Every time I talk to James Altucher, I’m in awe of whatever new thing he’s working on. He’s started and led more than 20 companies (17 of which failed) and is currently an investor in and advisor to over 30 more—from tech to energy to healthcare to biotech.

How does this entrepreneur, angel investor bestselling author, chess master, cryptocurrency expert, and stand-up comedian master so many different fields? James wanted to go beyond the hard-set boundaries of the 10,000 hours rule, so on today’s episode of Bulletproof Radio, we talk about what he calls the “10,000 experiment rule.” 

As many of us are constantly changing jobs, careers and interests, James says that experimentation can lead you down the quickest path to success, whether it’s for two or 20 different careers. He writes all about it in his latest book “Skip the Line: The 10,000 Experiments Rule and other Surprising Advice for Reaching your Goals.”

“The 10,000 hours rule, it's crippling,” James says. “It takes 20 years. But if you could really pursue what it is you love and know why you love it, and then experiment with new ways to push the frontier in this new interest that you love, you're going to be the best at how you now have individually defined the category.”

James has gone from being a computer programmer to being a venture capitalist to a professional poker player. His book is inspired by the people who would tell him “it’s just not possible,” every time he switched interests. He’ll talk about how that process showed him you can probably skip some steps in your learning process, in order to quickly get better at what you want to do. He asks us to consider how you can get great at what you love and monetize what you’re interested in. It helps if you’re curious.

“Curiosity is critical, because without curiosity, you won't be able to construct good experiments. An experiment is something that has little downside, enormous upside and is pretty fast to do,” James says. “And I'm doing experiments all the time in every area that I'm interested in.”

It won’t always be easy. In fact, as you start to do something you love, and start to get good, it’s probably going to be hard most of the time, he says. But if you listen to his advice in order to figure out what your skills are, how to push past failure, and more, you’ll find anything is possible.

Enjoy! And get more resources at Dave.Asprey/podcasts. Got a comment, idea or question for the podcast? Submit via this form.

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