In Case You Missed It…

• Posted by James Altucher

Someone just tweeted that they hate when someone tweets, “In Case You Missed It…”. Because probably nobody missed it so why tweet it again? This guy HATES that.

I don’t know.

Why all the hate? If I were to eat a tennis ball and then try to shit it out, I would hate that. That’s something worth hating.

I hate when someone tweets, “I just shat out a tennis ball. In case you missed it, here is the video.” I hate that.

Note to self: In case you missed it (you being, “me”), here is what I did yesterday.

Woke up and wrote a draft blog post about how I can’t figure out a good book title for my book coming out in a few months.

Working title right now is “The Choose Yourself Era”. But when I say the words out loud, “CHooose Yourssself Errrraaa” it sort of sounds garbled. It’s a hard phrase to say.

Then it sounds like “the choose yourself error”. Like, you chose yourself but then you made an error. Like, maybe you should’ve chosen that other guy instead of yourself.

Loser.

I read it out loud because in the book “The Art of Doing”, in the chapter on how to make a runaway bestseller, Stephen Dubner says to read your words out loud. [See also, "The 5 Reasons Freakonomics Was a Bestseller"]

“The written tradition is just a continuation of the oral tradition” is something I think he said in that chapter but probably didn’t. Note to self: “Call Camille and do a post on “The Art of Doing ‘The Art of Doing’ “.

Then I went to meet Dominic for breakfast. He is building a social media agency. I told him, “make an agency, not a social media factory”. More on that later. He’s supposed to send me an email summarizing the ideas he told me in that breakfast. Then I will send it out on my email list.

Then I met a photographer for the newspaper Haaretz which had interviewed me the other day. The photographer told me, “If you are feeling uncomfortable in a position then the photograph will look bad. Always be comfortable or change positions.”

I thought this was good advice in general. If you are uncomfortable doing X, then X won’t come out well.

I met an editor from Harper Collins for lunch. She was editor on my last mainstreamed published book. She liked my title for a book I want to do on how to be a GREAT parent: “Should I Abort My Kids? – And other Tips on Parenting” .

I told her my problem with “The Choose Yourself Era” title. It’s like that joke on 30 Rock when Jenna stars in a movie called “The Rural Juror”. You can’t ever pronounce it. The editor said, “Why not call it, ‘Choose Yourself!’ ?”

Good! The only problem is, now I wasted that post from earlier that day that’s sitting in my Drafts. I don’t tell her my new problem. How for a split second my entire life seemed like it was falling apart.

Then I did twitter Q&A. I was thinking about one question afterwards.

Someone asked how to make the most effective social change in the world.

I said, “be healthy and then you help everyone around you and they will help everyone around them.” I said, “ripples from the middle of the ocean eventually hit all shores.”

That’s the only way really to make the most impact. And then he asked, “but what about philanthropy?” as if somehow I had given a selfish answer. Sometimes being selfish will create the greatest social change in the world. Don’t be afraid of that.

Then I helped someone sell his company. More on that later. It’s’ a company everyone in NYC hates with a passion. It’s the sort of company you might compare to Satan on Earth. And then I helped China acquire enough iron ore to finish building out some skyscrapers. No joke. I did that.

I don’t know.

You had to be there.

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This post dedicated to the guy (@treehcapital) who tweeted “I hate people who start a tweet ‘In case you missed it’”. It’s also dedicated to the song “de los muertos” by makestapes that I listened to until my ear started bleeding. And also to Hollis for saying “Choose Yourself!” And also to Sam Pink. And to Camille Sweeney and her husband Josh Gosfield for writing “The Art of Doing”. Oh, and to @MikeLemmer for letting me tweet the phrase, “Hump the fear in order to get over the ‘Hump of Fear’ “.

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