You Don’t Have “Plenty of Time”
startingstrength.com
startingstrength.com
> But days gone by are days gone by. What can you do from here – from today – to commit fewer errors? Because the truth is you don’t have plenty of time.
These motivational posts tend to sound kind of sad and hollow to me. I love to lift weights myself, but if someone told me that a day spent with friends or family and not in the gym was an error -- I'd laugh.
Does anyone really think that when they're an old man looking back, they're going to wish they had spent more time in the gym to deadlift 800 instead of "just" 700? Or will they wish they had spent more time enjoying life and taking it a bit easier?
Especially since it's not guaranteed. There's a lot of people who never made it to the "end of their life", and a lot more people who had a retirement planned that they had to give up because life ended up having other plans for them.
I bring up the "looking back" angle only because fear of regret is a central theme to these types of "your life is ending one minute at a time" motivational posts. And it's largely false -- you will not regret having enjoyed the simple things in life.
However, for some reason, the way you described it combined with my current mental state caused something to click for me. Thank you for posting.
That's a bit too selfish for me. I'd rather spend my life making more than one person happy.
Why do we have to be an old man to look back? Or why would regrets there be any more valid than regrets now?
I can say with reasonably certainty that plenty of us have looked back and regret things we didn't do when we were younger. So yes, at least I do wish I've spent more time doing certain things.
Yes it's ok to live and enjoy the little things, but if you want to achieve a goal.... you don't have time. Deal with it and work within those parameters. Every second you spend enjoying your time with a beer and family is time someone else is stepping up.
I'm not saying this is right or wrong, but it just is. Maybe you want to spend time with family. But just as easily you could be forever unfulfilled because you are hyper ambitious and never applied yourself fully.
Man this has to be the greatest overestimation of human memory ever.
People don't remember shit from like 20 yrs ago, heck I don't even remember 99% of stuff from like even 2 yrs ago. Even if they do at that their age , they prbly don't care about what happened like 50 yrs ago.
My memory of events from my life has changed so much over the years that I don't trust that they actually happened in the way I remember them now.
>they're going to wish they had spent more time in the gym to deadlift 800 instead
this is more likely than looking back because you have your body constantly reminding you how fucked up it is due to neglect.
> Does anyone really think that when they're an old man
> looking back, they're going to wish they had spent
> more time in the gym to deadlift 800 instead of
> "just" 700? Or will they wish they had spent more
> time enjoying life and taking it a bit easier?
Do I ever look back at time spent with my kids and wish I did less of that? No. Do I ever look back at time spent on the beach doing nothing but hanging out and wish I did less of that? Yes.
It isn't so much spending all my time on my job or on getting more money or some superficial goal, its about spending my time in ways that later I'll be happy I spent it that way. I wasted a lot of it before I figured that out.
Man, I don't even know how to respond to this. "Just enjoy life"?
Working is how I enjoy life. My freetime is spent building art projects, or teaching workshops, or working on sidecode stuff, or just...working. Building stuff, putting stuff together, improving stuff.
If I look back on the vacations I've taken where I do "nothing", I come back extremely unhappy and antsy. When I look back at vacations where I did something useful, for instance: organizing all the tools in my late-grandfathers old workshop, it makes me feel happy and fullfilled.
So maybe to each their own. People who want to "just enjoy life" should do so. People who want to work should do so too.
I suspect I'm the kind of person who will never truly retire.
I'm saying don't do them out of a fear of your impending death. Do them because you love to do them.
What does this even mean? The scarcity of life, and therefore the imperative to do things now instead of later is because of death.
I absolutely do things because of the fear of impending death. I am going to die someday, and when I die, I won't have any more opportunities to build things with my niece, or work on an art project with my girlfriend.
A day I spent sitting around instead of spending time with somebody I love is a day that is, in my opinion, wasted, and I think that it is ridiculous of you to imply that there is something wrong with this.
And it is awful.
But I don't believe it has to be.
You can balance your life around gaining whatever kinds of strength you need, while also accepting the need not only for the rest and recovery required to cement your gains of physical strength or mental skill, but because you need to replenish your - well, whatever it is that makes you decide that staying alive is worth the trouble. And if there's only fear of lost achievement there, well, I feel like I've experienced that for part of my life, and it's fairly miserable and relatively ineffective at causing a person to, as the author admonishes, actually put things into effect.
I'm going to go get some balance right now, I've been itching to play Overwatch all week, I am going to go and do it! :D
If in your head you try to think of the "120Kg" deadlift you need to do, it might be hard to motivate yourself given that it might remind you of the pain involved.
A easier technique is to think "I am going to go to gym and browse HN on the sofa", 50% of the battle is to get yourself to the gym and once you are there its much easier to do the 120Kg deadlift.
After thinking about why I constantly fail to make going to the gym a routine - a big part of the problem is physiological.
It's amazing how much of a mental hurdle going to the gym was.
Now, I literally walk in my door, tear off my shirt, drop trow and get to work.
I'm actually in the process of "discovering" bodyweight exercising, and am pretty excited to try it (waiting for a minor muscle strain to heal first. It should be good in a few days)
I always got bored with weights and hated going to the gym. Just too big of an activation barrier and it always felt a bit too competitive, especially when first starting.
This (obviously) limits what you can do compared to a more open setup.
I think this hits the nail on the head. It's a mistake to think it's too late and what remains of life is going to rush you by, and it's also a mistake to think that time is unlimited. The way I resolve these two contrary directions is to figure out: when you're in the moment, what do you want to spend your life doing?
Enjoying the life I have built for myself. After all, there's not really "Plenty of Time" left...
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/01/top-fiv...
It seems likely our attitudes change as we age. Perhaps not, perhaps the imminence of death warps perspective. However, dying with minimal regrets is surely something to cherish.
Anyway, whatever works for you.
I suspect that people with truly significant achievements probably didn't/don't regret how they spent their time. People whose achievements mostly involve climbing the corporate ladder instead of seeing their kids' soccer games? Yeah, I bet a lot of them regret it.