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Live as if Today was a Quantum Superposition of the the Rest of your Life

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mouser:

You know those movies or lecturers who tell you to "live every day as if it was your last" ?
Rubbish.

It seems to me that living every day as if it was your last is a great way to have a couple of weeks of fun and then wake up to find yourself in debtor's prison for decades, trying to figure out how to hang yourself with your belt.

Of course these well meaning but fatalistically short-sighted folks do have a point at the heart of what they are saying -- one needs to live in the moment, take chances, and enjoy the wonder and delight of our daily existence.

But it's also critically important for living a full life that we also take the long view, plan for the future, and find the discipline to do the things that may not be fun today but will lead to happiness down the road.

So I present you now with the "Living for the Quantum Superposition of your Future Life" Theory (otherwise known as the "Probability Distribution Theory of Daily Living").

The concept is simple -- you could die tomorrow or live another hundred years.  So you need to psychologically live for today, and also for every potential day between now and the end of your life, as best you can probabilistically estimate the probability distribution governing how likely you are to die on that future day.

Estimating such probabilities is exceedingly difficult, and that says nothing of discounting rates and quality of life differences related to physical aging.

So I would like to suggest a much simpler heuristic:

* Live half of your days as if they were the last day of your life.
* Live the other half of your days as if you were going to live for another 100 years.
* Adjust this 50/50 split as you get older.
You could even try splitting each day into 50/50 blocks -- but i suggest that a per-day mode would result in less schizophrenia.  You might even alternate in week-long blocks instead of days.

One tip: if you have a family -- make sure your switching schedule is as synchronized as possible -- otherwise there could be some tension.

Good luck!

kunkel321:
Usually my body goes to work, but my brain stays at home....  Does that count?

nudone:
interesting.

have you been living like this for a while or are we the Guinea pigs?

(are you also living under a kind of quantum dualistic state whilst you remain constantly awake and yet you must also be sleeping - sometimes?)

Deozaan:
Sounds like a fantastic idea, but what the bleep do I know?

Paul Keith:
mouser, how seamless was the transition for you?

I follow a somewhat similar pattern in which each week day has a different significance.

Mon. is the day I focus my all totally on what I perceive as things to progress my life.

Tues. is the day I focus all my energies on Book Reading and other catching up on self-help topics.

Wednesday is the day I focus on improving my way of communicating with others. This can involve observing movies and reading non-fiction to writing stories and all that.

Thursday is what I consider catch-up day in which I focus all my energies on things I need to catch-up on.

Friday is what I dub a Sabbath version of a day in which I totally focus my entire day on resting including stopping most PC work by letting it scan for viruses and defragmenting and other low-key stuff.

Saturday is Review Day in which I do all my backups and catch-up on anything I want to reread, re-do or work on.

Sunday is what I called Riskless day in which given two choices, I choose the one where I just hang out. Say playing a game when i'm bored rather than learning anything or sleeping instead of trying to finish a videogame.

None of this is connected with any schedule I make and they're more like mindsets on how to approach the week but still I find it's ability to make me productive not as "accelerative" as I'd want to be. Maybe you could give some more hints on the troubles you encountered with your approach? That seems to be an underrated detail with articles of this theme.

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