An investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large fin tunas. The banker complimented the fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took him to catch.
The fisherman replied, “only a little while.”
The banker then asked why he didn’t stay out longer and catch more fish?
The fisherman said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs.
The banker then asked, “but what do you do with the rest of your time?”
The fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my friends. I have a full and busy life.”
The banker scoffed, “I have an MBA and could help you! You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat, and with the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats. Eventually, you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You could then leave this small dumpy coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then to Los Angeles, and eventually New York City where you could run your expanding enterprise.”
The fisherman asked, “But how long will this take?”
To which the banker replied, “15-20 years.”
“But what then?”
The banker laughed and said that’s the best part. “When the time is right you could announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You would make millions.”
“Millions?” asked the fisherman, “Then what?”
The banker said, “Then you could retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take a siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evening, sip wine, and play your guitar with your friends!”
NOTE: I first remember seeing this same story back in 2010, when it appeared on the walls of many Jimmy John’s locations titled: “How Much is Enough.”
Then I saw this same story in Matthew Kelly’s prologue of his book Off Balance: Getting Beyond the Work-Life Balance Myth to Personal and Professional Satisfaction which was published in September 2011.
A similar story recently appeared in Erin Loechner’s book Chasing Slow: Courage to Journey Off the Beaten Path released in October of 2023.
All of these—and many more—trace their origin to a short story by Heinrich Böll, a German writer who was considered one of Germany’s foremost post-World War II writers. Böll received the Georg Büchner Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature about an encounter between an enterprising tourist and a small fisherman, in which the tourist suggests how the fisherman could improve his life. It was written for a Labour Day program on the Norddeutscher Rundfunk in 1963 and is considered one of the best stories ever written by Böll.
Yet, it should be noted that even before that, a story Pyrrhus and Cineas by Simone de Beauvoir in 1944, features a very similar conversation where Cineas asks Pyrrhus why he doesn’t rest now instead of going through all the trouble of conquering empires.
Apparently, this is an archetypal story that appears in various forms across ancient Russian and Buddhist literature. This same anecdote originally appeared in Parallel Lives—a series of 48 biographies of famous men written by the Greco-Roman philosopher and historian, Plutarch—somewhere around the beginning of the second century.
We tell each other the same timeless stories again and again, in infinitely many variations.
SOURCES:
Albion, Mark (2009) More Than Money: Questions Every MBA Needs to Answer. Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. ISBN 9781576756560
Barry, Nathan (2021) What we get wrong about the Mexican Fisherman Parable
Kluth, Andreas (2012) Hannibal and Me: What History’s Greatest Military Strategist Can Teach Us About Success and Failure. New York: Penguin. ISBN 9781594486593
Kluth, Andreas (2012). A timeless story: Plutarch > Böll > Us
Kowalski, Kyle (2020) And then? Short Story of The Tourist & The Fisherman
