It takes discipline, patience, and even courage to live each day as if it were your last, because it requires you to live in a way that is contrary to how the majority of people around you are living their lives, according to Robert Smith in his book 20,000 Days and Counting: The Crash Course for Mastering Your Life Right Now. The book is intended as a short personal crash course in making the most of every remaining day of your life.
Living each day as if it were your last is really a thought process rather than specific actions. The author recommends three things to make the thought process easier:
- Create a life statement which gives you hope and enables you to move forward with certainty.
- Contact the people who are important in your life and express gratitude to them
- Number your days by daily marvelling at how many days you have been allowed to spend on this planet.
While plenty of the author’s advice is likely to conform with the reader’s expectations, some of it strays onto an unusual path. We are advised to eat dessert first, to make sure that you have room to fit it in. We are told that the simplest way to solve all of your problems is to start thinking of yourself as the problem. We are instructed that, when faced with a question of what to do next, we should do what we know to do. The author’s stories about his own extraordinary persistence in the face of rejection are intended to encourage the reader to persist, but they may instead cause the reader to think that he or she could never be like such an unusual person.
The book is entertaining, short, easy to read, and good in bits. It is probably more valuable for the questions it raises and the thought processes that it starts than for the answers it offers. Although God gets mentioned a few times, this is a self-help/motivational book rather than a Christian book. Most readers are unlikely to want to emulate the author, but there is plenty that can be gained from the insights of someone who has lived a very different life.
I received a free electronic version of the book from BookSneeze for review purposes.