When I first saw the title of this essay, I thought I already knew what I was going to say...
Something about how my own todo this now has only one item on it, the single most important thing to do next. I gravitated to this based on the great quote by chess master Jose Capablanca:
Then I read pg's essay and Bronnie Ware's blog post and realized that this post was less about work and more about life.
Then it hit me: My life's todo list still has only one item on it and always has:
"Always do the right thing."
I realize that this can be very hand wavy because the "right thing" means something different to everyone and even something different to me at different times. But still, it has been the perfect #1 for my todo list.
Several years ago, my mother, who lived 1000 miles away, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and could no longer use the phone. So I began flying back to Pittsburgh every other weekend to be with her. After a while, even this wasn't enough. So I moved to Pittsburgh to be with her every day.
People tried to say the right thing to me, but it never was right. They'd say things like, "I admire your doing this, but you really don't have to because she doesn't even know who you are," or "You may be making a sacrifice now, but in time you won't regret it; you'll have nothing to be sorry for." And I thought, "How sad. After all these years these people still don't get it. This isn't a sacrifice from me to her. It's a gift from her to me."
I'm a little uncomfortable distilling pg's and Bronnie Ware's five thoughts from down into one, but "Always do the right thing" just works for me. I just hope the others in my life find something that works as well for them.
Our definition of self has become so short sighted that doing the right thing becomes a challenge for anyone to remember. Imagine trying to do the right thing in a startup, if we aren't practicing it in every day life with every thought and action.
Seeing my parents getting a little older is tough. Where they used to take me to all my doctors appointments whenever I needed it, now more and more, I'm taking them.
Why's this important? Priorities and balance and making the most of your time is so important.
In waiting rooms I see maybe one in 10 adults accompanied by their kids. My parents are comfortable going to appointments without me, so it means a lot they even ask me, maybe to see the same feeling of finding a familiar face in the waiting room, or someone to help remember what the doctor said.
Sadly we have a generation that feels its ok to believe everything is about us, at the expense of being there for others who are greatly responsible for our greatness. Some of the deepest, satisfying moments are when I get to be witness to someone's story.
Doing the right thing is for the sake of the right thing being done, not how someone takes it, sees it, or expects you to be there for them. There inevitably are things that need to be done regardless of personalities and positions.
I hope we never forget to find and live by our values that give us a deep sense of connection with ourselves and through it to those in our lives. All we have at the end of the day is making memories. Everything can go to hell but you can revisit a memory anytime, and keep creating new ones.
My mother went through years of taking care of her aging mother with Alzheimer's and made many sacrifices. So much so that she made each of my siblings and myself promise her that if she ever got Alzheimer's we would put her in a home and move on. She can't bear the thought of putting her children through the pain she endured.
Odds are, if G-Forbid this ever happened, we would be by her side every day, telling ourselves it is the right thing. It's the least we could do after all she has done and continues to do for us....
But it makes me wonder... What would your mother prefer? What would have made her happier? What choice would she have made for you if it was up to her?
Human nature is an interesting thing. Always presenting conflict every step of the way. The right thing can and will almost always be a representation of what your heart desires.
The weird part is, the more important the decision, the easier it usually is and the choice is more obvious.
The hard decisions usually are not that important, but rather a scenario with both options are legitimately justifiable, and both choices can be justified or vilified.
Brilliant, always do the right thing. So catchy and yet so utterly useless at the same time.
You sound just like the 'seduction' experts, 'confidence, that's what gets the girl'.
My mum had an episode where she quite literally went mad. We spent a couple of weeks visiting her every day as she was confused, scared and angry.
At some point I turned to my sister and said 'we have to go home, our lives have to go on'.
The irony being that 'home' was 100 miles away from where my mum lives as my sister had met her husband a year earlier visiting me.
Your story is touching and totally fucking stupid at the same time. My to-do list for tomorrow has 'Get loo roll, book a ticket for Splendour festival, vote'.
Your to-do list sucks ass as it doesn't actually meet your real life needs.
And did I do the right thing? I'll never know, I still feel like a shit as she screamed that the nurses were hurting her. Humiliated, ignored. Maybe they did? Lies I hope. I will never, ever know. Alzheimer's? She won't even remember what you did, you're doing it for nothing more than your own conscience.
We are living in a very, very odd time where our parents are turning into our children.
EDIT: The reason I had to write this is that your experience seems to me at odds with points 1, 3 & 5 of the list. And the horrible thing is it's going to get worse for all of us here on HN in the next 40 years. Medicine has put us in a very awkward position, one of being able to maintain the body when the mind went long ago. Or (imo worse) maintaining the body and mind when the reasons to live have gone. My friend's grandma openly talks about wanting to die as all her friends are dead. But does my friend's Mum want her Mum to die? Of course not. This is a very odd time.
You did the right thing (re your mother) for the right reason, not merely out of some sense of duty. It's hard to get that across. Many people seem to think that "Do the right thing" means they should dutifully sacrifice themselves. I don't think it does. I rarely know how to express it properly. I hope your story helps make it clearer for some people.
What my personal experience told me so far, there are always situations that only happen once. then you can do the right thing or you don't, so be carefull how you react in situations like this since they can change the course of your history. the trick is to recognize these moments, but that#s when you do the right thing, so I agrre with you.
As the of hagakure put it (cited from my memory and translated twice...): treat important thing lightly and treat unimprtant ones with all the seriousness you have.
It took me some hard decissions and situations to slowly get this and it seems like death is best teacher for that you can imagine. So we all should learn from other peoples mistakes and lessons, espacially if it's almost impossible to make them by yourself.
I'd rework Paul Graham's list a little, as the first two items are phrased in negative terms (it's easier to do stuff than to not do stuff).
"Follow your dreams; take a break; say what you think; cultivate friendships; be happy."
The idea of putting them at the top of your todo list is interesting. At the moment I organise myself with Trello, one list per project, and at the top of each list I have a card that reminds me why I'm doing the project. Every now and again I check these cards to see if any projects should be culled -- if they're not meeting their goals, or if there's a better way to achieve those goals, or if I no longer care about those goals.
Keeping long-term priorities in mind when caught up in the midst of your daily tasks seems like a winner. Your life is lived one day at a time, after all -- if you don't seize the day, you won't seize your life.
Anyway, the whole idea of combining your todo list with your bucket list -- your daily goals with your life goals -- is interesting. I've seen a few startups based on this idea (evr.st, Goalhawk). It'll be interesting to see if the model works.
Re: adding items to your todo lists, i feel like PG's 5 exhortations (which seem more like general advice than specific prescriptions) fit into something like the "epics" that were recently introduced into Pivotal Tracker, than actual items to do. One should take a look at each of the items placed on a todo list and ask "does this item take me closer or further from my goals?"
At the risk of sounding cynical, I wonder how much it actually matters. We tend to live our lives thinking as we go that we should be striving to end up at some optimal place and that the purpose of our lives is desperately trying to keep us exactly on that course. If we don't ask the girl to the dance, or give up on an idea, or spend extra nights at the office to get a promotion instead of hanging out with our family we think that we are drifting off of our optimal course and we drive ourselves crazy wondering at every step if we are losing our way and strive to keep our future regrets to a minimum. But the reality is that life is no more valuable at the end than at the beginning or the middle. Why worry about what our future selves will regret while forgoing present happiness? Why should I worry today about what I will feel tomorrow if I know I can be happy today?
When I hear somebody say "I wish I would have spent more time with my family" I wonder whether they really wish they had spent more time with their family or if they just miss their old family and wish they could have them back. That is to say I wonder whether people confuse nostalgia with regret. As you get older you regret not taking advantage of some things in the past, but I tend to think that what you feel as regret is actually just longing for being young again.
If you don't ask the first girl to the dance you might not be brave enough to ask the second girl to the dance and before you know it you're in a self-reinforcing loop of not asking anyone to any dances until you're old enough to realise and break out of that loop.
> Why worry about what our future selves will regret while forgoing present happiness?
I'm not sure how to grok that sentence. Here's two responses.
i) Exactly. Don't miss out on current happiness just to keep the future you happy. That's the point - future you does not want to look back on a life of hard grind and no fun just so you can do the looking back from a gold bed on your huge yacht.
ii) Because seeking contentment now is a way to ensure that you'll be contented in future and the future you won't look back on a life of missed opportunities. Missing out on happiness now is sometimes important in the short term, but it's not a great way to live a life. Perhaps a lot of grind now means you can retire early and relax and enjoy stuff. But you have to live long enough to retire, and by that time you may have missed some really fun things like babies growing.
> the reality is that life is no more valuable at the end than at the beginning or the middle
Yes. That is the point. Don't grind today to provide future you with excessive luxury. A bit of grinding might be needed to avoid future financial hardship, but other than that you should seek things that fulfil you today. Happiness today will make future you happy.
Future you is not more valuable, but s/he will have the benefit of hindsight.
Advice rarely comes with the caveats, and free advice is worth every cent. Ever hear anyone write on a blog, "I wish I didn't have to spend so much time with my family." or, "Given the Dunning–Kruger effect, don't follow your dreams as you are unlikely to achieve your unrealistic expectations given your current skill level."
To add to your comment, I wonder what the "regret bulletpoints" look like for the people who actually did all those things that PG listed. Maybe they wish that they worked more instead of hanging out with friends all the time?
>That is to say I wonder whether people confuse nostalgia with regret.
This is such an excellent point. This "dying patients" list greatly ignores the opportunity cost of getting to where you managed to get to in life.
Lets say I grant these wishes. I wave my magic wand and you work less. Now your memories are full of being poor, sending your kids to some shitty school, getting robbed in a poor neighborhood as opposed to working more but being able to live in a better neighborhood, going on more vacations, having extra money.
So its like saying, "I want my cake to eat it too." Well, that wasn't possible when you were younger and its certainly not possible on your deathbed.
>We tend to live our lives thinking as we go that we should be striving to end up at some optimal place and that the purpose of our lives is desperately trying to keep us exactly on that course.
This is very US (and now occidental) thinking. Many cultures in the world don't have people thinking like that. You've got to have a family and integrate well and support the community. The rest is not as important as our current society wants us to think.
You're right, it doesn't matter. Life is absurd is death is the final word. Just live it however you want.. just don't toil 60 hours working for some company, that's the worst.
I work 9-5 for a large company (100,000+ employees). I clock on each day, they pay me a great daily rate and I enjoy the work that I do.
Work doesn't define who I am and I am definitely not unfulfilled. I take French classes, dabble in photography and build the occasional web app. Once a month I take a 3 day weekend and go somewhere I've never been before. So far this year I've been to Switzerland, Belgium, Iceland and I'm shortly off to Madrid. I also enjoy cooking and going to fine restaurants.
The only reason I can afford to do these things is because of the money I receive from my work as a cog. Sure, I could try and grow one of my web app ideas, work a bazillon hours for the small chance that it takes off and I become a millionaire.
But what would I do then? Most likely the exact same things that I am doing now.
I'm not advocating working in a job you hate and avoiding following your dreams. I'm saying that working as a cog allows me to afford my dream, so don't be so quick to bag it.
Hmm. About 2 years ago I bought myself a canvas and wrote on it the following:
Live happy, make friends, enjoy. Make those dreams happy
It was for much the same reason - to inspire me. However, about 6 months later I thought those idea through and realised that, actually, it was an example of "making me feel better". I could sit and look at this poster and think; "yeh, I'm following my dream, I'm going to be happy". I even had a list of goals to meet.
But really you're not; you're following an arbitrary list, and all that is is con-straining.
Here's my thought process; trying hard to be happy isn't being happy... That thought mulled for a long while; I was doing cool stuff, with people I liked, and having plenty of down time. But I still felt like it was an effort to pursue.
This year has been a revelation. I did something "stupid" and spent a lot of my savings on two big holidays (many years ago I discovered my truest love is travel). Yesterday I spent a big portion of what is left on my third holiday of the year. I've barely done any work since January - one product release and some bugfixes. I started writing, then stopped, wrote a little program for myself, tried some carpentry, almost trashed my car trying to fix it, stood for at least three elections (politics and social communities) on a whim, dated two girls at once. And this is the tip of the iceberg.
All of this wouldn't sync with the person who wrote that maxim 2 years before; it would seem reckless and silly. As if I was throwing away what I had worked for years to build. A load of fucking rubbish.
Right now I'm free.
And I smile more than I ever have in my life. I have more friends. My life is barrelling along where, 6 months ago, it was stagnant.
So I wrote a new canvas (about 2 weeks ago, actually) which now says:
Let rip
My point is this; take care, with some of these ideas, that you don't get too focused on the means to the end. Just relax, close your eyes, do what you feel like. In the end it will work out. One day we will all be dead - till then I am going to enjoy myself. :)
There is nothing wrong with a todo list topped by the words "don't ignore your dreams". But only if it makes you happy.
Following your dreams, not working too much, spending time with family and friends, saying what you think, and being happy, might belong at the top of Paul Graham's todo list. He's already succeeded at what most people struggle at: making a living. He may have forgotten that getting by is hard.
What's so wrong about being a "cog in a machine"? Large organizations exist partly because scale and specialization are useful. People aren't "cogs" out of perversity, but practicality. Sometimes your comparative advantage is in being a good cog. And sometimes being a good cog is admirable. Example: surgeons who specialize in one and only one procedure, doing it exactly the same way every time, have a low failure rate. They save more lives that way. Are they creative? Nope. They follow somebody else's rules. They make themselves as mechanical, as repetitive, as possible. And the guy on the operating table lives.
Paul Graham is in a very unusual profession, where risk-taking is much more of an ideal than it is anywhere else. Also notice that he makes money off of telling other people to take risks. The more people decide to be entrepreneurs, the wider a pool he has to draw from. "Follow your dreams" is a useful meme for people like that; if a hundred people follow their dreams and fail and ruin their lives, PG never hears about it, but if one person follows his dreams and becomes a billionaire, PG might get a share. This isn't meant to vilify the guy; there's nothing wrong with making a living by inspiring people. And I'm sure he would say that he's fighting dangerous opposing memes against ever taking risks. I just think you can't take posts like this at face value.
> if a hundred people follow their dreams and fail and ruin their lives, PG never hears about it
Ruin their lives?
Hundreds of people fail in front of pg all the time. As an entrepreneur you fail in little ways constantly, and in big ways repeatedly. But that's ok. Failing is how we learn.
Can you think of anyone who ruined their life by failing at a startup?
> What's so wrong about being a "cog in a machine"?
Wanna live to work or work to live? I know that cooperate america tends towards the former, and much of the world is following that great success story. But, there is really not much point. In the end you're just as dead.
My boss doesn't read hn, so I can get away with this. In the last few years, after my daughter was born, I made a decision to not work too much. I consciously reduced my working hours as much as possible.
To my surprise and delight, my productivity and overall work completion has actually gone up. By being time bound (I am leaving at 5 no matter what) I often have to work like mad to get my work done. I have to make decisions quickly and implement.
The results are more projects done, sooner. If a mistake is made, or a more complete solution is needed you iterate and do it tomorrow. Already you are two iterations in where 2 years ago I would have been stalled still trying to work up a good starting point.
There are two ways of living: fear-based, and love-based.
People who live fear-based avoid things. They avoid things that might cause heartache, pain, difficulty, etc. but all of the most interesting pursuits in life have the potential to cause these things sometimes.
People who live love-based move towards things that bring happiness and satisfaction in the long term. They work hard and play hard, and when they hurt they know that things may get better.
I heard this several years ago now, and I see one of these approaches in most people around me.
It's hard to step outside the systems of social domination which suppress dreams, encourage overwork, etc. because they operate from fears which are often so deep-seated we're often not even aware of them. Bringing those fears into the light and unlearning the reactions they trigger is the main goal of spiritual practice (at least of mine.) This sort of emotional study and training is on the critical path for all of the desiderata pg lists (again, at least for me) and would have to precede them on my todo list, if I had one for this sort of thing.
Can learned helplessness be undone? Well, that’s the big question,
isn’t it? The answer is “Yes.” The cost, however, is high. We can only
undo learned helplessness by severing our internal connection with the
system that gave rise to it.
Our motivation must be clear and strong. We must really want to hear
and respond to our own questions about life. We must really want to
live our own life and not one prescribed by our family, society,
culture, profession or tradition. Metaphorically, we must be willing
to go north, the direction that takes us out of society. We must be
willing to endure pain, know from direct experience, act on what we
see and receive what happens. We must yearn to experience what is
without relying on anything to confirm our existence.
A big problem is that the fears are not all irrational, either, at least not in all circumstances. For many people on HN, they might be, but on average we tend to have pretty marketable skills and middle-class backgrounds (with some exceptions). I think for a lot of people it's unfortunately the case that making yourself look as much like a shiny cog as possible really is the best strategy to making a decent living.
In sheer numbers, the largest path out of poverty is a pretty mundane one: find a stable middle-class job in a large company. There are more exciting rags-to-riches stories, but rags-to-decent-paycheck stories are a lot more numerous and high-probability. So, maximizing attractiveness to large companies is probably the highest-probability way out of poverty. And, large companies are large machines whose hiring processes usually aim to acquire new cogs that can be inserted into the machine as smoothly and efficiently as possible.
Another tool for designing out choices is called "Nudge" [1]
By a nudge we mean anything that influences our choices. A school cafeteria might try to nudge kids toward good diets by putting the healthiest foods at front. We think that it's time for institutions, including government, to become much more user-friendly by enlisting the science of choice to make life easier for people and by gentling nudging them in directions that will make their lives better.
"Most people know they should save money, but many don’t save enough and may not
even be sure what amount is enough. Most savings advice goes against human nature
and asks people to make complex calculations. To help people save, nudge them. When
it is time for employees to enroll in your firm’s retirement plan, make signing up the default.
People can choose not to sign up or can quit any time, but inertia and the status quo
conspire to keep them from doing what’s good for them. Try a “Save More Tomorrow”
program that “invites participants to commit themselves in advance to a series of [savings
account] contribution increases” as their wages rise. This approach recognizes that
people fear loss, and may perceive savings as a loss of disposable income, so it links
increases in their savings rate to parallel increases in their salaries. When people earn
more, the company automatically deducts more in savings. They don’t have to decide to
save."
Set up choices in a way that takes advantage of how humans make decisions. You can nudge people in beneficial directions. To facilitate better decisions, design a default option that benefits people unless
they explicitly choose otherwise.
5 most common regrets reflect what most people do.
If majority of people worked as entrepreneurs not cogs they would have different list of 5 regrets. But they would still have list of 5 most common regrets. Only different ones.
I think that people when they die usually regret the way they lived because they all dreamt about something different.
The only way not to regret anything is never dream and be happy with whatever hits you and with whatever comes out of your efforts.
A couple of years ago I had a conversation with a man, then aged 85. Outwardly successful, he took over and ran the family textiles business his father had built, raised a family -- "but did you enjoy the job?" I asked. Because before joining the family business he first did a degree in electrical engineering -- in the 1940s -- and joined an engineering consultancy, and worked in it for some time. "No," he said, somewhat sadly.
That's not to say that he had a bad life, but he'd let his father drag him into a line of work that wasn't his dream, and grew old dutifully following it. He was a ho-hum director of a company in a decaying old-world sector, while what he'd wanted to be was an engineer.
So my advice (for what it's worth, after 47 years of trying to figure life out for myself) would be: work out what you enjoy doing, then do it. Don't put it off until later, and don't let a false sense of duty lead you down a dead-end occupation. Don't chase an end goal, because if you get it you'll then have to figure out what to do with the rest of your life; build your life around the journey, not the destination.
1) Is it a given that our regrets, when death is close, are wiser than the choices we made when death seemed further away?
We clearly choose to do things like move away from our family and friends, to follow spouses, chase careers, have different lifestyles. And that keeps us occupied for decades.
If we chose to do none of that, or less of it, would be feel like we were in a rut all our lives? Maybe you'd still feel alone when you were dying, because you never set out in the world to find people who really understood you.
Maybe you always feel alone when you're dying and there's nothing you can do about it.
I'm just exploring this idea for the sake of testing it; actually I do not doubt the article's wisdom so much here. But my next concern, I believe in a bit more.
2) I wonder how many of these regrets are due to the systems we live under.
It seems to me that even a few hundred years ago, "I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends." would be absurd. You'd be sick to death of how close your friends were (in the 1300s, perhaps literally). Americans are particularly likely to move long distances, though.
And as for living a life true to oneself, and expressing oneself -- would you even think of such things if your horizon was one town, or one tribe? Maybe you'd have to be far more discreet, without the refuge of a large city, or other forms of anonymity.
As for not working so hard, that seems to be the most tied to whatever our political and economic systems are.
This is about priority. I'd argue that while this reminder is nice, it doesn't go far enough, it is too passive.
Actively working towards those goals is the only way you'll actually achieve them. Instead of putting these generic statements at the top of your list, put some concrete action or goal there.
This is something I'm trying to live right now. A month ago I quit my job [1] to travel the world after having saved and dreamed about it for years. During the time I was dreaming we put together a plan, set aside money, and tried to reign in expenses. All tangible actions that lead to an end.
I'm not sure whether belief in NLP is a matter of taste : The techniques are basically a distillation of what therapists (notably Erickson) have uncovered during hypnosis. To further amplify your point, the unconscious mind doesn't seem to be any good at parsing logical statements - so things that one 'says to oneself' should be cast straightforwardly.
At its most basic, the command "Don't think of a pink unicorn" brings to the surface exactly what you don't want. Drilling yourself to process 'bad stuff' unconsciously is (as you said) counterproductive.
"Don't ignore your dreams; don't work too much; say what you think; cultivate friendships; be happy."
Will counter and say, it's impossible to achieve dreams (or the first big exit) without putting your head down, working insane hours, neglecting friends, and being miserable. Need to live the bad times, ultimate lows, to fully realize happiness and no regrets.
My feeling (caveat: I'm only in my late 20's) is that it's impossible to simultaneously eliminate all the regrets on Ms. Ware's list. If you work really hard in order to chase your dreams, you end up neglecting friends and family for a bit. Stick around among your family and friends, and you don't get to chase your dreams as much.
It's hard to know where the exact boundaries lie such that a satisfying equilibrium is achieved. Makes me wonder if some regret is always inevitable.
Depends what your dreams are. One of my dream was to fly planes. I did learn all that without getting burned out - would not help me much keeping my medical certificate for flying!!! Actually, this was quite some time taking learning, but that doesn't made me put my other social activities aside. How do you define a dream? Do you define your dreams compared to the others, so you have to better than anyone else, and so you have to work like crazy? Or do you define your dreams by achievements you would like to get to yourself, in which case I'd ask you why you can't just adapt your pace to your life?
If you put anything at the top of your to-do list that you don’t _have to_ read and pay attention to you’ll ignore it sooner or later.
Ever invited someone new to your home and been surprised at the things that caught their attention? The things we make permanent fixtures in our environment—unless we have to interact with them or they change—ultimately get accepted and forgotten. Many people really hate to accept this because it means that any positive changes that we create in our life will ultimately be eroded. A solution to this problem is one of my main preoccupations.
In the mean time, the question that should be being asked is how _exactly_ will you live your life differently in order to adhere to these standards? And apply that question to tomorrow, next week, next season, next year, and the next five years. You could try writing a plan but then plans fail because they speculate. Sorry I don’t have any real answers.
I feel that balance, which can be hard to achieve, need a spot on the list. I had a friend who's approach was akin to work hard and be frugal. He was so frugal that he became famous for not cashing his paychecks for weeks. As an engineer he made very good money. He saved most of it and had been buying gold and silver as investments for the last 20 years. He and his wife were going to move to Hawaii and enjoy life. On his last trip there to buy a house he went for a swim out of the same beach they had visited for years. And he never came back.
This is an extreme example of a case where lack of balance produced the wrong outcome. He did not enjoy a lot of things in life because of his extreme focus on frugality.
I think many of us mistake expressing our feelings with saying whatever comes to mind which can lead to a bigger wreck than ignoring or suppressing them.
I would change it to: don't ignore your feelings. How you act on them is where wisdom comes in.
[+] [-] edw519|14 years ago|reply
Something about how my own todo this now has only one item on it, the single most important thing to do next. I gravitated to this based on the great quote by chess master Jose Capablanca:
[When asked how many moves ahead he looked while playing]: "Only one, but it's always the right one." (from http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Ra%C3%BAl_Capablanca).
Then I read pg's essay and Bronnie Ware's blog post and realized that this post was less about work and more about life.
Then it hit me: My life's todo list still has only one item on it and always has:
"Always do the right thing."
I realize that this can be very hand wavy because the "right thing" means something different to everyone and even something different to me at different times. But still, it has been the perfect #1 for my todo list.
Several years ago, my mother, who lived 1000 miles away, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and could no longer use the phone. So I began flying back to Pittsburgh every other weekend to be with her. After a while, even this wasn't enough. So I moved to Pittsburgh to be with her every day.
People tried to say the right thing to me, but it never was right. They'd say things like, "I admire your doing this, but you really don't have to because she doesn't even know who you are," or "You may be making a sacrifice now, but in time you won't regret it; you'll have nothing to be sorry for." And I thought, "How sad. After all these years these people still don't get it. This isn't a sacrifice from me to her. It's a gift from her to me."
I'm a little uncomfortable distilling pg's and Bronnie Ware's five thoughts from down into one, but "Always do the right thing" just works for me. I just hope the others in my life find something that works as well for them.
[+] [-] j45|14 years ago|reply
It really is a gift.
Our definition of self has become so short sighted that doing the right thing becomes a challenge for anyone to remember. Imagine trying to do the right thing in a startup, if we aren't practicing it in every day life with every thought and action.
Seeing my parents getting a little older is tough. Where they used to take me to all my doctors appointments whenever I needed it, now more and more, I'm taking them.
Why's this important? Priorities and balance and making the most of your time is so important.
In waiting rooms I see maybe one in 10 adults accompanied by their kids. My parents are comfortable going to appointments without me, so it means a lot they even ask me, maybe to see the same feeling of finding a familiar face in the waiting room, or someone to help remember what the doctor said.
Sadly we have a generation that feels its ok to believe everything is about us, at the expense of being there for others who are greatly responsible for our greatness. Some of the deepest, satisfying moments are when I get to be witness to someone's story.
Doing the right thing is for the sake of the right thing being done, not how someone takes it, sees it, or expects you to be there for them. There inevitably are things that need to be done regardless of personalities and positions.
I hope we never forget to find and live by our values that give us a deep sense of connection with ourselves and through it to those in our lives. All we have at the end of the day is making memories. Everything can go to hell but you can revisit a memory anytime, and keep creating new ones.
[+] [-] davemel37|14 years ago|reply
Odds are, if G-Forbid this ever happened, we would be by her side every day, telling ourselves it is the right thing. It's the least we could do after all she has done and continues to do for us....
But it makes me wonder... What would your mother prefer? What would have made her happier? What choice would she have made for you if it was up to her?
Human nature is an interesting thing. Always presenting conflict every step of the way. The right thing can and will almost always be a representation of what your heart desires.
The weird part is, the more important the decision, the easier it usually is and the choice is more obvious.
The hard decisions usually are not that important, but rather a scenario with both options are legitimately justifiable, and both choices can be justified or vilified.
[+] [-] mattmanser|14 years ago|reply
You sound just like the 'seduction' experts, 'confidence, that's what gets the girl'.
My mum had an episode where she quite literally went mad. We spent a couple of weeks visiting her every day as she was confused, scared and angry.
At some point I turned to my sister and said 'we have to go home, our lives have to go on'.
The irony being that 'home' was 100 miles away from where my mum lives as my sister had met her husband a year earlier visiting me.
Your story is touching and totally fucking stupid at the same time. My to-do list for tomorrow has 'Get loo roll, book a ticket for Splendour festival, vote'.
Your to-do list sucks ass as it doesn't actually meet your real life needs.
And did I do the right thing? I'll never know, I still feel like a shit as she screamed that the nurses were hurting her. Humiliated, ignored. Maybe they did? Lies I hope. I will never, ever know. Alzheimer's? She won't even remember what you did, you're doing it for nothing more than your own conscience.
We are living in a very, very odd time where our parents are turning into our children.
EDIT: The reason I had to write this is that your experience seems to me at odds with points 1, 3 & 5 of the list. And the horrible thing is it's going to get worse for all of us here on HN in the next 40 years. Medicine has put us in a very awkward position, one of being able to maintain the body when the mind went long ago. Or (imo worse) maintaining the body and mind when the reasons to live have gone. My friend's grandma openly talks about wanting to die as all her friends are dead. But does my friend's Mum want her Mum to die? Of course not. This is a very odd time.
[+] [-] Mz|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] js2|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] hef19898|14 years ago|reply
As the of hagakure put it (cited from my memory and translated twice...): treat important thing lightly and treat unimprtant ones with all the seriousness you have.
It took me some hard decissions and situations to slowly get this and it seems like death is best teacher for that you can imagine. So we all should learn from other peoples mistakes and lessons, espacially if it's almost impossible to make them by yourself.
[+] [-] jonah|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pragmatte|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] olalonde|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ojr|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IsaacL|14 years ago|reply
"Follow your dreams; take a break; say what you think; cultivate friendships; be happy."
The idea of putting them at the top of your todo list is interesting. At the moment I organise myself with Trello, one list per project, and at the top of each list I have a card that reminds me why I'm doing the project. Every now and again I check these cards to see if any projects should be culled -- if they're not meeting their goals, or if there's a better way to achieve those goals, or if I no longer care about those goals.
Keeping long-term priorities in mind when caught up in the midst of your daily tasks seems like a winner. Your life is lived one day at a time, after all -- if you don't seize the day, you won't seize your life.
Anyway, the whole idea of combining your todo list with your bucket list -- your daily goals with your life goals -- is interesting. I've seen a few startups based on this idea (evr.st, Goalhawk). It'll be interesting to see if the model works.
[+] [-] pg|14 years ago|reply
"Follow your dreams" is too strong. I wrote about that here: http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html.
"Don't work too much" is phrased that way because it really is a matter of avoiding something.
[+] [-] knowtheory|14 years ago|reply
Re: adding items to your todo lists, i feel like PG's 5 exhortations (which seem more like general advice than specific prescriptions) fit into something like the "epics" that were recently introduced into Pivotal Tracker, than actual items to do. One should take a look at each of the items placed on a todo list and ask "does this item take me closer or further from my goals?"
[+] [-] Tyrannosaurs|14 years ago|reply
The spirit is closer to what my father always says - no-one ever died wishing they'd spent more time in the office.
Take a break makes it sound like an hour or two out rather than what it is, basically saying it's really not all about work.
[+] [-] dkrich|14 years ago|reply
When I hear somebody say "I wish I would have spent more time with my family" I wonder whether they really wish they had spent more time with their family or if they just miss their old family and wish they could have them back. That is to say I wonder whether people confuse nostalgia with regret. As you get older you regret not taking advantage of some things in the past, but I tend to think that what you feel as regret is actually just longing for being young again.
[+] [-] DanBC|14 years ago|reply
If you don't ask the first girl to the dance you might not be brave enough to ask the second girl to the dance and before you know it you're in a self-reinforcing loop of not asking anyone to any dances until you're old enough to realise and break out of that loop.
> Why worry about what our future selves will regret while forgoing present happiness?
I'm not sure how to grok that sentence. Here's two responses.
i) Exactly. Don't miss out on current happiness just to keep the future you happy. That's the point - future you does not want to look back on a life of hard grind and no fun just so you can do the looking back from a gold bed on your huge yacht.
ii) Because seeking contentment now is a way to ensure that you'll be contented in future and the future you won't look back on a life of missed opportunities. Missing out on happiness now is sometimes important in the short term, but it's not a great way to live a life. Perhaps a lot of grind now means you can retire early and relax and enjoy stuff. But you have to live long enough to retire, and by that time you may have missed some really fun things like babies growing.
> the reality is that life is no more valuable at the end than at the beginning or the middle
Yes. That is the point. Don't grind today to provide future you with excessive luxury. A bit of grinding might be needed to avoid future financial hardship, but other than that you should seek things that fulfil you today. Happiness today will make future you happy.
Future you is not more valuable, but s/he will have the benefit of hindsight.
[+] [-] smashing|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] foobarian|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drzaiusapelord|14 years ago|reply
This is such an excellent point. This "dying patients" list greatly ignores the opportunity cost of getting to where you managed to get to in life.
Lets say I grant these wishes. I wave my magic wand and you work less. Now your memories are full of being poor, sending your kids to some shitty school, getting robbed in a poor neighborhood as opposed to working more but being able to live in a better neighborhood, going on more vacations, having extra money.
So its like saying, "I want my cake to eat it too." Well, that wasn't possible when you were younger and its certainly not possible on your deathbed.
[+] [-] maigret|14 years ago|reply
This is very US (and now occidental) thinking. Many cultures in the world don't have people thinking like that. You've got to have a family and integrate well and support the community. The rest is not as important as our current society wants us to think.
[+] [-] AznHisoka|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alanbyrne|14 years ago|reply
I work 9-5 for a large company (100,000+ employees). I clock on each day, they pay me a great daily rate and I enjoy the work that I do.
Work doesn't define who I am and I am definitely not unfulfilled. I take French classes, dabble in photography and build the occasional web app. Once a month I take a 3 day weekend and go somewhere I've never been before. So far this year I've been to Switzerland, Belgium, Iceland and I'm shortly off to Madrid. I also enjoy cooking and going to fine restaurants.
The only reason I can afford to do these things is because of the money I receive from my work as a cog. Sure, I could try and grow one of my web app ideas, work a bazillon hours for the small chance that it takes off and I become a millionaire.
But what would I do then? Most likely the exact same things that I am doing now.
I'm not advocating working in a job you hate and avoiding following your dreams. I'm saying that working as a cog allows me to afford my dream, so don't be so quick to bag it.
[+] [-] ErrantX|14 years ago|reply
Live happy, make friends, enjoy. Make those dreams happy
It was for much the same reason - to inspire me. However, about 6 months later I thought those idea through and realised that, actually, it was an example of "making me feel better". I could sit and look at this poster and think; "yeh, I'm following my dream, I'm going to be happy". I even had a list of goals to meet.
But really you're not; you're following an arbitrary list, and all that is is con-straining.
Here's my thought process; trying hard to be happy isn't being happy... That thought mulled for a long while; I was doing cool stuff, with people I liked, and having plenty of down time. But I still felt like it was an effort to pursue.
This year has been a revelation. I did something "stupid" and spent a lot of my savings on two big holidays (many years ago I discovered my truest love is travel). Yesterday I spent a big portion of what is left on my third holiday of the year. I've barely done any work since January - one product release and some bugfixes. I started writing, then stopped, wrote a little program for myself, tried some carpentry, almost trashed my car trying to fix it, stood for at least three elections (politics and social communities) on a whim, dated two girls at once. And this is the tip of the iceberg.
All of this wouldn't sync with the person who wrote that maxim 2 years before; it would seem reckless and silly. As if I was throwing away what I had worked for years to build. A load of fucking rubbish.
Right now I'm free.
And I smile more than I ever have in my life. I have more friends. My life is barrelling along where, 6 months ago, it was stagnant.
So I wrote a new canvas (about 2 weeks ago, actually) which now says:
Let rip
My point is this; take care, with some of these ideas, that you don't get too focused on the means to the end. Just relax, close your eyes, do what you feel like. In the end it will work out. One day we will all be dead - till then I am going to enjoy myself. :)
There is nothing wrong with a todo list topped by the words "don't ignore your dreams". But only if it makes you happy.
[+] [-] srconstantin|14 years ago|reply
Following your dreams, not working too much, spending time with family and friends, saying what you think, and being happy, might belong at the top of Paul Graham's todo list. He's already succeeded at what most people struggle at: making a living. He may have forgotten that getting by is hard.
What's so wrong about being a "cog in a machine"? Large organizations exist partly because scale and specialization are useful. People aren't "cogs" out of perversity, but practicality. Sometimes your comparative advantage is in being a good cog. And sometimes being a good cog is admirable. Example: surgeons who specialize in one and only one procedure, doing it exactly the same way every time, have a low failure rate. They save more lives that way. Are they creative? Nope. They follow somebody else's rules. They make themselves as mechanical, as repetitive, as possible. And the guy on the operating table lives.
Paul Graham is in a very unusual profession, where risk-taking is much more of an ideal than it is anywhere else. Also notice that he makes money off of telling other people to take risks. The more people decide to be entrepreneurs, the wider a pool he has to draw from. "Follow your dreams" is a useful meme for people like that; if a hundred people follow their dreams and fail and ruin their lives, PG never hears about it, but if one person follows his dreams and becomes a billionaire, PG might get a share. This isn't meant to vilify the guy; there's nothing wrong with making a living by inspiring people. And I'm sure he would say that he's fighting dangerous opposing memes against ever taking risks. I just think you can't take posts like this at face value.
[+] [-] paulsutter|14 years ago|reply
> if a hundred people follow their dreams and fail and ruin their lives, PG never hears about it
Ruin their lives?
Hundreds of people fail in front of pg all the time. As an entrepreneur you fail in little ways constantly, and in big ways repeatedly. But that's ok. Failing is how we learn.
Can you think of anyone who ruined their life by failing at a startup?
[+] [-] lispler|14 years ago|reply
Wanna live to work or work to live? I know that cooperate america tends towards the former, and much of the world is following that great success story. But, there is really not much point. In the end you're just as dead.
[+] [-] K2h|14 years ago|reply
To my surprise and delight, my productivity and overall work completion has actually gone up. By being time bound (I am leaving at 5 no matter what) I often have to work like mad to get my work done. I have to make decisions quickly and implement.
The results are more projects done, sooner. If a mistake is made, or a more complete solution is needed you iterate and do it tomorrow. Already you are two iterations in where 2 years ago I would have been stalled still trying to work up a good starting point.
Try it.
[+] [-] japhyr|14 years ago|reply
People who live fear-based avoid things. They avoid things that might cause heartache, pain, difficulty, etc. but all of the most interesting pursuits in life have the potential to cause these things sometimes.
People who live love-based move towards things that bring happiness and satisfaction in the long term. They work hard and play hard, and when they hurt they know that things may get better.
I heard this several years ago now, and I see one of these approaches in most people around me.
[+] [-] Estragon|14 years ago|reply
Something my teacher wrote along these lines: http://www.unfetteredmind.org/learned-helplessness/0
[+] [-] _delirium|14 years ago|reply
In sheer numbers, the largest path out of poverty is a pretty mundane one: find a stable middle-class job in a large company. There are more exciting rags-to-riches stories, but rags-to-decent-paycheck stories are a lot more numerous and high-probability. So, maximizing attractiveness to large companies is probably the highest-probability way out of poverty. And, large companies are large machines whose hiring processes usually aim to acquire new cogs that can be inserted into the machine as smoothly and efficiently as possible.
[+] [-] technology|14 years ago|reply
By a nudge we mean anything that influences our choices. A school cafeteria might try to nudge kids toward good diets by putting the healthiest foods at front. We think that it's time for institutions, including government, to become much more user-friendly by enlisting the science of choice to make life easier for people and by gentling nudging them in directions that will make their lives better.
"Most people know they should save money, but many don’t save enough and may not even be sure what amount is enough. Most savings advice goes against human nature and asks people to make complex calculations. To help people save, nudge them. When it is time for employees to enroll in your firm’s retirement plan, make signing up the default. People can choose not to sign up or can quit any time, but inertia and the status quo conspire to keep them from doing what’s good for them. Try a “Save More Tomorrow” program that “invites participants to commit themselves in advance to a series of [savings account] contribution increases” as their wages rise. This approach recognizes that people fear loss, and may perceive savings as a loss of disposable income, so it links increases in their savings rate to parallel increases in their salaries. When people earn more, the company automatically deducts more in savings. They don’t have to decide to save."
Set up choices in a way that takes advantage of how humans make decisions. You can nudge people in beneficial directions. To facilitate better decisions, design a default option that benefits people unless they explicitly choose otherwise.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Nudge-Improving-Decisions-Health-Happi...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_(book)
quick summary - http://www.slideshare.net/sgmitch/nudge09
[+] [-] scotty79|14 years ago|reply
If majority of people worked as entrepreneurs not cogs they would have different list of 5 regrets. But they would still have list of 5 most common regrets. Only different ones.
I think that people when they die usually regret the way they lived because they all dreamt about something different.
The only way not to regret anything is never dream and be happy with whatever hits you and with whatever comes out of your efforts.
[+] [-] cstross|14 years ago|reply
A couple of years ago I had a conversation with a man, then aged 85. Outwardly successful, he took over and ran the family textiles business his father had built, raised a family -- "but did you enjoy the job?" I asked. Because before joining the family business he first did a degree in electrical engineering -- in the 1940s -- and joined an engineering consultancy, and worked in it for some time. "No," he said, somewhat sadly.
That's not to say that he had a bad life, but he'd let his father drag him into a line of work that wasn't his dream, and grew old dutifully following it. He was a ho-hum director of a company in a decaying old-world sector, while what he'd wanted to be was an engineer.
So my advice (for what it's worth, after 47 years of trying to figure life out for myself) would be: work out what you enjoy doing, then do it. Don't put it off until later, and don't let a false sense of duty lead you down a dead-end occupation. Don't chase an end goal, because if you get it you'll then have to figure out what to do with the rest of your life; build your life around the journey, not the destination.
[+] [-] unimpressive|14 years ago|reply
I'd put at the bottom of my to-do list "...Die unfulfilled and unhappy"
I figured seeing that at the bottom of my to-do list would remind me to make sure it doesn't happen. And maybe even rethink the items on top.
[+] [-] dazbradbury|14 years ago|reply
How about you put something like this at the bottom...
[+] [-] sundeep_b|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neilk|14 years ago|reply
1) Is it a given that our regrets, when death is close, are wiser than the choices we made when death seemed further away?
We clearly choose to do things like move away from our family and friends, to follow spouses, chase careers, have different lifestyles. And that keeps us occupied for decades.
If we chose to do none of that, or less of it, would be feel like we were in a rut all our lives? Maybe you'd still feel alone when you were dying, because you never set out in the world to find people who really understood you.
Maybe you always feel alone when you're dying and there's nothing you can do about it.
I'm just exploring this idea for the sake of testing it; actually I do not doubt the article's wisdom so much here. But my next concern, I believe in a bit more.
2) I wonder how many of these regrets are due to the systems we live under.
It seems to me that even a few hundred years ago, "I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends." would be absurd. You'd be sick to death of how close your friends were (in the 1300s, perhaps literally). Americans are particularly likely to move long distances, though.
And as for living a life true to oneself, and expressing oneself -- would you even think of such things if your horizon was one town, or one tribe? Maybe you'd have to be far more discreet, without the refuge of a large city, or other forms of anonymity.
As for not working so hard, that seems to be the most tied to whatever our political and economic systems are.
[+] [-] orofino|14 years ago|reply
Actively working towards those goals is the only way you'll actually achieve them. Instead of putting these generic statements at the top of your list, put some concrete action or goal there.
This is something I'm trying to live right now. A month ago I quit my job [1] to travel the world after having saved and dreamed about it for years. During the time I was dreaming we put together a plan, set aside money, and tried to reign in expenses. All tangible actions that lead to an end.
[1] http://orofino.me/homeless-and-jobless-travelling-the-world/
[+] [-] elviejo|14 years ago|reply
"Don't ignore your dreams; don't work too much; say what you think; cultivate friendships; be happy."
Can be better expressed as: " pursue your dreams, get appropriate rest and relaxation, say what... "
(if you believe in NLP)
[+] [-] mdda|14 years ago|reply
At its most basic, the command "Don't think of a pink unicorn" brings to the surface exactly what you don't want. Drilling yourself to process 'bad stuff' unconsciously is (as you said) counterproductive.
[+] [-] allbombs|14 years ago|reply
Will counter and say, it's impossible to achieve dreams (or the first big exit) without putting your head down, working insane hours, neglecting friends, and being miserable. Need to live the bad times, ultimate lows, to fully realize happiness and no regrets.
[+] [-] gms|14 years ago|reply
Aren't these two mutually exclusive?
My feeling (caveat: I'm only in my late 20's) is that it's impossible to simultaneously eliminate all the regrets on Ms. Ware's list. If you work really hard in order to chase your dreams, you end up neglecting friends and family for a bit. Stick around among your family and friends, and you don't get to chase your dreams as much.
It's hard to know where the exact boundaries lie such that a satisfying equilibrium is achieved. Makes me wonder if some regret is always inevitable.
[+] [-] maigret|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] olliesaunders|14 years ago|reply
Ever invited someone new to your home and been surprised at the things that caught their attention? The things we make permanent fixtures in our environment—unless we have to interact with them or they change—ultimately get accepted and forgotten. Many people really hate to accept this because it means that any positive changes that we create in our life will ultimately be eroded. A solution to this problem is one of my main preoccupations.
In the mean time, the question that should be being asked is how _exactly_ will you live your life differently in order to adhere to these standards? And apply that question to tomorrow, next week, next season, next year, and the next five years. You could try writing a plan but then plans fail because they speculate. Sorry I don’t have any real answers.
[+] [-] robomartin|14 years ago|reply
This is an extreme example of a case where lack of balance produced the wrong outcome. He did not enjoy a lot of things in life because of his extreme focus on frugality.
Seek balance.
[+] [-] siavosh|14 years ago|reply
I would change it to: don't ignore your feelings. How you act on them is where wisdom comes in.