What if I told you that I only had 10,302 days left?
S.M.A.R.T.
- Specific
- Measurable
- Acheivable
- Realistic
- Timely
It’s time to pick your date.
Any date. It doesn’t really matter when, as long as it’s your date. And this is the simple part, but it is also the important first step. This date is your boundary. Your limit. This is when you are going to check the box. The day that your work will be done. The day that you can say your bucket list has been emptied, your to-do list is complete and you can now retire into hermitdom or whatever, but you are done. You can say, “It is finished.”
It’s so common in our culture that it is past being a cliche. If you want to accomplish something, put a date on it. You need a deadline. That line in the sand where you are going to hold yourself accountable. The place you don’t get to cross without saying I did this or I did not do this. And if you are like all other humans, you’ll probably get there and say I almost did this which is to say I didn’t do it, but I really did want to. But all of that aside, it has been shown that putting a parameter on your time to accomplish anything increases your chances of doing it.
So pick your deadline. Or maybe it should be considered a Lifeline, but that doesn’t matter. You need an end date. A date that you can count up to, work toward, continuously push against, know that it is coming, and how many days are left. Make it to that date, finish the thing and it becomes the moment you come sliding in sideways, bleeding and broken with a shit-eatin grin screaming “Fuck yeah!” and knowing you can happily plop into your eternal resting place completely drained.
It’s been used in countless outdoor lifestyle ads and it’s been written about by much more talented people than myself, but would you live your life differently if you knew when the end was going to be? And before you say, well, you can pick a date but that doesn’t mean you aren’t going to get hit by a car two blocks from your house and never wake up. Yes, you are right, but by measuring how much life you have left, which is to say, putting it in a box, within a measured parameter, would that change how you made decisions, would it change where you spent your time?
And would that be a good thing?
Measurable
I don’t think it is a coincidence that we refer to our lives as being spent.
Nuclear waste is considered spent when it no longer is radioactive enough to create electricity, it is essentially decomposing back to being just normal stuff. We talk about money and spending it. And then there is our time, our lives and we spend that, too.
To Spend
- To use or pay out
- Exhaust, wear out
- To consume wastefully
Most of us claim, or at least like to think, that we are doing our best to live life to its fullest. We want to come sliding in sideways, to be worn out, broken and grinning from ear to ear as we drop right into our graves. It’s an age-old idea. When it’s all said and done, what will you have wanted to spend your life doing?
And then we spend our lives going to work at a place we hate, doing the things we promised ourselves we wouldn’t, sneaking away for but a weekend to revel in our LIFE. The only one we get. Sure, there are moments. Maybe that’s all we get, but we know we only get one chance at this. If you’re living for the “afterlife,” you can stop reading now, this doesn’t apply to you, or maybe it does and you better keep reading.
It is said you will be more successful accomplishing your goals if you set parameters, metrics and deadlines. Well, what if my goal is to live a life that is full? to live life on my terms? Well, what the hell are my terms? When does this end? How do I measure this successful path that I hope I’m skidding around the turns on? Well, those are all hard questions, so I think I’ll just go back to work.
Acheivable
And if freedom is doing what I want
Well then, I gotta know what that is
Not just what it isn’t
Pat the Bunny
It’s pretty normal when talking about these big things that we go to the negative. As Pat the Bunny points out, you have to know what it is, not just what it isn’t. If we look at our lives, what we are currently doing and come up with a list of things we don’t want to do, that’s great, but we haven’t moved forward. That’s just saying, I don’t like these particular aspects of my current existence. What we need to do is know what we want to do.
Let’s take the most obvious, the one that is so easily summed up this way, “We buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like.” (Dave Ramsay) Meaning our entire reason for going to work is pointless and we all know it. That’s the first one that pops up for people thinking about life from 20,000 feet up. I don’t want to work anymore. Ok, great. That’s a great start, what do you want to do?
Utah Philips said that toil is what you do for others, work is what you do for yourself. So what is your work? What is the thing that gets you out of bed? That makes you want to live fully? That would define skidding around the corners, chasing the big dream and living your life to the fullest?
Working in a passion industry for a very long time, pretty much most of my life, I have had the opportunity to work and know a lot of people who are truly chasing their work. Unfortunately, I’ve known many that were much more chasing an idea of what they wanted instead of doing it. Interviewing folks for employment, everyone says they want to work at a job that more closely aligns with their passions. I’ve gotten to the point that I now ask what that passion is. They all respond bikes which I follow with, “Rad, when did you go on your last bike ride?” The answer is usually quite disheartening. Here is a person telling me that their passion is bikes, but they then spout off the endless excuses/reasons that they haven’t been able to chase that passion and are hoping that working in the industry will help them get there. Unfortunately, it won’t. They will still be working 40 hours a week, still be providing for a family of 5, still have other things that will end up taking precedence over their passion.
I’ve found that people who ride bikes, are passionate about them, that’s why they get up and do the thing. People who say they are passionate about bikes, but don’t ride them, tend to be folks who like the idea of bikes, but don’t have enough passion for them to get up and do the thing.
It hit me like a brick to the side of my head and I hate to say it, but it came from none other than Joe Rogan. I don’t entirely remember the context or where it was said and I am paraphrasing, but he said, people want to do things. They love the idea of being a writer, a comedian, an actor, a bike rider, but then they don’t do those things. At some point, if you want to do something, you have to put in the work, you have to get up and do the thing.
What’s your thing?
S.M.A.R.T. your life
What I am suggesting is applying the concept of S.M.A.R.T. to the one thing that really matters, your time.
Part of what keeps us doing the things we claim we don’t want to do is either being unwilling to really do our thing or failing to know what our thing is. The idea of a full life is just that an idea, an abstract. If it’s not specific, you have no idea when or if you accomplished it. It’s a hard question, but you have to know what your life work is, before you can figure out how to do it.
Take some time, determine what it is you hope to accomplish, be specific. Make sure it is something that you can measure to keep you honest. Is it achievable? Realistic? And then put an end date to it.
And then do the thing.
My date is my 70th birthday. I feel like that gives me plenty of time to do the things I want to do with a little fudge room at the end that can be just bonus time if I get there.
What are my things? Great question and one I have probably spent way too much time contemplating. Like most people, my brain tends to go to the easy side of things, and I list a bunch of stuff I don’t want to do. I’ve been working on asking the follow up question, how do I go about not doing those things? And then, it’s gotta be broken down into chunks that make sense.
I won’t bore you with my entire list, but if you’ve gotten this far, here’s my thing. Ever since I learned Spanish, I’ve considered myself a writer (Prior to learning a 2nd language, I couldn’t string together a coherent sentence to save my life). That’s my work and I want to get to the point that it is my job. Will it be easy? Fuck no, but I don’t like to do easy things. I like to push, stretch and challenge myself.
So what does getting there look like? Not entirely sure, but here’s what I feel like I can acheive.
- 2023 – Blog post once a week.
- 2027 – No Debt
- 2028 – Two books finished and hopefully at least one producing some semblance of income.
- All the in between – keep pushing my boundaries in my other passion, backcountry travel.
There’s a bunch of other stuff in there, but that’s my big one.
Will this work or do I have any idea what I’m talking about? I don’t know, but as we start yet another year, it seems appropriate to try.
Here’s to the next 10,302 days…
Embrace Chaos. Seek Discomfort.
