Mark: Most people believe success comes from raw intelligence or talent. But what if the single biggest predictor of wealth has nothing to do with your IQ, and everything to do with how far into the future you can think? That’s the bombshell we’re unpacking today. Michelle: Whoa, okay. That's a bold claim. You're saying my ability to daydream about my 20-year retirement plan is more valuable than my Mensa application? I'm both intrigued and slightly offended on behalf of my brain. Mark: Well, your brain can rest easy. This idea comes from Brian Tracy's book, Get Smart!: How to Think and Act Like the Most Successful and Highest-Paid People in Every Field. And it's all about upgrading your mental software, not the hardware you were born with. Michelle: Right, Brian Tracy. He's a giant in the self-help world, a true veteran. He's written something like 70 books. But what's fascinating about Get Smart! is its reception. It’s quite polarizing. Some readers swear it's a life-changing manual for thinking, while others feel it's more of a temporary motivational shot. I'm very curious to see where we land on this. Mark: Me too. Because it all starts with a pretty wild claim Tracy makes about our own brains. He says the average person only uses about two percent of their mental potential. Michelle: Hold on. The 2% thing. Is that actual, hard neuroscience, or is it more of a powerful metaphor? Because it sounds suspiciously like that old "we only use 10% of our brains" myth that Morgan Freeman narrated a whole movie about. Mark: That's a fair challenge. Tracy, drawing on experts like Tony Buzan, frames it less about unused physical brain mass and more about untapped cognitive potential. The idea is that our thinking habits, our perspectives, keep us locked in a tiny room when we have a whole mansion to explore. Michelle: Okay, a mansion of the mind. I can get behind that. So how do we find the keys to the other rooms? Mark: It starts with a very old story.

Mark: Tracy uses the ancient Indian parable of the six blind men and the elephant. You probably know it. A king brings six men who have been blind from birth to an elephant and asks them to describe it. Michelle: I think I remember this from a school assembly. Let me guess, it doesn't go well. Mark: Not for getting a complete picture, no. The first man touches the elephant's broad, sturdy side and declares, "An elephant is like a wall." The second feels a tusk and says, "No, it's sharp and smooth, like a spear." The third grabs the squirming trunk and proclaims it's like a snake. Michelle: And the guy who gets the leg thinks it's a tree trunk, the one who feels the ear thinks it's a fan, and the poor soul who gets the tail thinks it's a rope. Mark: Exactly. And then what happens? They argue. Each one is absolutely convinced that their limited experience represents the total truth. They're all right in a tiny way, but completely wrong in the big picture. Tracy’s point is that most of us are walking through life touching only one part of the elephant. Michelle: That is painfully accurate. It's basically every argument on Twitter. It's every family holiday dinner. Everyone is holding their one piece of the 'truth'—their 'tail' or their 'tusk'—and shouting that everyone else is an idiot for not seeing it. Mark: And that's the trap. We mistake our perspective for reality. We think we're seeing a wall, so we stop looking for the rest of the elephant. An optimist and a pessimist can look at the exact same set of circumstances—the same business challenge, the same life event—and one sees a wall of problems while the other sees a world of opportunity. Michelle: So the first step to "getting smart" is just admitting you might be one of the blind men? Admitting that your perspective is incomplete by default? Mark: Precisely. It's the humility to say, "I'm only holding the tail right now. I wonder what the tusk feels like." That curiosity is what unlocks the other 98 percent. It’s what allows you to start seeing the whole animal. Michelle: I like that. It’s not about being smarter, it’s about being more curious and less certain. That feels much more achievable. Mark: And seeing the whole elephant is what separates short-term thinkers from long-term visionaries. This is where Tracy brings in some fascinating, and frankly, life-changing research.

Mark: In the 1970s, a Harvard professor named Edward Banfield conducted a huge study on socioeconomic mobility. He wanted to know what the single biggest determinant of financial success was. Michelle: Let me guess. A rich dad? A fancy degree? Raw intelligence? Mark: None of the above. The factor that correlated most strongly with moving up the economic ladder was what he called "long-time perspective." Michelle: Long-time perspective? What does that even mean? Mark: It's the ability to think several years, even decades, into the future when making decisions today. He found that the most successful people were constantly weighing the long-term consequences of their present-day actions. The people who struggled the most were almost entirely focused on the immediate moment—short-term gratification, short-term relief. Michelle: That's a huge gap. And you see it everywhere. Tracy points out that something like 70% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, focused on making it to the end of the month. Meanwhile, a Forbes report he cites found that of the 290 new billionaires in 2015, two-thirds of them were self-made, starting with very little. Mark: The difference is that one group is thinking about tonight's dinner, and the other is thinking about the company they'll own in ten years. Michelle: Okay, but "think long-term" is easy to say from a billionaire's yacht. How do you actually do that when rent is due next week and your car just broke down? It feels like a luxury of the privileged. Mark: That's the perfect question, because Tracy's answer is completely counterintuitive. The way to achieve long-term goals isn't to hustle harder or move faster. It's to slow down. Michelle: Slow down to get ahead? Now you're really messing with me. Mark: He pulls from the work of Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, who identified our two systems of thinking. System 1 is fast, emotional, and reactive—it’s our gut instinct. System 2 is slow, deliberate, and logical. Most of our bad, short-term decisions come from System 1. When you react instantly to an insult, or panic-sell a stock, or eat a whole pint of ice cream after a bad day, that's System 1 driving. Michelle: Oh, I know System 1 very well. He’s a chaotic friend. Mark: To think long-term, you have to intentionally engage System 2. And Tracy offers a brilliantly simple rule for this: the 72-hour decision delay. For any significant decision, personal or professional, force yourself to wait 72 hours before acting. Michelle: I love that. It's like putting a mandatory cooling-off period on your own brain before you make a big move. It stops you from rage-applying to a new job or buying a Peloton at 2 a.m. Mark: Exactly. That delay gives your slow, rational brain—your inner CEO—time to come online, weigh the pros and cons, and see the long-term consequences. It’s a practical tool to force a long-time perspective, even when you're feeling pressured. Michelle: Okay, so we've shifted our perspective to see the whole elephant, and we're using the 72-hour rule to think long-term. We're set, right? We've got our 10-year plan. But the world changes so fast. How do we avoid our brilliant long-term plan becoming obsolete in six months? Mark: Ah, now you've hit on the final, and maybe most difficult, piece of the puzzle: building a mind that's not just smart, but flexible.

Mark: To illustrate the danger of inflexibility, Tracy uses the tragic, cautionary tale of Borders bookstores. Michelle: Oh, I remember Borders. It was a magical place. The smell of paper and coffee. I spent half my teenage years there. What happened? Mark: They failed to adapt. In the late 2000s, as e-readers like the Kindle and tablets like the iPad were exploding, Borders doubled down on what they knew: physical books and brick-and-mortar stores. They saw the digital shift as a fad, a small part of the elephant. Michelle: That sounds like a classic case of "this is how we've always done it." Mark: It gets worse. They were so convinced that their business was selling physical books in physical stores that they actually outsourced their entire online sales operation... to Amazon. Michelle: You're kidding me. They paid their biggest competitor to handle the one area of growth that could have saved them? That's not just inflexible, that's corporate self-sabotage. Mark: It's a brutal story. By 2011, they were bankrupt. They were masters of a world that no longer existed. Tracy's point is that in a chaotic world, your ability to adapt—your mental flexibility—is your most critical survival skill. And he offers a powerful tool for this called "Zero-Based Thinking." Michelle: Zero-Based Thinking. Sounds intense. Mark: It is. The core question is this: "Knowing what I now know, is there anything I am currently doing that I would not start up again today if I had to do it over?" Michelle: Wow. That is a terrifyingly useful question. You could apply that to jobs, relationships, projects, subscriptions... basically your entire life. It forces you to confront the things you're only doing out of habit or momentum. Mark: It's the ultimate antidote to the "sunk cost" fallacy. It helps you cut your losses on things that no longer serve your long-term vision. But he takes it one step further, especially for business or creative ideas. He says you have to actively try to destroy your own best ideas. Michelle: Destroy them? Why would you do that? Mark: To avoid what he calls "confirmation bias." Let's say you have an idea for a new laundry detergent. The natural tendency is to go out and look for people who will tell you how brilliant it is. Tracy says to do the opposite. Form a hypothesis—"I believe people will buy my new detergent"—and then go out and try to disprove it. Michelle: So you'd ask people, "Tell me every reason you wouldn't buy this. Tell me why my competitor's product is better. Poke holes in this." Mark: Exactly. You become your own harshest critic. Because if you try your absolute best to kill your idea and it still survives—if customers still want it despite all the objections you've raised—then you know you have something real. Something robust. Michelle: That's basically the 'lean startup' model, isn't it? Build, measure, learn. Actively seek failure to find success faster. It's about being a scientist in your own life, not just a cheerleader for your own ideas. Mark: That's the perfect way to put it. It's about building a mind that's not just smart, but also humble, curious, and ruthlessly honest with itself.

Mark: When you put it all together, it’s really a three-level upgrade for your thinking. First, you have to recognize that your perspective is a choice, not a fact. You have to step back and try to see the whole elephant. Michelle: Then, you use that wider perspective to aim for the long-term, but you get there by using slow, deliberate, 72-hour-rule thinking. You play the long game by making smarter moves today. Mark: And finally, you stay on track by building a flexible, anti-fragile mind. You constantly challenge your own assumptions with zero-based thinking and try to creatively destroy your own best ideas to see if they're truly strong. Michelle: I think the most powerful, immediate takeaway for anyone listening is that 72-hour rule. For any big decision you're facing this week, just give it three days. See what happens when you let your rational brain catch up with your emotions. Mark: That's a great starting point. It's a small habit that builds the muscle for all the other types of thinking. Michelle: But the bigger, more profound question Tracy leaves us with is that zero-based thinking one. It’s a challenge I want to leave with our listeners. What's one thing in your life—a project, a habit, maybe even a core belief—that you're continuing just out of momentum? And if you were starting from scratch today, knowing everything you know now, would you still choose it? Mark: That's a question that can change everything. Michelle: It really can. Let us know what you discover. Mark: This is Aibrary, signing off.