Life is action

Have a better life by doing more.

I am interested in learning how to live a better life.

I feel I have wasted parts of my own life, and I would rather not waste any more.

I read widely on the subject and have done so for years. I try to make sense of my existence by absorbing the wisdom of others as well as reflecting on my own experiences.

The goal is to distil this down into something useful. Every now and then I find a way to summarize things to help me get through whatever I am dealing with.

I have a reminder in my kitchen that currently serves this purpose. I read it every day. It helps reset my thinking and makes me focus a little better on what I care about.

The poster lists things I struggle with. It is an attempt to recalibrate and improve by focusing on my weaknesses.

Perhaps you are similar. If so, here is the whole thing.

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Life is action

1. Move quicker; you don’t have forever

2. Work on all fronts at all times; waiting based on a plan or sequence is a form of perfectionism

3. Life is not a thing to organize, but an experience to be had; experience as much of it as you can all the time

Have a better life by doing more; life is action.

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What it means

Hesitate less, work on a wide range of things, and don’t get too hung up on planning. Life is about living and experiencing, not following a plan.

We drift easily, so have a reminder somewhere in your house. Bad habits, drama, calamities. Much can get in the way, and we lose focus. An accessible reminder can help us reset when we forget.

Here is some more detail on each point.

Do it sooner

Life has an expiration date. No one lives forever.

Get moving. Every day counts. Each hour and minute too.

A day is a long time, even though the days themselves whizz past at an alarming rate.

Those days mount up; weeks, months, years. As people age, they wonder where the time went.

Some individuals in their seventies and eighties feel they ought to still be in their twenties. How does that happen?

The only way to counter the inevitability of time is to use it more efficiently. To be aware of time passing. Reminding ourselves today’s time is precious and irreplaceable.

If in doubt, do it now. Don’t hesitate or dither.

Move quicker. Whatever you have to do, get started.

A guiding principle for virtually everything is to do it sooner.

Do everything all the time

A plan is good, but it can become an impediment to the flexibility needed by real life.

A goal is better, and a well-articulated goal is best of all. This means a clear understanding of the outcome or destination you seek.

There are many paths to goals. A plan is today’s best guess. That can change, and you must change with it.

A rigid plan means you get lost in a sequence of steps. The world can change around you while you are stuck in one stage of a plan based on an outdated view of the world.

This is an important lesson to learn for the overplanners and the hesitant. Get on with it. Remind yourself there is a goal beyond the plan itself.

To some this is counterintuitive as plans are specifically designed to attain goals. But if we become fixated on the plan and not the goal or desired outcome, we lose the agility needed to navigate life.

Many lives end in failure for this reason. It is a subtle form of perfectionism, a myopic rigidity that appeals because it makes us feel safe. I have the plan, so I’m on the right track. Stick to the plan no matter what.

Meanwhile real life ambles along, totally indifferent to your brilliant schemes.

Man plans, while God laughs.

A practical method to move away from this is to split life into multiple areas. Social life and relationships; career; creative goals; health and fitness; list the broad areas that matter. Between three and seven is ideal.

Generate goals for each. Socialize more, change career, write the novel, lose weight. Anything will do.

Push forward these different aspects of life when you can but do not become overly focused on one area. Life is comprised of all these things and more.

Specifically avoid notions of an inflexible sequence of steps you imagine you need and focus on the broader goal, the outcome you hope to achieve. If better ways present themselves to achieve your goals, go with them instead.

Move between different areas to maintain momentum. When one area halts, others are there; when your job sucks you can always visit the gym.

If you are prone to perfectionism and overplanning retain that awareness and restrict your planning time to no more than five percent of the overall timebox.

But always remember the plan is not the goal, just a means to attain it.

Life is an experience to be had

For organizer types the plan can become a superb source of procrastination. Absolutely fatal.

Life needs some organizing; no one wants total chaos. But it is surprisingly useless because most plans are fiction.

Obsessing over plans, schemes and maps is becoming more common. Some attribute it to left hemisphere thinking. We become fixated on things inside our heads, little models of the world that comfort us rather than inform.

Since the rise of digital technology we increasingly see the world through a screen and not firsthand. Experience itself is becoming ever more filtered through technology.

Despite it all, life is experience. It can’t really be photographed, videotaped or captured. It can only be lived, and increasingly we are not doing so.

We have reached a point some of us have to be reminded of this obvious fact.

Many have become hermits, getting food and supplies delivered. We socialize less. Relationships are in decline with single person households on the rise. We seem to be becoming more antisocial.

A common example that reflects our growing detachment from living life is the phenomenon of people attending social events like concerts and spending their time photographing or capturing it on video instead of just enjoying it. Phone recording is becoming normalized despite it being a novel behaviour largely absent only a decade ago.

This betrays an inability to live in the moment, and perhaps a preoccupation with advertising life’s highlights like a kind of public showreel. An outward focused existence aiming at the approval of others rather than living life under our own steam. A neurotic drive to somehow capture and preserve an experience for later revisiting rather than the kind of immersion required to actually live now.

The goal is to experience life. To enjoy experiences unfiltered by screens, technology or other barriers.

The social media posts, the obsessive phone use and the Netflix bingeing are not life. They are distractions from life.

Real life isn’t happening inside your head, it is out there in the world.

Do more, embrace more, experience more. Embed yourself in the concrete reality of all that is around you as much as you can.

At its simplest, say yes more and put the phone down.

Life is action

To have more life you must do more. For the hesitant that may mean plan less. But for everyone it means a literal increase in activity.

Psychotherapists often tell us the biggest impediment to progress is not trauma or severe behavioural issues. It is us. We sabotage our happiness by getting in our own way.

The stuff in our heads slows us down. So don’t let it. Speed up, do more, get on with it. This is life. It is happening now.

I use a piece of paper to remind me. Consider developing your own bullet point list to live by. Take note of all that prevents you living and print it out, then read it every day.

Then get on with it.

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