I always thought I am a hardworking person, and I should’ve achieved a lot. However, when I reflect on what I have done in the past year, I was often surprised that I did not really accomplish anything!

Steve Job famously said, “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” It is wise advice, but not many people can follow it, including me.

The problem

I think the major reason is that we often got caught up in distractions in life, such as fame, money, Netflix, or how other people think of us. Thus we easily forget the fact that our life clock is ticking, and it will stop one day.

On the other hand, both death and deadline seem daunting, so we subconsciously avoid thinking about or facing them (our DNAs prefer survival, and no one wants stress). However, they can be the best things for our lives if we can look at them from a different perspective.

Deadlines are good

Think of it this way, without a deadline, we will lose our focus and have no incentive to prioritize. We will keep postponing doing the things that matter to us because we are always tempted by instant gratifications.

Deadlines are good. They push us to do the hard work. They help us to get into action without waiting for the perfect moment, or the perfect plan. With time constrain, we know what is truly important and what is inessential.

Solution

I am thinking to build a simple application to visually show how much time we left in life, year, month, and day. I will update this post if the app is made.