How to Stop Wasting Your Potential

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 00:00

Imagine you have two cartons of milk in your fridge. One expires in two weeks, the other expires in two days. Which do you drink first? Obviously the one getting ready to expire. Expiration dates serve an important function. They remind us that things don't last forever. Keeping an eye on the expiration dates on our food helps us prevent waste. Think of that package of spinach that's been hiding in the back of your fridge. You meant to eat it, but you forgot about. By the time you do remember,

and want to enjoy it, it's turned into this slimy, blackish green goo. All the potential that spinach had is gone, dead. We all have an expiration date. We just don't know what it is, but we can guesstimate. The current life expectancy is around 80 years. A lot of factors play into when you'll actually die, but let's just keep it simple and say 80. If you died on your 80th birthday, how much time do you have left? Write it.

on your milk carton. That's your expiration date. How many years, months, weeks, days do you have left? An expiration date is a deadline in the most literal sense. It's why we rush to tell people we love them when they're in the hospital. It's why there are so many deathbed confessions. It's why you see so much emotion in people professing their love before someone goes on deployment.

People wait until the last minute to tell others how they really feel before they're honest with themselves and before they make the most of the time they have left. Each of us has an expiration date, as does everyone around us. Expiration dates force us to prioritize what to do first so we can make the most of the time we have left. So our milk, our life doesn't go to waste. Think about it in terms of procrastination.

Procrastinators are actually great at getting things done when there's a deadline. The deadline kicks their ass in gear and focuses their time and energy toward achieving their goal by a certain time. Without that deadline, there would be no accountability, no fire under their ass to drive them to achieve their goal. This is Parkinson's law in action. Work expands to fill the time available to complete it. The more time you give yourself to do something, the more time it takes you to actually do it. Think of your ideal life.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 02:26

The one where you've reached your potential and spend each day doing fulfilling work. How long do you think it would take you to achieve it? Don't fall into the slave save retire mindset where you turn 18 and work a job you hate, do work that is thoroughly unfulfilling for 45 plus years to then retire at 65 and then start enjoying life. Because if you wait until you're 65 to start enjoying life, it might be too late. Writer and entrepreneur Kevin Kelly has great advice on this topic.

He says, I'm now 55 years old. Like a lot of people in middle age, my late night thoughts bend to contemplation about how short my remaining time is. Even with increasing longevity, there's not enough time to do all that I want. Nowhere close. My friend, Stewart Brand, who is now 69, has been arranging his life in blocks of five years. Five years is what he says any project worth doing will take. From the moment of inception to the last good riddance. A book.

That campaign, a new job, a startup will take five years to play through. So he asks himself, how many five years do I have left? He can count them on one hand if he's lucky. So this clarifies his choices. If he has less than five big things he can do, what will they be? But if 80 or 65 seem too far away to spend time today thinking about, you can narrow your focus. One way to make the most of each day

is to set micro expiration dates to prioritize what matters most. You can set them for five years from now, like Kevin Kelly's friend, or make smaller ones. How much could you accomplish in a year, a quarter, a month, a week, a day, an hour, if you set micro expiration dates? Because when you keep your ultimate expiration date in mind, you gain clarity on what truly matters. You'll stop putting off tomorrow what you can do today, because you have one life to live.

Why waste it doing things that make you miserable? Maybe your job pays well, but how much time does it require you to spend away from your family? How long have you been procrastinating writing that book, learning to play an instrument, studying a foreign language, or traveling because you'll get around to it someday? How much time do you have until your ultimate expiration date, the date you wrote on your milk carton? How can you overcome the obstacles keeping you from making your ideal life a reality so you can prioritize what truly matters?

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 04:52

Anytime you feel stuck and don't know which direction to take your life, remember the date on your milk carton. Let me know in the comments below. How are you planning to use micro expiration dates to help you do more with the time you have left? If you want more deep dives into psychology, online business, and content creation, consider checking out the Critter Alchemy newsletter. New issues go out each week and it's completely free to join. Check out the link in the description for more. Until next time, take it easy.