Choose Yourself is a book by James Altucher. James Altucher is an entrepreneur that host a popular podcast and has written many books. I put together what I thought were his best tips from Choose Yourself.

1. Corporatism is dead – James Altucher speaks a lot about the death of the corporate job. Nothing is guaranteed. I agree with that and this COVID-19 situation in 2020 proves that. Many people are losing their jobs and a lot of companies are planning on bankruptcy. This is not a good situation for people.

2. Work for yourself – He really advocates working for yourself to provide security. He doesn’t really care how you do it. He just recommends doing it. I recommend this as well. You need to build your career around something that you like to do or can tolerate.

3. Quit your job – He also recommends to quit your job many times in the book. I agree that people should do this as soon as possible as well. You need to save up money and be secure, but you also need to provide that security independently. Which leads to the next point.

4. Don’t let people make one decision that can blow your life apart – This isn’t necessarily how he phrases it in the book, but he says not to let one person destroy your life. What he means by this is don’t have one boss or one customer that can completely destroy your income or positivity. You need to build up your own business and security.

5. Disappear completely – James Altucher is a funny guy. He says the quirkiest stuff but that is definitely why I like him. He says things that just shock you out of your stupor. He recommends that if your life is so bad, you should just create a new identity and drop off the grid. Seems ridiculous right? Well the reason he says this is that if you hate your life so much, then do something about it. If you hate your life, you hate yourself. Why not create a whole new person then? I thought this was a cool idea. Instead of creating a new identity and disappearing though, I could just change who I am right now. However, whenever I get down on myself, I could always think of dropping off the grid and doing whatever I wanted. It’s just something that I thought was cool.

6. Come up with 10 ideas – this is one of James Altucher’s favorite mantras. Come up with 10 ideas a day and you will become an idea and creativity machine. I can’t disagree with thim except that making a list of 10 ideas becomes weird. Sometimes you just wnat to go down a rabbit hole on one idea, but the concept is great. He says that it will take about 6 to 12 months for your idea muscle to grow into a full-blow machine.

7. Create a daily practice around your health– James has something called the daily practice that he mentions like a million times in this book. He puts this above all other things in this book. What he suggests is that you improve your mental health, physical health, emotional health and spiritual health. I would agree with this as well. He also connects these activities to increasing your oxytocin which reduces your stress. In order to do this, you need to exercise, live in the moment, eat well and get good sleep. He also has other recommendations about the daily practice throughout the book.

8. Write a book on amazon – He also suggests writing a book yourself as a good business to start. I agree with this. I don’t do this enough. I’ve written a couple books on amazon, but I need to do this more. If you go to James’ website, he has more resource around this. You have to realize that some of it is a sales funnel but that is ok if you get into the habit of writing a lot of books. There are plenty of people out there that make money just cranking out tons of books.

9. Work only 3-5 hours a day – This is another recommendation that I really enjoyed. Most people think that you have to work head down for 12+ hours a day. The more I live, the more I realize this isn’t possible. He gives an example of woody allen who consistently works only 3-5 hours a day. Working only 3-5 hours a day, he is still able to crank out a movie script in a few months. This is important to note. Very few people are consistent. Being consistent and showing up for yourself will allow you to accomplish your dreams.

10. Draw circles of influence – In one of the final chapters, James recommends drawing a circle with you in the center. Then you keep drawing circles around that. In each successive circle, you put the people that you influence, and then you put the people that those people influence. Eventually, you can see that you have a big influence. You just have to keep trying to help people out and your chances of personal success will increase.