You've heard it said before that the way to think about mindfulness is to imagine that today is your last day here. To imagine that these are the last actions, last words that you'll speak, that what you're doing right now is how people will remember you or it will be the final moments of your life. Now, I don't intend to get too incredibly somber or depressing or morbid on this show, but this mental exercise of imagining that today is our last day is powerful and it's clarifying. After listening to Developer T, my goal on this show is to help driven developers like you find clarity, perspective, and purpose in their careers. And this idea of living every day as if it's our last is powerful and clarifying. Clarity coming from the kind of wake up call, the reminder of our mortality or at least the reminder that we do have some limited resources here, time, money. And so we should pay attention. If we want to spend our lives intentionally and if you're listening to this show, then you probably do, then it makes sense. It makes sense to review the simple fact that you only get so much time. But there's a tension here. There's a tension with something else that this show seeks to help you find. That is purpose. We're going to talk a little bit about that tension today and hopefully help you come up with a different heuristic than purely living every day as if it was truly your last day. And the alternative of living every day in passionate pursuit of your purpose. We're going to talk about this tension more in today's episode. But first, let's talk about today's sponsor. Command line heroes. Many of you listening to this show will remember the beginning of the age of the internet. Or at least you'll remember some of the effects of that. And then back to the year 1995, and as it turns out, command line heroes is going to focus on this year for season seven. In 1995, the internet starts going mainstream and the dot com bubble begins its rapid inflation. But ten years before all of this, a small team of systems administrators made a seemingly simple decision, it would turn out to have a monumental impact on these events and would set the course of the internet for the foreseeable future. If you want to hear about what, what that simple decision was, and go and listen to episode one at season seven, episode one of command line heroes. In season seven, you will probably hear a familiar voice from fellow podcaster and software engineer, Serranya Barak. And in each episode, Serranya is going to take us on a journey going back to this pivotal year of 1995 and to the surrounding years and decisions and all the tech that came along with it. For example, you're going to hear about Batman Begins. You believe it or not, it has a huge place in the history of the dot com era. Go and find command line heroes. Season seven anywhere you listen to podcasts. You will of course include a link in the show notes. My huge thanks to command line heroes for their support. And let me say, I am personally excited to listen to this one. There are plenty of reasonable and rational decisions that you can make today that if you knew it was your final day on earth, you certainly wouldn't make them. Several examples might include finally setting up your 401k, dealing with all of the junk mail or even something as simple as going to your job. This much is I and many of the people who listen to this show really love our jobs. I don't know that I would spend my final hours at work. I think I would spend that time with my family. But if I would live every single day as if it was my last, I would just be spending all that time with my family. But here's the thing, there is a lesson in this stoic philosophy and the lesson is simple. Don't waste your time. Don't waste your time. Now it's important to understand that not wasting your time is related to living as if it was your last day because of that clarifying factor. When you have the pure clarity that your time is important, your time is limited, it's precious and it's important. When you can grasp that completely and fully, then the decision you make about the things that you do are going to reflect what you care about the most. Because on the other end of this false dichotomy is the idea of pursuing your passion. Pursuing your passion has a lot of hard work involved. Sometimes that hard work is seemingly meaningless. It seems like you're running up against a wall over and over. Sometimes that work is boring, sometimes it's grinding. But at the end of that work, you find a groove, you find a direction, you develop your passion over the course of your career. Not by simply doing the thing that you would do as if it was your last day on earth. But here's the union, here's where these two things actually coincide by not wasting your time. It may feel like you're wasting your time from the outside looking in, but because you've taken a moment to clarify, because you've said, is this the most important thing that I can do with my time right now? You've taken that moment to clarify and you've chosen your activities based on your passion. Now I do want to make something very clear here. This show has never been about eliminating all distractions from your life. This show has never been about always finding only the maximum meaningfulness in every moment or defining that standard. Sometimes the most important thing that you can do to not waste your time is to rest, to sit down and watch a TV show that you haven't seen in a while, or to spend time with your friends to play a game. These are all human activities. To imagine that every single activity that we take on needs to be judged to the degree that we're scrutinizing whether or not it's the most meaningful thing we've ever done in our lives is a debilitating way. It's a debilitating philosophy. Instead, what we can do is as we are spending that time with our friends playing the game or sitting down and watching that television show, we can appreciate fully appreciate what we're doing in that moment. We can affirm that this is our choice that we've had agency in choosing this particular pathway. We can look at our options and say, I know that I could go and spend my time doing something else, but I'm choosing to spend my time doing this instead because, and here's the key, because I value something that this provides. I value something that this provides. If you can't draw back to your values, then how can you ever look at the activities that you're taking part in and imagine that you're doing the right thing or the wrong thing? How can you ever understand whether doing this aligns with what you would do on your final day here? There's no way to have that clarifying moment because the clarifying moment will lead us back to our values. So you have to decide based on your values on a day-to-day basis, how do you resolve the tension between living in the moment and living for a purpose? Ground, the harmony between these things, it almost certainly will lead you to the recognition that it's about not wasting your time. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Developer Tea. Thank you again to Command Line Heroes for their support. Go and check out Command Line Heroes wherever you listen to podcasts, like for example, wherever you're listening to this one. Thank you so much for listening to this show. If you'd like to have conversations about these kinds of things, it can be a heavy topic. Sometimes to talk about much lighter things on this show, but there are other people who are seeking to make their lives meaningful, who are wanting to become better software engineers to grow in their careers, to grow as human beings. Those people are part of the Developer Tea Discord community. Head over to developertea.com slash discord. You can join that community today, and there's discussions going on all the time in that community. You can ask questions. You can even do things like mock interviews. You probably said something up with somebody in that community. That's the kind of the beauty of a community like that. We don't know what's going to come next. A lot of it is organic and suggested by you as a member of the community. A lot of stuff grows naturally. If you want to be a part of a community like that, head over to developertea.com slash discord. Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, enjoy your tea.