worried about output." ---- B ) DIFFERENT > BETTER Spaces are getting crowded. Anyone can blog. Anyone can make a youtube video. Self-publishing is growing. And they're handing out podcasts at all the major international airports. More and more people are getting creative. More creativity = more competition. So how do you stand out? Micro-tribes. "I'm talking about being different, which is not the same thing as being better," Tucker said. "When I started writing, I wrote emails for my friends and my only measurement for whether the emails were good or not was whether those nine guys thought it was funny. There was no arguing. If they did, it was good. If it didn't, it was bad." This reminded me of how Craig from Craigslist built his company. Started out with an email, with the sole intention of providing pleasure for his friends. Provide benefit for the few, and then you can scale to provide benefit for the many. Tucker found his micro-tribe. And it grew. Because his did this... --- C) TELL THE TRUTH People send me articles all the time, "Can you read this?". I read one the other day. "How to survive a breakup" But the author left out his story. Advice is autobiography. Don't give me advice from the mountaintop. Tell me the story of the struggle. Of how you were the very reluctant hero, who was called into action for better or worse, who climbed the mountaintop, who now has the knowledge. Your story is the only test: Are you original? "I'll give you a super simple trick to being original," Tucker said. "Tell the truth. The hard truth that everybody thinks and nobody says." --- D) ASK YOUR QUESTION Last week I did seven podcasts. I probably asked 1000 questions. So I asked Tucker, "What's the skill? How does one become a good writer?" He had one answer: Self-evaluate. Tucker asks himself three questions: Am I what I think I am? Am I who I want to be? Am I good at... See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

28 Mars 20171h 40min

I have a rule. After every podcast, I write down 10 things I learned. I don't know if anyone else does this. Do you do this? Some people make illustrations. They send me what they've learned. It's a creation of a creation of a creation. A drawing of a podcast of someone's life.   But I broke my rule. It's been over a month. And my brain is digging for the lessons from my interview with the creator of Wordpress. I think I have Alzheimer's. Matt was 19 years old when he started Wordpress. It was 2003. Now Wordpress.com gets more traffic than Amazon.com.   The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times both use Wordpress. I use Wordpress.   I wanted to know if it's still worth the time and effort to make your own site. He said it is. That's how you break out...   "We're trying to revitalize the independent web," Matt Mullenweg said. He's 33 now. "It's not like these big sites are going anywhere. They're fantastic. I use all of them, but you want balance. You need your own site that belongs to you... like your own home on the Internet."   This is part of Matt's code. Not Wordpress's "code." Matt's like a robot. I mean that as a compliment. There are many signs of this: language, ability, he's very exact.   I had to interrupt. He was talking in code. And it was my job to translate.   He said, "If I send you a unit of work..."   "I don't mean to interrupt," I said. "I'm a little bit of an interrupter. So I apologize in advance, but you talk in a very code-like language... 'a unit of work.' How about 'a task?' That works as well."   He laughed. And thanked me for translating. The podcast continued.   He told me about his personal code (again, robot).   People have values. Geniuses and other advanced forms of life  have "code." So here's Matt's...  A) Measure what's important to you.   Matt wrote a birthday blog. He does this every year to measure what's changed. It lists how many books he's read over the past year, countries he traveled to and so on.   He's very specific.   It's a measurement of his personal freedom. He can see where time went. And if he chose himself. "You cannot change what you don't measure," Matt said.   So this year, I wrote a birthday blog.  B) Own the work you do "Other sites provide space," he said. "They provide distribution in exchange for owning all of your stuff. You can't leave Facebook or Twitter and take all of your followers with you."   That's why he recommends having your own website. It's yours. Not Facebook's. Not Business Insider's or Huffington Post's. It's yours.   When I first started jamesaltucher.com, I picked a template, posted a blog, shared a link on Twitter and within 3-4 minutes I had traffic.  C) Ignore concern Matt dropped out of college and moved to San Francisco when he was 20.   "Were your parents upset?"   "They've always been supportive," he said. "But they were concerned."   That didn't stop him. He had direction. And when you know where you're going, you don't ask for directions.   Sometimes I feel like I'm driving with the wrong address in my GPS. And Siri won't stop re-routing.   So what I learned from Matt: Reroute yourself as many times as it takes. Reinvent.   Put someone else's concern for your wellbeing on your gratitude list. But don't let it stop you. Don't let it get in the way of your code.  D) The myth of loyalty When Matt moved and started his first job, he made more than his dad did.   "I got an amazing salary," he said.   I kept wondering if his parents were upset. I don't know why.   "Were they upset?"   He said no. Again. But then he explained. "Learning spreads organically." And when he moved, it helped spark possibility for his dad.   "He worked at the same company for 26 or 27 years. He more than doubled his salary when he left. It made me so sad. I never want anyone to be in the situation my dad was in," he said. "He gave the loyalty of decades and they didn't... See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

21 Mars 20171h 10min

She said, I am an introvert but had to develop tricks to fake being an extravert because of where I worked. I said, Do you think everyone in LA is an extravert? She said, I don't know. Maybe they are all faking. We were at a party. I had been sleeping but a friend called me up and said "you have to go this party three blocks away from you." So I did. Why? Because why not? Sometimes you know to say no. But to surrender to the moment, if nobody is getting hurt, sometimes you say yes. I went. It was crowded and I knew some of the people and some of the people I didn't. I didn't know her but we were introduced. "You have to ask her for [X} favor," the introducer whispered to me. But I never got around to the favor. I said, can you tell me some of the tricks? I asked because sometimes I feel I don't really know how to live and look like a normal person. Sometimes I like being home and writing and reading all day because that passes for human without me having to see, or touch, or talk to anyone. When I go outside, I often feel unhinged. Like I could float away. So I wanted to know. She didn't tell me at first. Please. Ok, she said, sometimes I would do what I call a "dare of the day". I would do something that I might be scared to do or was out of my comfort zone. I said, like what? She didn't want to tell me. Please. She squinted her eyes at my face then touched my cheek and rubbed her fingers together as if pulling something off my face. I would go up to people, strangers, and pretend to pull a wisp of hair off of their face. That would freak me out, I said. Both doing it and having some stranger touch my face. I would do all sorts of things like that. Ok, I said, I want to try this. Start me off. Tell me more or tell me what I should do tomorrow. She said, I can't. She made a motion with her fingers around her head the way people do when describing someone who is crazy. She said, Now that i've told you this your mind will start working on it. Tomorrow you will wake up and your body will know what to do. She told me the rest of her story, which was fascinating. Stay tuned for the podcast I hope she agrees to do. Then I went home. I woke up and I was upset about something that had happened earlier the day before. My friend Amy then had advice: go and eat pancakes and bacon and photograph it so I know you are eating. You have to prove it to me. I went. I ate. I photographed. Then my body knew what to do. I walked outside and there was a man and his daughter. I held up my hands with palms out, non-confrontational and said, "Good morning!" and they smiled and said good morning back. I started walking home. I saw a couple holding hands. Palms out, Good morning! And you [the girl] I love your blue hair. And you [the boy] I love your jacket. A pretty girl crossing the street. Good morning! She turned away and angled away from me as she walked past. I guess it might be taken the wrong way sometimes. Maybe it might not be attractive. I said to a guy opening up his store. Good morning! He smiled. Hey, good morning, guy. I said it all the way home. I got home. I didn't feel down anymore. The sun was coming in. I started to write. First I wrote the girl from the party and told her what happened. She wrote back (i'm going to paraphrase), don't record your dares. That's why I was hesitant to tell you the dares I did. Ok, other than this one, I won't. She said it will take a few weeks to figure out your boundaries on dares. Both personal and physical. She said, don't dare anyone else to do this. I didn't understand her reason. But maybe it would affect the way I did my own dares. SO DON'T DO THIS. I wanted to leave the party but I had one more question. What did you do after you were working in LA for so long as an assistant. She said, I went to get a PhD in Robotics at [best school in world for Robotics]. She laughed and I think she said, maybe that... See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

18 Mars 20171h 27min

Ben (of Ben & Jerry's) was in the room. He needed a logo. Debbie Millman just started her agency. She was competing against the best ad agencies in New York City. She lost. So she moved on to Burger King. "Why do you think you lost?" "We didn't have insurance," Debbie said. "We didn't have the big, global brand experience to show them." "I'll never forget this," she said. "When we got to Burger King headquarters, we got into a fairly small elevator with the Senior Vice President of Market Research. The door closes. He looks at us and says, 'Don't get your hopes up.'" This is important. Because Debbie Millman never describes herself as an entrepreneur. But she's the perfect example. Entrepreneurship is about putting your all into something, getting rejected and going back into the next room.   Data is taking over. Data is replacing thinking and driving the direction of the future. Data sells confidence. And that's what the brands wanted. Burger King tried changing their logo 7 times in the decade leading up to Debbie's success. So she did focus groups. And studied eye-tracking on the original logo. "We wanted to know what people thought," she said. "We wanted to get a sense of why this was so beloved?" "People do not read first. First and foremost, they see color. Then they see numbers, then shape, and then, if you still have their attention and they understand what you put in front of them, then they will read." A logo is a message. Even if you don't read it. You can recognize logos visually without reading. Our brains know. Then we choose who we belong to. And that's our tribe. Debbie was changing the face of an iconic brand. And change causes fear, which strikes up all the stress hormones in our body. "In order for us to create an identity that was evolving from the original, we had to keep some of those iconic elements." You're original. As a baby, you were a blank canvas. No logo. No brand. No name. And no identity. Then you went to school and made friends and things happened to you. Someone asked me, "who will you always be? Who's James? When you're 4, 14, 24, 34, 44, 84, what parts of you will always be there?" That's what Debbie had to figure out with her brands. She did it with Tropicana, Star Wars, and eventually, she won Ben & Jerry's over too. But after all of this data, all of this color, all of this branding, at the heart of it is the essence of who you are. What is the logo of your heart.  Debbie figured out hers. And created her life around it. Figuring out who we are is the key to having an impact all over the world.  That's what Debbie taught me on this podcast. That's what I try every day to create in my own life.     ------------What do YOU think of the show? Head to JamesAltucherShow.com/listeners and fill out a short survey that will help us better tailor the podcast to our audience!Are you interested in getting direct answers from James about your question on a podcast? Go to JamesAltucherShow.com/AskAltucher and send in your questions to be answered on the air!------------Visit Notepd.com to read our idea lists & sign up to create your own!My new book, Skip the Line, is out! Make sure you get a copy wherever books are sold!Join the You Should Run for President 2.0 Facebook Group, where we discuss why you should run for President.I write about all my podcasts! Check out the full post and learn what I learned at jamesaltuchershow.com------------Thank you so much for listening! If you like this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe to "The James Altucher Show" wherever you get your podcasts: Apple PodcastsiHeart RadioSpotifyFollow me on social media:YouTubeTwitterFacebookLinkedIn See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

14 Mars 20171h 9min

Tony Robbins stopped by on his birthday. And then he started causing problems. Like he does. "I realize you're high energy," the audio engineer says, looking at Tony, "but when you bang the table it sounds like the whole room is shaking." In 220 podcasts, it's the first time the audio engineer had to interrupt in the middle. "Oh, ok, no problem," Tony says. "I don't want to stop the passion," the audio engineer says. "Don't worry, I'll be good," Tony says. Then the audio engineer went back outside. Tony kept slamming that table. Outside the room, people thought he was going to climb over the table and beat the S**t out of me. But it was all good. BUT... I felt like I had to keep the energy level high. So pretty soon we were both yelling back and forth. He was there because of his new book, "Unshakeable". But we spoke about maybe 1000 topics. Not just the financial world. So let's get right down to it. What did I learn? - EVERY YEAR (on average) THE STOCK MARKET WILL FALL 10% This is great for newspapers. They say, "The world is ending!" and they say it EVERY SINGLE YEAR. And yet it never does. It never did. Even in 2008. The world did not end. The market is at all time highs right now. The key with Tony's book is he shows these statistics not so you can make money off of them but so you DON'T PANIC. Markets move. Ignore the news. - BRING IT Before the podcast I said to Tony, "let's do a fun outtake". I wasn't sure he'd say "yes". We videotaped it (it's on my instagram). He BRINGS IT. It's so much energy I almost had to stutter out my planned line ("I can't see your face on Skype, only your chest"). And when we did the podcast, I felt like I had to yell and really UP my own energy level at least three levels higher just to keep pace with him. I don't know how he does it. SO....! I asked. How do you do it? I want that energy also. Please? - DON'T ASK HOW, INSTEAD ASK 'WHY!?' He finally said, "Enough with the 'how-to'. Don't ask 'how-to' questions". He said, "Ask What and Why?" What is the Result. Why is your purpose. "Why are you getting out of bed in the morning? And what are you going to do about it? "Motive matters and brings energy". He said, "I love lighting people up." That, he said, gives me the energy. When I later found out his schedule, not only was he booked every hour that day with different news sources (he started the day by ringing the bell at the Nasdaq) but IT WAS HIS BIRTHDAY. He brings it. - TRADE YOUR EXPECTATIONS FOR APPRECIATIONS This is critical for well-being. Don't expect the world to provide you with happiness. Every time you find yourself slipping into an expectation, change it in your head into an "appreciation". Find the things you appreciate. Then take ACTION. "It's like a practice," I said. He banged the table. "Exactly!" - MODELING I said, "how do you learn new things?" He said, "Modeling." I said, "Well, I imagine you look great walking down a runway at a fashion show but seriously." He laughed and said, "Look, when I went to write the Money book and then my new book, Unshakeable, I didn't just sit around reading the paper. "I went out with a video crew and interviewed 50 billionaires about how they invest. "I watch what they do. I study how they think. And I see if I can break it down into chunks so that anyone can follow their process." In my last podcast with Tony, two years ago, he described how he learned how expert Marines improve their firing skills even though he had never fired gun before. He described almost the same process then. For me, I know this works. When I want to write, I always read first. When I want to do public speaking, I watch standup comedians (and singers) first. I want to figure out how the best people in the world do something so I can do it 1/100 as good at the very least. When I need energy now, I picture Tony Robbins smashing... See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

7 Mars 201759min

My ancestor from 70,000 years ago was smarter than me. He knew every plant, mushroom, animal, predator, prey in a several mile radius. He knew how to make weapons. He knew how to capture something, make it edible. I can barely order delivery. And as far as weapons, they say "the pen is mightier than the sword" but I don't think a tweet is. My ancestor also knew how to adapt to new terrains, how to handle strangers who could be threats, how to learn who to trust and who not to trust. I wish I had his skills. Not only that. Archaeological evidence says his brain was bigger than mine. And bigger is better. To make things worse, another animal made the entire human race its slave. Wheat domesticated us. It forced us to stick around for the harvest, horde up for years when the harvest might be bad, go from a life of a diverse diet to basically all carbs all the time. And it turned us from hunters to farmers. But it's not all bad. And the news is actually very good. Probably the books I've recommended most in the past five years was "Sapiens" by Yuval Harari. And not only me: it's Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg's top recommendation. And now Yuval has a new book, "Homo Deus" - i.e. where are humans heading? If Sapiens explored the last 70,000 years of human history, "Homo Deus" takes the trends into the future. What will happen next? The answers are fascinating. And I had even more questions. I couldn't believe I was finally talking to Yuval after reading "Sapiens" so many times and recommending it on every list and giving the book to all of my friends. And then finally reading "Homo Deus". What made humans the only animal to spread across the entire globe? What was special about us? How did we go hundreds of miles into empty water to find Australia for instance? I would never take that risk! And then survive and flourish in a completely new ecosystem, just like we did in North America. "Fiction," Yuval told me, and describes in his book. "We created elaborate fictions for ourselves: 'nations', 'corporations', 'religion', 'crusades', and perhaps the most successful fiction: 'money'. So I could use a dollar and some stranger in China can use a dollar and we can trust each other enough to do a transaction." So what's next? "Homo sapiens are going to evolve again." Yuval said, "Technology is taking us there and technology is evolving much faster than we are." I still can't believe I spoke to him. Five years ago I took his course on Coursera. I was thinking, "how did this guy get so smart?" And now I was talking to him. And, like I said, the news was not bad. Here's what I learned: 1. The economy needs you to invest in yourself "There's a change in the nature of the economy from a material based economy to a knowledge-based economy. The main assets in the past were material like gold minds or wheat fields," Yuval said. "These are the types of things you can conquer through violence." That's how we got California. The US invaded and absorbed their wealth. But you can't invade and absorb knowledge. China isn't going to take over Silicon Valley and absorb all the wealth. "Today, the main asset is knowledge," he said. The only good investment you can make for your future is the investment you make in yourself today. Hone your idea muscle, build a network and a library of mentors, make a commitment to do one healthy thing a day. Because the health of your body impacts the health of your brain. I try to improve 1% a day. That's it. That's how I invest in myself. 2. Explore Internal realities vs. External realities Resources today are different. They're abstract. Yuval said, "The source of wealth in California today is knowledge, in the mind's of engineers and technicians and CEOs. And you just cannot conquer it by force." That's one of the reason's why Yuval says, "You see a decline in international violence." The other reason: weapons are too powerful.... See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

28 Feb 201752min

Imagine going on a swing as high as you can. Then going higher. Then going so high you loop around. I get scared thinking about it. Sergey Brin, the founder of Google, did it the first time he tried. Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal were training people at Google how to get into the state of FLOW. Sergey volunteered. What is Flow? The state where your brain and body loses all sense of time and you retreat into this perfect area of creativity and productivity. A state where Steven and Jamie have spent years trying to hack and re-create at will. And this is what they've done. I was talking to Steven Kotler, who's been on my podcast a few times and Jamie Wheal. They co-authored "Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work." It's sort of a sequel to "The Rise of Superman" all about "flow" in action sports. Steven said. "It's the moments of total absorption where you get so focussed on the task at hand that everything else just disappears, action and awareness merge, your sense of self disappears, time passes very strangely and all aspects of performance, mental and physical, go through the roof." But when I read it I thought, "Where are the chess players?" Where are the creatives? Programmers get into flow. Musicians, athletes, artists, all sorts of people get into flow. The question was "how?" I am selfish. I wanted to know for myself: HOW? So I read "Stealing Fire." It's about all the ways you can get into flow and other "optimal states of consciousness." It teaches you how to step outside yourself, have a 500% increase in your performance, functionality, creativity and have satisfaction. I had to find out, what are the triggers to get into flow? They said "risk." "Life or death?" I asked. "You need risk, but it's definitely not physical risk," Steven said. "The brain can't tell the difference between social fear and physical fear." Steven and Jamie figured this out when they went to Google to experiment on Sergey Brin's brain (Google's founder). They built a swing that loops 360 degrees around and covered him in EEG sensors. You'd have to pump your legs and use all your strength to gain the physical and mental momentum to go in a full circle. "My ten year old daughter crushed it," Jamie said. "She did 35 loops in 60 seconds, which is nudging the world record." Only a few people actually made it all the way around. Sergey's one of them. It takes intense focus. You have to overcome your fear and stay in the moment. You have to use risk to your advantage. "Anything that drives attention to the current moment drives flow," Steven said. It's not just swings. It's not just "smart drugs" or "extreme sports". On the podcast, Steven and Jamie give a range of techniques and ideas for how to get into flow. I want in. I want in ALL of the time. They have a quiz on their website (flowgenomeproject.com) that tells you your "flow profile." Over 50,000 people have taken it. On the first company I started I once disappeared into my office and programmed for about 24 hours straight. Completing a month's project in one day's time. We kept that client for life, even when we sold the company. Flow not only feels good, creates increased productivity and brain function, it's also a key skill to compete. I hope I can get back to that state again. Today. ------------What do YOU think of the show? Head to JamesAltucherShow.com/listeners and fill out a short survey that will help us better tailor the podcast to our audience!Are you interested in getting direct answers from James about your question on a podcast? Go to JamesAltucherShow.com/AskAltucher and send in your questions to be answered on the air!------------Visit Notepd.com to read our idea lists & sign up to create your own!My new book, Skip the Line, is out! Make sure you get a copy wherever... See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

21 Feb 20171h 13min