The Karol Markowicz Show: Choose Yourself in the Age of AI: James Altucher on Creativity, Careers & Reinventing Your Life

Summary

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Podcast Summary:

The Karol Markowicz Show: Choose Yourself in the Age of AI – James Altucher on Creativity, Careers & Reinventing Your Life
Date: December 3, 2025
Host: Karol Markowicz
Guest: James Altucher (entrepreneur, author, host of The James Altucher Show)

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Episode Overview

This episode features a lively conversation between host Karol Markowicz and prolific author, entrepreneur, and podcaster James Altucher. Together, they explore themes of creativity, resilience, the disruptive role of AI in the workplace, personal reinvention, and what it truly means to “choose yourself” in a rapidly evolving world. James shares candid stories from his own eclectic career, offers actionable advice, and delivers an optimistic perspective on the future—especially regarding AI, the economy, and new opportunities for self-starters.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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1. James Altucher’s Productivity and Philosophy of “Choosing Yourself”

• Book Writing and Discipline

  • James demystifies his ability to author 20 books:

    “If every day you kind of move the needle forward in whatever it is you’re passionate about, you’re going to get a lot done over the years. Imagine writing 1,000 words a day: that’s three pages. In a year, you have 360,000 words, the equivalent of 6 books.” (03:30)

  • Karol pushes back with humor:

    “You make it sound quite easy. I’ve written a book… But I will never do it again. It was extremely difficult.” (04:13)

• Origins and Impact of “Choose Yourself”

  • James identifies his book “Choose Yourself” as central to his philosophy:

    “I realized I was always waiting for others to approve of me... Instead of being just the best possible employee, maybe I should start a company. Or self-publish. The best-selling books I wrote are the self-published ones. Choosing myself was financially successful for me.” (04:58)

  • The “choose yourself” ethos stems from personal setbacks and the drive to take agency in one’s life and career.

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2. AI, Creativity, and the Future of Work

• Optimism About AI

  • James stands out as an AI optimist:

    “AI’s not coming to take your job if you focus on the skills that have always created success—creativity and learning the tools to manifest it. …If you’re creative, you’re going to succeed.” (06:42)

  • Karol observes most guests are anxious about AI; James disagrees:

    “If it wasn’t a net positive for the economy and individuals, it wouldn’t be as popular as it is now… The number of employed people has gone up since the rise in AI… Think of it as a tool to be more creative and more productive.” (08:05)

  • He compares previous technological shifts (e.g., silent films to talkies, the rise of the Internet) and suggests adaptability creates new opportunities.

• Creativity for Everyone

  • James notes:

    “It’s easy to be in the top 1% of creativity just by focusing on it a little bit each day.” (06:42)

  • He warns against waiting for gatekeepers, urging listeners to develop primary skills and use modern tools.

• The Renaissance of Old and New

  • Discussion about how trends cycle, with nostalgia (like Polaroid’s comeback) potentially spurring renewed interest in traditional media even as AI changes content creation:

    “Polaroid came back around. It became cool to be this older thing… People are going to reject just AI movies and go back to basics.” (10:03)
    “There’s something called micro dramas… A lot of the videos you see scrolling Instagram or YouTube, a lot are produced. But we love watching them.” (10:23)

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3. Career Reinvention and the Value of Failure

• From IT to Finance to Creative Writing

  • James shares his circuitous career route:

    “I really wanted to be a writer ... but I went to school for computer science... My first real job was at HBO in the IT department. I convinced HBO to make a website and let me, this lowly guy, do it. That both built a business for me and let me be more creative.” (15:48)

  • Reveals experiencing—and bouncing back from—spectacular failures and financial loss:

    “I went from generational wealth to $143 in the bank because I didn’t know anything about investing.” (16:56)

• Plan B? There Wasn’t One

  • On alternative careers:

    “Plan B? Probably suicide. I’m not encouraging that behavior from anyone... but I never had any plan B.” (19:19)

  • Shares that his approach was to start many businesses, fail fast, and not waste time on ideas that didn’t work.

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4. Money, Class, and Higher Education

• Money's Psychological Complexity

  • James frames money in three skills:

    “There’s making it, keeping it, growing it. I would have a hard time keeping it… Money is a very psychological thing. All these skills are very difficult.” (20:39)

• College: Worth the Cost?

  • Both guests express skepticism about higher education’s modern value:

    “I personally think they should just force all the colleges to shut down.” (James, 21:50)
    “I did tell [my kids] not to go to college and they didn’t listen to me. Eventually, they… paid attention to me, but I begged them not to go.” (James, 22:00)
    “I see college as just for socializing… but I don’t see it as somewhere you get an education.” (Karol, 22:46)
    “Can you remember anything you learned in college?” (James, 23:03)
    “0. …I had to say [the family is an outdated concept] in college in order to get the A.” (Karol, 23:05)

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5. Personal Pride and Life Lessons

• Proudest Achievements
  • James names "Choose Yourself" as the most meaningful project:

    "Even now, when I find myself unhappy... getting back into the advice from that book always makes my life better." (23:31)

  • Shares a favorite creative memory from his HBO days:

    “I proposed this project called 3am … where I would go out in New York City at three in the morning and interview random people. That was the funnest thing I’ve ever done.” (24:17)

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6. Five-Year Predictions: AI, Crypto, Biotech

• A Bold, Positive Forecast
  • On health:

    “Every disease is going to be diagnosable by AI within seconds. The AI is there already… but there’s regulatory hurdles.” (25:30)

  • On work and new industries:

    “AI’s going to create a lot more jobs, brand new industries we can’t even think of. Just like when the Internet was started, nobody could have dreamed of Uber…” (25:46)

  • On decentralized finance:

    “Crypto removes intermediaries and gives people more power over their own money. I think that’s going to be revolutionary in ways we haven’t truly discovered yet.” (26:41)

  • Summing up:

    “The combination of AI, crypto, biotech is going to change life as we know it in a good way… Don’t fear it. Yes, there’s going to be scary things… but ultimately these are all positive forces.” (27:09)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On daily progress:

  “Just move the needle every day.” (03:30, James Altucher)

• On choosing yourself vs. waiting for validation:

  “If I really wanted things to happen, I need to start choosing myself.” (04:58, James Altucher)

• On creativity and AI:

  “AI is not coming to take your job if you focus on the skills that have always created success—creativity and learning the tools to manifest it.” (06:42, James Altucher)

• On education:

  “I personally think they should just force all the colleges to shut down.” (21:50, James Altucher)

• On his favorite achievement:

  “That book [Choose Yourself] is the best thing I’ve ever done.” (23:31, James Altucher)

• On the future:

  “Every disease is going to be diagnosable by AI within seconds… Crypto removes intermediaries and gives people more power over their own money… AI, crypto, biotech—this is going to change life as we know it in a good way.” (25:46–27:09, James Altucher)

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Actionable Life Advice

The "10 Ideas a Day" Creativity Habit

“Take a small little notepad, have a cup of coffee, and write down 10 ideas. 10 has to be 10… They could be 10 bad ideas. Creativity is a muscle, and if you don’t exercise it, it atrophies… It’s just about exercising that muscle.” (28:35, James Altucher)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:30] – James's method for writing 20 books
• [04:58] – The “Choose Yourself” philosophy
• [06:42] – Optimism about AI, creativity as a job-saver
• [08:05] – Impact and economic opportunity of AI
• [15:48] – Early career stories, reinvention, and setbacks
• [19:19] – The absence of a “Plan B”
• [21:50] – Critique of higher education
• [23:31] – James’s proudest achievement: the impact of “Choose Yourself”
• [25:30] – Five-year predictions: AI, crypto, and biotech
• [28:35] – The “10 ideas a day” creativity exercise

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Conclusion

James Altucher offers a refreshingly upbeat and pragmatic look at choosing yourself, harnessing creativity, and thriving amid seismic technological change. His encouragement to be adaptable, cultivate ideas, and maintain optimism—especially in the face of fears about AI and economic shifts—makes this episode an inspiring resource for anyone seeking to reinvent themselves in the 21st century.

Transcript

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[Carol Markowitz]

Series you'll never want to leave.

Hi and welcome back to the Carol Marcos show on iHeartradio. My guest today is James Altucher. James is an entrepreneur, best selling author, natural chess master, and host of the James L. Toucher Show. He is currently also involved in two different companies. So nice to have you on James.

[James Altucher]

Carol, it's so great to be here. I know we've been, I feel like we've been planning to plan to talk for years and now we finally are.

[Carol Markowitz]

I love it. You know, it's so funny, you know, I got your bio sent over and it doesn't even mention you're the author of 20 books. How, where, how do you do this? How do you even find time for like life?

[James Altucher]

You know, I think if you, if every day you kind of move the needle forward and whatever it is you're passionate about, you're going to get a lot done over the years. Like, like take book writing for instance. A thousand words is, you know, a couple pages. Yeah. Maybe three pages. And if you write a thousand words a day, which is again, three pages maybe takes a couple hours a day. So you wake up an hour too early and you go to sleep instead of watching tv, you write for an hour, you're going to end up with 360,000 words by the end of the year, which is the equivalent of six books. So just take the best 60,000 words and now you have a book. And then over 20 years you're going to have more than 20 books. That's what's going on.

[Carol Markowitz]

You make it sound quite easy. I've written a book. It didn't go like that. It was great for me.

[Lear Capital Advertiser]

It was great.

[Carol Markowitz]

I was a bestseller. I can't complain. But I will never do it again. It was extremely difficult.

[James Altucher]

Ever since my very first book, which was in 2004, I have said every single time, I am never going to do this again. I am never going to write a book again. And then the next year I end up writing another book.

[Carol Markowitz]

What was your first book?

[James Altucher]

Well, it was a very financial oriented book called Trade Like a Hedge Fund. My first couple of books were very financial and then I started moving into more really kind of the sort of writing that I enjoyed reading and the kind of issues I wanted to talk about as opposed to just financial stuff, which I kind of find boring.

[Carol Markowitz]

So which one's your favorite of the 20?

[James Altucher]

I have a book called Choose Yourself. Which kind of was a philosophy that became very important to me when I realized, oh, I was always waiting for others to approve of me. Whether it was a boss or, or let's say a publisher, please pick me, or a TV producer or, or a girlfriend or whatever. Like I wanted everyone to choose me. And, and I finally realized, you know what, if I really wanted things to happen, I need to start choosing myself. Like, okay, instead of being just the best possible employee for a boss, maybe I should start a company. Or instead of waiting for a mainstream publisher, maybe I should self publish. Now, of my 20 books, maybe half are with mainstream publishers and half are self published. But by far the best selling ones are the self published ones. So choosing myself was financially successful for me and the same thing too. Like, oh, instead of waiting for this group of people to like me or, or this hire, this social hierarchy that I want to be a part of to approve of me, you know, always look for ways. Usually if I'm unhappy, I realize the roots of it are because I'm not quite choosing myself. I'm not quite confident enough that I could be, create or creative enough to choose myself. And that that's what that book is about. Starting from times when I went broke waiting for people to choose me. And you know, the only way to get out of it was to choose myself because I had no other opportunities.

[Carol Markowitz]

It sounds like a much better version of the let them, you know, Mel Robbins thing that's going on right now, which is like, don't wait for other people to, you know, pick you basically. But you sound like that book is about pick yourself first, which is, I think, an even better message.

[James Altucher]

Yeah, and it's really important, particularly now we're in this. Look, I wrote that book in 2013, but I can easily write a version of it now. Like, everybody's nervous because you have things like, oh, AI is going to take all our jobs. I won't take your job if you focus on the skills that have always created success, which is, you know, creativity and then learning all the tools that will make you help you make your creativity manifest. The same skills that worked in 1928 when silent movies went to talking movies. And it's the same thing now. Like, or in every generation, before and after. Like, AI is not coming to take your job. You're, if you're creative, you're going to succeed. And it doesn't mean creative like, oh, I'm going to be Picasso or the greatest artist of all time. It's easy to be in the top 1% of creativity, you know, just by focusing on a little bit each day as like we were describing earlier.

[Carol Markowitz]

So you're optimistic about AI?

[James Altucher]

Oh, very optimistic, yeah. I love AI.

[Carol Markowitz]

What, so what do you think is gonna, I mean, I'll, I'll ask you my, my prediction question down the road on this interview, but what do you think is, because a lot of people on the show that come on are very worried and they think that the economy is going to take a giant hit and not everybody is creative, not everybody is really smart. What happens to all those people? Why, why are you optimistic about it?

[James Altucher]

I'm optimist. First off, if it wasn't kind of a net positive for the economy and for individuals, it wouldn't be as popular as it is now. I mean, the fastest growing companies in the world now are the ones, you know, building AI tools for consumers to use. And consumers are using them. And by the way, when companies use them, companies get more profits. What do they do with their profits? They invest in new companies and new industries and new ideas and that creates new jobs. The unemployment rate, you know, despite the rise in AI over the past three years, the unemployment rate has got. There's more employed people than ever. People are, yes, we see in the headlines, oh, there's layoffs. But what we don't see is that there's tons of new businesses starting and again, the number of employed people has actually gone up since the rise in AI. I was just speaking at a conference to the movie industry where I feel like they're torn in the movie industry. Is this going to replace movie studios? Is this going to replace actors? Is this going to replace writers? And to some degree it will replace a lot of just, just like the Internet replaced a lot of industries and computers replace a lot of industries and cars replace the horse, you know, driving industry. AI is going to replace some industries. Yeah, but think of it as a tool. Think of it as a tool to be more creative and more productive. And you're going to, you know, you were always competing a little bit against other, you know, our colleagues and other people in the workforce. If you're the one using AI and master these skills, no matter what your age, you're going to do well. And, and by the way, it doesn't mean, you know, people at Polaroid Camera didn't suddenly get a, another, you know, didn't suddenly get a job at a digital camera company. Maybe they went off and did something completely new, something that they wanted to do, or, or maybe they retired, you know, they, they Set expectations differently, they downsize, they retired.

[Carol Markowitz]

But you know, Polaroid came back around. It became cool to be this older thing, you know, I also think there's some of that, like people are going to reject the just AI movies and go back to like, I don't know, I don't know about silent films, but back to kind of basics with movies. I think it could bring a renaissance.

[James Altucher]

Yeah. And also, by the way, there's, there's something called micro dramas where a lot of the videos you see on just, you know, scrolling Instagram or YouTube, you.

[Carol Markowitz]

See, I love the micro dramas.

[James Altucher]

Yeah, yeah, those are, a lot of those are produced. They're not like, I'm always wondering, are those real or not? But a lot of them aren't real. But we love watching them like, you know, the outrage ones like, oh, this woman won't sit next to somebody with a, on an airplane with a maga hat.

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[James Altucher]

Those are all produced videos.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah, they are. They completely are. We're going to take a quick break and be right back on the Carol Markowitz Show.

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[Carol Markowitz]

What was your, what did you want to be and how did you get here?

[James Altucher]

Well, I really wanted to be a writer. I wanted to write novels and. But I went to school for computer science, so I was a programmer. So. So, okay, I had some random jobs, but then my first real job and took me to the big city, New York City, was at hbo. I figured that's going to be my back doorway into the entertainment industry. So I was working in the IT department. My title was like junior programmer analyst. Nobody would talk to me. I could barely do the job well. But I figured, okay, this is my backdoor way into writing novels that will get published and being in the entertainment industry, which was sort of true because what happened was there was no Internet. There was no web. I mean, the web was just starting. So I convinced HBO to make a website and convinced them to let me, this lowly guy on the totem pole, to do their website. And from that I both built a business making websites for entertainment companies. But it also allowed me to be more creative. I created web shows for, for hbo, something they don't currently do. Actually now nobody knew what to do with the web. Now it's a big marketing slash e commerce environment. But hbo, I said, oh, let me do like creative web shows just like you do creative TV shows. And so I did that. And that way really was my first exposure to the writing and the entertainment industry. And even. And I wrote a whole bunch of unpublished, unpublished, but I should also say unpublishable novels and then ultimately built a business, sold it, had no idea what to do with money. So I went completely broke. Like, just like I went from like generational wealth to $143 in the bank because I didn't know anything about investing.

[Carol Markowitz]

Wow.

[James Altucher]

Myself investing to the point where then I was running a hedge fund.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah, I was gonna say I see you as a finance guy. And then like looking into your background, it turns out you're like this creative writer guy.

[James Altucher]

Yeah, like I wasn't a finance guy at all. But then I, I got interested in it and I got passionate about it and learned everything I could after I went broke and, and, and I wrote software to help me trade the markets. And this was early on when people were starting to do that kind of like quantitative trading. And I just, I just got immersed in that and that became, you know, writing about finance and then also managing money was an early part of my career after building websites and you know, and then I started writing books using my. I think when you, when you take the intersection of your interests and skills, that's a very powerful way to be number one. So there weren't that many.

[Carol Markowitz]

You happen to have the ones that like, you know, the, the tech and the finance and the ability to write like that's a very good intersection. Not everybody has that kind of intersection.

[James Altucher]

Right. So I could be like money is made like, like I could be a finance person who then programs my ideas to see if they work, but then write about them to communicate them to the world. So, so it was like, like I was like a one man band. You know, you see the guy, I love it, blowing the tuba but also playing the harpsichord or whatever. And I built a career doing that. But then I got interested in other things, like more and more things and combined these, these intersections in, in very interesting ways and, but I've always been able to. Only my weakness with that all is I could only do what I'm passionate about. Otherwise I'm just really bad at whatever it is I'm asked to do.

[Carol Markowitz]

What would have been a plan B, like had this not worked out, probably.

[James Altucher]

Suicide, like James, like. And I'm not encouraging that behavior from anyone but, but I don't know, I never really, like, I never had any plan B. When I applied to college, I only applied to one school. And I like looking back on it, I can't even imagine what I was thinking. I had zero plan B. And you know, I remember going broke and I was thinking to myself, well, should I get a job here? I had started a company, sold it and then I just was dead broke. I was losing my house. I was really depressed as my family had been. Generational wealth again. But nothing, you know, I was, had nothing and I was, I just, I couldn't get myself to like look for a job. I just had to start another business and I started many business. I had a policy of starting businesses and failing them very quickly so that I could, I don't waste time on any one business idea. And that process worked and. But then I went broke again. Like it was hard for me. There's three skills to money. There's, there's making it, keeping it, growing it. And I would Was. Would have a hard time keeping it, you know, for a very long time. For like a decade or more. I kept making it and then losing it. And, you know, it's all these skills are very difficult. Money is a very psychological thing.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right.

[James Altucher]

And it's hard to deal with all the issues around. Around money often.

[Lear Capital Advertiser]

Yeah.

[Carol Markowitz]

Did you grow up, like, middle class or.

[James Altucher]

Yeah, I would say, like, lower. Lower middle class. Like, middle class almost had a different definition when, when we were kids. Like, you could, you could actually be middle class and survive. Now I feel like middle class, you almost like, how would you survive in, in New York City as middle class now?

[Carol Markowitz]

You can't really. Yeah, it's impossible, actually.

[James Altucher]

Yeah.

[Carol Markowitz]

I don't know anywhere really. I think it's gotten so difficult to be middle class.

[James Altucher]

Yeah. Because you just look at your. Like, for instance, a lot of people send their kids to school. Well, the price of a college tuition has risen faster than inflation for 50 years in a row. So not even like, on average, but just every year. Inflation might be 3%, but tuitions are going to rise 7%. And that's happened every year for 50 years in a row. So now college is completely unaffordable to middle class unless you borrow enormous amounts of money.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah, yeah. And the colleges aren't even doing that great. There was like, this piece in the Wall Street Journal about University of Chicago is like, not broke, but they're, they're definitely scrambling around for money. And it's like, how do you guys not have money?

[Lear Capital Advertiser]

It's just.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah, the whole system makes no sense.

[James Altucher]

It makes no sense. I personally think they should just force all the colleges to shut down.

[Carol Markowitz]

Like, do you tell your kids, I don't know, how old are your kids? Do you tell them not to go to college?

[James Altucher]

I did tell them not to go to college and they didn't listen to me. And then one did leave college after two years and the other graduated in three years. So they both ultimately kind of paid attention to me, but I begged them not to go. Of course, I'm not gonna, like, deny them going because, you know, you can't argue with. I'm. I'm a dad. I have two daughters. I can't argue with. With my daughters.

[Odoo Advertiser]

Right.

[James Altucher]

But, you know, but now they agree with me. But I think, I think now also it's. It's a legitimate conversation now. It wasn't a legitimate conversation 20 years ago. It's a legitimate conversation now. Hey, are there alternatives? Maybe I can start a business. Maybe I can learn from AI or the Khan Academy or these other online places and get a Google certificate for it or whatever.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right.

[James Altucher]

So I think there's much better choices now than college.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah. I see college as just for socializing and I realize I'm going to have to pay a lot for my kids to go socialize, but I see it as maybe somewhere where you might meet your future spouse or where you make lifelong friends or professional connections. But I don't see it at all as somewhere that you get an education.

[James Altucher]

Can you remember anything you Learned in college?

[Carol Markowitz]

0. I remember the things I lied about. Like, I found a paper that I wrote and I remember writing this paper about how like the family is an outdated concept and I was a lifelong conservative. I never believed the family was an outdated concept, but I had to say it in college in order to get the A. So that's what I have to be.

[James Altucher]

Like a, like a socialist to survive grades in college.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah, exactly. What do you most proud of in your life?

[James Altucher]

Probably this book that I mentioned earlier. Choose Yourself Only because. So like I might even like even to this day and age. Like I was in an airport the other day and someone came up to me and said, I read your book. It changed my life. Thank you so much. And when you get that kind of feedback, it feels really good. And, and I get that all the time from, you know, from, from, from many of my books, but that one is the most. And, and I. And it was something, a philosophy. I really believed in that, that works for me to this day. Like whenever I find myself in a rut or going down some path that's making me unhappy, it's usually because some aspect of a, of some. I'm not really following my own advice from that book. Usually even now, when, when, when I find myself unhappy. So getting back into the advice, it always makes me my life better. And again, I see that with other people too. So I think that that book is the best thing I've ever done. Also, I mentioned HBO earlier. There was a project I proposed to them then. It was called 3am and it was a web show on the website. This is in the mid-90s where I would go out in New York City at three in the morning on a Wednesday night, which is sort of an odd night to be out 3 in the morning. And I would interview random people. And I did this for like two and a half years. And I think that was the funnest thing I've ever done.

[Carol Markowitz]

Wednesday nights in New York City were actually the best night because it was the locals Night it wasn't, you know, nobody coming in from anywhere to go out. It was very, very fun. I, and whenever I had off from school on Thursday, I would, Wednesday would be the best night to go out.

[James Altucher]

Yeah. If you, if you were out on a Wednesday night, you were up to something and then like on a Saturday night, okay, everyone's out, whatever, crowded.

[Carol Markowitz]

But if parents are out on Saturday, you know.

[James Altucher]

Yeah, like, but Wednesday night, that was like, you're not a civilian anymore. Like you're, you're, you're doing something.

[Carol Markowitz]

Absolutely.

[Lear Capital Advertiser]

Yeah.

[Carol Markowitz]

So give us a five year out prediction. It could be about the country, the world, music, art, whatever you want.

[James Altucher]

Well, you know, I'm very, I am very optimistic about AI and I do think what's going to happen is all of our lives are going to change. Like, let's just take the most obvious. Medically, every disease is going to be diagnosable by AI.

[Lear Capital Advertiser]

Wow.

[James Altucher]

Within seconds already the AI is there. But of course there's a lot of regulatory hurdles that medical devices have to get through. But, but I see it through my own investing and my own research into AI. But even furthermore, like AI is changing every job. AI is going to create a lot more jobs, brand new industries we can't even think of. Just like when the Internet was started, nobody could have dreamed of Uber or companies like that. There's going to be things we can't even dream of that AI is going to supply. And I'm optimistic also about crypto. Not in this kind of like scammy, you know, make a gazillion dollars buying this weird crypto, but more like the financial system, like every industry needs to evolve and it hasn't really evolved that much in the past 100 years. Like, you know, when you put money in a bank, they're just killing you on transaction fees.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah.

[James Altucher]

And they take your money and give you almost no interest and they lend it out at 6,7% interest to people who want to buy houses. Like, why are banks in the way of everything we would want to do with our money? Crypto sort of removes these intermediaries and gives people more power over their own money. And I think, I think that's going to be very revolutionary in ways that we haven't, we haven't truly discovered yet. So the combinations of AI, crypto, biotech, this is going to change life as we know it in a good way. And I would encourage people to embrace that because, like, don't fear it. Yes, there's going to be scary things. Just, just like the Internet has some scary things, just like nuclear energy has scary things, just like, like there are a million car accidents a year. So cars aren't always great, but ultimately these are all positive forces.

[Lear Capital Advertiser]

I love it.

[Carol Markowitz]

I love your optimism. I really don't feel like I hear enough optimism about AI. I'm kind of neutral on it. I'm like, wait and see, you know? But I hear so much doom that I. It's very rare for me to hear a very, very positive perspective like yours.

[James Altucher]

Some things AI is not going to be able to do. I mean, people think AI is going to be able to do everything, but, you know, AI is just a gigantic way of doing very sophisticated data analysis. And we've never had this before, and we've never had this kind of opportunity in front of us. Yeah, it's very exciting because there is a lot of data out there, like, for instance, data about medical diseases, data about, you know, I don't know, any kind of analysis, any kind of analysis that you would want to do. AI is going to be a great tool to do that.

[Carol Markowitz]

I love it. I can't wait to see where this goes. James, I have been a fan of yours for so long. I have loved this conversation. I just. I find you so super interesting. I can keep this going forever. Leave us here with your best tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives every day.

[James Altucher]

Take a small little book. Okay, it could be a small little notepad. Here's my small little notepad. Fits in your pocket and have a cup of coffee and write down 10 ideas. 10. 10 has to be 10.

[Prolon Advertiser]

10'S a lot.

[James Altucher]

It is a lot. And the thing is, they could be 10 bad ideas. The whole idea is that creativity is a muscle. And like any muscle, if you don't exercise it, it atrophies. And it atrophies very quickly like any muscle. And so write 10 bad ideas a day down. By the way, around Idea, the reason 10 is important is around 7. This happens to me every day. I always think I'm done and I count and it's just seven. And it's the final three. It's where you start sweating.

[Lear Capital Advertiser]

Right.

[Carol Markowitz]

And those are the hardest ones.

[James Altucher]

Yeah, yeah. You could feel your brain sweating. And so, you know, maybe it's 10 ideas for chapters in a book you'd write or 10 ideas for books you'd want to write. Or maybe I write down 10 ideas for the Carol Markowicz show or 10 ideas at Amazon. How Amazon can improve just could be about anything. And it's the whole idea is though, it just exercises that creativity muscle again you could buy, right? Just nothing but bad ideas. Doesn't matter. It's just about exercising that muscle.

[Carol Markowitz]

I love that. I'm going to try it. I'm going to let you know how it goes. I don't know, 10 might be hard, but I feel like I'm going to give this my best shot. He is James L. Toucher the thank you so much James for coming on. Check out his James L. Toucher show. Thank you.

[James Altucher]

Thank you Carol.

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