It is said that Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, once said this during his lifetime.
“If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I’m about to do today? If the answer is ‘no’ for too many days in a row, then it’s a sign that something needs to change.”
This really makes you think.
If today were my last day… I definitely wouldn’t be doing laundry, cleaning, or cooking meals—haha.
Instead, I’d spend my time playing with my kids, driving to see breathtaking views, or enjoying delicious food.
So, what about my current daily life? Am I prioritizing what I want to do? Or am I being controlled by what I have to do rather than what I want to do…?
My family has routines too, and realistically, you can’t only do what you want every day, but the successful and creative people I know seem to, like Steve Jobs, place more importance on what they want to do than what they have to do.
The best example close to me is my husband, who seems to be very strict about “doing what he wants when he wants to do it” and “not doing what he doesn’t want to do, or changing it to another way”.
And as for me, the overly serious one, for the past 10 years or so, I’ve been repeatedly told by my husband, “Break your daily routine” — haha.
I know it’s true, but changing habits ingrained over many years isn’t easy. Still, by imitating the behavior patterns of successful people, I want to get even a little closer to that world.
Today, I want to write about that.
Since I was a child, I’ve had a strong desire to be free from others telling me what to do. To achieve that, I developed a pattern of finishing what I had to do before doing what I wanted to do over many years.
For example, “finishing summer vacation homework by the end of July” and “studying on my own to get an average grade of about 4.5 out of 5 so my parents wouldn’t nag me about going to prep school or cram school.”
Because of that, my parents stopped nagging me except about curfew.
Even after becoming a working adult in sales, I believed that if I produced results that my boss couldn’t argue with, I could have freedom, so I focused on delivering results, which allowed me quite a bit of freedom in my daily activities and sales methods.
Also, since producing results earned me recognition and increased monthly allowances and bonuses, prioritizing what I had to do before what I wanted to do became my winning formula.
That winning formula of mine was shaken by one thing: raising children.
When my eldest daughter was about three years old, I gave birth to my second child and, due to various changes at work, I decided to put work on hold for a few years and focus on child-rearing.
Until then, I was surrounded by entrepreneurs and hardworking working moms, with a mountain of tasks to accomplish every day, feeling fulfilled. Suddenly, I found myself in a circle of full-time housewife moms, picking up my child at 2 p.m. and going to the park together.
At first, I honestly felt quite lost. I stopped working during the hours I used to work, felt guilty as if I was slacking off, experienced emptiness with no sense of accomplishment or progress, and felt anxious being left behind while others thrived at work.
Many emotions swirled inside me, and time passed without me being able to sort them out well.
Later, I started working a little again and began this Porsche blog, which gradually brought some excitement back into my daily life.
Still, most days were dominated by my newborn second daughter, and I couldn’t make any progress on what I wanted to do, ending the day feeling frustrated and unfulfilled.
Around this time, I began to sense that the winning formula of “do what you have to do first to gain freedom” no longer worked, and my husband often gave me this advice:
You should stop living by a routine from the moment you wake up. It’s better to be flexible and adapt to the situation of the day. Sometimes you can’t do what you planned, and if you don’t feel like doing something now, you can postpone it. Even if you don’t finish your tasks for the day, it’s not the end of the world. Instead, try doing what you want at that moment and spend your time feeling better. I never say “hang in there,” and I actually think you don’t have to push yourself. If you can’t cook dinner that day, I’ll just eat out, so no need to force it. You have to stop living a life frustrated by being tied down to routines.
Exactly. I understand this deeply in my head, but changing ingrained habits and long-standing success patterns is very difficult.
This won’t do. As they say, “Get out of your comfort zone,” because there’s no growth in a comfortable space!
I tell myself this (while ironically trying hard not to try too hard… haha), consciously working on it like rehab, gradually getting used to the discomfort, and after several years, I think I’ve gotten a little better than before.
Recently, I’ve realized that breaking routines leads to discoveries, and often things go better because of it.
For example, when I’m writing my blog and my kids keep talking to me endlessly, I used to say, “Hey! I’m busy now, later!” and send them away, but if I stop and listen or play with them, they get satisfied and stop bothering me.
Or, washing dishes all the time to keep the sink clean takes more time than washing them all at once after a while.
These are very small things, but I realized that what I had always thought of as “things I must do and finish first” weren’t really that important, and changing how I do things depending on the situation often leads to finishing faster.
It’s said that “It’s not the strongest who survive, but those who adapt to change.” Until now, I thought “people who adapt to change are those who can make big changes at turning points with courage.”
But now I think “people who can adapt to change are those who can make small changes in their daily habits before making big changes.”
Changing daily habits is much harder and has a bigger impact on oneself than making once-in-a-lifetime big decisions every few years.
I believe successful people are those who can change daily. They don’t cling to routines or get stuck; they flexibly change their style. They rarely fall into unconscious thoughtlessness in their daily actions, keep their purpose in mind, and constantly create better ways.
That’s why creativity and ingenuity are honed daily, and the accumulation of those days makes a big difference. About this, my husband says:
There are people who maintain their condition or calm their minds by following routines, so there are obviously good aspects to it. In my case, my mentor during my repeat-year of high school told me, “Study when you want to. If you don’t want to, don’t. Studying when you don’t want to won’t be effective anyway.” From around then, I think I became able to live more flexibly. I try not to live a life stuck in a mold and question each “I have to do this” or “I must do that,” thinking from scratch whether that’s really true before acting. So sometimes I put things off, and other times I complete things with incredible focus. It’s like living only doing what I want or absolutely need to do now. People might say, “You can do that because you’re not a salaryman,” but I’ve been like this since my salaryman days. I was probably a difficult employee for my bosses (laughs).
I’m a serious, routine-loving person, but this year I want to break free from that and live more flexibly and without attachment.
Alright, let’s do this! … or maybe I don’t have to push myself so hard—haha.