I Found Out Exactly When I'm Going to Die and It Fixed My Entire Life

Today, we're going to talk about an uncomfortable topic, but an important topic, death. No one likes talking about death, but we're going to talk about death in the context of there will be an end to everybody's life at some point. And we're going to talk about how that's actually a very empowering idea. And there's a lot of people historically that have played around with the idea of recognizing your own death and using that as a factor in making bolder decisions and sort of progressing and moving your life forward, but it's uncomfortable. However, I think that having uncomfortable conversations is actually what moves the needle in all of our lives. So let's talk about it. Now, more specifically, not just about death in general, but I want to talk about the idea of a death clock. But before I get into that, let me paint a picture for you. You're lying in bed. It's 3 a.m. in your mind. You are mentally scrolling through the same decisions that you've been making for six months, 12 months, sometimes six years, the job offer, the relationship, the move, the business idea, whatever it is. You've analyzed it from every angle. You've made pros and cons lists. You've asked everyone around you and you're still exactly where you started. You're paralyzed. You can't make a good decision, but you've really been trying to make better decisions your entire life. You've read the productivity books. You've tried the morning routines. You've downloaded the apps that blocked the other apps. You've made lists and frameworks and systems. And you're still paralyzed, right? You're still scrolling on LinkedIn at 2 a.m. wondering if you should take the job. You're still in that relationship that ended emotionally three years ago. You're still thinking about starting that business, writing that book, having that conversation. Now, here's why none of this works. Here's why you're still so paralyzed. And why so many people are so paralyzed, making decisions that will actually improve their lives. You're trying to optimize decisions for a life that you've convinced yourself is infinite. That's not a mindset problem. That's a math problem. When you have unlimited time, every decision carries infinite weight. Every choice could be wrong forever. Every path that you don't take could have been the one. So you take no path at all. You stand at these crossroads, just analyzing and optimizing and waiting for the clarity that will never come. But when people know when they're going to die, they don't have decision problems anymore because life isn't infinite. Life does end. This brings us to the death clock. So there's a new app. It's a death clock app. And it's not the death clock from 1998, which was kind of a joke. There's a new death clock, an AI one. And it's trained on 53 million people's health data. It asks 29 questions about everything from sleep patterns, the family history. And when I put my information into it, it gave me a date, an expiration date. 2077 is my expiration date. Now, this is not to say that that date can't change or that date is correct or incorrect. And there's a lot of things you can do to improve and extend your lifespan. I get it. This is just an arbitrary date based on some data. It is not 100% accurate. Of course, however, when you do have a date, it starts to get real. And you start to do some math, right? I'm 35. That means if I assume this date is accurate 2077, I get 52 more years. That is 18,980 days. Now, this is what actually hurts. I've already lived 12,775 days. And honestly, at sometimes I can barely remember 100 of them. Really remember them. The rest is just gone. It's a blur of scrolling and meetings and waiting for the weekend. So 18,980 days left. And if I keep living like I have been, I'll remember maybe 500 of them. That's not an infinite number. That is a specific countable number. And that's a number you could actually count to if you wanted to waste one of those days doing it. And for the first time, when I went through this calculation, every single decision that I've been agonizing over and overthinking, it had an obvious answer. So the business partner, who we made good money together, but made me feel dead inside at 18,980 days left. Why would I spend 10 more days with that business partner? The move to a new city that I've been researching for two years at 18,980 days left. I'd either do it now or admit that I'm never going to do it. That conversation with your father about why you guys don't really talk. He's not young. Maybe he's 73. Stistically, he has about 4,000 days left. That's 100 real conversations. If you're lucky, 100. If you do the math on your death day, you're going to call him that night. Now, why does this change everything? This is what people don't quite understand about mortality. It's not a philosophy. It's a filter. When you know you have 18,980 days left, you stop asking what if this is wrong and start asking what if I never try? When you know how many days you have left, you stopped optimizing for every possible future and you start optimizing for the one that you actually want. And when you know exactly how many days you have left, you stop caring about other people's opinions because you start to recognize them for what they always were. Noise from people who are also dying and also scared. And most importantly, not you. It's isn't morbid. It's math. Every day that you don't make a decision is a day that you've decided to stay the same. And every week that you spend thinking about it is a week that you've removed from the total. And every year that you wait for the right time is a percentage of your entire existence that you've created for the illusion of safety. The creator of the Death Clock app discovered this himself. Brent Franson saw his death date, panicked, changed his sleep, died, and exercised. And his death date moved nine years into the future. Nine years that he brought back by stopping the things that were slowly killing him. And what's even more interesting is that the Danish researchers who built the AI behind this, 78% accuracy in predicting death within four years, found the biggest predictor of early death isn't what you think. It's not genetics or exercise or diet. It's whether you feel trapped. People who feel stuck in lives, they don't want die faster, literally. Their bodies give up before their time runs out. And this, this thought of death, it gives you absolute clarity. I'll tell you, for me, when I got my date every morning, I subtracted one from that number. So 18,980, 18,979, 18,978 and it sounds psychotic and it probably is, but here's what happened. The client who always paid late and treated me like garbage fired him, not in two weeks that day. Because 18,979 days is too few to spend any being disrespected. The project that I've been planning since 2019 started it, not perfectly, not when I was ready. I just started because at 18,979 days, there is no ready. There's only now or never. This isn't about being reckless. It's about being purposeful. It's about being courageous and it's about being accurate. And when you have unlimited time, it's not of us have. You trick yourself into thinking you can afford to be wrong or you can afford to wait or you can afford to tolerate what you hate because someday you're going to fix it. When you have 18,979 days, someday doesn't exist. You're going to say, Scott, I know I'm going to die. I don't need an app to tell me that. I don't need an app to motivate me. And I'm going to say, no, you don't. Because you know conceptually, intellectually, the same way you know the sun is 93 million miles away. It's information without any kind of impact. It's a fact without feeling. You need a number, a specific countable reducing number because your brain can't process someday. I'll die, but it can process. I have 15,429 days left. Your brain cannot create urgency from life is short. It's too esoterical, but it can create urgency from 18,980 days remaining. And this is why every culture that figured anything out had some version of this. The Stoics, they called it Momentumori. Remember, you must die. Marcus Aurelius, running the Roman Empire, wrote in his journal every evening, you could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think. It's not about motivation. It's mathematics. When you have a number, every decision becomes an equation. Will this matter in 10 days, 100 days, 1000 days, and at 18,980 days total, spending 100 on something that doesn't matter, is spending 0.5% of your remaining existence on bullshit. Now, would you spend 0.5% of your net worth on something you hate? No, you wouldn't. Then why would you spend 0.5% of your life on it? So what do you do with this information? I don't want to overwhelm you. I don't want to stress you out, but what do you do with this information? This is what you do. And it's not because I'm some guru, because I'm someone who's wasted 12,775 days, and I can't afford to waste the remaining 18,980. But I will tell you to get your number, download the Death Clock app, or use Actuarial tables, or just pick 75 years old if you want to be conservative. Do the math, get a specific number of days, write it somewhere you'll see it every single day, and then do the subtraction. Every morning, subtract one. Actually, write the new number. Feel it getting smaller. This isn't negative thinking. This is reality. The number is getting smaller, whether you count it or not. Apply the percentage test. So before any commitment, decision, whatever, calculate what percentage of your remaining days it requires. That two-year contract, that's 730 days, at 8,980 days left, that is 4% of your remaining life, that toxic relationship that you're maintaining. Every year is 365 days, or 2% of what you have left. And then you make the cut. Everything that fails that percentage test gets cut. Not eventually, now. That client that makes you miserable, gone. The obligation, you said yes to out of guilt, cancel it. The person who makes you feel small, blocked them. You're not being harsh, you're being honest. You don't have enough days left to pretend otherwise. And lastly, this forces you to start before you're ready. Everything in your life that you've been planning, thinking about, started today. Not the whole thing, just the first step. Send the email by the domain, book the ticket, make the call at 18,890 days remaining. Not ready is a luxury you can't afford. Now, this is what changes when you start counting. Say, around the three-month mark of counting down, something will shift. You're going to stop asking, what if? And you're going to start asking, why not? You're going to stop needing everyone to like you. And you're going to start needing to like yourself. And you're going to stop waiting for permission and you're going to start giving it to yourself. But the biggest change you're going to notice, at least for me, I stopped pretending I had time to waste because I could see literally see in a number that got smaller every single day that I didn't. So the business that I'd been researching and sort of pushing off for three years, launched it in three weeks. It's not perfect. It's not even good, but it exists and exists beats perfect every time when you only have 18,980 days to work with. The move across the country that I've been contemplating, I did it. Signed the least sight unseen could it be a mistake? Sure. But at least it's a mistake instead of a regret. And that person that I pretended to be to keep everyone comfortable killed him, some people hate who I actually am good at 18,980 days being hated for who you are, beats being loved for who you're not. Now, the real reason why many people will not do this will not listen to a lot of the things I'm speaking about today in this podcast, even after they know their number, even after the fact that they know they could calculate their exact number, if they wanted to, they choose not to. Because knowing makes it real and making it real means admitting that you've been wasting your life and admitting that you've been wasting your life means that you have to change and change for a lot of people is scarier than death. That's the truth that nobody wants to say out loud. We are not afraid of dying. We are afraid of living honestly, authentically at 150%. We are afraid of making choices that can't be undone. We are afraid of committing to a path that might be wrong. We're afraid of finding out who we really are when we stop having time to be someone else. So we pretend like we're immortal. We make decisions like we have infinite do-overs. We tolerate what we hate because it's quote unquote temporary and we delay what we want because there's time. But there isn't time. There's just a number getting smaller every single day. Mine is 18,980. What's yours? And more importantly, what are you going to do with it? Because whether you count it or not, whether you acknowledge it or not, whether you like it or not, it's counting down. And the only question is whether you're going to use it or lose it. Your move.