How I’m using Eight Vacation Days to Choose Myself

In the book Choose Yourself, James Altucher makes the argument that the technology available today makes it so we do not have to wait until someone chooses us for us to do what we want. If you want a radio show, start a podcast. If you want to make a documentary, film it on your smartphone and put it on YouTube.

He also makes a more global appeal for you to not wait for other people to deem you ready. You can decide that yourself.

I’ve done a lot of things to put off choosing myself. I’ve applied for programs and other things so that other people can choose me. I’ve looked to others to validate the worthiness of me going in a different direction. None of it leading to much success.

I want to do something different. I want to fight for myself.

This summer, I’m going to take every Friday off from work and will work on to developing a product or service that solves a problem in the world. I’m going to bring in my friends and colleagues who have shown interest or capacity in the areas I’m working on. By the end of the summer, I intend on having a prototype that I have tested in the wild.

I’ll be using a design thinking structure to plan those eight weeks. It will be fun and hard and scary and I’m so excited.