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 the last words that you'll speak that what you're doing right now is how people will remember you or it will be you know the final moments of your life now i don't intend to get too incredibly somber or depressing or morbid on this on this show but this mental exercise of imagining that today is our last day is powerful and it's clarifying you're listening to developer t you're 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 the 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 and that is purpose so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so soensionension 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. Think back to the year 1995. And as it turns out, Command Line Heroes is going to focus on this year for Season 7. In 1995, the internet starts going mainstream and the dot-com bubble begins its rapid inflation. But 10 years before all of this, a small team of systems administrators made a seemingly simple decision that 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 that simple decision was, then go and listen to Episode 1. That's Season 7. Episode 1 of Command Line Heroes. In Season 7, you will probably hear a familiar voice from fellow podcaster and software engineer Saranya Barik. And in each episode, Saranya is going to take us on a journey going back to this pivotal year of 1995 and the surrounding years and decisions and all of the tech that came along with it. For example, you're going to hear about Batman Begins. She brings evolution to evolution. a huge place in the history of the dot-com era. Go and find Command Line Heroes Season 7 anywhere you listen to podcasts. We 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. But if you knew it was your final day on Earth, you certainly wouldn't make them. Simple 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 as 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 were to live every single day as if it was my last, I would just be spending all of 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, that your time is limited, it's precious, and it's important. When you can grasp that completely and fully, then the decisions 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, and 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. And 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 way to not want this 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? And if you can't do that, then how can you ever the harmony between these things that 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. I'll see you next time. Bye. If you'd like to have conversations about these kinds of things, it can be a heavy topic. Sometimes we 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. And 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 set something up with somebody in that community. That's kind of the beauty of a community like that is 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. And so a lot of that stuff kind of grows naturally. If you want to be a part of a community like that, head over to developerday.com slash discord. Thanks so much for listening. And until next time, enjoy your tea. Microsoft Mechanics