One of the best “memes” (if you can call it that) is a simple question posed to the smartest among us:
“If you’re so smart, why aren’t you happy?”
This simple question gets to the point of the matter in a way that most questions don’t. Shouldn’t smart people know how to make themselves happy? Is it better to be a dummy that’s happy instead of a smartie that’s miserable?
And this simple question also has a lot of carry-over into the world of business: Smart people overanalyze everything, suffer from analysis paralysis, and make large, sweeping plans only for said plans to get lost in the digital abyss, never to be acted on.
To be a successful entrepreneur, you need the right mix of smarts and dumbs. You need to be smart enough to be confident and dumb enough to be downright delusional. I left my job over 5 years ago—with not even a single actual client lined up—because of this combination of confidence and delusion.
Why do I bring it up?
Well, a “smart” person recently murdered the CEO of UnitedHealthcare in America. The murderer was a valedictorian at a private school. His family owned country clubs and were wealthy even according to private school standards. And the murderer could’ve lived the good life by applying his brains to his career.
Except he didn’t.
Now, I don’t know all the details of the story and I don’t pretend to know them. But it seems he went a little haywire after suffering a back injury and getting back surgery. I don’t know what kind of medications he was on, but killers usually are on some type of medication.
And he might’ve had a legitimate complaint about the American healthcare and insurance system.
Does that make murdering someone okay?
Nah.
But I believe he used his own smarts against himself to dupe himself into believing he could be a martyr for the healthcare and insurance system.
And you know what?
If he was as smart as some reports claim, he could’ve attacked the healthcare and insurance system in a different way: By starting a competing business.
Not only would he have actually helped people (instead of murdering one person and traumatizing their family), but he’d would’ve made a lot more moolah—and made the system he was attacking actually panic and sweat.
He could’ve gone down as an American hero. He could’ve used his pain and unjust treatment by insurance companies to elicit meaningful change throughout the industry. RFK Jr. is coming after all.
But he didn’t. He let his emotions overtake him. And he’ll deservedly spend the rest of his life behind bars.
Moral of the story?
Don’t let your smarts get in your way of success.
This is obviously an extreme example of a cautionary tale. But less extreme versions of this story play out in the business world every single day: Overanalyzing everything, suffering from analysis paralysis, being too smart to take action.
Anyway, one of the best ways to calm any murderous tendencies, so I hear, is watching your email revenue tick up and unlocking more freedom to spend time with your family, on the golf course, or whatever it is that you wanna do.
Hit reply if you wanna experience the soothing effects of increased email revenue.
John
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