This is what got me through college...

Category: Knowledge

Published: 09/01/2008 04:41 p.m.

I stumbled across this article in a link from my google reader. It begs you to ask "Will this matter in five years?" when making decisions on how to spend time or whether to be distressed. It sounded exactly like something I was telling my friends for the past two years. Mostly, this was used as a motivational technique to get them to come hang out instead of study. It worked more often than not. Mikhail can back me up on this. As far as my use, I expanded it a bit. I would start out smaller, asking if it would matter in a week, then a month, then a year, etc. This strategy works great when you have a bad day, because most of the time it doesn't matter, and the answer is no.

The other great use is when you ask this question and you get a yes. This means you've stumbled upon something exciting, something that matters. The trick to things like this (staying in shape, brushing your teeth, eating right) is that for lots of 'yes's, a 'no' can slide in. But with too many 'no's, it goes back to yes. So for things like this, you have to keep a good watch. On a final note, you can also ask if something will matter in 10, 20, 50 years. These are decisions I haven't made yet, but they will come soon enough.