For related reading, I recommend this Tim Urban piece, "The Tail End": <a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/12/the-tail-end.html" rel="nofollow">https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/12/the-tail-end.html</a><p><i>I read about five books a year, so even though it feels like I’ll read an endless number of books in the future, I actually have to choose only 300 of all the books out there to read and accept that I’ll sign off for eternity without knowing what goes on in all the rest.</i><p>...<p><i>I’ve been thinking about my parents, who are in their mid-60s. During my first 18 years, I spent some time with my parents during at least 90% of my days. But since heading off to college and then later moving out of Boston, I’ve probably seen them an average of only five times a year each, for an average of maybe two days each time. 10 days a year.</i><p><i>Being in their mid-60s, let’s continue to be super optimistic and say I’m one of the incredibly lucky people to have both parents alive into my 60s. That would give us about 30 more years of coexistence. If the ten days a year thing holds, that’s 300 days left to hang with mom and dad. Less time than I spent with them in any one of my 18 childhood years.</i><p><i>It turns out that when I graduated from high school, I had already used up 93% of my in-person parent time. I’m now enjoying the last 5% of that time. We’re in the tail end.</i>
As a side note, not only one's life is short, but the entire human history is short. I'm over 40 and it struck me that if I repeated my life 50 times it would already go back B.C.! We've invented and developed ALL the things in between. I don't think I could live 50 times and do that myself. That was some amazing achievement, humans.
By far the deepest and most eloquent writing on this subject that I've ever read has been Seneca's <i>"On the Shortness of Life"</i>.[1][2]<p>[1] - <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Shortness-Life-Seneca/dp/1941129420/" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Shortness-Life-Seneca/dp/1941129420/</a><p>[2] - <a href="https://tripinsurancestore.com/4/on-the-shortness-of-life.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://tripinsurancestore.com/4/on-the-shortness-of-life.pd...</a>
I have a one year old and this is such empowering advice. I discovered a lot of this on my own somehow, but reading that blog now reminds me to cut the bullshit that somehow keeps creeping back in. When explaining to my boss and peers why I was quitting my dream job, I would repeat, "life is fleeting, I want to watch my son grow up."<p>I've had that wish for a few months now. I have another job that's a bit less rewarding but I work from home and it's far more relaxed. I've already remarked to myself or my wife a dozen moments that I would have missed if I was elsewhere that day: at work, in traffic, etc.<p>I feel so blessed that I was lucky enough to figure this out this early in life.
This makes me so anxious and depressed. I'm convinced that nothing will make you more unhappy than reading articles like this about how you're doing your life wrong. A good life seems to come from being content with a bad one.
Alright. This isn't Reddit, but: how do people find meaningful things to do (instead of addictive, unrewarding habits) when options, at any particular time, seem to be very limited (i.e. I have 2 hours, starting now - what's available?)? Is it even possible to choose particular meaningful activities consciously (e.g. why would I expect travelling to X to be a great experience if I haven't done it before?), or do they happen by accident if you just expose yourself to many different situations (like having kids)? It seems like the "just say yes" principle is key - don't plan how to spend time based on what you know, just try more things and stop doing what turns out pointless. And, like pg writes, do it now.<p>Practical result: it's probably better to go to a new club you don't know yet every time you go out, than to frequently visit your favourite one. Even if it feels wrong to habitual animals like us.<p>Apologies for the rambling.
I admire pg's sentiment here but I think the analysis is inaccurate.<p>There's all these "regret minimization" techniques and books out there - but they all fail at one thing; giving the true reason for why every person will ultimately have regrets: You are not you. The exhausted and tired you has different weights assigned to activities, most strongly correlated with energy required. The stimulated you after drinking 4 shots of expresso or taking amphetamines, is more than willing to do the things that tired you would probably have not done.<p>We wrestle with lazyness, consumption versus actual action, the great now for the shitty future or vica versa. You really can't please all modes of thinking -- ever. The deathbed mode of thinking is another entirely different beast.<p>But what pg says about "importance" vs "what matters" rings true and really penetrates through this incompleteness of self-thought. Love is the only thing that could never be wrong. Because it isn't a binary - it's not even just a feeling - it's a thing that modes of thought can't erase despite their different weighting schemes.<p>Do whatever you do - but do it for love. I promise you it won't be a regret.
might be good to be pg and have plenty of time to spenD with its own kid, after doing a phd in one of the most expensive colleges in the US, selling a company for tons of money, creating a extremely successful incubator<p>i used to enjoy his essays for a long time, til i started to see how out of the world of most people even the basic stuff he writes there -- he is able to afford to spend time doing stuff nobody can, then it's kinda of easy to be successful at whatever he does.
Telling a weird and only slightly related to the 'not waiting' part of this article (which I like).<p>I recently got bitten by bitcoin trading. Knowing nothing about trading it was extremely wasteful. Also soulless... every dollar I made was someone else's loss. But it made me approach waiting and time efficiency differently. I'm a very attentist person.. I wait.. waiiit.. In bitcoin there's a tension (I did minute scalping) to get started and leave at the right time. Also since no one wants to wait watching charts, it made me learn rust/kotlin in the mean time with way more energy. Stretching and working out too.<p>Surprisingly this stupid activity gave floor to other more fulfilling ones. Life is complex sometimes.<p>ps: sometimes too life make you blind to what would be your perfect life and then you miss it. uneasy feeling to get over.
A pleasant essay, but I think it is a bit dismissive of the situations people are in. A simple example is the teenagers he mentions. You can't help but worry a ton about what people think about you as a teenager - your "social subprocess" has just kicked on, and you are overwhelmed by a great number of new senses and feelings. Telling a teenager not to worry about things does nothing but make everything worse. I can come up to you and inject you with adrenaline and nothing you do (short of medical intervention) will make you feel calm, and certainly me telling you to "just calm down" isn't going to help.<p>The essay is well intended, and well written as usual, I just have an issue with the underlying assumption that people can simply change everything as desired.
Sam Altman published a very related piece three years ago:<p>“The days are long but the decades are short”
<a href="https://blog.samaltman.com/the-days-are-long-but-the-decades-are-short" rel="nofollow">https://blog.samaltman.com/the-days-are-long-but-the-decades...</a>
> After my mother died, I wished I'd spent more time with her. I lived as if she'd always be there.<p>I love this article, and this line has always hit me particularly hard. He goes on to mention that she encouraged this illusion, and I think many people who are older do this as well.<p>As someone who is going through something similar, what do you do in this situation? Of course you can adjust your life to live as if people won't always be there, but how do you get them to stop encouraging the illusion?
I definitely agree with this article and believe that life is short, but it's also a good idea to relax and not worry about it all too much. I think the relaxing and having a piece of mind is undervalued by most people. It helps you have a better quality life however short it is. Remember that the time you spend on worrying about how short it is is also part of your life which you are kind of wasting. Having said that I agree that we should consider the bullshit in our life and cut in favor of things that we really want to do, because at the end life is to short for that.
"Relentlessly prune bullshit, don't wait to do things that matter, and savor the time you have. That's what you do when life is short."<p>Wise words. It took me a long time to learn this the hard way.
I see this and I understand the sentiment but my emotional reaction is basically “Nah.”<p>Life is long and good. Even when shitty things happen to you, it’s a gift to be alive. (A gift from whom, you might ask? Probably nobody, but nobody knows! Isn’t that exciting?) I’m about to celebrate my 10,000th day on Earth. That’s a lot of days! And I have a couple times that more ahead of me if I’m lucky and I do some exercise.<p>I’m not waiting to do things that matter to me, not because the clock is ticking, but because I <i>want</i> to do them now. And I might not want to do them later, so it’d be a shame if I didn’t.<p>Of course I’m terrified of the day it ends. It keeps me up almost every night. But pragmatically, the more I think about that, the less I enjoy the time I have. And I plan to arrange a good vitrification at the end of things so I have a small chance of coming back for an encore. You’ve got to be practical about life, but you don’t need to be pessimistic. Life may not be long <i>enough</i>, but it is long.
Oh my. My son is 7, and I know time with him will fly by. But realizing I can count the childhood Christmases that we have remaining hits me so much harder than knowing his childhood will fly by in general<p>I savor every day with him, even when I'm busy and a bit frustrated. I tell him that as well.<p>Reading the opening part of this hit me in the gut.
Related: two of President John Tyler's Grandsons Are Still Alive.<p><a href="http://mentalfloss.com/article/29842/president-john-tylers-grandsons-are-still-alive" rel="nofollow">http://mentalfloss.com/article/29842/president-john-tylers-g...</a><p>John Tyler was born in 1790, and he took office in 1841.
Interesting piece but perspective matters.<p>> don't wait to do things that matter, and savor the time you have. That's what you do when life is short.<p>It depends on your situation. If you cashed out and don't have to worry about paying rent and feeding your family (like Paul) then it's easy to spend more time with your family.<p>If not: You are constantly torn between spending time with your family and getting your startup/career/job right to be able to finance the next vacation/school/flat. It's actually even worse. Every minute you spend with your family you face opportunity costs losing money you could invest into your family. If you work only your kids won't remember you.<p>Try to cash out before you hit 25, not later than 30.
Nice article, and I agree, life is short.<p>This is, of course, not a new observation. It's Easter, so here are a few Biblical quotes with the same sentiment:<p>"What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes." (James 4:14 ESV)<p>"Man is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow." (Psalm 144:4 ESV)<p>It's an old observation... but it's also timeless. It's good to be reminded. Thanks.
the corollary to "time flies when you're having fun" is that misery never ends. Chronic depression and entry level retail is the next worst thing to immortality...
Life is short for those that have triggered immortal processes. There are no easy ways to do this however. (the easiest way being starting a family)<p>Most people probably feel that life is too long and boring and are always looking for something to do.<p>It's probably somewhat offensive to these people to claim life is too short when their major negative emotion day to day is ennui.<p>I think the internet has exacerbated this problem for some people. Those who can't bring themselves to do things because they can easily see that it's already been done before but weren't young enough to grow up in this new environment to easily consider doing things like game streaming or YouTube channels.
Arguing on-line can be a <i>good</i> thing: it sharpens both your logic and articulation skills. If you don't like on-line debate, you can leave.<p>A good online debate ends up looking like a geometry proof: based on these givens, here's the logical conclusion using cold, hard, and clear logic.<p>Now, it may be that people disagree with the givens, being that many of them depend on assumptions of human behavior and psychology that would take million$ to settle in controlled studies, but at least one narrows down the reasons for their preference. Another reader can then "shop the proofs" and select the one with givens that best match their own circumstances or shop practices. Thus, good debates create clear(er) decision trees even though disagreements remain. Parameters will remain parameters.
"Life is too short" is also the core tenet of a philosophy called "Memento Mori" (remember that you will die!). It was even used as a greeting, instead of "hello" by the members of certain religious sects.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_mori" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_mori</a><p><rant>
But the opposite is also true: while I am alive, I am never dead (as silly as it sounds). I never experience death. For me it is an eternal now which is always alive. Should I worry about things I will never experience? We only experience the death of others, we don't know what it is like not to be alive 100 years from now. Why should we care about that when we are in an eternal now that is always alive?<p>One way to deal with death is to leave something of you behind - kids, ideas or social impact. Another way is to remember that there is a great number of people who died as well - everyone before a certain birth date in fact. It's not like going in a strange place, it's like going where all these great people went before us.<p>When we die we're divided - the matter that was in our bodies goes to earth and is recycled in nature, possibly becoming part of another life. The genes pass on to our kids and our grandchildren, then spreading out in a vast number of people 10 or 20 generations later; genes have a life of their own. The ideas we had fly from mouth to mouth, having a life of their own as well. The memories are left with our friends and family and will have a second death when they die. But does it matter to you if you're remembered by someone who is not close to you? The life that was in us just reinvents itself again. We're split into pieces and every piece goes right where it should.<p>Another thing to ponder about: what else is a lot like death? In a sense, it's the time before we were born. It was like death, because we didn't exist, and then we came into being. How was it before we were born? Was it a bad experience? We have had eons of death before our short ~80 year span and it didn't affect us negatively one bit. If we're not affected by the 'no-life' of the time before we were born, why should we be affected by the 'no-life' that will be after we die?<p>In the end, what is important? I think all reasons in life are related to survival instincts. Even learning to walk and grasp, or how to function as a member of society, or how to date and how to raise children - they are all in the service of self replication (and protecting one's life). Our fundamental reason for being is self replication, and all our "good things in life" come from things that support it. Thus it is this recursive loop that creates the root value (that of being alive) and from it come all our other values.<p>But this kind of thinking is relative. When we're lifting ourselves from the basic loop of survival, we see how many of the things we hold dear and important are irrelevant. There is no universal good or reason to be. Meaning is being invented every moment and we're in control of it. We should think ourselves free and ignore the survival game as much as we like. That's the beauty of it - we're free to reinvent ourselves, or to embrace our instincts and values, which have been chiseled by countless generations of genetic selection before us. One strategy is exploration (there's no rule, we could be anything), and the other exploitation (holding dear the good things in life, those which fit our survival instincts). They're both valid.
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For those with kids, is it better to have them early, or later?<p>I’ve always thought it’s better to wait until at least my late 30s, so I can live the first half of my life completely on my terms. My father was in his late 30s when I was born, and I think it was a pretty good decision on his part.