Dumb People Live on Autopilot. Smart People do This.

You at 100 years old would tell you...

My brain is firing on about 3 brain cells as I try to make my mind up.

It’s 10:30pm and I’m doing a ride-along with my friend on an ambulance. How I pulled that off is another story. At this point, I’ve been with them for 16 hours while they responded to medical emergencies.

I’m exhausted.

Kaputt.

Out of it.

Now I’m trying to decide if I want to go home and sleep or spend the next 8 hours with them while they run calls all night. Most people in my shoes would make the seemingly wise decision and go home so that I don’t feel terrible tomorrow.

That is where most people go terribly wrong while making decisions.

Decisions determine your destiny

Some sources say we make close to 37,000 decisions a day. (Btw, that’s totally false. There’s no legitimate study that says that. It came from a Microsoft advertisement. Be careful what you cite as evidence.)

Either way, we make a lot of decisions, some good, some bad. Some are conscious, and others are picked for us by our habits. For better or worse, your decisions determine your destiny in life. They define almost everything about you, internally (thoughts, emotions) as well as externally (appearance, job, etc).

The problem is people make their decision based on how it will affect them in the next minute, hour, day, or week.

That’s a problem. Here’s why.

When we make decisions while only focusing on the short term, we make bad decisions. This is what truly separates the good from the great. They are willing to sacrifice short-term pleasure for long-term fulfillment. These people are grounded.

When we make decisions focusing on short-term enjoyment, we are borrowing from our future selves. We are creating problems that our future self will have to deal with.

We do things like

Procrastinate

Criticise

Cheat

and then wonder why life is so unfair towards us. It’s not unfair, we are just systematically creating problems for our future selves.

What does all this mean?

Make the best decisions you possibly can

You’re one decision away from ruining your life.

You’re one decision away from the best thing that’s ever happened to you.

Decisions make the difference.

Here’s how to make better ones.

You, but at 100 years old

I want you to imagine yourself at 100 years old. I don’t know what your regrets will be, but I can tell you what regrets other 100-year-olds have.

“I wish I’d taken more opportunities that came.”

“I wish I’d made more memories.”

“I didn’t live life to the fullest.”

And those people were barely in the internet phase. Imagine what we will say.

“Your 100-year-old version of yourself won’t wish they had fewer crazy stories to tell.”

When you find yourself needing to make a decision, zoom out and ask your 100-year-old version of yourself what they would do. What would you at death’s door tell you?

It puts things in perspective.

Because you on your deathbed has a grasp on what actually matters in life. You in 5 minutes… not so much.

You at 100 years old would tell you to be more vulnerable, spend more time with friends, and say “yes” to more opportunities. To stop wasting your time on things that don’t matter. Because someday, believe it or not, your time, abilities, and opportunities will run out. When that time comes you won’t wish you’d spent more time on Instagram, X, or TikTok.

With this perspective in mind, while my current self is telling me that if I stay up all night, tomorrow will be terrible, my 100-year-old version of myself is saying something very different. He’s saying that this might be the only opportunity I ever get to ride all night with an ambulance. This might never happen again in my life. Take the opportunity. Because someday you won’t be able to.

Now some of you are thinking “That’s a little weird, you want me to just say ‘yes’ to everything?”

Honestly, if you do this you will probably end up saying “no” more than “yes.” But here’s the thing. You already do this. Whether you realize it or not, you are already making decisions based off your current or near-future self. Why not extend that? Look at the big picture. Now is the time to do it.

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