This is FiveMinuteFriday, The Six Months Rule.
Welcome back to the SuperDataScience podcast ladies and gentlemen, super excited to have you back here on the show today. And in this episode I’d like to share with you a rule for life that I don’t even remember where I learned. I’ve shared it since with several people and I’ve used it in my own life and many people have actually found it useful. A couple of people have come back to me saying that this is, well, this one person I remember recently saying that this is a useful rule that has changed their perspective of life. And I thought I’d share it here. Maybe you’ll get some value out of it as well. So here it goes.
The rule is, would you be doing, what you are doing now, if, hypothetically, you only had six months left to live? So it might sound a bit morbid or scary, but it really puts things into perspective. If you knew you only have six months left to live, would you be doing what you’re doing now? Would you be working at the job that you’re working at now? Would you be dating the person you’re dating now? Would you be, doing the hobbies that you’re doing now? Would you be reading that book that you’re reading now? Would you be playing that computer game that you’re playing now? Like what is it that you’d be doing?
And when you think about it that way, I find it really puts things into perspective because normally we think that our lives are endless and, or not endless, very long. And we’ve got lots to do and hopefully they are that way that we have a lot of life to live and a lot of time on this planet. But that also encourages this wasteful mindset. Because remember that time is the only resource, the only commodity on the planet that you cannot replenish. That once it’s gone it’s gone. Money, you can probably make it back. Things you lose, you can return them or you can make them again or find them again.
Even health to some extent, you can work on it and get it back, but time you cannot. And when we think that we’ve got a lot of time available to us, we kind of tend to be wasteful of it. But if you change your mentality and you think, what would I be doing if I only had a limited amount of time left, all of a sudden the whole perspective shifts. And I know that for myself, I’ve been asking myself this question recently, would I be doing things I’m doing if I knew that only had six months left to live? And most of the things I’m pretty excited about. I excited that most of the things I would still be doing, I am generally doing things that I want to, I enjoy doing. There are a couple of things, specifically for example, that I wouldn’t be doing if that was the case.
So for example, like I’m, I find myself working too much in my business or in the business rather than on the business. And that’s something I want to change. Something that, you know, I need to put the right systems, process, people in place in order to allow myself to work more on the strategy and the things that I enjoy about working on the business. And, and as a [inaudible 00:03:42], I come to this conclusion, one of the ways was by asking this question like would I be doing what I’m doing if only I had six months left to live? And I found that, hey, actually a lot of things, yes, but there’s a couple things no, and I probably need to change that.
So there you go. That’s a quick rule for life that maybe you might find helpful and see what happens if you ask this questions yourself. And the main thing of course is looking at the time that you have, not from a endless perspective but from a scarcity perspective and seeing how that shifts your perspective. And hopefully of course, hopefully we all have lots and lots of time left to live, but it’s always healthy to have a fresh outlook on the things that you’re doing now. So there you go. Would you be doing the things that you’re doing or any given thing that you’re doing if you only had six months left on this planet?
On that note, hopefully you find this insightful and gives you some new ideas, some new perspectives. And on that note, thanks so much for being here today. I look forward to seeing you back here next time. And until then, happy analyzing.
