Mortality Motivation—It's Time to Stop Wasting Your Time
When an invisible enemy took the world by storm two years ago, I had one of the most eye-opening insights to date… While confronted with daily statistics of infections and deaths, I realized my time on earth is limited. At some point, I, too, will face the inevitable day the curtains of life will close.
The awareness of mortality made me and my misses think about our lives and whether we made the most of our time on earth. We looked around and concluded that getting kids and settling for an ordinary life was not the script we wanted to live.
With this mortality motivation in our minds, we concluded it was time for a change. We planned for the future and decided to take a leap of faith. Six months later, we packed our bags and moved to a place where we could sculpt a life we consider worth living—Dubai.
In this article, I wanted to share my perspective on mortality motivation and why it’s time to stop wasting your time!
You Are Running Out Of Time
According to this report from the United Nations, the average life expectancy at birth for a human being in 2021 was 71 years. That is roughly 25933 days, 622392 hours, or 37343520 minutes.
It's like we all have an hourglass that represents our lives. The moment we are born, our hourglass is turned upside down, and the clock starts ticking. Unfortunately, we don't know how much sand is left in the upper part of the hourglass. We hope it will be many years worth of sand, but the truth is that we don't know how many birthdays we have left.
Mortality Motivation Helps to Invest time wisely
Once I fundamentally understood that the amount of sand in my hourglass was limited, it heightened my sense of urgency.
I experienced more focus, and I started making more rational and motivated decisions about whether or not something would be worth investing my time in.
Instead of mindlessly scrolling through social media, watching TV shows late into the night, and doing seemingly unimportant things, I suddenly felt like I wanted to be very careful with ‘spending my sand.’
I began disassociating myself from negativity and energy-draining people. I started prioritizing experiences over material possessions and inner peace over external validation.
All these shifts in perspective made life feel more meaningful and fulfilling than ever!
Mortality Motivation helped to buy time
But the real game-changer was when I translated this valuable insight into my business.
Until then, I always traded my time for money as a freelancer. A client hired me for a project, and I sent them an invoice for my services.
Like me, many people exchange some of their valuable sand for a paycheck from clients or employers. Now, don’t get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with earning a living this way, especially if you enjoy your work!
The only downside of being solely dependent on selling my time for money was that I was in trouble when I couldn’t sell my time (because of a pandemic, for example) or clients didn’t want to pay for my time anymore.
Another problem with exchanging my time for money was that no matter how good I became, my income would be limited by the hours of the day. I could work harder and acquire more work, but my income was limited by the clock and how much people were willing to pay me for an hour.
Once I realized my entire income source was based on selling time for money, I concluded that something needed to change if I wanted to have the option to choose how to spend the remainder of the sand in my hourglass.
I needed to build something that could buy me time. Something that could work for me and generate an income even when I was not working.
And that’s when I discovered the endless possibilities of monetizing my knowledge and skills through my website by creating and selling digital products.
A new direction that would allow me to create the freedom to work on what I want whenever I want and no longer be solely dependent on exchanging time for money.
Don’t wait before it’s too late
Mortality motivation has taught me that in this life, you can always acquire more work, money, and stuff, but you can never get more time.
You cannot turn your hourglass once the last grain of sand has dropped in the bottom part and continue living again. Once you run out of sand, life’s journey will end.
Unfortunately, so many people wait until they get diagnosed with a fatal disease or terminal illness before making thoughtful decisions about what to do with their time.
If you're waiting for tomorrow to pursue your most ambitious goals and dreams and live the life you want to live, it's time to wake up. You're living under the false impression that your hourglass is filled with limitless sand.
If you’re 30 years old and reach the average life expectancy of 71 years, you only have 41 years to live. That might sound like a lot of time, but if you sleep 8 hours a day, you lose another 14 years, and suddenly you only have 27 years left!
Live Life To The Fullest
Mortality motivation has opened my eyes and made me realize that everyone dies, but not everyone lives.
I used mortality motivation as a tool for self-improvement. Together with my misses, we decided what we wanted to do with the sand in our hourglasses, made a plan, and shaped the life we wanted to live. We realized we were born with nothing and would die with nothing, so we had nothing to lose!
Once you accept that your hourglass will run out of sand someday, you will suddenly see that we all live two lives. The second begins when you realize you only have one.
So, the next time you're feeling stuck, unmotivated, and procrastinating instead of chasing after your goals, remember this concept - mortality motivation - as a reminder that wasting your time is probably the biggest waste of all.
