To maximize your potential, ask yourself this question

Warren Buffett is used to giving advice.

For decades, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway has sat before a packed house at his company’s annual shareholder meetings, answering investors’ questions about everything from artificial intelligence to the ins and outs of the insurance industry to marriage advice.

In “Warren Buffett: A Life and Legacy,” airing Jan. 18 at 3 p.m. ET on CNBC, Becky Quick asks the Oracle of Omaha some of the toughest questions and best advice he’s ever given. Buffett ends up taking on a challenge he used to pose to students.

Buffett would ask students to consider a scenario in which, in a class of about 300 students, they could receive 10% of the earnings of five of them over their lifetime. Who would they choose – and why? And who would they sell short? The people you choose, he says, won’t necessarily be the prettiest, smartest, or most athletic.

“Of course, I explained at the end, you can be the person you would buy,” Buffett says. “There’s nothing impossible. Because it’s not about whether you can throw a football 60 yards, and it’s not who has the highest IQ. You can be one of five.”

So what could put you on the list of people with high expected lifetime earnings?

“A lot of it is luck. If you choose the right parents, you’re rich when you come out,” Buffett says. “You won the lottery – the ovarian lottery.”

But Buffett told students they could still be among the people in the room their classmates should bet on.

“You can achieve this by being a good person, reading a lot, spending less than you earn,” he says. “I just told them you can spend 110 percent of what you earn once, and then you use it up. The rest of your life you’re underwater.”

Buffett is careful to emphasize this last point. While certain types of loans, like a mortgage, can make sense in some cases, you generally want to avoid debt, says Buffett.

“Beyond a certain point, if you get into a hole or anything, it’s hard to dig out,” he says. “It’s not that it’s impossible, and I give people credit for doing it. But do it the simplest way.”

Of course, you won’t end up becoming a top earner among your peers if you don’t work hard and focus on your personal development, says Buffett. He recalls his longtime partner Charlie Munger’s habit of “selling out” his most productive hour of the day — spending an hour each morning focusing exclusively on improving his mind and selling the rest of his work to clients.

“It’s not crazy,” Buffett says. “Your future is your future, and you can’t expect anyone else to do it.”

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