[2021-04-11] Life's too short
When Barbara Walters asked professor and science writer Isaac Asimov what he would do if told he had only six months to live, he said, "Type faster."
I love this response. It suggests that Asimov enjoyed what he did and wanted to keep doing it, to the very end of his days. He also said: "I write for the same reason I breathe—because if I didn't, I would die." And write he did. Asimov was prolific, writing or editing more than 500 books in his lifetime.
In a similar vein, Steve Jobs said:
For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
What I like about Jobs' statement is that he didn't say he never did something that he didn't want to do or that he immediately bailed on a situation because it wasn't what he wanted to do on that particular day. His approach was more nuanced. Presumably, Jobs did exactly what he wanted on some days and not on others, but the real test was whether his efforts aligned, most of the time, with what he would have wanted to be doing on his last day on Earth. If the answer was no numerous days in a row, Jobs would make a change, which—in my reading—doesn't necessarily mean that he simply walked away. A change could have been everything from speaking up, to asking for what he wanted, to changing his perspective.
It is a gift to be able to spend our days, like Asimov, doing work that is fulfilling and meaningful. I experience that gift every day when I write my blog post. That's not to say that writing is easy. Like most things that are worth doing, writing is hard. However, the final product usually makes the effort rewarding.
Sometimes, it's not the content of our work—the news release that's written, the car that's repaired, the song that's recorded—but the context in which it's done that leads us to conclude that we do or don't want to be doing this particular thing for the rest of our lives. That context could include the work environment, our boss's management style, the organization's respect for work-life balance. When what we do and how we do it align with our passions and values, we're more likely to answer "Yes" to Jobs' question. When they don't, it may be time to ask, "What can I change?" Life's too short.
