Kill Yourself

I love being unproductive.  I could sit on the couch and watch football all day long.  I could play video games 12 hours a day.  I could surf and hang out at the beach for a week straight.

Sometimes, we need to do these things.  It’s important for your own sanity to get your mind off things every once in a while.  It also produces better results if you have time to recharge, then come back and look at the work you’ve done with fresh eyes and a clear mind.  Right now, I need about a day a week, or a day every two weeks of just nothing.  Total withdrawal and relaxation.  I get burnt out pretty quickly on the stuff I’m working on.

But it’s terrifying how quickly an allotted half day of relaxation turns into a full day, and then two days, and then a long weekend, and then a week.

If relaxing, or some form of mindless entertainment isn’t your vice, I would bet something else is.  Maybe it’s running errands.  Or web surfing.  Or celebrity news.  Or politics.  Maybe its involvement in some club you don’t really care about.  Maybe it’s an exercise routine that doesn’t really produce results.  We all use something to procrastinate.  Whatever yours is, it’s easy to get knocked off track, to get consumed with stuff that doesn’t matter and to lose focus on your real goals.

Thinking about my massively unproductive last two days, I thought about killing myself.  What would my tombstone read?  “Here lies A.J. Kessler.  He started doing a lot of interesting stuff, and even got halfway through some of it.  Too bad he loved football and video games so much.”

Similarly, what if you were diagnosed with some terminal disease and had six months to live?  Would you instantly regret how you’d spent most of your life?  Would you regret all the things that you allowed to knock yourself off track, to impede you from accomplishing your real goals?  I know I’d instantly regret all those half-productive Sundays spent on my couch watching football or the late nights playing video games.  Those days didn’t add anything to my life or help me add anything to anyone else’s life.  So why do I continue to do them?

I’ve often kept in mind the fact that I’m going to die someday.  In fact, it’s the number one reminder on my daily time tracking template.  But that’s still hard to digest.  Everyone knows it, but even when I remind myself on a daily basis, it’s easy to lose sight of what that really means.  I think the eulogy/6-month diagnosis does a better job.

So instead of just reminding yourself that you’re going to die, ask yourself: “If I had six months to live, would I be doing this?  If I had six months to live, would I regret all the time I’ve spent doing this?  If I were dead tomorrow, would I be satisfied with what I was able to accomplish in the time I had?  If not, what can I do in the next six months that would be truly fulfilling?”