The most ridiculous question of all-time

Want to hear the most ridiculous question of all-time?

Before I tell you, it’s my duty to warn you that you’ve probably heard it so many times that it seems perfectly normal. But it’s not.

It’s been asked by your local motivational speaker, countless youtube videos, and you definitely saw it plastered on the wall of your second grade classroom.

All telltales signs it has become trite.

Any idea what it could be?

Photo by Xan Griffin on Unsplash

Alright, here it is - What would you do if you knew you wouldn’t fail?

*sigh*

“What’s wrong with it?”, you ask.

It’s useless.

It’s like asking - What would you buy if you had all the money in the world?

Well, that’s easy, I’d buy everything.

I don’t know about you, but there’s countless things I would like to do if I knew I wouldn’t fail:

• Go to Mars

• Learn to code

• Play professional basketball

• Start a trillion dollar business

• Become besties with Tim Ferriss (a boy can dream)

But do I really want to put in the effort required or does it just sound nice?

Maybe I’m being too harsh by labeling the question in such a way.

You know what, the most ridiculous question of all-time is well-meaning. I’ll give it that. The issue is it fails to lead to anything useful.

At first glance, we may think it opens up a world of possibilities, but all it does is leave us feeling confused.

It offers no constraints. And constraints are like rocket fuel for the mind.

To make the money question more useful we could ask - What would you buy if you knew you had to keep it for ten years?

Now we’re able to provide useful responses. Because there’s a constraint.

Addition by subtraction

So, let’s tranform the question from ridiculous to world-class. All we’re gonna do is remove two letters and an apostrophe.

This new version will get the wheels of the mind turning in the right direction.

Can you already guess what it’s gonna be?

For my fellow slow thinkers, I’ll save you the mental hassle.

What would you do if you knew you would fail?

Now, you might think this version sounds MORE ridiculous than the original. And who am I to tell you you’re wrong? But stick with me.

The constraints contained in the new question provide immediate clarity.

It forces the mind to be ruthless about what’s worth doing. By removing the would-be-nice-to-do’s. And revealing the must-do’s.

How so?

It recognizes the fact that failure is a part of the process of doing anything meaningful (especially in the beginning). It also gives us the freedom without worry of failure to try, test, and tinker with stuff. But above all, it forces us to select the handful of things that are MOST important to us.

What is important enough for you to try even knowing you may fail miserably?

That list is likely much shorter than the one I came up with, which is a good thing. Once you have it, it’s imperative that you start. Now.

For me, the list shrunk all the way down to one thing.

Writing.

Before I started publicly sharing my writing last year, I asked myself, “Would writing still be worth doing even if I sucked, or worse, nobody ever read it to tell me it sucked?”

I believed it would.

So I started with zero guarantee of success (the jury’s still out). At first I heard nothing but crickets. Then a few people asked me what the hell I was doing? But to my surprise, I started to get some positive feedback from friends.

None of it mattered. Whether the feedback was good, bad, or indifferent I just wanted to keep writing.

That’s when you know you’ve found your thing. When you do it even while being ridiculed by the outside world or worse, ignored.

The funny thing is that if you can get over that initial hump of sucking, do it consistently for ten years, you’re practically guaranteed to succeed.

But success isn’t the point.

The point is that the thing you have chosen to do is so meaningful to you that you would do it even if you were the last person on Earth.

Yeah, I’d still write even if all of you died.

That’s what we want to find.

Two legends

I’ll send you off with an example to drive it home.

I watched a couple of (long) documentaries detailing the lives of the two greatest American authors who ever lived - Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway.

I’m a fiction noob so I figured both these guys just popped out of the womb writing bestsellers. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

I discovered that they started writing at a young age because they felt compelled to do so. But to little fanfare.

Back then, they couldn’t just publish their writing online like I do today without permission. Their writing had to receive a stamp of approval from a publisher, editor, newspaper, etc. They each received dozens of rejection letters when first starting out.

They had failed.

Did that stop them?

(Spoiler for my fellow fiction noobs)

It did not.

They wanted to be writers worse than it hurt to be rejected. So they kept on writing until their first pieces received outside approval. The rest was history. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

But that’s not the point.

I will never know the inner workings of these two great literary minds, but I suspect I know something about both of them that the outside world does not.

I have a hunch that Mr. Twain and Mr. Hemingway would have continued to write for a lifetime even if they never became legendary figures.

It’s simple. They loved writing. So they wrote.

Of course they both basked in the glory that eventually came their way, but that wasn’t why they started. They started because it was more important to write and fail than to never write and not know what was possible.

Take this question with you and stick it in your back pocket before you leave - What would you do if you knew you would fail?

Sit with it.

Let it seep into the neglected parts of your mind.

A voice deep within you knows the answer.

Let that voice speak up.

---

Remember to smash that like button and share your insightful comments below.

---