But Mr. Altucher seems like an unlikely person to look to for solace. Bookish, contrarian and given to speaking in staccato bursts, this skinny computer geek from North Brunswick, N.J., is like the anti-Anthony Robbins, the strapping self-help star.

His regular-guy appearance turned out to be a plus, as he developed a following blogging about his win-some-lose-some “life hacker” experiments.

There was “the 5 p.m. diet,” in which he eats nothing after that time (“Your face gets more angular. I’ve seen it happen. Not just with me. With everyone on this pseudo-Paleo diet”). There was “the alien trick” to beat anxiety, in which he pretends to be an alien and wake up every day on another planet with a new body (“I have no worries because tomorrow I will be in a new body. No envies. No worries. Only new things to explore”). There was his zombie email gimmick, when he would respond to unread emails from seven years ago: “Sure! I’ll have coffee today” (“People laugh and all is forgiven,” he said).

By writing candidly about his own triumphs and flameouts, Mr. Altucher “shows readers how they can succeed despite their flaws, not because of a lack of flaws,” said Tim Ferriss, author of the best-selling “4-Hour” self-improvement series. “This is hugely refreshing in a world of rah-rah positive-thinking gurus who are all forced smiles and high-fives.”

It helped that Mr. Altucher, despite his biting views on topics like college, maintained a positive tone. “I am an optimist,” he said. “There’s a great novel from the ‘60s by Richard Fariña called ‘Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me.’ Basically, I’ve been down on the floor so many times, I know now that I can always bounce back, and it gets faster each time.”

His philosophy is perhaps most clearly articulated in “Choose Yourself,” which he summarized over lunch like this: “If you don’t choose the life you want to live, chances are, someone else is going to choose it for you. And the results are probably not going to be pretty.”