Skip the Line summary

In the 1960s, Dick Fosbury was a mediocre high jumper.

This was mostly because the accepted technique for high jumping – the upright scissors technique – just didn’t work for him. It involved running toward the bar, jumping forward and swinging your lead leg up straight, then lifting your other leg to clear the bar. But Fosbury just couldn’t do it; his legs were so long that he’d always clip the bar. 

Have you ever wondered how some people get good at things so quickly?

Consider Pelé, the Brazilian soccer superstar. He didn’t start playing seriously until he was 15, when he joined Santos FC. By that age, many professionals already have a decade of experience – and 10,000 hours of practice – under their belts. 

In 2002, Altucher was in the depths of depression.

After a stint as a day trader – which eventually left him bankrupt – he was broke . . . again. He was losing his home and had two kids to feed. He needed to figure a way out of this mess.

Ever had a day where you feel like an unlimited fountain of thoughts and ideas? Altucher has experienced this a lot – but it hasn’t always been a good thing.

Sometimes, after madly conjuring up ideas all day, he’d have nothing tangible to show for it. He’d wonder, Why didn’t I do anything? He simply couldn’t decide which ideas or activities to pursue. With too much wide-open space, and no plan, he wasn’t able to move forward.

Matt Berry was a Hollywood screenwriter. While that may sound like a dream job, he was sick of it. So he quit – and the choice nearly cost him everything. 

He got divorced and started blogging to earn a measly income. It wasn’t exactly a run-of-the-mill blog, however. It was about fantasy sports – a niche interest he’d had since childhood.

When Jeff Bezos first launched Amazon, he primarily sold books. After that, he sold clothes, then electronics, then food. Then he started selling his logistics and shipping infrastructure and created the Amazon Sellers program. 

He didn’t stop there, however. Bezos went on to create Amazon Web Services, which allows anyone to rent space and develop within Amazon’s cloud infrastructure. 

When Altucher was 26 years old, he already felt like a total failure. His dream was to become a famous writer. But he temporarily gave that up because he was scared no one would like his work.

Instead, he took a job at HBO as a software developer. The first few months were tough. He kept screwing up, so he had to go to remedial computer classes – even though he’d studied computer science at grad school.