Death: The Ultimate Productivity Tool

Death.

Slowly, but surely, it creeps up on everyone, and one day, it will be knocking on your door.

Your time on this earth is getting shorter by every second.

Tick, tick….. BOOM.

When faced with your own mortality, you have two choices:

Hide from the fear, put it at the back of your mind, and try not to reflect on it.

Or, confront the fear and use it to your advantage.

I am going to show you how to use your fear of death to:

• Beat procrastination
• Be productive
• Actualize your potential

The Triad of Productivity (Urgency, Motivation & Drive)

We all have goals and aspirations.

The only way to make those goals into reality is through long-term consistent action.

However, as we all know, consistent action is dreadful, exhausting, and draining.

This discomfort leads us to procrastination, which over time, leads to quitting.

To deal with the constant resistance of long-term consistency, we need 2 emotional states to keep us going (Hint: It’s not willpower):

• Motivation — To get started.
• Drive — To keep going.

You can cultivate these states in different ways.

In my experience, the best way to get them is through developing a sense of urgency (the quality of being very important and needing attention immediately).

The best way to achieve an extreme sense of urgency the fastest and easiest way is through reflecting on death.

By visualizing our death, and the shortness of life, we realize that every moment counts.

If we don’t take action now, we waste time, and risk not reaching our dreams.

We have one chance to live out our dreams… And we will waste it because we don’t want to do the work?

For me, there is nothing more scary than to confront my life on my deathbed and realize that I wasted my life, and left my potential on the table.

There is a saying that the scariest day of your life is when you meet the person you could have been.

Try to make that gap between you, and the person you could have been as short as possible.

Actionable Steps

To trigger a sense of urgency:

• Reflect on the shortness of life
• Visualize how little time you have left, and potentially how much time it takes to reach your goals
• Visualize how devastating would it be to feel regret on your deathbed, because you hadn’t chased your dreams enough

How to use the urgency for productivity:

• Concentrate on the emotions you have cultivated (urgency, anxiety, fear)
• Use the power of those emotions for your task

Tl; Dr: When you procrastinate on the things that need to be done in order for you to achieve your dreams, reflect on the shortness of life, visualize yourself on your deathbed wishing you have worked harder, and use that potent energy to fuel you to do the task.

Hope you gained value!

If you did, check out my weekly newsletter to receive weekly advice like this: https://improvement-by-design.beehiiv.com/subscribe

If you want condensed content, or simply connect: https://twitter.com/thebenedeknovak