If there’s one thing I value in myself and the people in my life, it is those that have a sense of urgency. Having a sense of urgency is the single thing that can help you accomplish your goals, to stop procrastinating, to finally get moving on that side project or business you want to build. Let me explain…
So often in life, we struggle to find the motivation, the energy, and even the inspiration to do what we know we need to do in life.
Even if there is that one project we’ve been meaning to take on at work…
Or that side business we’ve been hoping to start…
It’s alway so easy to delay it.
We say things like…
Tomorrow.. I finally will.
Or next weekend, I’ll spend the WHOLE weekend on it!
And quickly that turns into… One day… or Maybe… I’ll finally do that thing.
I realized early in life that there is one key characteristic that motivates people to make changes in their life. To take action. To get off their butts, stop watching Netflix and go pursue that project that they know will be good for them.
It’s also the same characteristic that every single top performer I’ve ever worked with has exhibited.
It’s having a sense of urgency.
People who have a sense of urgency about their goals are friggin’ unstoppable and I love them. They overcome all kinds of obstacles, inertia, and they don’t need much “inspiration” or “motivation” to get going.
The question becomes, how do you get a sense of urgency. I have a very simple method for this, I simply do the math on how much time I have left on planet earth.
Now look. I’m not here to make things morbid. But the reality is we are all here on this planet living for a certain amount of time. And while we’ll never know exactly how much time we have, we also fail to do the math on how much time we probably have.
We don’t do the math becomes it makes it easier for us to pretend we have infinite time and make excuses like “tomorrow…I’ll get to it.”
I’ve found that people who have a sense of urgency have a deep understanding of just how much time they have left and what a finite resource it is.
Over the past few years, I’ve followed this simple trick to keep reminding myself how much time I have probabilistically.
If you google “average life expectancy” you’ll find that the average human in a relatively stable country lives to be 79 years old.
If you subtract how long you’ve lived from that 79, then you get how many years you probabilistically have left.
In my case, I’m 36 years old which means that I have 43 years left. Again, probabilistically. There may be other factors that significantly reduce this number, and scientific breakthroughs that significantly increases it, but basic math says that I’ve got 43 years.
Now here’s the trick. FORTY THREE YEARS feels like a long time. But here’s where the trick comes in. I don’t look at it as FORTY THREE YEARS or look at it as the roughly FIFTEEN THOUSAND days that it represents.
I look at as the distinct events I’ll experience during those 43 years. To ME, I get a sense of urgency in everything that I do because I’m constantly reminded by my math that I’ve got
43 Birthday Parties to experience
43 New Year’s Eve celebrations and Days to experience
43 Christmases
43 Summers
… and 43 4th of July Barbecues
This simple math and mental trick reminds me just how short life really is and how it is our duty to make the most of that time we’re blessed with… with a sense of urgency.
So the question becomes, are you going about life with a SENSE OF URGENCY?
What is the thing that you are putting off?
Are you living life in a proactive fashion to make the most of the time that is given to you?
In our Unstoppable Life Planning guide (linked below), we teach you how to use tools like Unstoppable Sundays, and 45-day challenges to drive consistency and discipline in achieving your dreams and getting to a proactive mindset in both life and business.