A) WAITER’S PAD HACK

There are two uses:

BUSINESS MEETING:

Everyone pulls out their fascist Moleskine notebooks and you pull out your waiter’s pad.

First thing that happens is that the alpha male in the room says “I’ll take fries with that
burger”.

This bad joke happens 100% of the time. Homework assignment: come up with the best
joke in response.

Second thing happens: “Why do you have a waiter’s pad?”

Answer:

1. It’s easy to write notes.

2. Easy to keep track of the names around the table (since at the top of a check are
tables which you can write names to remember).
3. They are cheap. 10 cents a pad with the right supplier.
This makes you the center of attention at the meeting. It says you are serious about taking
notes.

And most important, it shows you are frugal and will care about not wasting people’s
money.

A waiter’s pad is MONEY IN THE BANK.

Second use:

RESTAURANT:

When I sit down, I simply pull out a waiter’s pad and put it next to me on the table.

Now the waiters think I’m in “the biz” and I never have any problems with service.

This is not even a one minute hack. It’s a ten second hack.
B) LIE DETECTION HACK

If someone does not answer your question, they are lying.

Example: “Hi honey, where’d you go last night?”

Your honey: “I was out with friends.”

Notice: He or she did not answer the question. Which means somewhere in there is a lie.

Example: “Are all expenses included in this estimate?”

Answer: “Sure, unless we see something unusual.”

Did not answer the question. So you will be paying more.

This technique always works. Great for people who are paranoid (like me).

C) LIE DETECTION HACK #2

You’re sitting and one person has a rolling chair. You ask a bunch of easy questions. They
answer and sit still.

Now you ask harder questions. Like, “Hey, where were you that night?”

“I was at home” And they start to roll away on the chair.

Lying.

This works for anything with these two conditions:

1. It’s easy for them to move

2. You can ask easy to answer questions to start to establish them as sitting still
when truthful.
This is a very common interrogation technique.

Both of these were told to me by a former DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) interrogator
who now runs his own private intelligence agency.

D) NETWORKING HACK

Even if you don’t smoke, always carry around a pack of cigarettes.

Situations where this works:

1. Smoking break. Someone you want to network is at a restaurant and takes a

smoking break. You can follow them outside and start conversation.
2. The back-technique. You leave your cigarettes behind right before someone you
want to network with is sitting down (at a restaurant, club, meeting, etc). You go
back, “Ugh, left my cigarettes here.” And you start to talk.
Believe it or not, everyone in the CIA carries cigarettes around all the time for this reason.

This was told to me by a former “black ops” soldier who wouldn’t tell me “yes” or “no” when I
asked him if he was still in the CIA.

E) INTERVIEW / SPEAKING HACK

You start off saying, “I’m sure the others you’ve interviewed have all been great and
qualified.” Or.. (for speaking), “Let’s give a hand for all the others before me.”

THIS IS AN IMPORTANT COGNITIVE BIAS:

This is called “Choice Ambiguity Bias”.

When you say the word “other”, then the audience lumps everyone into one aggregated
being.

Or your potential boss lumps everyone into one aggregated (and forgettable) person they
interviewed.

They literally won’t be able to remember anything about the others before you and you will
stand out.

Related to this is Recency Bias. Try to be the last person interviewed or the last person to
speak on the agenda. The “recent” is always the most remembered and if you combine this
with Choice Ambiguity Bias, you will create the most memorable impression by far.

All of this was told me by a professor of cognitive biases when I needed help winning a
contest of public speaking.

F) WRITING HACK

What’s great about this hack is that even if you know the rule, it still works:

After you write ANYTHING: take out the first paragraph and the last paragraph and it will
99% of the time be better written. I did it with this answer, for instance.

G) EMAIL HACK

I do this every day.

I go back 7–10 years in my email history (I store everything).

There’s many emails I haven’t responded to. In my inbox (not my spam box), I have
271,109 unread emails at this moment.

I go back to an email I didn’t respond to and I respond as if the email was sent to me five
seconds ago.

Like: “Sure, I’ll meet for coffee on Tuesday!”

This almost always results in a new connection/ fun meeting / whatever. Note: most jobs.

One time I did this when someone in 2004 sent me an email saying, “Hey, James, I bought
you “jamesaltucher.com” for your birthday.”

I finally wrote him in 2010. We’re good friends now AND I own “jamesaltucher.com”.

The longest email response delay I did was 12 years.

H) THE ONE SECOND HAPPINESS HACK

Happiness = Reality / Expectations.

You can’t change your reality quickly. But you can change your expectations in a second.

When my wife left me, I couldn’t change the reality. I couldn’t make her stay.

I was sad, scared,miserable, depressed.

But I could change expectations. I could say, “perhaps this is for the best” and figure out the
reasons why and have hope for the future.

I’m not saying it’s easy to do that in a second. But it’s possible. And that changes
immediately how happy you can be.

We are all dealt a new hand of cards every few seconds. You play the hand you are dealt
instead of whining about it. That’s how to win.

My therapist once told me this. She’s the best.

I) THE 5/25 RULE

This is from Warren Buffett.

He told me this when we were jet-skiing in Hawaii.

He said, “Take your top 25 things you want to do in life.”

Then, “Put the first five to your left and the next 20 to your right.”

“NEVER NEVER NEVER look at the bottom 20 again.”

Why?

Because the bottom 20 are all things you want to do. So they will distract you from the five
things you want to do the MOST.

By the way, I was kidding about the jet skiing. That is clearly in his 6–10 and not in his top 5.
And it’s not in my top 1000.
J) THE LOVABLE RULE

There’s a saying that’s now cliché: “You are the average of the five people around you.”

Fair enough.

Harold Ramis also says, “Stand next to the smartest person in the room.” So he stood next
to Bill Murray and made Caddyshack, Stripes, Ghostbusters, and Groundhog Day.

(sitting next to the smartest person in the room)

Again, fair enough.

But not enough.

BE THE PERSON that people want to stand next to.

Everyone is looking for their five. Everyone is looking for the person to stand next to.

Seth Godin once asked me, “What books do people buy?”

I didn’t know.

He said, “They buy the books that are already on the bestseller table.”

Be the sort of person who is on the bestseller table.

Again. while kite-surfing in the Mediterranean, I asked Warren Buffett, “how do you define
success?” And he said, “By how many people love you.”

And then he said, before I could ask, “You get people to love you by being lovable.”

K) THE ADVICE HACK

This hack has helped me so much I’m almost afraid to share it.

Let’s say you want something (call it “X”) from a person (call the person “Y”).

Ask Y for advice on how to get X.

For instance, let’s say you get a job offer and you are negotiating a salary. Your new boss
asks how much you want to get (he’s trying to get you to put a price first).

Now use the “advice hack”.

You say, “Listen, I’m good at what I do, which is why you are hiring me. But you are the pro
at managing and negotiating. If you were me how would you negotiate here?”

You can even throw in an “Anchor Bias” by saying, “If you were me, how would you
negotiate here, given that I’ve heard (say very high number) is a reasonable number.”

You’ve just done several things:

a) reaffirmed their status above you (everyone likes that)

b) anchored them on a high number (you won’t get it but the number you get is now going to
play off a high “anchor”).

c) asked them to guide you specifically on how to get what you want. Since they are giving
the advice, they won't deny you once you follow it.

I’ve used this when negotiating with customers, investors, bosses, publishers, even getting
podcast guests.

And if I get rejected for something important to me, I use this hack (“What advice would you
give me if I wanted to pitch again to someone like you.”).

I’ve been using this technique for 25 years.

L) LEAVE THE SMARTPHONE AT HOME

Yuval Harari (author of “Sapiens”) told me he didn’t have a smart phone. I drilled him on this
and then I’ve been trying it myself ever since.

The average person touches their smart phone 2600 times a day!

The average person is using their smart phone for 4 hours and 40 minutes a day!
People think it might help with productivity but it doesn’t. Most of the time we’re checking
mindless social media, liking Instagram photos, reading useless news, playing games, etc.

I take a book with me when I go out. So I’m now reading and thinking a lot more.

And when I get home I catch up on my emails and social media messages: since I’m
focused on it at that point it takes me just a few minutes instead of spreading it out
throughout the day.

I probably save two or three hours a day with this one hack. And I read a lot more and enjoy
my downtime more (no pressures to respond to messages all day long).

I have more.

Let me ask you for advice!

I want to build up my Instagram presence. Should I post one hack a day on Instagram? I
hope you can follow me there because I post lots of hacks there.

M) “BECAUSE” HACK

This is incredibly useful.

There’s a study that showed that if you say:

“You should pay me more because I will work harder” you are more likely to get a raise than
if you just say “You should pay me more.”

BUT EVEN MORE INTERESTING….

is that people don’t even care what you say after the word “because”. This is the “because
placebo”.

If you just say “You should pay me more because you should pay me more” then the results
were EXACTLY the same as when you gave a valid reason and still handily beat out the
line “You should pay me more”.

So always use “because” when you are asking for something and you don’t have to have
anything after the “because”.
I don’t consider these “life hacks”.

I do these things every day. And I am constantly studying more ways to improve my life.

I love writing. I love doing standup comedy. I love succeeding at business and helping
people.

I use these tools and many more so I can have more time and opportunities to focus on the
things I love.

When I focus on the things I love, I can say I have FREEDOM. The more time per day I am
making decisions based on my loves, the more freedom I have.

These “one minute hacks” give me freedom.

Because.