This might seem incredibly morbid, but stick with me here. I am not going to talk about the sweet release of death, but rather how death can improve your life right now. This is nothing new – the idea of a memento mori is popular, and useful. I will however give a slightly different take on death as a life-enhancing consideration.

The usual way that death is used to enhance your life is the following: “Your time is limited! You must do as much as possible before your time runs out! If you don’t do it now, you will never do it!” My approach would counter that with, “If you’re not doing it now, is it really worth it?”

There is great freedom in realizing that you are old already and heading towards death at a steady and irreversible rate. Sure, you might be able to extend your life by a few years, and you should pay attention to health, but do you honestly want to spend your time here doing nothing but trying to increase your time here? (If you are doing it in service, so that others may have longer and healthier lives, sure – go right ahead. That is a noble undertaking. If, however, your main purpose is increasing your own longevity, you might want to re-examine your priorities.)

Now, there is this concept of a “bucket list”, all the things you want to do before you die. A beach in Thailand? “Oh yes, that’s on my bucket list.” Learning to play the guitar? “Yup, on my bucket list.” In essence then, a bucket list is a list of things that would be nice, but that you cannot be arsed to do now. I propose the following. Set a bucket list, and then cross off all those things that you cannot start doing right now. Then start doing them.

Want to learn to play that guitar one day? Forget about it, unless you are willing to start doing it now.

A necessary consequence of this approach is that you should reduce your number of wants. As Oliver Burkeman points out so eloquently in “Four Thousand Weeks”, the illusion that we can do everything that we want to if only we optimize our time is pernicious, and prevents us from attaining the full meaning an activity will only assume if we choose it above others.

I started writing this post before beginning Burkeman’s book. Turns out, he managed to say what I was trying to say a thousand times more eloquently. Go read that, instead. I’m naming it my Book of the Month.