WORK BACKWARDS FROM WHAT YOU DON’T WANT
According to people who work with the dying, there are 5 common deathbed regrets:
- Not having lived a life true to oneself
- Working too much, working too hard for too long
- Not spending more time with friends and loved ones
- Not having the courage to express feelings
- Not letting oneself be happier
It’s not a bad idea to try and live your life well by seeking to minimize these regrets, as well as other things that you imagine you might regret. Jeff Bezos has spoken before about his “regret minimization framework”.
In the long run, most people don’t regret what they did nearly as much as what they didn’t do. I think a lot about how I used to play RPG video games as a child – I would conserve all my potions and items, thinking that I’d have a use for them later – and I would often end the game with more items and money than I needed. Similarly, somebody once tweeted that they went through their dead parent’s things, and found that they had all these things that they were saving for a special occasion but never got around to using. She didn’t wear the dress or the purfume, didn’t use the fancy cutlery. This is not a practice life. There’s no dress rehearsal. This is it! It’s the special occasion!
Different people need to hear different things. Some people might be living life a little too recklessly, getting into needless debt, pissing off all their loved ones with their carelessness. Others live life too tight-fisted. It shouldn’t be too hard to know which you are; if you don’t already have a good idea, your friends should be able to tell you.
What was the original thing I was going to say with this sub-title? I know, for example, that I don’t want a boring desk job in a 9-5 office where I have to wear a shirt and tie. I don’t want to work somewhere where I need a university degree or to prove my worth. I’d rather work somewhere that’s a little more early-stage, somewhere that’s more tolerant of improvisation and alternatives. I’d like to work “with” people rather than “for” people. (I remember saying this to a childhood friend, and he called me an arrogant idiot who didn’t know how the world works. A part of me I was afraid that he might’ve been right. But a few years later, I was introducing my boss to another person I respected, and my boss said “I work with Visa” – and that felt so sweet and good. I mean, the work environment was great to begin with, but there was something about that moment for me. Vindication?)
So yeah there’s a strengths and weaknesses bit to this. I don’t think it makes sense to spend your life forcing yourself to do things that’s not things that you’re inclined to. There is some utility on working on your weaknesses, being a bit more well-rounded – I think particularly you want to be able to catastrophe-proof yourself so that you’re not utterly at the mercy of somebody else.
But I’m still young in the grand scheme of things, and I’m kind of deferring to Steve Vai here (a guitarist I respect for his professional/career success – and he talks about how he doesn’t worry about his weaknesses, and he focuses on cultivating his strengths. Lots of other smart, talented, high-functioning people have echoed this across many different industries and contexts – being a T shaped person, yada yada).
Circling back. Work backwards from what you don’t want. Do you want a lot of friends, or a few? Do you want children, or not? What are some large projects that you’d like to complete in your life? Imagine yourself on your deathbed, what do you regret? Imagine an old version of yourself – not particularly special, not much smarter than you, not better or different – just older. They’ve carried on with their life the same way you’ve carried on so far. How are they? What’s their health like? What hurts? What do they regret? I can imagine old Visa smiling a little sadly going “I wasn’t very organized, I was very scatterbrained, all over the place – I didn’t have focus, I didn’t have discipline. I didn’t write the books I believe I could’ve written. I guess we’ll never know now.” So… I have to write the books! I’m writing the book(s) now! I don’t think he’d have said things like “I wish I didn’t get married young”. I DO think he’d say things like “I wish I had travelled more when I was able”. So… fucking travel, man!
Think about your old self.
THE WORLD WILL TELL YOU WHAT YOU SHOULD WANT
Everybody has an opinion on what you should want. Your parents do. Your friends do. Strangers on the internet do. I think this is something that we should talk to kids about from a very young age, a very early age. School should come with the warning label that school itself is a huge source of bullshit. But of course teachers don’t tell you that. How many people do you know who are openly willing to admit their own fallibility? (How do we trust anybody who doesn’t do this? How does the world function at all? The mind boggles, sometimes.) There’s a ZenPencils comic about a George Carlin quote, on Bullshit. Parents, clergymen, law enforcement – everybody is potentially full of shit. And children have to be warned about that. And of course there’s the Richard Feynman bit about how you have to be careful not to fool yourself, and that you are the easiest person to fool.
It’s not always obvious what the world is telling you. But the messages are everywhere. “They leer down at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They’re on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing. You especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you.”