Re-post: What Really Matters in the End
Re-post: What Really Matters in the End
When we clarify our priorities and broaden our perspective, we can make better decisions about how we spend our time
Hi everyone!
I’ve been hard at work on my essay about asking for help — the one I mentioned last week — but it’s not quite ready yet. I want to get it right, so I don’t want to rush it.
This week, I’d like to share one of my favorite posts from 2023, on how to clarify our priorities.
Enjoy!
Chris
When I was in college at Northeastern University, I strongly considered doing a semester abroad in my junior year. Several upperclassmen I knew gushed about their time in Europe and Australia, and I wanted to have a similar life-changing experience. After doing some research, I set my heart on a university in London.
I had never been across the pond. I had only been on a plane once, and that was just a one-hour flight from Baltimore to Hartford. Studying abroad would be an opportunity to get out of my comfort zone and immerse myself in another culture.
Unfortunately, doubt soon crept in. The more I thought about the decision, the more I focused on the astronomical cost of spending four months abroad. I was barely scraping by as it was and I had student loans to pay. I had also just finished a six-month co-op (a full-time paid internship) and hadn’t stepped foot on campus in months. If I went abroad, I would be away from Northeastern for almost a full calendar year. Would my friends still remember who I was? Would I still feel a part of the campus community, or would I feel like an outsider?
Despite my initial excitement, I decided not to go. To this day, it is a decision I regret.
Now, in the grand scheme of things, it’s not that bad of a regret. No one died. I didn’t go to jail. I didn’t burn any bridges. And it’s not like I could have known what was going to happen to me physically after college with the onset of my muscle disease.
But for many years after I wondered: did I prioritize correctly? Should I have put short-term finances and fitting in on campus ahead of a transformative experience living abroad? Looking back, I know that my concerns were valid. Financial considerations are important; so is staying connected to a college community. Nonetheless, my thought process was fundamentally flawed.
Above all, I lacked the right perspective. I didn’t take the time to think about what I valued most. I didn’t examine the situation from all angles and take into account the regret I would feel later in life at this missed opportunity. If I had, I would have realized that financial concerns would always exist; the chance to spend four months overseas would not. I would also have realized that there would be other opportunities to spend time on campus once I got back. If I felt I hadn’t had enough of a college experience, I could have tacked on a master’s degree. (Or I could have pulled a Tommy Boy and graduated in seven years.)
I don’t lose sleep over this decision, but I wish I could go back and shake my 19-year-old self and tell him how nothing in life is guaranteed. If you have a chance to do something exciting and scary, you should jump at the opportunity. Health is not a given.
A higher perspective
Since college, I have been obsessed with how to make better decisions. I have many regrets from poor choices I’ve made over the years—some large, some small—and although I can’t change the past, I want to make sure that I can at least learn from my mistakes so I can minimize future regret.
The goal of today’s post is not to dive into the nitty-gritty of making individual decisions, but rather to think about our decisions on a higher plane. By taking an inventory of our priorities and looking at life from a holistic, 10,000-foot view, we can better understand which decisions are important and which are trivial. We can see how our decisions align with our values or if we are about to do something we will later regret.
The following frameworks are simple to understand, but not always easy to implement. Had I utilized these frameworks when I was in school, I would have decided to study abroad.
Clarify your priorities
As humans, we are bombarded with hundreds of decisions every day. Some decisions have negligible consequences; others can dramatically alter the course of our lives, even if we don’t know it at the time.
To complicate matters, life is full of tradeoffs; there is no perfect choice. If we choose to do one thing, we are giving up the chance to do something else. These opportunity costs are not always clear at the time of the decision. Sometimes, we don’t know if we made the right choice until many years later. When operating in environments of great uncertainty, we do what we think is best. Sometimes it works out; many times it doesn’t.
But choose we must; decisions don’t wait around for us to have perfect information.
When faced with such ambiguity, it is helpful to know your priorities. You might intuitively know what is most important to you, but if someone put you on the spot, could you list your priorities, in the proper order? Probably not. For the longest time, neither could I.1
Take a few moments and make a list of your priorities. What do you value most in life? Is it your family? Friends? Faith? Career? Status? Reputation? Possessions? Whatever your priorities are (and hopefully it’s more the former than the latter), write them down. Then rank them from most important to least important.
Ranking your priorities helps you when you are faced with a decision that forces you to make tradeoffs. Is the decision congruent with your priorities? You can look at your list and find out.
For example, if your boss asks you to work late, will you choose the incremental boost in status from putting in the extra effort, or will you choose to call your friend who has fallen on tough times? Your boss might be demanding, but if you look at your list and see that you prioritize being a good friend over burning the midnight oil, you will know the right choice in the end. You might change your friend’s life by being there for them in their hour of need. The PowerPoint slides aren’t going anywhere, and they certainly won’t appreciate you like your friend will.
This is a simplistic example, I know. But time is finite; we will always have to make tradeoffs. There is an opportunity cost to everything. It is important to give our decisions this extra layer of scrutiny. Time is a non-renewable resource.
Your 100-year-old self
Another way to clarify your priorities and make better decisions is to project ahead to the end of your life.
We are all familiar with the “deathbed” exercise. We are told to picture ourselves on our deathbed, thinking back on the consequential moments in our lives. By doing this, we gain clarity on what is truly important vs. what is trivial. On our deathbed, we will regret the fact that we didn’t call our friend because we decided to work late. In our final moments, we will rue the time spent watching mindless TV instead of taking up a hobby.
The goal of this exercise is to help us course-correct before it’s too late. It is instructive, but it has its limitations. Not only do we have to think of our death, which isn’t fun, but it’s not as useful for thinking through everyday decisions. Our deathbed self can only offer so much advice before the nurse escorts us from the room.
Fortunately, there is a slightly less depressing version of this exercise involving someone wiser and more alive: our 100-year-old self.
I came across this exercise in author Matthew Dicks’s book, Someday Is Today: 22 Simple, Actionable Ways to Propel Your Creative Life. According to Dicks, your 100-year-old self knows what you value, and what is most important to you. Your future self can offer reliable guidance on what you should do in the here and now because he or she understands the full context of your life choices. Whereas the deathbed version of you gives short, terse answers on what you should have done, the 100-year-old self is available to talk through what’s weighing on your mind.
At first, it may seem silly. But once you do it a few times, the power of the exercise is revealed. By removing yourself from the myopia of the present moment, you start to make better decisions.
Says Dicks:
Whenever I need to make a decision—monumental or minuscule—I no longer rely upon the current version of myself to make that decision. I have discovered that I am an unreliable, ineffective decision maker in the moment, because I often base my decisions upon my feelings, thoughts, and desires in that moment. I do the thing that makes me happy now—which is sometimes perfectly acceptable and advisable—but is oftentimes shortsighted and counterproductive.2
Dicks developed this exercise after experiencing a personal trauma, as a way to make the best decision possible at all times, congruent with his values. After coming so close to death, he didn’t want to live with regrets or wish he had done more in life. By thinking of his 100-year-old self, he can cut through the clutter of today and choose actions that align with what matters most.
What I like about my 100-year-old self is that he is always available to offer counsel. He is my copilot, steering me toward the right course of action while guiding me away from doing something I’ll later regret.
Dicks feels the same way:
[W]hen I’m sitting at my desk, trying to finish a novel, staring down an email from my editor asking why my novel is so late, and my son Charlie, age three, tugs on my shirt and asks to play monster freeze tag, the current version of myself says to finish the damn book. You have a hundred pages to write and bills to pay and an editor to keep happy.
But then I look ahead to the one-hundred-year-old version of myself, and he says that bills will somehow get paid and you can always find time to finish a book, but that little boy who wants to play monster freeze tag isn’t going to ask to play forever. One day he’s going to stop asking. One day he’s going to stop asking, and you’re going to hate yourself for not saying yes to him. So I shove all my work aside, and as much as I hate monster freeze tag—a truly senseless game—I play, knowing I will be a happier person for it.3
Dicks understands his priorities: family over career. The career will always be there; his son as a young boy will not.
This practice can be used as often as necessary, for both small decisions and large ones. Had I known about this exercise back in college, I could see my 100-year-old self whispering into my ear, “Take the trip. You might not get another chance.”
And he would be right.
Your Life in Weeks
Writer Tim Urban is known for amusing and thought-provoking articles on his website, Wait But Why. Urban writes on a variety of issues that interest him, from artificial intelligence to politics, going down rabbit holes and exploring topics in incredible depth. In his posts, Urban likes to draw his own visuals—usually stick figures—to better illustrate difficult concepts.
In 2014 and 2015, Urban wrote two posts analyzing the human lifespan in weeks and years. From this granular vantage point, we can more easily see how we spend our finite time on this planet. These posts struck an emotional chord with me; I still think about them today. They have fundamentally changed the way I view my life and how I spend my time.
The 2014 piece, “Your Life in Weeks”, breaks down a 90-year life span into a chart that can fit on a sheet of paper. Each square represents a week; a row is one year.
By visualizing life in this way, we see that our lives are far shorter than we realize, even if we are lucky enough to live into our ninth decade.
Urban agrees:
It kind of feels like our lives are made up of a countless number of weeks. But there they are—fully countable—staring you in the face.
There is also another way to look at this chart: life is full of possibility. When we see Urban’s breakdown of the life of a typical American, or we analyze the accomplishments of golfers and physicists, we see that milestones and successes can happen at many different ages. Even if there’s an “average” life, many people operate outside this average.
Every week is valuable in its own way. But once they’re gone, they’re gone.
The Tail End
Urban’s follow-up 2015 post, “The Tail End”, builds on what he wrote in “Your Life in Weeks”. In “The Tail End”, we see life broken out by how much time we have left to spend with those we love. This is where looking at life in such granular terms really hits home.
As Urban points out, most of the time we spend with our parents, our siblings, and our childhood friends happens early in life. When we grow up, our time with one another diminishes considerably or ceases altogether. Available time becomes hard to find. We move away from home. We start our own families. And unfortunately, people die.
For Urban, this was a sobering fact:
[Y]ou realize that despite not being at the end of your life, you may very well be nearing the end of your time with some of the most important people in your life…It turns out that when I graduated from high school, I had already used up 93% of my in-person parent time. I’m now enjoying the last 5% of that time. We’re in the tail end.
Bittersweet? Yes. But it also represents an opportunity.
When considering our most valued relationships, Urban says to consider three points:
1) Living in the same place as the people you love matters. I probably have 10X the time left with the people who live in my city as I do with the people who live somewhere else.
2) Priorities matter. Your remaining face time with any person depends largely on where that person falls on your list of life priorities. Make sure this list is set by you—not by unconscious inertia.
3) Quality time matters. If you’re in your last 10% of time with someone you love, keep that fact in the front of your mind when you’re with them and treat that time as what it actually is: precious.
When we look at our relationships through this lens, we realize just how special these relationships are. As we get older, each interaction becomes that much more important.
Look at your life
Now that you have your list of priorities, you’ve made acquaintance with your 100-year-old self, and you’ve gained an appreciation for your remaining weeks and months, what will you change? Do you see your relationships in a new way? Do you feel you have a better framework for making decisions and evaluating tradeoffs?
As you begin to see your decisions in a new light, you will notice discrepancies emerge between what you are currently doing and what you should be doing. This is okay. It is never too late to start living your priorities. If there is someone you haven’t talked to in a while, try to make time to see them. Or, if the situation presents itself, move closer to them.
This perspective also works for experiences. If you now realize that you might only see the ocean 20 more times in your life, but you always had fond memories of beach vacations growing up, this might be the impetus you need to book more frequent trips.
Disappointments and hidden joys
I moved home to Connecticut seven years ago after spending twelve years in Boston, a city I love and hope to move back to someday. My move was only supposed to be temporary, but life has a funny way of thwarting our plans.
I sometimes feel like my life has gone off track. A lot of the milestones I was supposed to have hit by now have not been achieved. But by employing the frameworks we discussed today, I see that my life is not that off track.
My years of solitude have allowed me to think deeply about what matters most in life. With this grounding, I have been able to evaluate opportunities better than before. I know what I am willing to do and not willing to do. I value the everyday moments, knowing that nothing is guaranteed.
When I think of my priorities, I think of how much clearer they are now than they ever were before. Adversity is an effective filter.
When I make decisions, I consult my 100-year-old self to help guide me toward a more purposeful life.
When I contemplate my life in weeks and years, I can see that, although I am no spring chicken, I still have time to achieve my goals.
As I get older, I appreciate the finite nature of my most valued relationships. If I am at the tail end of my time with those I love, I want to spend as much time with them as possible.
Although I am disappointed I am not yet back in Boston, I appreciate that I have been able to spend more time with my parents. Had I not had this disease, I would probably not be in Connecticut, and would only see them every few months.
If I was not back in Connecticut, I also would not have been able to see my extended family as often. There is someone close to me who is very sick. I think back to all the good times we’ve had over the last seven years, and I cherish that additional time we’ve spent together.
Our past may be littered with disappointments and bad decisions, but one regret we will never have is spending too much time with those we love.
For reference, here’s my priority list today:
Faith
Family
Friends
Serve others
Health
Enjoy life
Everything else (money, status, career, etc.)
This list has evolved over the years. In college, I obsessed over money and finances. After college, I prioritized maintaining my strength (to the detriment of everything else on my list). Your list is going to change over time. That is okay! As we get older, we accumulate wisdom and experience.
It is also worth mentioning that this list is not mutually exclusive. For example, spending time with family and friends does not have to come at the expense of my career. I can attend a work conference with my parents and meet up with a local friend for drinks at night.
Someday is Today, by Matthew Dicks, P. 10
Someday is Today, P. 11
It is always impactful to read your posts. I loved the exercises you shared and I would like to suggest one more, that I use myself and I frequently recommend to friends or people that I was lucky enough to mentor. It is doing a list of 100 things you want to do in 1000 days. And this list should contain big or small things, the important exercise is thinking what is a desire that I have and I would like to attend? Something like learning how to make a cake, organizing my books by color, learning pottery or traveling to some place. Anything. My first reaction when I did it for the very first time was how hard it is to be able to list 50 things meaningfully. The second thing was the amount of "small" things such as making a birthday cake that I was ignoring and could make me feel good. Lastly, it was consciously preparing for bigger ones like moving city or leaving a job that was hurting me. This list is one way I have found that supports me with this prioritization and I recommend the exercise.
Chris, this is an awesome post. Thank you for sharing it. I like the perspectives here (the 100 year old self is a new one for me!) and appreciate your candor as always. Keep up the great work. + We are lucky to have you in our great state of CT :)