It's Later Than You Think

Welcome to the 840 new members of the curiosity tribe who have joined us since Friday. Join the 86,375 others who are receiving high-signal, curiosity-inducing content every single week.Quick Announcement: Audience Building Course is back May 3-6!It's a live cohort-based course designed to help you build a high-leverage audience. Results from prior cohorts were awesome—hundreds of thousands of new followers and subscribers and countless new monetization opportunities created.50 spots remaining—you can grab your seat here.Today’s newsletter is brought to you by LEX!What asset class has created more millionaires than any other? Real estate. The problem is that it’s an asset class that has previously been inaccessible to most investors. LEX has changed that with a unique new way to invest in real estate.LEX does an “IPO” for a building, so you can build a portfolio of buildings you want to invest in. Each building has a ticker, just like stocks. Any US investor can open a LEX account, browse opportunities in various asset classes such as multifamily and office buildings, and buy shares of individual buildings.I’m a huge fan of the platform—you will be too! Get a $50 bonus when you deposit $500 by using the link below.It’s Later Than You ThinkYou work and work for years and years, you're always on the goYou never take a minute off, too busy makin' doughSomeday you say, you'll have your fun, when you're a millionaireImagine all the fun you'll have in your old rockin' chairEnjoy yourself, it's later than you thinkEnjoy yourself, while you're still in the pinkThe years go by, as quickly as a winkEnjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it's later than you think- Guy Lombardo, Enjoy Yourself, It’s Later Than You ThinkA few weeks ago, I posted a thread on Twitter on harsh truths of life.Contrary to what you may believe, this piece was not intended to be dark or morbid. It was intended to make you think—to hopefully question some underlying (yet flawed) assumptions and spark active discussion with those around you.Today’s newsletter has the same intention.It’s more emotion-inducing than most of my work—I teared up several times during the writing!—but also arguably the most important piece I will ever write.My hope is for you to come away from it feeling cleansed, refreshed, and empowered to think clearly and deeply about your time and how you choose to spend it.With that context in mind, let’s dive right in…The Harsh TruthHarsh Truth: You’ll only see your loved ones a few more times.A Personal StoryI’ll start with a personal story.In May 2021, I had a conversation with a new friend that changed my life.We were having a chat—over a few whiskeys, of course—about living in California. He had grown up there and his entire family had settled there, so I was lamenting that it was so far away from my parents and sister in Boston.My friend asked how often I saw them and how old my parents were...I replied that I saw them about once per year, and that they were in their mid-60s. He looked me square in the face and plainly said:"Ok, so you'll see them 15 more times in your life."Gut punch.It sounds insensitive—but it's just real. It’s just…math. If the average life expectancy is ~80 years, my parents are in their mid-60s, and I see them one time per year, the math—however depressing—says I will see them 15 more times before they are gone.Our time together is finite, but we fail to recognize it until it's too late.Time is cruel. You’ll love it with all of your being, you may even pray for more of it, but the reality is that time doesn’t care about you.Your relationship with time is the ultimate unrequited love.The morning after this conversation, I woke up and had a very candid conversation with my wife about what we wanted in life. A few days later, we listed our brand new house in California on the market. Thanks to a blazing hot housing market, we sold our house within days, packed up our things, and shipped off to the East Coast to be closer to our parents.It’s been almost a year, and it was the best decision I've ever made.I'll never regret these tiny moments—of doing nothing in particular—that we'll get to spend together in the years ahead. I’ll never regret the moments my parents get to spend with my son once he is born.I’ll never regret any of this.Visualizing TimeWhen I first shared this story on Twitter, the response was pretty overwhelming. It seemed I wasn’t alone in having this painful, yet powerful, realization.Tim Urban—one of my favorite writers (and an upcoming guest on my podcast!)—wrote about this phenomenon in a recent New York Times op-ed.In classic Tim Urban fashion, he produced a simple visualizations to capture the sentiment of the entire piece.Quoting from the article:What it boils down to is this: My life, in the best-case scenario, will consist of around 20 years of in-person parent time. The first 19 happened over the course of my first 19 years. The final year is spread out over the rest of my life. When...