If you had to choose, would you rather be rich or famous?
You say you want diamonds and rings of gold.
You say you want your story to remain untold.
I say make your bloody mind up!
Self-help books often suggest we work backwards from the end and think about the inscription we’d like on our tombstone. What do we want people to say about us in our eulogy? How do we want to be remembered?
These are hard questions that force us to look beyond our immediate skill set, job and status to our underlying values, relationships, and impact on others. While this approach is an improvement, it’s not a complete answer, because it’s still relying on an external perspective. What do other people think of us?
We conflate achievement and notoriety but they are not synonymous.
I like to ask, if you had to choose, which would you rather be?
It seems like an easy choice to me. I often quote comedian Bill Murray’s advice: “I always want to say to people who want to be rich and famous: try being rich first.”1 But data quoted in Scientific American would suggest many people prefer recognition:2
In 2012, a study found that a desire for fame solely for the sake of being famous was the most popular future goal among a group of 10–12 year olds, overshadowing hopes for financial success, achievement, and a sense of community.
Those pre-teens are all adults now.
I suspect many of them mistakenly assume that “famous” is a stepping stone, underestimating how difficult it is to go from “poor and famous” to “rich and famous”. There are very few examples of people who have made that transition. On the other hand, going from “rich but unknown” to “rich and famous” is much easier, if famous is the ultimate goal. The downsides of being “famous but poor” are not often discussed.3 Likewise, the benefits of being “rich but unknown” are massively under-reported. By definition, I suppose. But also because social media amplifies noise just as effectively as it does signal.
Maybe we need to be more specific when we describe these two options.
What role does the audience play? Is it enough to do something great if nobody else notices?
Ultimately we can’t control what other people think or say or feel. So if we rely on that as our definition of success the outcomes are going to be more chaotic. The bigger the group of people whose opinions matter to us the harder it gets. It seems better to shrink that number as much as possible.
This becomes critical when we consider how we cope with failure. Most people are only really scared of other people knowing about their failures. As a result too many of us go to great lengths to pretend we’re constantly smashing it.
It’s very easy to say we shouldn’t worry at all about what others think, and at the same time more or less impossible to actually not worry about what others think. Of course we care. It is one of the most human things we do.4
If we can’t reconcile our own assessment of ourselves, there isn’t enough external praise that can compensate for that. On the other hand, the Pixar movie Coco has some interesting lessons about legacy. This review from Letterboxd sums it up well: 5
A story about death, murder, loss, grief, ageing, dementia, living skeletons, and deadbeat dads. Y’know, a kids movie.
My theory for a long time was that the opposite of “famous” is something like “blissfully anonymous”. But it’s a small nudge from anonymous to generally unrecognised, overlooked, and (in the Coco sense) forgotten. It’s a joy to be hidden, but a disaster not to be found.
I’ve wrestled with this for years and remain conflicted. Recognition can be lovely, of course, but I’ve found it’s mostly a distraction. For me, knowing that something wouldn’t have happened without me is far more satisfying. I like to think of it as leaving the credit to be claimed by those who believe it’s important. In reality, achievement and recognition are self-reinforcing, and neither is entirely discretionary. However, unpicking these elements does help us tease out our priorities.
Of course, there are different ways to define a “rich” life. We usually assume it’s monetary. But it doesn’t have to be. If you have an aspiration which doesn’t require money to unlock it, then run with that. Founders often say they want to make the world a better place and make a difference. That’s fine. The logic works either way. Not having to worry about money is great. It leaves much more time to worry about everything else. However, more money by itself doesn’t make anybody a better person. I’ve found it just makes people more of what they already were before – both positive traits and negative traits are amplified. No doubt the same is true of me.
I’ve also learned that removing cash as the constraint just highlights that the thing that’s universally scarce is time. Having a big net worth might mean you can do anything. But you still can’t do everything. There is still only space for one unbounded commitment.
The other problem is that we all quickly normalise our achievements, however big or small they are. Happiness has a half-life. There is nothing so amazing that we can’t get used to it.6 We quickly refocus on the next level up.
We are all victims of our own definition of success. If we can honestly define what’s really important to us, then not only are we more likely to actually get it, but also much more likely to be satisfied when we do.7
There is always another level.
There is an alternative to chasing recognition: be so good you can’t be ignored.8 Build a great business from a solid foundation. If you do that and still want to be famous afterwards, it will be much easier then.
Be honest about the lessons you’ve learned so far. Choose to work with people who can teach you and lift you up rather than people who expect you to already have all of the answers. Be authentic. Don’t worry too much about fitting in – the goal is not to be the same as most people. The average is average.
Be envious rather than jealous.9 But be careful: try not to compare how you feel on the inside with the misleading representation of how others look on the outside. Always remember many of them are faking it.
Be proud, if you do eventually achieve your goals, but stay humble even then. It’s very unlikely that you achieved anything entirely on your own, so try not to get too distracted by how much credit or recognition you personally get. On the other hand, be liberal with the credit and recognition that you give to everybody who helped along the way.
Don’t pretend to be something you’re not. That only unnecessarily increases the pressure you put on yourself. Remember, anybody who is really crushing it rarely needs to boast about that. If you optimise for status, be clear about what you’re compromising.
Focus on wanting what you have, rather than having what you want. Until we experience it, it’s difficult to describe how much better it is to work on something we’re invested in. It’s not two or three times better, it’s more like 100- or 1,000-fold. I’ve never seen anybody retire happy after working on a successful startup. They all say: “What can we do next? What’s the next level?” After the excitement of a startup that has momentum, and the rewards that come from that, spectating from the sidelines can feel like a step backwards. Even the biggest boat you can buy won’t compensate.
And finally, understand why you’re doing it all in the first place. Financial rewards are an easy way to keep score, but we all need to be careful we don’t get too hung up on them, because even if we do everything right, it still may not work out the way we hope.
This approach probably won’t make you famous, but it’s a much healthier path.
The World According To Bill Murray by Jacob Stolworthy, Esquire, 21 September 2015. ↩︎
Why Do You Want To Be Famous? by Scott Barry Kaufman, Scientific American, 4 September 2013. ↩︎
Reasons Not To Become Famous by Tim Ferriss, 2nd February 2020.
Keep in mind, in this post he is describing the downsides of fame in the context of also being wealthy. Imagine having to deal with all those issues without the resources he had. It’s a much more difficult equation. ↩︎
Dr Emily Anhalt, Twitter, 4th December 2021:
↩︎Lies we tell ourselves:
I shouldn’t care what people think of me.
Of course you care. We all do. It’s the most human thing there is.
It’s actually important to consider others’ perspectives of us. Just don’t forget those perspectives are heavily influenced by their own [shit].
Coco Reviews, Letterboxd. ↩︎
The Half-life of Happiness, by Paul J Gertler, Raimundo Undurraga & Sebastian Galiani, Vox, 21 July 2015. ↩︎
See: Happiness Lab by Dr Laurie Santos ↩︎
As comedian Steve Martin explained in an interview with Charlie Rose, many people asking for advice are looking for a shortcut: “Nobody ever takes note of it because it’s not the answer they want to hear. What they want to hear is, ‘here’s how you get an agent’ or ‘here’s how to write a script’. But I always say, ‘Be so good they can’t ignore you.’ If somebody is thinking, ‘How can I be really good?’ people are going to come to you. It’s much easier doing it that way than going to cocktail parties.”
See also: So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love, by Cal Newport. ↩︎
As Homer Simpson explains to Marge and Lisa:
Jealousy is when you’re worried someone will take what you have. Envy is wanting what someone else has.
Homer Simpson on Jealousy and Envy, YouTube. ↩︎
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