The Secret to Telling if Your Life is on Track

Ideas

November 4, 2014 12:01 AM EST

Barker is the author of Barking Up The Wrong Tree

Sir Ray Avery, entrepreneur and author of Rebel With A Cause, says it’s as easy as counting your days.

“When you’re born, you’re born with 30,000 days. That’s it. The best strategic planning I can give to you is to think about that.”

He’s 65. So he’s “got about 5,625 days to live.” Then he just works backward to plan.

Via Techcrunch (HT: 99U):

“For me, I can reverse engineer my life to achieve much more than you guys. Every day I do a chart on what I’ve achieved and where I want to be. And it makes you scary-as-shit clever,” Avery said. “So think about that. You’ve got 30,000 days and the clock is ticking.”

Mind-blowingly simple yet it makes so much sense.

9 minutes in to his famous Stanford commencement speech Steve Jobs discussed the importance he placed on thinking about death during life:

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.”

And scientists agree he’s on to something. Thinking about death really does help us prioritize and be better people.

Candy Chang gave an inspirational TED talk about a project that asked people to finish the sentence: “Before I die I want to…”

I’d love to write more but I’ve got less than 20,000 days left. So much to do…

This piece originally appeared on Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

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