Would you......

....pick a million dollars off a tree?

Obviously the answer is yes, right?

Now, what if the tree only had leaves of $1 bills? Would you still pick from it until you had a million dollars? No strings attached except when you stopped picking, you can't pick anymore. Would you?

Ok, now how many people do you think would answer yes? At first glance I would say most people if not all would jump at a chance to get a million dollars, especially when all you need to do is pick it off a tree! Sounds pretty easy to me.

When you examine it beyond face value though, you quickly realize that it isn't quite that simple. The math shows that it is impossible to do without some breaks. Let me break it down for you.

Let's assume you pick one dollar per second and maintain that pace without fatigue. It would then take you a million seconds to finish. How long is a million seconds? Well, it is about 16,667 minutes. How long is 16,667 minutes? That would be about 278hours. And how long is 278 hours? 11.5 days.

So we are talking 11.5 days STRAIGHT of picking dollar bills to get your precious million dollars. That is without sleep, water, food or rest not to mention muscle fatigue.

With that said, let's look at it from a regular job standpoint. If you have 8 hours of picking a day, it would take 34 work days and 6 hours. So 7 full work weeks to get it done. Pretty profitable two months I would say. I'd do it in a heartbeat. I bet most people would. It couldn't be much different than working in a factory.

I thought of this scenario earlier today and hypothesized that, regardless of the physical limitations, many people would give up early despite the promise of a million dollars due to laziness or impatience.

If it is done in the work format I presented, I doubt too many people would quit. But if you let people go for as long as they could and break only when needing to eat or sleep then get back to it, I wonder how many people would still make it to a million. I bet they would get tired of it after a number of days and leave, forfeiting their chance.

Of course, while you may not be able to get to a million dollars, going as long as you can just might net you a nice chunck of change before it is all said and done.

What do you think? Am I crazy? Would everyone be able to stay long enough to get the full million with only food and sleep breaks?

This was just running through my head and I thought I would share it with you. I have been blogging about so much personal stuff and depressing stuff, I figured it was time for a lighthearted, hypothetical scenario to think about.