why you should read the obituaries.

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Life has a funny way of seeming a lot longer than it is - especially when you’re young.

It’s the easiest thing in the world to live life as if there will always be more. More time, more opportunities, more relationships, more of everything we love.

And yet, all that can change in an instant.

I wrote a newsletter last week about the day I almost died, and how it completely changed the trajectory of my life.

But there’s a bit of a catch… here’s what I didn’t address.

The problem with those singular experiences that alter the trajectory of our lives is that our human brains tend to forget. Left alone, we like to revert back to the status quo.

But look around you - the status quo is to live life on auto-pilot.

You’re surrounded left and right by people who don’t stop for a second to think about what they’re doing, how they’re using their time, or where they’re headed in the long run.

Time slips by, and your life disappears.

In an society where people rarely pause to contemplate the bigger questions of life, it’s almost inevitable to lose sight of the things that you once cared deeply about.

One of the antidotes I stumbled upon in the months after the car crash was the obituary page in the newspaper.

I know most of us don’t get the daily newspaper; those times are long gone. But every local newspaper still publishes their obituaries, you just have to look them up.

The obituary page is a fascinating place, because everyone’s in there. You’ll find multi-millionaires and the homeless on the same page. From all walks of life, all religions, and certainly all ages… people are dying every day.

It’s a frightening thing when you come to grips with the fact that one day your entire life will be summed up into a few short sentences in your local obituary column.

And yet, that’s precisely why you should read those obituaries.

You see, it’s not that you should be afraid of dying, or living with death always on your mind.

But the simple truth is this: if you don’t constantly remind yourself of the shortness of life and the importance of every decision that you make, eventually you fall into the same trap that everyone else around you does.

Meaningless distractions. Constant indecision. Empty praise. Endless complaints. A life dulled by ease and comfort.

These are just a few of the things that characterize much of life in the 21st century West.

But the real kicker is that only you can extricate yourself from the unthinking, aimless life that most are content to live on autopilot.

I’ll leave you with one of the best decision-making razors I’ve come across. (Sahil Bloom shared this recently, and I was struck by its simple beauty.)

A razor is just a simple mechanism - a rule of thumb, if you will - to help decide between two divergent paths.

The term “time billionaire” was first brought up by an investor named Graham Duncan, to help illustrate the brevity of life. A trillion seconds is longer than the span of human civilization, but a million seconds is 12 days.

A time billionaire is a person with over a billion seconds left in their life… around 31 years.

If you’re in your 20s or 30s, you’re likely a time billionaire. You might be lacking in all other sorts of resources, but time is not one of them.

And the kicker? Go talk to any 85-year-old. They’ll all tell you the same thing. The time goes by in an instant… and no amount of money will ever buy it back.

So here’s the razor. When faced with the infinite possibilities of life, let this simple principle guide your decisions.

Time is your ultimate currency. It’s a gift, and one that you’ll never get back.

The next time you have two divergent paths ahead of you - choose the one that places the highest appreciation on the value of your time.

Everything else fades… but as Marcus Aurelius said, “everything we do now echoes in eternity.”

How you use your time matters. Make sure you live like it.