Life is Short

and the BS that makes it even shorter...

Sep 03, 2023

“Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.” – William Shakespeare.

I am 43 years old and I’m beginning to get a sense of time and how fast it is passing by. Let me elaborate on this.

I love reading and playing Snooker. These activities consume most of my free time. I look forward to indulging in these activities and it gives me immense joy. But I read, on average, one book a week and I play Snooker once a week. So how many of these experiences am I left with to enjoy in times ahead?

If I consider the average age as 80, then I have approximately 37 more years to pay a permanent visit to the gods up there i.e. 1,924 weeks ONLY. This makes it clear that I will most likely be reading only 1,924 books going forward, and letting go of thousands of books that would have accumulated in my library or Kindle by then. I already have 1000+ books in various libraries (physical/Kindle/Kobo/audible) that remain to be read as of today.

Snooker is also the place where I connect with a dear friend of mine, and we discuss life, money, relationships, global affairs, and so much more while I beat him on most days. Just yesterday I beat him 5-0 and he wasn’t happy at all (I hope he doesn’t read this piece 😉).

At once a week, we have only 1900 more sessions left, assuming that both of us remain in Dubai till our 80s. Odds for that are low, given that he is an entrepreneur and will move where opportunity takes him and I am a Banker and the global capital market is my playground. I might bet that we have less than 500 sessions left.

If I take this concept further and think about the time left to spend with my parents, then the realization is even more painful. My parents are in their 70s and I have made sure that they enjoy the comforts of life, and do not have to stress about anything. But I still have to factor in the average age of 80, to calculate the possible number of days left with them. If I spend on average 30 days a year with them since I live in Dubai and they prefer to live in Mumbai, that makes it a measly 300 days left to enjoy with them. ONLY 300 days.

There isn’t much time left ⏱️

Take a moment to think about your goals and ask yourself how much time are you left with. Would you like to trek the Himalayas in your 70s when even Basecamp 1 would be almost impossible, or should you look at ticking this off sooner? Should you start writing today, or should you wait for a perfect sunny day in 2029 to put pen to paper? Should you stick to making a routine Happy New Year’s call as a ritual to your loved ones and cousins you grew up with, or should you book a ticket to spend some time with them this month month/year itself?

There isn’t much time left to do the things we love, to spend time with people we love, to chase goals that matter. And there is a way to maximize these moments that are left with us. I will let Paul Graham share a wisdom bomb from his post Life is Short -

“Cultivate a habit of impatience about the things you most want to do. Don't wait before climbing that mountain or writing that book or visiting your mother. You don't need to be constantly reminding yourself why you shouldn't wait. Just don't wait.”

Photo by Marc Sendra Martorell on Unsplash

Time is racing by and hence making most of the present matters. Many a time, what may take us away from making the most of our lives is the BS that we get drowned in. Sometimes, it is unavoidable i.e. the landlord goofed up, the tenant didn’t pay on time, a job loss, politics at work, or relationship issues - these are forced upon us and we have to deal with them. There is no way out of these without biting the bullet or having difficult conversations, and both will take some energy out of us.

But I am referring to the BS that we ourselves allow in our lives, without realizing the time that it is sucking out of life, especially when time itself is so finite if seen from the perspective of how less of the special moments are left out for us to really savor.

The non-stop scrolling of social media, the binge-watching of Netflix, the daily parties at beach clubs, the tequilas and the old monks being dunked on our gut to deal with, the toxic friends, the mundaneness of a job if you are in one, the urge to impress people, the seduction of saying YES for every invite heading your way, the seconds lost every time a notification arrives on the phone. These are all BS that is taking over our lives, leaving us very little time to make the most of today.

Let’s take investing alone. Reading, researching, analyzing, networking, learning - these are the bare minimum to make your money work for you i.e. in case you are an active investor and determined to beat the indices and compound your wealth handsomely and become financially independent one day. But you won’t be able to achieve this goal if BS keeps taking time out. This dream will die a thousand deaths.

The other reason that tempts us into allowing BS in our lives, is that we value what we don’t have and undervalue what we have. According to Dan Gilbert, humans underestimate the changes we will go through, making us spend considerable time and energy chasing umpteen ghosts, eventually to arrive on the deathbed only to question the choices we made, the people we ignored, the opportunities we missed, the stupidities we gave into and the present we didn’t care for.

Waitbutwhy website has a beautiful illustration of where we could choose to invest our time in. Spending time in the green zone would be ideal i.e. an area which is enjoyable and it improves our own life and the lives of many others. Finding this zone becomes a question that we should deeply think about. Without clarity on this, we could spend time in the orange or the dark blue zone, hoping to live our lives in the future, a future that is shrinking with every passing day. The worst case would be spending most of the time in the gray zone below, where there is no future to be excited about.

We also live in a very uncertain world, a world where the future is volatile, complex, and ambiguous. No matter how solid our plans are, luck (good/bad) can change the world around us in an instant eg. Covid leading to shutdowns, job losses, travel restrictions, etc.

And hence depending on our plans to go right at all times reeks of overoptimism, only to be painfully deflated with turn of events. Hence we must also have a plan for our plans not going as per the plan. And the best way to do so is to make every day count. Making the most of our time with loved ones now, making the most of the time today to invest in our goals, making the most of enjoying a lovely cup of coffee with no distractions, making the most of today without our phones pinging 100 notifications per hour.

Being present in the moment is a skill to work on. The present is all we have and tomorrow is an illusion that is tempting to buy into. Enjoy tomorrow if it comes true, or else you will have made the most of today.

Steve Jobs summarizes this responsibility that we all have in the most eloquent manner possible - “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are.”

Recommendations for the week #

I went through excellent source material to write today’s piece and I would urge you to take 30 minutes out anytime this week to go through the articles or videos shared below. This is gold and I highly recommend them all, preferably in one sitting.

From Tim Urban’s website ‘Waitbutwhy’ 👇

The Tail End

Your Life in Weeks

Oceans and Clay

Life is a picture, but you live in a Pixel

Dan Gilbert 👇

TED Talk

Wishing you all a fantastic weekend ahead🥂

And sending you loads of love & luck 🧿

Manish