Recently by James Altucher: Abolish the Presidency. It's a Useless Job.
I was the dumbest person in my graduate school program which is part of the reason I was thrown out. Stupidity plus immaturity and a willingness to show off both qualities is a bad combination. I thought I was a cowboy. I would show up to final exams having not attended a single class, totally smashed from the night before and not having slept. I had semesters where I failed every single class that semester.
I did everything you could possibly do to piss off as many people as possible in as short amount of time as possible and eventually I got thrown out. Well, I got “asked” to leave. I’m not defending myself. I took bad advantage of a great situation I was in. They paid me a stipend and I used it to do whatever I wanted to do.
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Later, when I had to move to the corporate world, I was the stupidest person there as well. Probably because I failed to learn anything in graduate school. I got the job for various reasons that had nothing to do with my abilities and so they didn’t know what to do with me. I was so impressed with everyone running around, knowing what to do, knowing how to survive in the big city. I thought to myself, “these are the real people and I’m faking it.”
On my second day they gave me a computer to put on the Internet. They said, “you know something about that internet stuff. Get this thing on the internet. But be careful, we keep some email servers on this.” I destroyed that computer so badly it had to be sent back to the manufacturer (Silicon Graphics) and it never came back. I was wearing a suit that didn’t fit me. I never wore suits. It was sunny out. I went outside to use the payphone. No sense making a call like this from my cubicle. I called my girlfriend in Pittsburgh and told her I was about to be fired. She was pretty happy about that. She wanted me back. Which, unfortunately, was my worst nightmare.
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Jolie Hunt at Reuters invited me to a dinner a few months ago. I was definitely 100 IQ points lower than anyone there. Tina Brown was sitting next to me. Shawkut Azziz, the former prime minister of Pakistan was across from me. Padma Lakshmi was next to him. I don’t even know why I was invited. I concluded during the dinner that I must’ve done a favor at some point for Jolie but I couldn’t remember what it was. The list goes on of the people at this dinner. Everyone had something to say. One of my favorite authors, Ken Auletta, was drilling the former prime minister about how much Pakistan knew about Osama Bin Laden’s whereabouts. I was deathly afraid someone would look at me and say, “well, what do you think about all of this? What do you have to say for yourself?”
But after 40 years of being the least smart person in most situations that I’ve been put in I’ve finally figured out how to be the smartest person on the planet.
The KEY: ALWAYS assume you are the least intelligent person in the room. Always.
Do this in every room, at every dinner, in every situation.
Several things will happen:
