‘One’s real life is often the life that one does not lead.’  Oscar Wilde

Creating legacy and mortality

In the bestselling ‘The Book Thief’, author Markus Zusak uses death as a narrator, and begins with these two sentences: ‘Here is a small fact. You are going to die.’

Personally, I think this is the one small fact that we are trying all our life to forget. And in order to forget it, many of us postpone doing the things that we desperately want to do before we die, because doing them implies that time might might be running out.

So we leave the trip to Argentina, writing that novel, or launching that acting career for later, for when we are financially secure enough to have earned the right to live. In the meantime, we distract ourselves with chasing that promotion at that job we told ourselves we’re only taking to pay the bills, but to which we are sacrificing our every waking moment; impressing the boss we don’t really like just because he’s there to be impressed; and competing with our friends for who gets the biggest pay rise and making the biggest impression on our boss.

Up against the clock

The thing is, time is running out. Even though life expectancy in my neck of the woods is something like 79.4 on average, none of us knows when our time is up.

There are so many stories of people who were suddenly told they have a terminal illness. Quite often, their response is to use up their remaining time to do all the things they had always wanted to do, but had always postponed. And in the last months of their lives, these people suddenly discover what it is like to live, not to go through the motions pretending to be alive but to actually live.  

The question

So here is the question I promised you in the title: If you found yourself on your deathbed, what would you most regret not having done during your life?

We don’t usually talk about this question. It’s not polite to mention death in conversation. And we often even prevent ourselves from thinking about it as well.

But I think by avoiding the question of our own mortality, we are preventing ourselves from seeing the wood from the trees, from sorting out the things that are really important to us from the things that other people persuaded us are important.

The life that asking yourself this question can save is not the boring, routine life most of us are leading; it’s the life we want to lead but don’t have the courage to.

Ask this question of yourself today. Now. And whatever it is you think you will regret not having done if the moment of death was near, do it now. Don’t wait.

Don’t avoid thinking of your own mortality

In your daily life, stop avoiding questions about death. The certainty that death will should act as an impetus to make the most of the life we have. 

My guess is that once you start thinking of your own mortality, you will soon think about a way to leave a trace on this earth by creating legacy. But creating legacy takes time, and if you don’t start creating legacy soon it may be too late.

Death is bound to come for you, sooner or later, like it will for us all. The question is, when it comes: will you be happy with the way in which you have used your precious time on this planet?

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‘The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.’  Bertrand Russell

Creating legacy and the learning zone

The learning zone is located between things you find really easy to do (the comfort zone), and things that are so difficult that you don’t really have the courage to attempt (the panic zone). When a task is located in the learning zone, it is neither too easy nor too difficult for you; it stretches you to go just one bit further than you’ve been in the past.

Only by choosing activities in the learning zone can you make progress. That’s where the skills and abilities are located that are just out of reach, not too close yet not too far.

It is when you are in the learning zone that you are most likely to create legacy. This is because you feel challenged enough to try out new things, but not so challenged as to be tempted to give up easily.

Try to stick to the learning zone

Keeping the progress of your legacy project in the learning zone is easier said than done. The reason why I’m writing about the learning zone today is because I’m currently experiencing problems with this in relation to one of my legacy projects.

This legacy project is a play for two actors. The writing was going quite well until Monday, when I tried to write out a few scenes that I hadn’t yet planned out properly yet. This was my mistake, because it immediately put the project into the panic zone, and for the past few days I ended up having to get my spirits back up after having failed miserably at writing those scenes.

And as I was trying to figure out why I have failed, I realised that this is because I stepped out of the learning zone into the panic zone, trying to speed the process of writing the play up a bit. As you can see, it didn’t pay off, and I’ve now lost a few days of work because of it. Lesson learned.

The learning zone keeps changing

Another thing to bear in mind about the learning zone is that its boundaries keep changing. As you are becoming more and more comfortable with your legacy project, tasks that were once in the panic zone will become part of the learning zone, and then the comfort zone.

For example, I’m sure that in a few weeks I’ll be laughing at how trying to write those few scenes blocked my progress on writing this play in such a massive way; it’s just the way legacy projects work, you have to approach things one step at the time.

How to find the learning zone

A handy little exercise I’ve learned about finding the learning zone is to take a big sheet of paper (ideally, one of those things they use in presentations), and map three concentric circles onto it. The smallest circle is the comfort zone, the middle circle the learning zone, and the largest circle the panic zone.

On a stack of post-it notes, write down tasks you have to do for your legacy project in the forseable future, e.g. the next month. Now see where along the three circles each of your post-it notes belong.

As you’re getting the tasks completed, try to mix those from the learning zone with those from the comfort zone, so the comfort zone tasks don’t become too boring.

Once you get those complete, you may find that your learning zone has changed, and that some of the tasks that were previously in the panic zone are now in the learning zone. So get those done next, and so on.

If you do this exercise, let me know how you got on, and if you can think of ways of improving it.

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‘Don’t wait for extraordinary opportunities. Seize common occasions and make them great.’  Orison Swett Marden 

Creating legacy and small opportunities

Creating legacy is about making the very best of whatever happens to you. There’s no such thing as a small opportunity; there are just ‘opportunities’, which you can make the best of or not.

Every opportunity helps you flex your legacy muscles

Never underestimate the value of small challenges to flexing your legacy muscles. Such challenges provide excellent avenues for deliberate practice. 

By overcoming small challenges, you are elevating the stakes for yourself, and what may look like an insurmountable obstacle today may look minuscule in a year’s time. This is the power of improving your ability to create legacy one small step at a time.

Small opportunities and building a reputation

Another reason to do your very best with every single opportunity that comes your way, no matter how small it may seem, is that you will build a reputation as someone who does their best.

Eventually, people will begin to call you and ask if they can help you on your next legacy projects; and gatekeepers will begin to take notice of you.

Therefore, treat every opportunity you have as a way of building a brand, of convincing people that you are worth rooting for.

How are you taking advantage of the opportunities that come your way?

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 ’It’s not necessarily the amount of time you spend at practice that counts; it’s what you put into the practice.’  Eric Lindross

Creating legacy and the need to practice

Creating legacy rarely happens by accident (even when it looks that way). Usually, legacy creators have to abide by the ten-year rule and use this time to continuously improve their craft through practice.

But not any kind of practice will lead to improvement. Decades of psychological research suggests that for practice activities to yield continuous improvements, they have to fall into the category of what researchers have come to call ‘deliberate practice.’ 

What deliberate practice is and isn’t

As researchers have argued,  what most of us think of as practice isn’t what researchers mean by deliberate practice. Let’s take a concrete example. Let’s say I’d like to create legacy through writing a series of essays that I intend to publish in book form. Therefore, my aim is to become the best essay-writer I can be; how do I do that?

Most of us would assume that the answer is to write essay after essay, hoping that this will increase the quality of the output. In fact, research suggests that this approach is wrong. Instead, what I have to do in order to become a better essay writer is to find out where my weaknesses lie with respect to essay writing; and then to engage in activities specifically designed to address those weaknesses.

So for example, I may find that one of my weaknesses with writing essays is my poor understanding of structure. This means that I need to find an activity that will focus on practicing structure.

An example of such an activity would be to read high-quality essays written by someone else; not look at the article for a few days; and then write out the structure of that essay if I were to write it. By continuously doing this with a wide range of essays, my understanding of structure would improve. Then I’d move on to another weakness and design an activity specifically designed to tackle that, and so on.

The 6 characteristics of deliberate practice

Okay, I know the concept of deliberate practice is quite complicated, so I’ve written a list of characteristics that I hope will help you decide whether an activity falls in the category of deliberate practice or not:

1. Deliberate practice is an activity designed specifically to improve performance. Deliberate practice requires that you identify sharply defined elements of performance that need to be improved, and then work intently on each of them separately. As soon as you record measurable improvement with one aspect, you can move on to the next.

2. Deliberate practice often requires a someone else’s (e.g. teacher/coach) help. There’s a reason why the world’s best golfers still go to teachers. One of the reasons goes beyond the teacher’s knowledge. It’s his or her ability to see you in ways that you cannot see yourself. Without a clear, unbiased view of your performance, choosing the best practice activity will be impossible.

3. Deliberate practice activities can be repeated a lot. High repetition is the most important difference between deliberate practice of a task and performing the task for real, when it counts.

4. Feedback on results is continuously available on deliberate practice activities. Practicing without feedback is like bowling through a curtain that hangs down to knee level. You can work on technique all you like, but if you can’t see the effects, two things will happen: you won’t get any better, and you’ll stop caring. 

5. Deliberate practice activities are highly demanding mentally. This applies not only for activities that are intellectual, such as my essay-writing example, but also to activities that are heavily physical.

6. It isn’t much fun. Yep, that’s the bad part, and the main reason why there are so few top performers and legacy creators. The good news though is that if you stick with deliberate practice, you are bound to see a real improvement in your performance.

By the way, if you want a really in-depth explanation of deliberate practice, read Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin. A terrific book with lots of examples of how deliberate practice has helped legacy creators and other top performers improve their work in a wide range of areas of endeavour.

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‘Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.’  Oscar Wilde

Creating legacy and (not) fitting in

From a very young age, we’re told we have to fit in. Whether it’s our family, our classroom, our peers – the messages we get are usually about comforming to the crowd rather than standing out.

In Australia, they have the term ‘tall poppy syndrome’ to refer to someone who stands out and is therefore taken down by their peers; the lesson there is not to stand out too much or you’ll be taken down.

Creating legacy may make it difficult for you to fit in

Now, the trouble is that if you set your sights on creating legacy, chances are that you won’t be fitting in too well; you’ll be the tall poppy that others will want to take down. And if your legacy project does not become successful in the conventional sense of the word (i.e. bring you money, fame, and lasting glory), people will enjoy making fun of you even more for having dared to do something different with your life.

So, if you’d like to go down the path of creating legacy, you’ve got to seriously consider the consequences of your decision for your ability to fit in. There are of course legacy creators who seem to fit in despite following an unconventional lifestyle. Elizabeth Gilbert, for example, author of Eat, Pray, Love talks about how she tends to immediately make friends no matter where she is and what she is up to. But most of us legacy creators don’t manage to make our unconventional lifestyles as inconspicuous. So we stick out like a sore thumb.

Ask yourself this question

The question you’ve got to ask yourself is: is creating legacy worth the risk of not fitting in? There is no right or wrong answer; it depends entirely on you. But it’s probably best you ask yourself this question before you begin on the path of creating legacy, otherwise you may find yourself constantly zig-zagging between trying to fit in and making the tough choices that creating legacy often requires.

Do you think that creating legacy makes fitting in difficult?

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‘Every calling is great when greatly pursued.’  Oliver Wendell Holmes

Creating legacy and finding your calling

Creating legacy presents a huge dilemma: in what area should you do it? Especially if you are multi-skilled, and have several interests, it often feels like you’re in trouble. How do you choose?

Following the talent

Some people say that you should try to see where your natural abilities lie: are you particularly good with colours? Or do you have a good musical ear? Do you have a way with words? etc. In other words: where is your talent?

I’ve been giving this view a great deal of thought, and I’ve come to find several problems with it.

The first problem is that some of us have talents in more than one area. Indeed, we could even argue that natural ability is not a matter of dichotomy (do you have a good musical ear? yes or no), but rather a matter of degree. So in a sense, we all have some degree of natural ability in most fields.

Okay, the next logical step would then be to ask – in which field do you feel you are most talented? But this is problematic too, because you may feel equally talented in two different fields.

And of course, an obvious question: what is talent? How do we measure it? Is someone talented at something because they find it easy? Or do we judge talent on the quality rather than the quantity of their performance?

Overall, the whole question of talent I feel is a red herring. For example, decades of research on top-level performers in a wide range of fields (aptly summarised in Talent is Overrated, by Geoff Colvin) suggests that talent has a very small role to play, if any, in these performers’ success. A much better predictor of their success is the extent to which they engaged in deliberate practice activities in their fields, i.e. activities that were specially designed to improve their performance in key areas of the tasks they had to perform.

Okay, so where does this leave us in terms of finding the most appropriate area for us, in which to create legacy?

 Following your calling

 The solution I’d like to propose is that you stop thinking about what comes easiest to you, what you’re best at etc. for a moment, and consider what you are really passionate about. What makes your heart sing? What kind of stuff do you like doing in your spare time, once all your obligations are taken care of?

Of course, if it’s something like eating pizza or sleeping, you may have to spend some effort turning that into something you can create legacy in. But if it’s things like painting, writing poetry etc. – bingo! You may have found it.

You may find that there are several things you are passionate about; but chances are one of those things feels more ‘right’ than any of the others.

It may not necessarily be the thing that comes easiest to you, or the thing you feel your biggest talents lie. For example, prize-winning children’s author Kate DiCamillo tells in every single interview how difficult writing is for her, and how she postponed writing for ten years precisely because of how difficult it felt. But as she goes on to say, just because something doesn’t come easy to you doesn’t mean it isn’t what you were put on this earth to do, if this is the thing that feels ‘right’ in your bones.  

I hope this helps. Do you have other ideas about how to identify the most appropriate area for creating legacy? 

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‘Success always comes when preparation meets opportunity.’   Henry Hartman

Creating legacy and preparation

Creating legacy takes time. A lot of time. And it’s not just the time it takes to set up a legacy project, work on it, get through the dip, and make it successful. It’s also the time it takes to set up, run, and fail at, all the other legacy projects before you have any chance of success. The time it takes to make mistakes, gather experience, and start from scratch again and again and again, until what you create has the chance to stand the test of time. In other words, the time to prepare for success to happen.

How long is this preparation time?

What a quick answer? Roughly ten years. How do I know this? Well, it turns out there’s been lots of research on this. This research initially began by following the career of top-level chess players. In doing so, researchers that no one seemed to reach the top ranks of chess players without a decade or so of intensive study, and some required much more time.

What is really interesting though is that subsequent research in a wide range of fields has substantiated the ten-year rule everywhere the researchers have looked. In maths, science, musical composition, swimming, X-ray diagnosis, tennis, literature – no one, not even the most ‘talented’ legacy creators, became great without at least ten years of very hard preparation.

Oh yes, and in some fields of endeavours, the ten-year rule is doubled. For example, research found that most scientists and authors produce their greatest work only after twenty or more years of devoted effort.

Is this too long for you?

Research on top-level legacy creators shows that no matter who they were, it always took them many years to become excellent. Are you up for it?

What do you think about the ten-year rule? Do you think you have the stamina to wait so long for any sign of success?

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 ‘The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.’  Mitch Albom

Creating legacy and finding your passion

In creating legacy, it is important that you find and pursue your true passion. So many of us delude ourselves into following the deferred life plan until it is too late to do anything about what fills our life with meaning, and turning that into a legacy.

Here are 12 tips that will help you pursue your passion while creating legacy: 

 1. Don’t just daydream. Pursuing your passion is hard work, it’s not just about having fancy daydreams about how nice it would be if you could do such-and-such instead of living the deferred life plan. Once you have found your passion, you need to start taking action. There are never any perfect circumstances for taking the first steps. Just make the best of your current circumstances here and now, don’t wait until it is too late.

 2. Find role models. Look for role models to see how they stood up to others for their passion, how they got started, and how they overcame the barriers that stood in their way. By reading their story, you will find pragmatic solutions to your problems, but you’ll also find comfort that others went through the same difficulties as you.  

 3. Perceive obstacles as tests. You may find that people (especially loved ones) are preventing you from pursuing your passion, maybe because it is too risky. Or you may find other kinds of obstacles blocking your way. If so, try to see these obstacles as testing your resolve. Show them how determined you are through your actions, and eventually they’ll relinquish their resistance.

 4. Beware of the cul-de-sac. You don’t need to overcome all the obstacles in your way – some you can simply ignore. In particular, don’t go down a cul-de-sac thinking you have to pass through; learn to spot these from a distance, and avoid at all costs.

 5. Stick to your guns. Some people are very good at making us believe their particular view of the world, and live by it. For example, I know someone who keeps telling me that life is unfair and that we are condemned to do stuff we hate most of our lives. The thing is, because this is what they believe, this is how they live. Beware living according to other people’s worldview. Generate your own truths according to the kind of life you want to live.

6. Use positive self-fulfilling prophecies. If you believe good things will happen to you, then they will. Use self-fulfilling prophecies to your advantage.

7. Embrace positive thinking. Learn to see opportunities rather than downsides in everything that happens to you.

8. Trust in providence. When you truly want something, the whole universe is conspiring to help you. You just have to know what you really want, and go after it with all your energy.

 9. Keep up your enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is contagious; others will soon come to see just how important it is for you to pursue your passion, and they’ll start helping you out.

 10. Don’t be afraid to experiment with lots of different things. It’s worth spending as much time as possible to make sure you’ve found your true passion before embarking on a legacy project.

 11. Once you have found your true passion, focus. Of course, you should still engage in Renaissance thinking, but your main aim should now be to make as much progress as possible on your legacy projects.

 12. Don’t confuse passion with drive. You can have drive for succeeding with the deferred life plan, but passion is about what makes your heart sing. Just because you can rustle up the drive to do something doesn’t mean you’re passionate about it. Understand the difference and learn to see it within yourself.

What about you? Do you have any other tips that will help legacy creators pursue their passion? I need more ideas!

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‘People throw away what they could have by insisting on perfection, which they cannot have, and looking for it where they will never find it.’  Edith Schaeffer

Creating legacy and getting things done

Creating legacy is about taking action, and about making the best with what you’ve got at the moment. There is never a perfect time for creating legacy. There are never any perfect circumstances. And you’d better accept the fact that no matter how long you work on it, your legacy project will never be perfect.

So don’t wait for the perfect moment to start your legacy project, and don’t keep your legacy project hidden from the world in a quest for perfection. All you can be sure of is the ‘here’ and the ‘now’. Start with these. And don’t wait interminably before making your legacy project accessible to the world. Set yourself a deadline for when your legacy project will be complete, and stick with it as much as possible. Don’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good, as Voltaire says and Gretchen Rubin discusses in an excellent blog post on the Happiness Project blog.

The perfection fallacy 

Of course, some of the great legacies often seem to embody perfection. So it is tempting to think that we should not release the result of any legacy project into the world until we are one hundred percent happy with it, until we find absolutely nothing more to add to it – thereby thinking we are standing a better chance of our legacy project making an impact.

But if you look at the way the greatest legacies were made, you will see that people rarely came out with a masterpieces as their very first work. Mozart composed dozens of pieces before creating anything memorable. Shakespeare had written many plays before Hamlet and Macbeth. Goethe took 60 years of redrafting to come up with his final version of ‘Faust’ (60 years! can you imagine?).

Each and every legacy creator we admire today had to start somewhere small, somewhere imperfect – and worked through their imperfections day after day after day, honing their craft, before producing some of their greatest work. Don’t be fooled by looking at their greatest accomplishments, and seeing that as their general standard. Look into some of their early work, and also take into account that their really early work never got published – and you will see that they never would have created anything memorable if they had harboured the delusion of creating something perfect from the very start of their career.

Don’t look for the perfect circumstances

It is also tempting to see our lack of time and money as obstacles to starting a legacy project. So we adopt the deferred life plan. We say to ourselves that ‘I will work in a meaningless job that pays lots of money for X number of years, and once I am financially secure I will quit the job and start creating legacy.’

In practice, it just doesn’t work that way. Because you will always have obstacles in your way. For starters, it’s unrealistic to expect that you’ll have a well-paying  job and yet keep on living on as little as possible; well-paying jobs come with expectations about your lifestyle. So you won’t be able to save as much money as you think to allow yourself the time to create legacy – which means your ‘creating legacy start date’ will get postponed for later and later in life.

Wouldn’t it be better not to get the high-earning meaningless job, but settle for something more flexible yet less well-paying instead, and use your spare time to create legacy?

What about you?
Are you what they call a perfectionist? Or are you waiting for the perfect circumstances in your life to start creating legacy? Share your story or your ideas with us in the comments section.

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‘Our obligation is to give meaning to life and in doing so to overcome the passive, indifferent life.’  Elie Wiesel

Creating legacy because…

…we don’t know what happens after death. You may have faith in an afterlife, or you may be agnostic, but the truth is that we do not know, and no one can tell us for sure. What you do know though is that you have this life, this opportunity, to make a difference in this world. Take this opportunity now, don’t waste time waiting for the perfect circumstances to arise, find out what it is you want to do as your legacy and get started.

…we all need to give meaning to our lives, and creating legacy is a way to do so without harming ourselves, without falling under others’ harmful spell, and without deluding ourselves that we are living when in fact we are only puppets in others’ corporate game. Don’t get caught into the game of chasing after more wealth, more promotions, more pats on the back for running, running, running, with nowhere to go but the grave. Don’t join an extremist group that tells you who you are by asking you to see everyone who is not part of that group as the enemy. Focus your search for meaning on something that makes a positive difference in this world, and something that is likely to keep your memory alive long after you are gone.

…our time on this earth is finite, and the day will come when you will be lying on your deathbed and reflecting on your life, with only moments left to live. What images do you want to see at that moment? What will you be likely to regret you haven’t done? Don’t wait until that moment to reflect on your life. Do it now. And whatever it is you want to see then, do it now. Whatever you think you will regret not having done, do it now. Don’t wait. None of us knows when that moment will come, all we know is that it will come one day. Take action now. Dedicating your life to creating legacy, with all the risks and disappointments that this entails, will mean that when the moment comes you will see images of yourself fighting against the odds, trying, hoping. Not images of a rat in a maze doing others’ bidding. Bring what you want to see then into your life now.

…future generations need your help, need your experience, need your strenght. Don’t rob them of your contribution. Share what you have learned with the world with every opportunity, and be a role model, an agent of positive change. Be the change you want to see, and don’t let a single day pass by when you are not in some way working towards the long-term sustainability of our world.

What about you?

What are your reasons for creating legacy? Please share your thoughts with us in the comments section.

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