Recently I’ve come across a saying: “Read biographies of famous people and you’ll stop wanting to be famous”
It somewhat reminds me of a striking stats in “The psychology of money” by Morgan Housel: There are 13 divorces among the 10 richest men in the world.
And it makes me think about the price of being successful and famous in this modern world.
I remember in a podcast episode between Tim Ferriss and Morgan Housel, Tim shared a very interesting anecdote about Warren Buffett – probably the best investor in the world, not only contemporarily, but of all time. The story is that Warren is so scheduled and obsessed with his routine of going to office, then going home and immediately getting into his home office in the second floor. So one day when he got home, his son played on the stair and had an accident of falling down to the bottom. And what Warren did was that he stepped over his son to keep going to his office, without stopping and checking if his son was ok.
Now, without any judgemental comment on the morals of the story, I guess we can see how obsessive Warren is with his work. And that I believe is true. In this modern world, we’ve heard again and again the message that if you want success you have to “Give it everything you got”, or “You can sleep when you’re dead”.
However, with that focus and dedication, there seems to be nothing left for all other aspects of life, including health, family, surrounding community, and possibly spirituality – the things we often care no less than our career success.
So, just like Alain de Botton once said: “A success in 1 field can be also a failure in another aspect of life”, I guess it would be better if we can keep in mind the true price of success.
Because it might be the only way we can stay calm and in control, in this fast-paced world.
And if you're still not convinced, Tim Ferriss himself has an excellent blog post about being famous:
https://tim.blog/2020/02/02/reasons-to-not-become-famous/
A Dreamer