We’ve all heard Tim McGraw belt it out. We’ve seen the Pinterest boards with sunsets and cursive fonts telling us to live like you are dying. It sounds romantic. It sounds like the kind of thing you say after a third glass of wine when you're feeling particularly "deep" about your cubicle job. But honestly? Most people interpret this in a way that would lead to absolute ruin within six months. If you actually lived every single day like it was your last, you wouldn’t be flossing. You wouldn’t be contributing to your 401(k). You’d probably be in Vegas, broke, and incredibly hungover, wondering why the world didn't actually end at midnight.
There is a massive difference between the "YOLO" recklessness that the phrase implies and the psychological clarity it’s supposed to provide.
The real experts on this aren't country singers or motivational speakers. They are the people working in palliative care—the nurses and doctors who sit with people in their final hours. Bronnie Ware, an Australian nurse who spent years caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives, famously recorded their top regrets. She didn't find people wishing they’d gone skydiving more often. She found people wishing they’d had the courage to live a life true to themselves, not the life others expected of them. That is the core of what it means to live like you are dying. It’s not about the adrenaline; it’s about the inventory.
The Psychology of Finite Time
When humans realize time is short, our brains do something weird. It’s called Socioemotional Selectivity Theory. Dr. Laura Carstensen at Stanford has spent decades studying this. Basically, when we're young and feel like we have forever, we focus on "future-oriented" goals. We want to gather information, meet new people, and expand our horizons. We tolerate a lot of BS because we think it’ll pay off later.
But as the horizon shrinks? We flip a switch.
Suddenly, we don't care about networking with people we don't like. We care about "emotional goals." We want meaning. We want depth. We want to eat a really good peach and talk to our sister. Living like you are dying is basically just manually flipping that switch earlier than nature intended. It’s a cognitive hack.
But here is where it gets tricky. If you flip that switch too hard, you lose the ability to function in a world that requires a future. You still have to pay the electric bill. You still have to get your oil changed. The trick is to maintain "dual processing"—acknowledging the sheer fragility of your existence while still acting like you’re going to be here for another fifty years. It’s a paradox. It’s annoying. And it’s the only way to actually stay sane.
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The "Skydiving" Fallacy
Most people think living like you're dying means a bucket list. They think of the 2007 movie with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. Go to the Pyramids! Drive a vintage car! Eat at a Michelin-star restaurant in Paris!
That’s fine. Go for it. But that’s "tourist living."
Real mortality-awareness is much quieter. It’s about the stuff you’re currently ignoring because you think you have time to fix it later. It’s the resentment you’re holding against your dad. It’s the fact that you haven't sat in total silence for more than five minutes in the last three years. It’s the way you treat the barista because you’re "in a hurry." When you realize you are dying—which, let’s be real, you are, just at a very slow pace—those tiny frictions start to look like a massive waste of energy.
What People Get Wrong About "Regret"
We’re told to "live with no regrets." That is a lie. Regret is actually a vital human emotion. Dr. Daniel Pink wrote a whole book called The Power of Regret where he surveyed thousands of people. He found that regret isn't something to avoid; it’s a map.
If you live like you are dying by trying to avoid all future regret, you’ll paralyze yourself. You’ll be so afraid of making the "wrong" choice for your final years that you won't choose anything.
Instead, look at the four types of regrets Pink identified:
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- Foundation Regrets: Not being responsible (saving money, looking after health).
- Boldness Regrets: Not taking the chance on a crush or a business idea.
- Moral Regrets: Doing something that hurt your sense of self.
- Connection Regrets: Lost relationships.
If you want to live like you are dying, you don't chase "happiness." Happiness is fleeting. You chase the minimization of those four specific regrets. You make the "boldness" move, but you don't ignore the "foundation" move. You save for retirement and you tell your boss to shove it if they’re soul-crushing. Balance is boring to talk about, but it’s the only thing that works.
The Problem with "Someday"
We treat "Someday" like a physical location on a map.
"Someday I’ll write that book."
"Someday I’ll take that trip."
"Someday I’ll start being the kind of person who doesn't get angry in traffic."
The problem is that "Someday" is a predatory concept. It eats your current life to feed a future that might not happen. Oliver Burkeman wrote a fantastic book called Four Thousand Weeks. That’s roughly how long you have if you live to be 80. 4,000 weeks. It’s not a lot. When you look at it that way, "Someday" looks like a scam.
Living like you're dying means realizing that you are already in the "Someday." This is it. This 15-minute window where you’re reading an article on your phone? This is a chunk of your 4,000 weeks. It’s gone now. And now that bit is gone too.
Practical Steps to Mortality-Based Living (Without Being a Weirdo)
You don't need to wear a memento mori ring or keep a skull on your desk unless you’re into that aesthetic. You just need to change the way you filter your daily decisions.
Stop doing "Low-Value" things for "High-Value" people.
We often spend our best energy on our coworkers and our worst energy on our families. We come home exhausted and give our partners the leftovers of our personality. Reverse that. If you were dying, you wouldn’t care if Brenda in accounting thought you were "super helpful" at 5:00 PM on a Tuesday.
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The "Five Years Gone" Test.
Imagine you’re five years in the future and looking back at right now. What will you wish you had done? Will you wish you’d spent more time scrolling through TikTok? Or will you wish you’d finally started that garden or learned how to cook a decent carbonara?
Audit your "Musts."
We carry around a lot of "I must do this" or "I should do that." Most of them are fake. They are social pressures we’ve internalized. When you filter your to-do list through the lens of your own mortality, about 40% of it usually evaporates.
The Quiet Reality of the End
I talked to a hospice chaplain once who told me that the most common thing people do when they realize the end is near is... they look out the window. They notice the light. They notice the way the leaves move. They become incredibly attuned to the "smallness" of life.
You don't have to wait for a terminal diagnosis to do that. You can look at the light right now.
Living like you're dying isn't a call to go jump out of a plane. It’s a call to wake up to the fact that you’re already in the air, and the parachute is going to open eventually, whether you're ready or not. You might as well enjoy the view on the way down.
Actionable Next Steps
- The 10-10-10 Rule: Next time you’re stressed, ask: will this matter in 10 minutes? 10 months? 10 years? If it won't matter in 10 years, don't give it more than 10 minutes of your "living like you're dying" energy.
- Write Your Own Obituary: It’s morbid, but do it. Don't write what you've done; write what you want people to say about who you were. If there’s a gap between that and who you are today, that’s your to-do list.
- The Relationship Audit: Pick three people you actually love. Send them a text right now. Not a "hey," but a specific thing you appreciate about them. Do it because you can.
- Stop Optimizing Everything: You aren't a machine. You don't need to be "productive" every second. Sometimes the most "living like you're dying" thing you can do is absolutely nothing at all, just existing in the moment.
The goal isn't to live forever. The goal is to create something—a life, a feeling, a memory—that actually feels like it was worth the 4,000 weeks you were given. Stop waiting for the "right time." The clock started the second you were born. Use it.