I recently read Steven Levine's A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last. Here are the lessons I took away from the book. (Note that these weren't necessarily the author's intended lessons.) Some of these are closer to procedural knowledge than declarative knowledge; that is, just accepting that these facts are true may not be enough to change behavior, thinking and experiences that reinforce the fact may also be required.
- By default, we don't live as urgently as we should.
- Once you have enough money to live comfortably, it's usually a bad choice to trade time for money, and it's usually a good choice to trade money for time.
- The difference between living as if you have one year left and living as if you have fifty years left is one of magnitude, not kind.
- Fear of death, fear of dying, fear of pain, and fear of not having lived or of having wasted your life are four very different fears that are often mixed together.
- If you live every day the same way, then in one important respect you're already dead.
- People consistently regret the things they didn't do more than the things they did do.
- Act as if you have only one year to live, and count down the days starting today, and see how it makes you feel and act differently.- Make a list of the things you want to accomplish in your life and then trying to accomplish them in the next 365 days (to the extent that it's practical).