‘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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 ’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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‘Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyse you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.’  Bernice Johnson Reagon

Creating legacy and (not) killing yourself

Creating legacy is about stretching yourself just a little bit further every day. Where many people go wrong is that they are seized by an immediate urge to create legacy, suddenly realising that time is flying past them at dizzying speed.

So they take on legacy projects that are far beyond their current abilities, and then they work insane numbers of hours on these projects, trying to make as much progress as quickly as possible. Before the month or even the week is over, they’ve run out of energy and out of enthusiasm for the project, and then they decide that creating legacy is not something they are able to do.

I’ve seen this happening so many times I’m considering putting up a ‘health warning’ sign on my blog. Honestly, people, where did you leave your common sense? Although creating legacy does imply leaving something behind for future generations, it’s not meant to become the cause of your death, okay?  

Stretching yourself – the sustainable way

Okay, so what I’m proposing instead is that you should approach creating legacy one small step at a time. For your first legacy project, choose something you can get done in under six months, or maybe even in one month. You can always challenge yourself further next time.

Also, set yourself a low and realistic target for every day you are working on your legacy project, and don’t push yourself beyond that target. This may sound counter-intuitive, but particularly on legacy projects that require creativity (such as writing), it’s better to start the new day with lots of new ideas that you didn’t get to the previous day, than stuck because you’ve run out of steam.

For example, Kate DiCamillo, the award-winning children writer, limits herself to writing only two pages a day. Even if things are going well, she stops once she has finished her two pages, because she wants to keep plenty of energy and ideas in store for the next day. I’ve recently adopted this strategy as well with my own creative writing project, and find that it’s really working.

Of course, on days when I’m brimming with ideas it feels frustrating to stop right upon reaching my target, but what I do in that case is I scribble down my ideas in the back of the notebook, so I know what to start with the next day. This means I’m usually dying to get back to writing the next day, and I know exactly where to start the day’s session.

How do you make sure you don’t push yourself too hard while creating legacy?

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‘Our character is basically a composite of our habits. Because they are consistent, often unconcious patterns, they constantly, daily, express our character.’  Steven R. Covey

Creating legacy and behaviour patterns

In living our lives, most of us develop particular behaviour patterns. The extent to which we prepare for a job; the frequency with which we are late for appointments; the way in which we deal with circumstances in our lives that are beyond our control. Recognising such patterns in ourselves and others is invaluable for setting up legacy projects. 

Using patterns in choosing people to work with

 In hiring people to do a job, I have come to strongly rely on patterns. For example, I found that short-listing people with spelling mistakes on their CV tended to be a waste of my time; they tended to make an even worse impression on me in the interview, and were even late in some cases.

 Similarly, as soon as I hired someone, I would start the ‘hunt’ for their strengths and weaknesses through finding patterns in their behaviour. For example, I found that those who were great at juggling various commitments were less good at becoming an ‘expert’ within a particular area. Knowing this allowed me to assign people tasks that matched their particular tendencies.

 Twyla Tharp, one of the greatest choreographers of our time, writes in ‘The Creative Habit’: ‘I can size up a dancer and determine if he’s right for my company or project by the way he comes in the door and puts his bag down. That and asking him to come forward and move into fifth position will tell me all I need to know about his training, his attitude, his propriety and modesty, even his charisma.’ It’s true: our way of dealing with the world can be seen in our most minute gestures and habits.

Creating legacy through developing positive patterns

Not only do patterns help us choose the right people to work with on our legacy projects; becoming aware of our own behaviour patterns can help us prevent making the same mistakes over and over again.

A few years ago, I became aware that I had a tendency to start things with great enthusiasm, and then never finish them. I’d start writing a short story, and then abandon it after the first two pages; I’d start learning a new skill, and then stop as soon as I got bored with it. For someone wanting to create legacy like me, this pattern was a huge barrier.

So I set about changing that pattern. I took on fewer things, and then followed them through to the end, regardless of how I felt about them mid-way. I finished writing both my masters and my phd theses despite being sorely tempted to give up countless times. I kept on going to acting classes even after the novelty had worn off. And in the same spirit, I am writing my blog posts even on days like today, when I don’t feel like it.

What I’m suggesting is not that you keep on doing stuff when you don’t feel like it; some people would in fact benefit from not being so duty-bound and not finishing things once in a while. All I’m saying is that I had a particularly strong tendency of not carrying on with things after they were no longer new to me; so once I became aware of that, I decided to work towards changing this pattern in order to be better equipped for creating legacy.

What behaviour patterns are stopping you from creating legacy, and what are you doing about changing them?

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‘Champions know that success is inevitable; that there is no such thing as failure, only feedback. They know that the best way to forecast the future is to create it.’  Michael J. Gelb

Creating legacy and feedback

Creating legacy is often a lonesome endeavour, even if you are lucky enough to have a good supportive network around you. The reason I’m saying this is because as the legacy creator, you alone are in charge of your legacy project.

You are the first person working on the project and the last one to leave the project, hopefully once it is completed. Your supportive network are of course there to do their bit, but you will often be the one to decide the direction things will take. And the more remarkable your project, the more unchartered the path and therefore the more likely you are to make mistakes.

So it is important that you find ways to give yourself feedback on how you are doing, and not just rely on others to tell you. Also, you should not only ask yourself for feedback at the end of the legacy project; but after reaching every single milestone, and at any other time you feel you want to evaluate how you are doing.

Which questions you should ask yourself

The easiest way to give yourself feedback is to use the same questions every time. If there are things not covered by these questions, you can of course consider these as well; but the questions are there to ensure you cover all the things related to your work on the legacy project.

Here are five questions that I ask myself after reaching every milestone, or at any other time I need to give myself feedback:

1. What worked? Which factors within your control did you use to your advantage?

2. Why did it work? What things did you do to make the above factors work? Writing them down will remind you to repeat them in the future.

It is important to list the factors that did work, and why they worked, because it’s easy to take them for granted. If you don’t write them down you’re likely to forget that they worked because you did something specific about them.

3. What could have worked better? Speak to yourself as positively as possible when asking yourself about this. Don’t phrase it as ’what did I do wrong?’, for example, and only focus on the factors that were within your control.

4. Why could it have worked better?

5. What am I going to do next time? This should be a list of exactly what you need to keep remembering to do, and what you need to work on.

Can you think of any other questions to ask?

A few extra tips on giving yourself feedback

It is essential that you write your answers to all five questions. Don’t just give yourself the feedback mentally; by writing the answers down, you are bringing them to your conscious awareness and are more likely to take action based on this feedback.

Also, remember to give yourself this type of feedback consistently, even if it seems obvious or repetitive to write down every little thing. If you answer your questions after you reach every milestone of your legacy project, and take action based on your answers, your work on the project can’t help but improve.

If you can you think of any other tips on giving yourself feedback, let me know.

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‘My father always told me just worry about the things you can control and don’t worry about anything else. I can’t control the number of games we play. As long as we keep playing the way we’re playing, that’s the most important thing to me.’  Brian Hill

Creating legacy and the control factor

Creating legacy is strongly connected to our ability to focus on the things we have control over, and disregard those things we cannot control.

It is of course important that you prepare before starting a legacy project, and that you have a plan for what you are hoping to achieve. But once the work on the legacy project starts, i.e. once our nicely defined plan meets reality, things are bound to change, often quite dramatically.

The ‘in my control vs. outwith my control’ list

Here’s a really simple and handy tool to figure out what you can and cannot control. Just grab a big sheet of paper and split it into two colums. In the first column, list the things connected to your legacy project that are within your control. In the second column, list those things that are outwith your control.

For example, on my list I’ve got things like ‘discipline’ and ‘persistence’ in the ‘within my control’ column; and I can of course break these general concepts down into concrete actions, such as ‘work on my legacy project Mon-Fri for 1 hour, from 10 to 11 am’ and ’send out my funding application for the legacy project to one potential funder each week’.

Now, this is the most basic version of the list. Here is an extra layer of complexity: split the list into two rows, making one about short-term concerns and the other about long-term concerns connected to your legacy project. This means you will end up with four squares: ‘within my control – short term’; ‘within my control – long term’; ‘outwith my control short term’ and ‘outwith my control – long term’.

Try making a list like this for yourself and let me know how you get on. Also, what other tools do you use to keep focused on those things you can actually control, in working on your legacy project?

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‘We achieve inner health only through forgiveness – the forgiveness not only of others but also of ourselves.’  Joshua Loth Liebman

Creating legacy and procrastination

Let’s face it: a sizeable portion of the time spent on creating legacy is actually spent procrastinating. I don’t like to admit it, but procrastination is part of the game. 

Sometimes, we procrastinate for months or even years before starting a legacy project. And then once we start, the only really productive time is the legacy project honeymoon. Then we start procrastinating in the back-to-reality phase, all throughout the motivation slump, and by the time we’ve reached the last 100 metres we are champions of procrastination. I know I should probably talk in the first person here, but seriously – doesn’t that sound painfully familiar?

Forgiving yourself and moving on

It’s taken me a few years to realise, but one of the best ways to stop myself from procrastinating is to forgive myself for it. And just the other day, I came across a social psychological study that provided some evidence that this is indeed a highly effective method.

The study found that university students who had procrastinated in the first semester but who had forgiven themselves in the second semester did significantly better in their academic work than students who did not forgive themselves.

At first glance, the findings appear counter-intuitive: surely forgiving yourself for procrastinating would indicate that you’re too easy on yourself, and therefore more likely to keep on procrastinating. But the researchers who reported the findings suggested an interesting explanation of the findings.

They argued that the findings may be due to the fact that we often tend to avoid tasks that are associated with negative feelings. So those students who felt guilty about their previous procrastination kept on avoiding their academic study; whereas those students who forgave themselves managed to get back on track in the second semester.

And based on personal experience, I think the researchers were right: forgiving yourself for procrastinating certainly does the trick, and it will help you get back on track on your legacy projects.

How to forgive yourself

Deciding to forgive yourself is one thing, but you may find that you don’t know where to start. Here are a few tips on how to do it that work for me and that you might find useful:

1. Wait until the start of a new day to forgive yourself. There’s no point forgiving yourself when you’re tired; you might as well go to bed and get a good night’s sleep. If you then start the next day by forgiving yourself, you’ll be very likely to do a decent day’s work on your legacy project.

2. Speak to yourself as if to another person. For example, say ‘I forgive you’  rather than ‘I forgive myself’. I often find that I’m more lenient towards other people than I am towards myself. If you’re the same, speaking to yourself as if to another person will be more effective than speaking in first person. 

3. Only forgive yourself; don’t make excuses. Forgiving yourself is not the same as making excuses. As soon as you say ‘I forgive you, and I know that you were tired yesterday and needed a break etc.’, you immediately give yourself license to make the same mistakes today. So just focus on forgiving yourself.

4. If saying it doesn’t work, write it down. Simply write a letter to yourself as if you were writing to a dear friend who has wronged you but whom you forgive from the bottom of your heart. By writing it out, you are clarifying what it is that you forgive yourself for. So often, it is only by clarifying our feelings of guilt for past behaviour that we can eliminate these feelings and start afresh.

How do you forgive yourself for procrastinating?

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‘Actually, this seems to be the basic need of the human heart in nearly every great crisis – a good hot cup of coffee.’  Alexander King

Creating legacy and meeting basic needs

The more I systematically explore the circumstances under which I make good progress on my legacy projects, the more I am struck by how important basic physical comforts are: whether I had a good nights’ sleep; how hungry I feel; how cold or hot I feel etc.

Physical comfort is worth the trouble

I wish these things didn’t matter to me at all; worrying about my grumbling stomach feels so trivial while working on a legacy project that I hope will outlast me and inspire others. But there it is: the grumbling stomach does distract me, and I usually work much better if I’ve taken the precaution to feed it before it starts to bother me.

Funnily enough, Gretchen Rubin had similar thoughts about the importance of physical comforts to her Happiness Project. Once again, an interesting way in which working on legacy projects seems so similar to working on your happiness – both are about the balance between short-term concerns (the grumbling stomach) and longer-term considerations (one’s overall feeling of happiness; a remarkable legacy project).

How to take care of your physical needs while creating legacy

So, whether I like it or not, it looks like physical comforts are to be taken extremely seriously when wanting to create legacy.

Here’s a short checklist I’ve put together to help me remember to take care of my physical needs before they start distracting me from my legacy work:

1. Make sure you get a good night’s sleep. No matter how little you feel you’ve achieved in a given day, staying up late to catch up just isn’t worth it in the long run; it will mess up your sleep cycle. (This is the one I’ve got most trouble with, hence it’s Numero Uno.)

2. Eat at regular intervals. It’s better to eat little and often than to realise too late you’re hungry – you’ll be more tempted to reach for junk food, which gives you a burst of energy and then sends you into a downward spiral.

3. Have healthy foods always ready for nibbles. Related to 2., eating healthy means you won’t get the up-down effect of junk food on your concentration. I tend to always have things like bananas and various seeds close to where I’m working, so I can reach for them when I need a pick-me-up – they release energy into your body slowly, therefore helping keep your focus on your legacy project at a steady pace. Unhealthy things like chocolate and crisps give you a few minutes of energy (which may in fact make you too hyper to work on your legacy stuff) and then make you feel drowsy when the energy goes away.

4. Drink lots of water. Not only does it keep hunger levels down, but water works wonders for your brain and your entire body. Try to drink at least eight large glasses of water a day, and never leave the house without a water bottle.

5. Go to the loo before starting work. Nothing is more distracting than needing to pee right as you’ve gotten into the flow of your legacy project. Don’t let your bladder ruin your concentration.

6. Use layers of clothing. This means you’ll be able to put layers on/take layers off quickly when you’re too cold/hot, without too much distraction. I also carry extra layers with me in my bag whenever I go to a legacy project HQ outside my flat.

Have I forgotten anything? Let me know and I’ll add it to my checklist.

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‘Blessings on him who invented sleep, the mantle that covers all human thoughts.’  Miguel de Cervantes

Creating legacy and sleep

It is amazing how much routine aspects of life play into our ability to create legacy. Take sleep, for instance. I know that when I’ve had a good night’s sleep, I’m able to be so much more productive working on my legacy projects than on days when for some reason I didn’t get enough sleep.

Indeed, a large number of studies show that sleep deprivation impairs memory, weakens the immune system, and slows metabolism. Not surprisingly, then, being able to sleep well will do wonders for your legacy efforts.

How to get a good night’s sleep

It turns out that there are lots of things you can do to make sure you get a good night’s sleep. The following is a list of 10 tips I’ve picked up from Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project:

1. Near your bedtime, don’t do any work that requires alert thinking.

2. Keep your bedroom slightly chilly.

3. Do a few prebed stretches.

4. Keep the lights low around bedtime (e.g. if you go to the bathroom).

5. Make sure your room is very dark when the lights are out, and that you can’t see any lights from electrical items.

6. If despite taking steps 1-5 you still can’t fall asleep, breathe deeply and slowly. This will get your whole body to slow down and make it easier to fall asleep.

7. If 6. still doesn’t help, it’s probably because your mind is still processing stuff, perhaps worrying about something. Have a pad and paper near your bed, and if this happens to you write down whatever it is that is on your mind. This will help to tell your mind that the matters are being dealt with so it can stop worrying.  

8. Make sure you’ve got enough blood flow coming to your extremities - especially your feet. Put wool socks on if you find your feet are too cold.

9. Get ready for bed well before bedtime.

10. If you find yourself waking up during the night, tell yourself you have to get up in two minutes. If you haven’t had your full sleep, this will usually help you fall back to sleep.

How do you make sure you get a good night’s sleep?

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