life is too short for bullshit

everybody likes to talk about how ‘life is short.’

but i think they’re only half right.

i see it more like an equation:

lifetime = life x time

time is fixed. humans max out at 100ish years, & we can’t change that (yet).

but life — how you spend that time — is within your control.

that’s why when people say ‘life is short,’ i think they’re missing the point.

the real question is, too short for what?

i was reading an article about this by Paul Graham, & he had a good answer:

life is too short for bullshit.

which begs the question: what is bullshit?

i’d define it as ‘time spent on anything that doesn’t move you closer to what you want.’

& the way i see it, there are 2 types:

1. baked-in bullshit

this is the stuff we need to do by default, like sleeping, eating, or using the washroom — literally pissing time away. these are the fixed costs of life.

since you can’t get rid of these things, the only way to ‘solve’ them is to change how you experience them.

the easiest way to do that is to practice gratitude.

& the easiest way to do that is to (1) think of something you have, (2) imagine not having it, & then (3) remind yourself that you have it right now.

if that doesn’t work, you can kinda trick your brain into gratitude by replacing the words ‘i have to’ with ‘i get to.’ for example, ‘i have GET to walk in the rain today.’

some people would do anything to have the problems you do.

but if neither of those things work, you can shortcut the whole process by just doing the baked-in bullshit with people you like. like, chores are kinda fun when i do them with my girlfriend.

baked-in bullshit is impossible to avoid, & easy to fix — but i can’t say the same about the 2nd type:

2. chosen bullshit

this is the bullshit we do that we don’t actually need to do.

& the only reason we do it is because we trick ourselves into thinking we must.

take ‘working for someone’ as an example.

up until i was 21, i had tricked myself into believing that having a boss was just part of life — baked-in bullshit.

all it took was 1 customer in my first business to realize that there’s no universal law saying ‘if you want money, you need someone to hire you.’

money is just stored value, which means if you want to make money, you just need to make value.

you don’t need a boss to do that.

that’s how i concluded that working for someone is actually chosen bullshit.

& now that i’ve seen it up close, i can’t unsee it.

chosen bullshit is everywhere once you know what to look for.

but there’s a catch.

if bullshit is just ‘time spent on anything that doesn’t move you closer to what you want,’ i think the most important part of that definition is at the end:

‘what you want.’

simply put, bullshit is relative — what’s bullshit to me might not be to you.

that means it all just depends on what you want your life to look like.

& if that’s true, there’s only 1 logical conclusion to make:

nobody can identify or get rid of the bullshit in your life but you.

if the output of your lifetime is just a function of what you do (life) x how long you do it (time), i think that most people are worrying way too much about the time part & not enough about the life part.

but you don’t have to be like most people.

you can decide what you want.

you can ask if what you’re doing is taking you there.

& you can cut everything that isn’t.

because even though you can’t change how much time you get, you can always change what you do with it.

life really is short.

so don’t waste it with bullshit.

some things i learned

1. a controversial (?) tweet worth considering

   

2. why bad ideas are good
   ‘dismissing an idea is so easy because it doesn’t involve any work. you can scoff at it. you can ignore it. you can puff some smoke at it. that’s easy.
   
   the hard thing to do is protect it, think about it, let it marinate, explore it, riff on it, & try it.
   
   the right idea could start out life as the wrong idea.’
   — Jason Fried

3. live your life by design, not by default
   ‘it’s one thing to get what you want. but it’s another thing to want what’s worth getting.’
   — Shane Parrish
   
   this is why i’m so big on starting with the life you want to live & working backwards from there.
   
   it’s much easier said than done.

cool stuff i found

1. a visual of how i approach life

   

2. a cool website to discover new corners of the world
   someone made a website that lets you choose a city, & then it shows you dashcam footage from a car driving there while playing the local radio station. it’s called driveandlisten.app

   

3. a cool pool
   bro i am such a sucker for normal things done in a beautiful way lol.

   

that’s all for this week!

this past month has been one of the busiest, most challenging, & constructive times of my life — for so many different reasons.

i’ll write about it in more detail when the time is right, but the gist of it is that entrepreneurship is hard, but not for the reasons you’d expect.

i can’t wait to show you what i’ve been working on (;

but until then, thank you as always for reading.

go make yourself proud this week!

~ liam (:

PS - i’m reaching out to you from a new email soon! if you have a sec, please send a quick message to liam@liamzgb.com so it doesn’t land in your junk! i’ll reply (: