Even though we believe and behave as if we are immortals, all of us have a super finite time here (about 80 years if you are lucky). And while the average is about 80 years, we never know when our time runs out. I mean a meteor could hit us right now and before I “publish” this post, it could all be over and I won’t even know. Neither would you for that matter! If I do get to publish this post, I could get into an accident on my way home from Starbucks. I won’t know how many people did this post reach and all that. Or I could die at the old, ripe age of 80 after posting 10000 blogposts (I am at 1500 something posts, written over the last 13 years) and doing all the things that I wish to do!
So, I was reading something and somehow I stumbled on to this post by Kevin Kelly. I pick two things from that post.
A. KK starts by talking about when he was 29. Back then he lived as if he only had 6 months to live (P.S.: He’s still alive and kicking at the age of 65). All his actions and thoughts were guided by the knowledge that he would be gone in the next 6 months.
After those 6 months, he estimated the time he had left (he calculated the approximate date of his death, by looking at statistics and other medical information). He used/uses this expiry date as a goal post. He put a widget that counts the number of days left in his life. At any given point in time, he knows the exact number of days that are ahead of him. And this “fear” (or may be “awareness”) helps him decide the things that he wants to spend focus his time on. A ticking clock time-bomb is such an important tool for motivation!
B. The other thing that he talks about is how one of his friends (Stewart Brand) sees life in 5-year chunks – he says that anything worth doing takes about 5 years. In my experience this is not true but I am sure this is how things are.
So, if we combine A and B, it could probably become yet another system that helps us do more. How? By buying a time-bomb!
Lemme talk about me as an example.
While I want to live forever, I will assume that I am going to die on 1 Jan 2026. And that leaves me with little less than 8 years (3174 days to be exact). And thus, apart from personal things, that means I have just two things that I can do well before I die. One of those things is C4E. The other, I dont know yet.
So, all I ought to do is focus on C4E. All other things become recreation, for the lean days, for the days when I am so tired that I don’t want to work on making C4E the greatest entertainment business in the world. Of course in these next 4 years, situation could change and I am ok with adapting to the change. But the endeavour would be to focus on just C4E! Every act, every investment will be towards that one goal.
Does that mean I will leave all other projects hanging in the limbo? After all I am the kinds to have multiple things running at the same time – in fact it makes me who I am!
No it doesnt. Two reasons. A, I have traditionally been a bad finisher and now that I have started to finish things, I will take all open projects to respective conclusions. And then, either handover to others or find a way to merge them with C4E. B, this multi-tasking, inter-disciplinary approach, swinging on multiple trees is what makes me, me. It has served me well and I enjoy it. I just need to reshape the priorities and I should be ok.
So yeah. The time is limited. 3174 days in my case. How about you? How many days do you have? How many 5-year long projects can you take up? What are those? Tell me about it. Lemme know if I could be help. Please?
Thats it for today. 3173 more to go! Thanks for reading.
P.S.: And the meteor did not hit us before I hit the Publish button. Let’s see if I reach home.
P.P.S.: Some books that you may want to read about life and death (especially in context of today’s day and age) are: When Breath Becomes Air, Being Mortal and The Last Lecture. You may also want to see Steve Jobs’ address at Stanford. Here.
P.P.P.S.: Here’s some trivia – Steward (KK’s friend, the one that talks about 5-years) is also the creator of Whole Earth Catalog that Steve Jobs talks about in his Stanford talk. Plus the phrase “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish!” originated on the last issue of the catalog. Here…
