This is how short your life really is.

[Mai72]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mSpwYQMwvE

The first part is broken down to the activities that we do on a day to day basis like work, sleep, eating, going to school, retirement, taking care of family, etc. Then time wasters like TV viewing, smartphone use. He didn't bring up gaming though. You could put that as a time waster. That just depens on your preferance.

The second part is about being mindful, and about living in the present. Doubt many people here are going to care as i doubt it's your thing. I liked it.

 

[Thebobo]

Quit your job release yourself of all material possessions stick out your thumb and see the world.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

Aren't all millennials living 'living in the present'? I me, the idea that they live for tomorrow, next week/month/year/generation is absurd.

 

[Kaido]

Good video. The catch with looking at life statistically like that, however, is that it makes you feel depressed, instead of motivated. Some thoughts on dealing with time, meaning, and life-planning in general:

1. Time available: There's a good book called "168 Hours" by Laura Vanderkam that talks about the time we all have available to us in the course of a standard week, and how we have more time available than we think:

https://www.amazon.com/168-Hours-Have-More-Think/dp/159184410X

2. Personal time: I advocate creating a "Power Routine". This is basically where you map out both your standard types of days & your standard routines during those types of days (ex. work week & weekend) in order to see what available chunks of time you have available. Then you can figure out what to do in those blocks of time. We are in auto-pilot mode for most of our activities & rely on habits, good or bad, to get us through much of the day; identifying where you typically put your time at parts of the week & parts of the day can help you see where your time is really going. The easiest way to do this is to track every 15 minutes of your day for a few weeks in order to see where you are actually putting your time - you need solid data to setup a power routine, not just guesswork. Good article:

https://affordanything.com/i-tracke...ents-for-a-week-the-results-are-embarrassing/

Random printable chart I found off google:

https://www.printabletodolist.com/preview/15_Minute_Time_Tracker

3. Zero days: One productivity idea I really like is "no more zero days" from this reddit post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/getdisciplined/comments/1q96b5/i_just_dont_care_about_myself/cdah4af/

4. Productivity: There's a lot of stuff out there related to being more productive in your life, and it's easy to get caught up in the whole idea of productivity, lifehacking, self-help, and so on. What I think it really boils down to is 3 things:

1) Work
2) Personal work
3) Free time

You want to get your personal & work stuff done so that (1) you are staying on top of your responsibilities, and (2) you are getting meaningful stuff done, so then (3) you can enjoy your free time without having to engage in avoidance behavior. You don't need to be productive 24/7, you just need to be productive at the things you have to & want to, and that way you can enjoy your free time more fully. The system I like for getting stuff done is GTD, which is a workflow that helps you capture to-do's & then break them down into actionable tasks that you can track on a calendar or a list:

https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Productivity/dp/0143126563/

5. Meaning: One of the things that in the video in the OP highlights is not only how much stuff we are on the hook for doing already (sleeping, personal hygiene, eating food, etc.), but also the need to apply meaning to our lives. Everything you do today, everything you create or invent or make progress on, will be obsolete in 100 years. And eventually you will die, so you won't even be around to enjoy earthly stuff anymore. So rather than those things being depressing to think about, flip the script and think about how you can create meaning in your own life.

That sounds like kind of a big thing to do, but it's really not. First, don't let a lack of meaning stop you from being productive & getting things done, because you can go your whole life without a "life purpose" just fine. You have to start at ground level, which is what the GTD workflow advocates, because then you're starting out by taking care of your responsibilities first, and then you can move on to figuring out the rest - but you're staying on top of what you're on the hook for before anything else. Second, attitude plays a huge role in how we feel about things. I have three good resources on that. The first is a relatively short book called "Attitude is Everything" by Jeff Keller:

https://www.amazon.com/Attitude-Everything-Change-Your-Life/dp/0979041031/

The second is a good motivational talk by Zig Ziglar, available on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRMogDrHnMQ

The third is one is a little bit heftier, a book called "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl, a holocaust survivor:

https://www.amazon.com/Mans-Search-Meaning-Viktor-Frankl/dp/080701429X/

Basically, (1) don't let a lack of meaning stop you from staying on top of your current responsibilities, and (2) start by changing your attitude. Another great couple of books are by David Burns. First one is called "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy":

https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380810336/

The basic idea in the book is that thoughts create emotions. Different people respond to different situations in different ways, all because of the way they think about them. The foundational reason why you feel good, bad, or indifferent about anything is because of how you think about it, which creates an emotion, and over time, we feel that emotion as an immediate response to a particular situation. Changing how you think, i.e. being proactive in thinking about how you think, instead of passively reacting to a situation, which is how we do things by default, is how we can change how we feel about things. The second book by David Burns is a companion to the first one, which is a workbook called "Ten Days to Self-Esteem":

https://www.amazon.com/Days-Self-Esteem-David-Burns-M-D/dp/0688094554/

The basic idea is kind of like the 15-minute tracking trick mentioned earlier - you track how you feel & then deconstruct what you think about it, and then decide how you want to feel about it, so then you change how you think about it. I think this is super important in life because thinking is what creates emotions, and we can use that to control our attitude about life.

Work is work - whether you're flipping burgers or you're Elon Musk, you still have to show up to work, do your work, and go home. The three things you have control over are your thoughts, what you say, and what you physically do with your body. So to your body, it's all the same - you have to make an effort to think, speak, and move. The difference is how we feel about it, which is how we think about it, and the larger implementation of that is our attitude, which is how we decide to approach situations like school, work, family, finances, etc., which becomes an auto-pilot reaction over time. So if you hate your job, then your attitude is just going to be kind of angry all day because you don't like going to or working at your job, and that is easily fixable if you're willing to work on it!

So the video in the OP illustrates a good point: we do have limited time. But we're also really good at denial & not thinking about our impeding death, our limited amount of free time during the day, the seemingly overwhelming number of responsibilities we have to deal with, etc. By combining an attitude adjustment with a solid GTD workflow, we can stay on top of our responsibilities, enjoy our free time, and be happy about both things.

Or you can do like me & just spend time neffing on ATOT

 

[Mai72]

Quit your job release yourself of all material possessions stick out your thumb and see the world.

Well I think that there is a middle road, and that is what the person who made this video is saying. Be mindful that you really don't have as much time as you think. To take responsibility for your life. To eat smart, work on things that you actually care about, etc. To be mindful.

That's if you are in tune with the video. The other side of the coin is nothing really matters anyway. You, me, the world is just going to perish anyway. The sun will swallow the earth. Does any of this actually matter? I just thought it was an interesting video.

 

[Mai72]

Good video. The catch with looking at life statistically like that, however, is that it makes you feel depressed, instead of motivated. Some thoughts on dealing with time, meaning, and life-planning in general:

1. Time available: There's a good book called "168 Hours" by Laura Vanderkam that talks about the time we all have available to us in the course of a standard week, and how we have more time available than we think:

https://www.amazon.com/168-Hours-Have-More-Think/dp/159184410X

2. Personal time: I advocate creating a "Power Routine". This is basically where you map out both your standard types of days & your standard routines during those types of days (ex. work week & weekend) in order to see what available chunks of time you have available. Then you can figure out what to do in those blocks of time. We are in auto-pilot mode for most of our activities & rely on habits, good or bad, to get us through much of the day; identifying where you typically put your time at parts of the week & parts of the day can help you see where your time is really going. The easiest way to do this is to track every 15 minutes of your day for a few weeks in order to see where you are actually putting your time - you need solid data to setup a power routine, not just guesswork. Good article:

https://affordanything.com/i-tracke...ents-for-a-week-the-results-are-embarrassing/

Random printable chart I found off google:

https://www.printabletodolist.com/preview/15_Minute_Time_Tracker

3. Zero days: One productivity idea I really like is "no more zero days" from this reddit post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/getdisciplined/comments/1q96b5/i_just_dont_care_about_myself/cdah4af/

4. Productivity: There's a lot of stuff out there related to being more productive in your life, and it's easy to get caught up in the whole idea of productivity, lifehacking, self-help, and so on. What I think it really boils down to is 3 things:

1) Work
2) Personal work
3) Free time

You want to get your personal & work stuff done so that (1) you are staying on top of your responsibilities, and (2) you are getting meaningful stuff done, so then (3) you can enjoy your free time without having to engage in avoidance behavior. You don't need to be productive 24/7, you just need to be productive at the things you have to & want to, and that way you can enjoy your free time more fully. The system I like for getting stuff done is GTD, which is a workflow that helps you capture to-do's & then break them down into actionable tasks that you can track on a calendar or a list:

https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Productivity/dp/0143126563/

5. Meaning: One of the things that in the video in the OP highlights is not only how much stuff we are on the hook for doing already (sleeping, personal hygiene, eating food, etc.), but also the need to apply meaning to our lives. Everything you do today, everything you create or invent or make progress on, will be obsolete in 100 years. And eventually you will die, so you won't even be around to enjoy earthly stuff anymore. So rather than those things being depressing to think about, flip the script and think about how you can create meaning in your own life.

That sounds like kind of a big thing to do, but it's really not. First, don't let a lack of meaning stop you from being productive & getting things done, because you can go your whole life without a "life purpose" just fine. You have to start at ground level, which is what the GTD workflow advocates, because then you're starting out by taking care of your responsibilities first, and then you can move on to figuring out the rest - but you're staying on top of what you're on the hook for before anything else. Second, attitude plays a huge role in how we feel about things. I have three good resources on that. The first is a relatively short book called "Attitude is Everything" by Jeff Keller:

https://www.amazon.com/Attitude-Everything-Change-Your-Life/dp/0979041031/

The second is a good motivational talk by Zig Ziglar, available on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRMogDrHnMQ

The third is one is a little bit heftier, a book called "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl, a holocaust survivor:

https://www.amazon.com/Mans-Search-Meaning-Viktor-Frankl/dp/080701429X/

Basically, (1) don't let a lack of meaning stop you from staying on top of your current responsibilities, and (2) start by changing your attitude. Another great couple of books are by David Burns. First one is called "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy":

https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380810336/

The basic idea in the book is that thoughts create emotions. Different people respond to different situations in different ways, all because of the way they think about them. The foundational reason why you feel good, bad, or indifferent about anything is because of how you think about it, which creates an emotion, and over time, we feel that emotion as an immediate response to a particular situation. Changing how you think, i.e. being proactive in thinking about how you think, instead of passively reacting to a situation, which is how we do things by default, is how we can change how we feel about things. The second book by David Burns is a companion to the first one, which is a workbook called "Ten Days to Self-Esteem":

https://www.amazon.com/Days-Self-Esteem-David-Burns-M-D/dp/0688094554/

The basic idea is kind of like the 15-minute tracking trick mentioned earlier - you track how you feel & then deconstruct what you think about it, and then decide how you want to feel about it, so then you change how you think about it. I think this is super important in life because thinking is what creates emotions, and we can use that to control our attitude about life.

Work is work - whether you're flipping burgers or you're Elon Musk, you still have to show up to work, do your work, and go home. The three things you have control over are your thoughts, what you say, and what you physically do with your body. So to your body, it's all the same - you have to make an effort to think, speak, and move. The difference is how we feel about it, which is how we think about it, and the larger implementation of that is our attitude, which is how we decide to approach situations like school, work, family, finances, etc., which becomes an auto-pilot reaction over time. So if you hate your job, then your attitude is just going to be kind of angry all day because you don't like going to or working at your job, and that is easily fixable if you're willing to work on it!

So the video in the OP illustrates a good point: we do have limited time. But we're also really good at denial & not thinking about our impeding death, our limited amount of free time during the day, the seemingly overwhelming number of responsibilities we have to deal with, etc. By combining an attitude adjustment with a solid GTD workflow, we can stay on top of our responsibilities, enjoy our free time, and be happy about both things.

Or you can do like me & just spend time neffing on ATOT

Awesome reply. Thanks.

 

[Kaido]

Aren't all millennials living 'living in the present'? I me, the idea that they live for tomorrow, next week/month/year/generation is absurd.

No.

The difference between this generation & previous generations is nothing, except for social media. Every generation has their own group of slackers & whiners, which is only a portion of the total population. In today's world, you can hop on Twitter & get quoted by CNN. Something happens in the world, a 20-something person tweets about it, and CNN can screenshot their post and say "LOOK! Millennial are outraged by this!" People still want to get educated, get jobs, get homes, and make a life for themselves. There will always be that segment of entitled special snowflakes, and now they have a global platform to make themselves known, and the media is taking advantage of that to create drama in the form of clickbaity articles.

The fact is that everyone lives in the present. We all respond to the environment we live in & to our current responsibilities. We have to go to school, get jobs, raise kids, keep our house clean, mow our lawn, etc. & try to make things work and make ends meet as best we can. There are a few people out there saving the whales & protecting the environment, sure, but most people are just trying to do the best they can for themselves & for their families with what they've got. The last generation didn't sabotage this one, they just did the best they could with what they had & economic forces changed over time due to inflation, technology, globalization, etc.

 

[Kaido]

Awesome reply. Thanks.

I like the ground-up approach of dealing with your current responsibilities first (i.e. GTD), because if you try to tackle the "meaning of life" stuff first, you can put yourself into a permanent holding pattern of doing nothing, coupled with depression. That meaning portion is different for everyone, and involves multiple meanings. Some people work to pay for their meaningful activities outside of work. Some people finding meaning in their work. It varies quite a bit.

I've mentioned the idea of the "warm-fuzzy" in other posts...as kids, we all get a free pass to have that feeling in life, where you are just focused on enjoying living in the moment, whether it's playing at school or playing at home or waking up early to watch Saturday morning cartoons or whatever. As adults, we have to choose whether we want to have that in our life or not, because it's easy to goof up your body's processes & lose that - it's easy to stay up late, eat crap food, not exercise, and be stressed out, instead of going to bed early, eating well, exercising on a regular basis, and managing our stress. That's meaning level #1 right there - doing the things that are required for your physical body to feel good, and for your mental state to be good.

I'm sure they exist, but I have yet to meet someone fully depressed who is going to bed at a reasonable hour, getting enough sleep, working out every day, eating three healthy meals a day plus snacks, and staying on top of their responsibilities so they're not guilt-ridden & playing in avoidance mode all day. We have a lot of traps in our lives, especially in America where we have numerous strong traps to keep us awake at night, junk food galore with drive-throughs & mini-marts, and where we're so busy that it's easy not to make time to exercises.

Thinking about this kind of reminds me of that movie "Yes Man" with Jim Carrey, where he opts out of everything in life under he basically gets put under a spell where he has to say "yes" to everything, and he starts overcoming his hermit-like life and starts doing stuff that makes him happy, like going out with friends & dating. A lot of times we simply have trouble overcoming ourselves & pushing ourselves to do things we know will make us happy & make us feel good. Which is important because, as your video link illustrates, we do have a limited amount of free time after we take care of all of our required responsibilities for the day, and a lot of people live in the haze of low-level depression & denial because it's easy to do so, but maybe that's not the best way to live our lives.

 

[Mai72]

I like the ground-up approach of dealing with your current responsibilities first (i.e. GTD), because if you try to tackle the "meaning of life" stuff first, you can put yourself into a permanent holding pattern of doing nothing, coupled with depression. That meaning portion is different for everyone, and involves multiple meanings. Some people work to pay for their meaningful activities outside of work. Some people finding meaning in their work. It varies quite a bit.

I've mentioned the idea of the "warm-fuzzy" in other posts...as kids, we all get a free pass to have that feeling in life, where you are just focused on enjoying living in the moment, whether it's playing at school or playing at home or waking up early to watch Saturday morning cartoons or whatever. As adults, we have to choose whether we want to have that in our life or not, because it's easy to goof up your body's processes & lose that - it's easy to stay up late, eat crap food, not exercise, and be stressed out, instead of going to bed early, eating well, exercising on a regular basis, and managing our stress. That's meaning level #1 right there - doing the things that are required for your physical body to feel good, and for your mental state to be good.

I'm sure they exist, but I have yet to meet someone fully depressed who is going to bed at a reasonable hour, getting enough sleep, working out every day, eating three healthy meals a day plus snacks, and staying on top of their responsibilities so they're not guilt-ridden & playing in avoidance mode all day. We have a lot of traps in our lives, especially in America where we have numerous strong traps to keep us awake at night, junk food galore with drive-throughs & mini-marts, and where we're so busy that it's easy not to make time to exercises.

Thinking about this kind of reminds me of that movie "Yes Man" with Jim Carrey, where he opts out of everything in life under he basically gets put under a spell where he has to say "yes" to everything, and he starts overcoming his hermit-like life and starts doing stuff that makes him happy, like going out with friends & dating. A lot of times we simply have trouble overcoming ourselves & pushing ourselves to do things we know will make us happy & make us feel good. Which is important because, as your video link illustrates, we do have a limited amount of free time after we take care of all of our required responsibilities for the day, and a lot of people live in the haze of low-level depression & denial because it's easy to do so, but maybe that's not the best way to live our lives.

The fundementals (Eating, Moving, Sleeping) are often overlooked, but they are the glue that holds everthing together. When you don't eat nutritiously, get inadequate sleep, and don't exercise it affects brain chemistry, which inturn affects your life negatively. I was taking a class on goal setting, productivity, and procrastination and that is the first thing that was brought up. The 3 fundies. You have to get that stuff in order before you can do anything else. You're right. We have a lot of modern day traps that we didn't have even 20 years ago. It's crazy. I can stay up and play on my gaming PC all night, but I know there are consequences if I did that.

Meaning and purpose are important. I've seen and worked with people who have no purpose and it doesn't work out too well for them. You can find purpose in anything, if you look at it that way. Instead, many people drown out that negative feeling of not having a life purpose via excessive TV watching, video games, and social media. They did studies on people who watch 3 plus hours of TV per day, and they found that it's coorelated with minor depression. I'm sure you could add video games in as well.

 

[monkeydelmagico]

we can stay on top of our responsibilities, enjoy our free time, and be happy about both things.

Quoted for truth. I used to care ALOT about productivity. Every available moment dedicated to some meaningful endeavor. Raise a son, work, school, home improvement, money hustle. Zero TV, gaming, or otherwise loafing. This went on for nearly two decades. Eventually the parental duties tapered off, the home was in great shape, all the degrees I needed were posted to the wall, and my work is at a level where nobody ever questions what I do.

I find myself with more time than I know what to do with. I have added in hobbies but there is only so much time you can spend on a boat, or out bicycling. I even sold the nice house and bought a wrecked out foreclosure home. It's almost enough to keep me busy.

My point is be careful how much responsibility and time management you apply for early in life. It changes you. Now, as I reach an age where I should be able to allow myself to relax and just watch life flow by, I can't. Sitting down to watch a movie makes me a little anxious. If it turns out to be a dud of a movie I get cranky. I just wasted 2 hours that I could have been fixing the trim in the bedroom.

Now I have to train myself to relax after having listened to all the gurus on how not to waste time. Ugh.

 

[ImpulsE69]

Different people are driven differently. I worked hard in school, got straight A's, blah blah blah and I learned early on that high achievers never really succeed. They are just expected to maintain and do more. I've never been one to have a 'dream' or a 'goal' in life. I guess you 'could' say I live in the moment. I work because I must. I do my work well and quickly but I have no interest in 'moving up ladders' or spending all my time trying to run a business. I use those funds to fill my free time. I think what many of these 'studies' fail to realize is that not everyone wants to make their mark on society and be remembered forever. Some people just want to enjoy life without stress and take life for what it is, fleeting. People like to judge what others do because people enjoy different things. These studies are no different. I would say people who spend their time studying other people are trying to make up for emptiness in their own lives.

 

[Kaido]

Now I have to train myself to relax after having listened to all the gurus on how not to waste time. Ugh.

I am definitely a believer in the work-life balance because it's easy for me to fall into the trap of being a workaholic, because I really enjoy what I do. On one hand, you need to learn a work ethic so that you can stay on top of your responsibilities & not be lazy. On the other hand, you also have to learn how to relax & let go so that you don't run into a "cat's in the cradle" deal with your family, or get burnt out on a personal level. It's a balance! And it's hard also when you get sucked into stuff like productivity, because it seems like such a good idea, but then all you've done is be really productive over stuff that will all be obsolete in 100 years. I think the point is to stay on top of you work, and also enjoy your unstructured time, and find meaning in your work & your play times, because eventually it's over. Again, that can be either depressing, or motivating, depending on where you're at in life & how much you've thought about what you really want to do in your life.