Isaac Asimov was one of the most famous writers of the 20th century, extraordinarily prolific. He wrote 500 books in his lifetime by definition, he was an extraordinarily productive person. But once he, again, you have to step back and ask yourself, what is it you're trying to produce? He certainly did produce a tremendous number of books, very well received books, many of them, many of them still in print. He has huge huge fan bases, especially in the scientific community and the science fiction community. But he wrote on so many different subjects, he was extraordinarily productive when it comes to producing well written books that can be read by public around the world.

So there's no doubt he was extraordinarily productive. As a writer, but what was the price? Isaac Asimov was famous for writing 500 books, many of them good books, but he was also famous for his work ethic. He grew up relatively poor, lower middle class kid had to work in his dad's candy store. And he famously adopted the same work ethic as he did in the candy store and his dad dead. He was up at 5am working pretty much right after that, until 11pm.

Not Monday through Friday, but seven days a week. Not seven days a week during the school year, but seven days a week, year round, including holidays. Yeah, you can read a lot of books if you right from 5am to 11pm every single day of the year, 365 days a year. But because of that he was known For having horrible relations with his spouse's kids, he also had a fear of flying basically never went anywhere. Based on what most people, including myself are looking for a full rich well rounded life. He had a horrible life I would not want to have been Isaac Asimov.

Now I like to write, I might like to write 100 bucks in one day, but I have no desire to write 100 books at the expense of seeing the world traveling the world playing sports, having hobbies, having friends, I spend time with having family members, I do things with vacations, other hobbies, these are all a part of life. So be careful. What you wish for your goal shouldn't be to simply be productive in one field that outside people admire. You have to Be able to look back on your own life and ask yourself, Is this what I wanted to produce? And a life all of us are producers in essence, we all produce our own life. Now I understand some of us are in much less fortunate circumstances than others.

I've been very lucky. Presumably, if you're watching this course you're luckier than the bottom 800 million people in the world who don't have enough food to eat tonight. But we all have some control over our life. And you get to decide what is it you want to produce? Some of us go way too far in the extreme of just having a boring job, never accomplishing anything. Always feeling like we're just sleepwalking through life.

But there is the other extreme the Isaac Asimov extreme, yes, highly productive to everyone else. But what kind of a life is that? So ask yourself, What is your vision Have an ideal identity to be well rounded. That's not everyone's aspiration you may desire to be the most famous novelist in the world and write the most novels. But those two are often mutually exclusive. Some of the most famous novelist in the world wrote one some of the worst novelists in the world have written dozens or even hundreds