“When you think of the word ‘successful,’ who’s the first person who comes to mind and why?”
Tim Ferriss asks this question to guests on his podcast and he’s highlighted some of the best responses in his book, Tools of Titans. My favorite was from Derek Sivers:
The first answer to any question isn’t much fun because it’s just automatic. What’s the first painting that comes to mind? Mona Lisa. Name a genius. Einstein. Who’s a composer? Mozart.
Referencing Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast & Slow, Sivers highlights the significant differences between instant, unconscious, automatic thinking and slower, conscious, deliberate thinking. So, he proposes an alternate question: “When you think of the word “successful,” who’s the third person that comes to mind? Why are they actually more successful than the first person that came to mind?”
After going through two instinctual, automatic responses (Richard Branson, Tim Ferriss), he comes to an interesting conclusion:
My third and real answer, after thinking it through, is that we can’t know without knowing a person’s aims. What if Richard Branson set out to live a quiet life, but like a compulsive gambler, he just can’t stop creating companies? Then that changes everything, and we can’t call him successful anymore.
What about you? Who comes to mind when you hear the word “successful”… if you think about it slowly?
Insight inspired by: Tim Ferriss and Derek Sivers, via their conversation in Tools of Titans.