Transcript
00:00:00This video is all about how to figure out what to do with your life.
00:00:02This is a question I get all the time when I do talks and when I have conversations with friends.
00:00:06And so for whatever it's worth, this is my three part method that I hope you can follow to help you figure out what to do with your life.
00:00:11So when I'm exploring this question with people of what to do with your life, there's a few different directions that we can take.
00:00:15But one of the most useful ones is to start by actually just defining what are your different life areas that you care about.
00:00:22So, for example, work is a big category of life area.
00:00:26We've got health. We've got marriage.
00:00:28We might have kids. We might have hobbies.
00:00:31We might have growth.
00:00:32If you're one of those people that want to build a side business, then maybe we have an area called a side business.
00:00:37Maybe we have an area called home.
00:00:39Like, step one is to define what are the life areas that you care about, right?
00:00:44Because when you ask this question of what do I want to do with my life, life as a whole, that's like a freaking, you know, very vague, enormous question of like what to do with my life.
00:00:53And it's not very specific.
00:00:55And when I speak to people who have this question, what do I want to do with my life?
00:00:57Often what they're really asking is how do I find work I love that makes a lot of money and is also really fun.
00:01:03And they often have a question around if they're not yet married, do I want to get married, have kids, you know, that whole bundle of stuff.
00:01:12Those tend to be the two primary domains where people have uncertainty about this sort of question.
00:01:16But even just doing that, even just defining these life areas gives you a little bit more clarity, right?
00:01:19Because you can then answer for yourself by when you stay up and I thinking, I don't know what to do with my life.
00:01:24Do you really just mean I don't know how to find work I love?
00:01:26Because that is a much easier question to answer than I don't know what to do with my life.
00:01:29Or do you really mean, man, I don't know if I want to take dating seriously.
00:01:32I don't know if I want to get married and have kids.
00:01:33I don't know if I want to pursue career because then the family's like, is that what you mean?
00:01:37Or is there something even broader?
00:01:38So step one is we sort of break life down into these different areas.
00:01:41And then step two is that for each of these different areas, and you can define your own areas however you want.
00:01:46For each of these areas, we want to create a sense of like, long term, what sort of thing do I want?
00:01:51And what sort of thing do I not want?
00:01:53So let's just start with an easy one.
00:01:54Let's start with the area of health.
00:01:55If you ask yourself like, okay, in the area of health, what would success look like for me over the long term?
00:02:01If I imagine like a few decades from now.
00:02:03Well, for me, I can tell you that in the area of health, I'd like to be in really good shape.
00:02:07I'd like to have enough muscle.
00:02:09I'd like to live to 100 in good physical, mental and emotional health.
00:02:12I'd like to be able to play with my kids and grandkids.
00:02:14I'd like to have energy every day, and I'd like to avoid any injuries that could derail me.
00:02:18Great, fantastic.
00:02:19It's worth writing that down somewhere of like, okay, this is what we want in that particular area of life.
00:02:23Then we ask the question of like, what do I not want in that particular area of life?
00:02:27Again, easy example, health.
00:02:28Most people, when they're asking the question, what do I do with my life?
00:02:30They're not really worrying.
00:02:31Like, oh my God, what do I do with my health?
00:02:32Unless you have any kind of health issues.
00:02:34But that's why it's like an easy one to start with.
00:02:35So in my case, what I don't want for my health is I don't want to have to do a lot of exercise that I don't particularly enjoy.
00:02:41That's good to know.
00:02:41I'm not really trying to get like super, super mega muscular and jacked and stuff.
00:02:45Like, that's not really a goal.
00:02:47I'm not really trying to become like an Ironman athlete or an ultramarathon runner or anything like that.
00:02:51I don't really want that.
00:02:52I'm not really trying to perform at an elite level in any particular sport.
00:02:56And I don't really want to devote like loads and loads and loads of time to optimizing my physical health.
00:03:00It's just not the thing that I'm interested in.
00:03:02So that's good to know.
00:03:03Now I have way more clarity on what do I want from my life and what do I not want from my life in the area of health.
00:03:07So now what happens if we tackle a more difficult one, let's say work.
00:03:11What do I want in the life area of work?
00:03:12What do I not want in the life area of work?
00:03:14Again, we're thinking decades from now, like what does success actually look like?
00:03:17Well, ideally, what are the things I would want?
00:03:19Well, I would want work that feels enjoyable and energizing and fulfilling and kind of fun.
00:03:24I'd like to work with people that I enjoy hanging out with.
00:03:26I'd like to my work to have some sort of impact.
00:03:28I'd like my work to be making a good amount of money.
00:03:31Often very useful to define at this stage, what does a good amount of money actually mean to you?
00:03:35And putting a number on it.
00:03:36As you get closer to that number, that number will change and that's okay.
00:03:39But it's worth defining what that number looks like.
00:03:40Do I want the kind of job that's able to make me $10 million a year?
00:03:44Or am I all right with $1 million a year?
00:03:45Or am I all right with $500K a year?
00:03:47Or even $100K a year?
00:03:49Is it like, man, if I could just make six figures doing what I love, that would be sick.
00:03:52By defining these sorts of things, you can just get a feel for what do you want?
00:03:56And then you also ask yourself, what do I not want?
00:03:58So in the area of work, what do I not want?
00:04:00Well, I don't want work where I have to show up nine till five every single day,
00:04:07Monday to Friday, regardless of how I feel about it, maybe.
00:04:09Or I don't want work that requires me to travel a lot.
00:04:12Or I don't want work that requires me to go into an office because I hate going into an office.
00:04:16Or conversely, I don't want work that's just working at home all day
00:04:19because I actually enjoy hanging out with people and all this sort of stuff.
00:04:22You figure out, like, what do you not want?
00:04:23And at this point, you don't need any kind of...
00:04:26We're not trying to distill it into what specific job or what specific business.
00:04:30We're just trying to understand what are the kind of characteristics I'm optimizing for
00:04:33and what are the sorts of things I'm trying to avoid.
00:04:36It gives us a sense of direction rather than trying to be like,
00:04:39do I become a marketing executive or do I try and become a partner in a law firm?
00:04:43These job titles and the specific business and the specific thing is going to change so much.
00:04:47AI is already changing absolutely everything.
00:04:48A few decades ago, people would not have been able to imagine that, like, Lehman Brothers would one day collapse
00:04:53or that the Fuji would, like, not be dominant in the camera space.
00:04:56Right now, it's so hard for us to imagine that the world is actually going to change.
00:05:00And yet, that's what everyone thinks throughout time.
00:05:02They're like, oh, the world can't possibly change.
00:05:03And then, boom, the world changes.
00:05:04All right, so if you have ever wanted to start your own business, but you've been unsure as to what idea you should actually pursue,
00:05:10then you're definitely going to want to check out a completely free tool that I've built using Perplexity Computer,
00:05:14who are very kindly sponsoring this video.
00:05:15Now, the problem with business ideas is that most people don't have any ideas at all,
00:05:18or on the other side of the spectrum, they have way too many ideas and they're not sure which one to actually pursue.
00:05:23And so this free tool can help you out with that.
00:05:25It is the ultimate business idea generator, and it gives you everything you actually need to get started with your business.
00:05:29It runs you through a quick question and answer session where it asks you about your background, your skills, your experience.
00:05:34And it's as if there was a researcher or a business coach that's sitting across from you asking you questions
00:05:38to try and get your own genius insights out of you to try and figure out what business idea would make sense for you.
00:05:43The really cool thing is that as you talk, the canvas on the side of the screen fills up with actual business ideas as you're going.
00:05:48And these are not just like vague generic suggestions.
00:05:50These are business ideas that are tailored to you with a little bit of a spiel as to why that one might match your specific personality and skills experience.
00:05:57Once you've picked an idea, it can draft out a business plan for you, so you can use that as inspiration.
00:06:01And the vibe we try to create is that it's sort of like having a business partner who's helping you set up your first business from scratch.
00:06:07The tool is completely free.
00:06:08There'll be a link down below.
00:06:09So you just pop your email in, you run the interview, and then you can see what it comes back with.
00:06:12And I'd love to know in a comment down below what business idea you might be pursuing or you might be tempted by.
00:06:17So anyway, thank you to Perplexity for sponsoring this video and for the wonderful tool, Perplexity Computer, that I use in my own work and life every day.
00:06:23Let's get back to the video.
00:06:24So when figuring out what to do with our life, we want to avoid the mistake of fixating on a job title or even a job area.
00:06:30We want to understand like what are the general characteristics I'm optimizing for.
00:06:33When it comes to work, it's also really useful to think, okay, what do I want in terms of the lifestyle of my career?
00:06:39Do I want the kind of work that's flexible where I can kind of work on my own terms?
00:06:43Or am I okay with like a high-powered corporate lawyer job where I know that work is going to be the primary center of my life and I'm going to have to sacrifice other things around that, like my family or, you know, home life or health or whatever the thing might be.
00:06:54Again, there's no right answer.
00:06:55It's just a case of figuring out what you want from that situation.
00:06:57And most people never take the time to really define these life areas and map out what do you want and what do you not want.
00:07:02It's also very useful at this point, again, just to give you more clarity around figuring out what to do with your life, is to answer the question of why.
00:07:08This is a hard one.
00:07:10You might think I want a job that gives me a million dollars a year.
00:07:12But it's like, okay, why?
00:07:13What do you think you can do with a million dollars a year that you can't do with, let's say, 500K?
00:07:16You might think, man, I really want to build a business, a billion dollar business.
00:07:18But the question is why?
00:07:19Like, what are you hoping a billion dollar business will give you that you do not already have?
00:07:22Again, there's no right or wrong answers, but it's just worth asking that question, right?
00:07:25Because if, for example, you say you have to be making at least a million dollars a year, man, the number of careers you can do for that drastically shrinks.
00:07:31Because almost zero careers will actually make a million dollars a year.
00:07:34You could start your own business.
00:07:35And if you're like, decide to start your own business and it has to be a billion dollar company, again, drastically shrinks the number of businesses you can make.
00:07:40You can't probably start the local coffee shop.
00:07:42It's not going to make a billion dollars a year.
00:07:43It just massively limits you when you have these big goals and aspirations.
00:07:48And so, again, it's worth understanding why.
00:07:49Generally, when we go after something, it is because we are seeking some kind of feeling.
00:07:55So the question to ask yourself is what feeling are you hunting for when you say you want that thing?
00:07:59Is million dollars a year just there because it's a nice round number?
00:08:02Are you looking for the feeling of security or the feeling of safety or the feeling of certainty in a world that's uncertain?
00:08:08Are you looking for a feeling of relaxation, a feeling of balance, a feeling of like a stress-free life?
00:08:13In which case, again, it's sort of like the lifestyle you want related to the why behind the specific thing.
00:08:18Some of these are kind of obvious.
00:08:19It's like, why do I want to be able to play with my kids?
00:08:21Because I want to be able to play with my kids.
00:08:22You know, I want the feeling of, you know, contentment and joy and fulfillment from being able to like bounce my granddaughter up and down when I'm like 70 years old without worrying that I'm going to freaking break my back and then end up in hospital and end up dying.
00:08:32You know, that's what I'm going for.
00:08:33But it's a lot harder to ask that question when it comes to the context of work.
00:08:35And then you start doing the same for like the home stuff, the kids stuff, the marriage stuff, growth, hobbies, side business.
00:08:40Like if you want to start a side business, that becomes this whole other category.
00:08:43If you already have a business, I mean, that basically becomes the category of work.
00:08:46Again, we're just mapping out what do we want and what do we not want?
00:08:49And why do we think we want the thing?
00:08:51At this point as well, this is where it can be helpful to create a kind of vision board, which is basically you put some pictures on it.
00:08:55Often the words themselves of the kind of lifestyle that you want are unlikely to move you to take action.
00:09:02But if you post, if you have like a picture of it, I have a vision board.
00:09:05We'll flash it up on screen that I have as like my desktop wallpaper.
00:09:07So there's like, you know, this nice house, there's like this random woman with three kids, you know, it signals that I want to have like at least three kids.
00:09:14I think there's this like guy who's like a jacked dude doing martial arts where it's less that he's jacked.
00:09:19It's more like he's a very flexible and mobile.
00:09:20And so that's something I'm optimizing for with health.
00:09:22There's like a squash player.
00:09:23I'd be like, oh, I really enjoy playing squash.
00:09:25Probably never going to do it professionally, but it's a cool thing to do.
00:09:27There's this like app screen.
00:09:28Like, you know, I like the idea of like making apps and designing apps and stuff because it's cool.
00:09:31I like tech, you know, these sorts of images, when I see them on my vision board, gives me much more clarity around what I want to do with my life.
00:09:36Because whenever I think of that question, I just look at my desktop wallpaper.
00:09:39I'm like, oh, okay.
00:09:40Does that seem like it's still generally aligned with what I think I want?
00:09:44So we're defining life areas for each one.
00:09:45We're asking ourselves, what do I want?
00:09:47What do I not want?
00:09:48Why do I want the thing that I want?
00:09:49And can I put some pictures on it just to make it feel a little bit more like bitey?
00:09:52This is not easy.
00:09:53This takes a long time.
00:09:54It takes probably a few hours of like really sitting down and journaling about this.
00:09:57When I do this, I like to do it on an airplane because I don't get the Wi-Fi.
00:10:00I just open up blank Apple Notes document.
00:10:02I use a little airplane emoji to be like, yeah, I'm flying from Hong Kong to London and I'm doing some journaling about figuring out what to do with my life.
00:10:07And I'll just write out the different life areas and write out what do I want and what do I not want.
00:10:11Immediately, if you just do that, you'll get way more clarity around figuring out what to do with your life.
00:10:14By the way, random thing, if you've enjoyed the video so far, my team and I are actually working on a productivity app to help you figure out what to do with your life.
00:10:21It's called Super Focus.
00:10:22It's currently in private beta, but there'll be a link down below if you're interested in a, you know, an app that actually helps you answer all of these questions.
00:10:29There's more details down below.
00:10:30Now let's move on to step two.
00:10:32Step two, when it comes to figuring out what to do with your life is that it's really, really, really helpful to define what are your dreams.
00:10:37I first did this exercise when I was at a Tony Robbins five-day seminar thing, which was literally like, actually it was six days, called Date With Destiny.
00:10:44And it was literally all about how to figure out what to do with your life.
00:10:47And this was one of the most powerful exercises for me.
00:10:49Because basically what he did was played some like inspiring background music and stuff.
00:10:52And everyone had to write down for like a solid 20 minutes, as much as you could, about what do you want from life.
00:10:58And it was things like, what do you want to have?
00:11:00What do you want to do?
00:11:01What do you want to achieve?
00:11:03What do you want to try?
00:11:04What do you want to learn?
00:11:05What do you, where do you want to, what do you want to visit?
00:11:07Where do you want to go?
00:11:09What do you want to experience?
00:11:11And the whole shtick was you're just writing down this enormous list of stuff.
00:11:15And again, this is really helpful in terms of figuring out what you want to do with your life, right?
00:11:18Because we almost never just actually sit down and define these things.
00:11:21We do variants of this exercise once a year when I run my annual productivity summit.
00:11:25People get a lot of value from this as well.
00:11:27You know, in the have column, you're allowed to be as materialistic as you like.
00:11:29If you want a private jet, you're allowed to put private jet on the list.
00:11:32If you want a yacht, you're allowed to put yacht on the list.
00:11:34A lot of people don't want those things.
00:11:35That's also fine.
00:11:36What do you want to do?
00:11:37What do you want to achieve?
00:11:38What do you want to try?
00:11:38What do you want to learn?
00:11:39For me, I want to learn Japanese.
00:11:40I want to learn Mandarin Chinese.
00:11:41I want to learn snowboarding.
00:11:42I want to visit the Maldives.
00:11:43I want to visit Timbuktu because it seems like a cool place.
00:11:46What do I want to experience?
00:11:47I want to experience more psychedelics.
00:11:49Where do I want to go?
00:11:50You kind of make a list of all of these different dreams.
00:11:52And generally, you can lump some of these dreams into different areas,
00:11:55into the different areas that we have already defined.
00:11:58So we are defining our dreams.
00:12:00Crucially, we're trying to define our dreams without limiting ourselves.
00:12:03A lot of the time, people are like,
00:12:04Oh, I really want to learn Japanese.
00:12:05Oh, no, I'm not going to put it on the list because it's going to be too hard.
00:12:08It's like, we want to drop the, this is going to be too hard.
00:12:10It's not going to be realistic.
00:12:12Any of this sort of stuff.
00:12:12Again, we're just thinking, thinking big, thinking broad, thinking if I could do whatever,
00:12:17like what would be cool?
00:12:18For me, there's a bunch of other things on that list.
00:12:19It's like, you know, each year I want to organize a ski trip with friends.
00:12:22I want to organize a co-working trip with friends each year.
00:12:24I want to organize a cruise with friends.
00:12:25I think that will be fun.
00:12:26I'd like to hike to the whole like Machu Picchu stuff because I've seen pictures of that and it looks cool.
00:12:30I'd like to live in a van for a month and I'd like to sort of remodel my own like van
00:12:33and like learn about the electrics and the plumbing and stuff to do the van life thing for a bit.
00:12:36You know, we're just making a list of dreams.
00:12:38And again, the more we think about this stuff and write it down somewhere where we've then bookmarked it on our web browser
00:12:44and we can find it whenever we want.
00:12:45The more whenever we get this question of like, what do I want to do with my life?
00:12:48Because, you know, even once you figure this out, we'll still have that question probably at least once every three months.
00:12:52You can just look at your list.
00:12:53You can look at your life areas.
00:12:54You can look at your life vision.
00:12:55You can look at your pictures, your vision board, and you can ask yourself, does this still feel aligned?
00:12:59Because really, to be honest, what you want is always going to change over time.
00:13:02And so at the time you're asking that question, it is only ever going to be a snapshot.
00:13:06Like right now, I am 32 years old.
00:13:08If I ask myself what I want to do with my life and I do all this stuff, it'll just be a snapshot.
00:13:11It's very different to when I ask myself that question at 22.
00:13:13And it's probably quite different to when I'll ask myself that question at 42.
00:13:17But some things will be fairly constant and some things will have changed.
00:13:20Back when I was 22, I still wanted to be a doctor.
00:13:22And so quite a lot of the work stuff was like about medicine, about anesthetics, maybe emergency medicine, maybe plastic surgery, maybe working part time, all this sort of stuff.
00:13:29And then once I left medicine and realized that that's no longer what I wanted to do, all of that stuff just dropped away.
00:13:33And now what I want in the work front is mostly focused around building a cool lifestyle business, working with people that I enjoy hanging out with, being able to teach people and help them improve their lives and help them learn the skills for financial freedom and stuff.
00:13:42And maybe 10 years from now, I'll stop caring about that and maybe we'll do something else.
00:13:45But that's okay, because right now it is a snapshot.
00:13:48And the point of the snapshot is not to give you a clear destination.
00:13:51It's actually to give you a direction.
00:13:52If I know that roughly that's the destination I'm aiming for, what matters is the direction, not the destination.
00:13:57It matters that my ship is going this way rather than that way.
00:14:01If the destination I'm painting is I want to build a $10 billion startup, the actions I would take in the here and now are very different than if the destination I'm painting is I want a chill lifestyle business where I can work three days a week and make 100k doing what I love.
00:14:11Those lead to drastically different ways of building a business.
00:14:14And the destination is almost irrelevant, but what matters is the direction.
00:14:17Final thing we do is we're really going to zoom out and think like really big picture life vision.
00:14:23So we define the areas, we define some of our dreams.
00:14:25Now we're going to go even even broader and we're going to do a bunch of journaling prompts that will help us get out of our current mode of operating and move into like just exploring different potential paths that we might have.
00:14:38One of my favorite exercises for this is called the odyssey plan.
00:14:41Basically, the idea is that you're asking yourself three questions.
00:14:44Number one, you're asking the question of like, okay, if I continued down my current path five years from now, what does my life look like?
00:14:49And you write out in detail what your life looks like five years from then.
00:14:52Then you ask yourself, what's the alternative path?
00:14:54Let's say I'm not allowed to go down that path and I have to pick a completely different one.
00:14:57What does my life look like five years from now down that path?
00:14:59And then you're, all right, cool.
00:15:01Come back to today.
00:15:02And then you ask yourself, what does my life look like five years from now if I take a completely different path where I don't care about money
00:15:08and I don't care about what people think of me.
00:15:09I've done this exercise a bunch of times over the years.
00:15:11My wife literally did it like two days ago when she was grappling with this question of figuring out what to do with her life as it relates to certain work projects.
00:15:16And it's insanely helpful.
00:15:17I've been recommending it on the internet for years and sometimes when I'll do events and stuff and people will ask me this question of like, I don't know what to do with my life.
00:15:23I'm like, oh, have you come across the odyssey plan?
00:15:25They'll often say, oh yeah, I heard you mentioned it in a video or an Instagram reel.
00:15:27And I'm like, great, have you done it?
00:15:28And they're like, no, I haven't done it.
00:15:29So my suggestion would be, if you're at this point in the video and you're genuinely struggling to figure out what to do with your life,
00:15:35there's a sort of thing where you don't get clarity by just watching a YouTube video and hoping for the best.
00:15:39You get clarity by watching a YouTube video, getting the insights from it,
00:15:42and then actually doing the work of this inner exploration and journaling to explore these different life paths.
00:15:47The benefit of the odyssey plan is that it forces us to think outside of our current like paradigm.
00:15:53And it forces us to really articulate what would I do if I didn't give a shit about money?
00:15:57And if I really didn't care what society or my parents, my friends, my cousins, if I really didn't care what any of these people thought of me.
00:16:03And often it makes us realize that actually we are remarkably limited by the need to make a certain amount of money and by the need to please the people around us.
00:16:11It's not saying you have to follow any of these plans, but it's just a good way to sort of think a little bit broader.
00:16:14Another prompt I really like is the TED talk prompt.
00:16:17Let's imagine 30 years from now, I've been invited to give a talk at TED.
00:16:21TED, the main conference, not TEDx, the smaller ones, but like a proper TED talk.
00:16:24And it gets a standing ovation and it gets tens of millions of views on YouTube.
00:16:28And everyone's like, all the comments are like, oh my God, this is incredible.
00:16:30It's so inspiring, et cetera, et cetera.
00:16:32What would you be talking about 30 years from now?
00:16:34What would be cool to be talking about 30 years from now?
00:16:37Hard question to answer.
00:16:38You're probably thinking, man, I have no idea.
00:16:39But if I were to say, do you think it would be cool to talk about how I became a partner at a big law firm as a TED talk?
00:16:47Would that be really cool and really exciting?
00:16:49You'd probably be like, eh, not really.
00:16:52Would it be really cool and exciting to talk about how I won gold medal at the Olympics four times in a row?
00:16:57Maybe if you're a person into sports, you might think, whoa, that sounds really cool.
00:17:00If you're a normal person, probably like, eh, no, it's not that cool.
00:17:03So you just start like throwing these things out and asking yourself these questions of like,
00:17:06what are the sorts of things that if you were giving a TED talk about 30 years from now,
00:17:10you think it would be kind of cool to potentially talk about?
00:17:13Then there's another one which I really like, which is,
00:17:15let's imagine you've got all of the time and money in the world.
00:17:17And so you don't need to worry about making money.
00:17:19You've already made it, et cetera, et cetera.
00:17:20But the catch is you have to spend about 40 hours a week using your skills and talents
00:17:26to serve other people in some kind of way.
00:17:29What sorts of things might you do if you had all the money in the world,
00:17:31you had all the time in the world, but you had to use your skills to serve people in some kind of way?
00:17:36Would you be teaching about stuff?
00:17:38That's often my answer.
00:17:39Would you be building cool things?
00:17:41Would you be saving the environment?
00:17:42Would you be solving the refugee crisis?
00:17:44Would you be helping homeless people in your local community?
00:17:47What sort of stuff would you be doing if you had to spend 40 hours a week serving people in some way?
00:17:52This often helps us get to the thing of what kind of work do you actually want to do?
00:17:55Especially if you're like trying to figure out like,
00:17:56oh man, how do I figure out what to do with my career?
00:17:58Ideally, the more we can remove the veil of, I need to make money.
00:18:01I need to worry about what people will think.
00:18:03And the more we can step into that spirit of service,
00:18:06like work is helping other people in some way, in some kind of way.
00:18:09So if I had to, what would I actually do to help other people?
00:18:12And then often, you can try and find a way to make money from that thing,
00:18:16if money is the thing that you need.
00:18:17Not saying it's possible in 100% of cases,
00:18:19but it's often more possible than if you hadn't thought about the question.
00:18:21Then there's a fun one, which is,
00:18:23what would you want people to say at your funeral?
00:18:25In your eulogy, which is the thing that someone,
00:18:26you know, the speech that someone gives about you at your funeral.
00:18:28Or what would you want written about you in your obituary,
00:18:31which is the thing they write about you once you die.
00:18:33This is sort of the true sense of beginning with the end in mind.
00:18:35Generally, in a eulogy,
00:18:36they don't really talk about your achievements or any of that kind of stuff.
00:18:39They generally talk about what a nice person you were and the impact that you had on your local community
00:18:42and your friends and family and how great a guy or great a gal you were, et cetera, et cetera.
00:18:45And then generally in your obituary, they'll do some of that,
00:18:47but they'll also talk about your achievements and the impact you had on the world
00:18:50or the people that your work served and stuff.
00:18:52And again, when we do our annual productivity summits,
00:18:55we sometimes do this exercise where we get people to write out their own eulogy
00:18:58or write out their own obituary.
00:18:59And we get people in the Zoom chat being like,
00:19:00oh my God, I'm crying.
00:19:01Oh my God, I've never done this before.
00:19:02Oh my God, I feel so much clarity.
00:19:03Oh my God, I'm getting so emotional.
00:19:05It's great.
00:19:05So 100%, if you're up for it,
00:19:07I'd recommend writing your own eulogy and or your own obituary
00:19:09as a real sense of giving you a feel of what do you actually want to do with your life?
00:19:13Because when all is said and done, we're all going to die.
00:19:16You know, a few decades from now, neither of us are going to be here.
00:19:18A few decades after that, no one is going to remember me.
00:19:20No one's going to remember you.
00:19:22And so, you know, keeping that like, you know, that idea of mental mori,
00:19:26keeping in mind that we are going to die,
00:19:28can often give us a sense of how do we actually want to live.
00:19:32Now, all of this stuff is way easier said than done.
00:19:34It is genuinely a difficult question to answer what to do with your life.
00:19:37But if you're interested in more of these sorts of journaling problems
00:19:39that can help you figure this out,
00:19:40I've got a video right over here,
00:19:42which will explore those in a bit more detail.
00:19:44So thank you so much for watching.
00:19:45I hope you got value out of the video
00:19:45and I will see you in the next one.