Fix Your Life in Five Minutes

You can fix your life in five minutes. Almost nobody spends them.

No system, no roadmap, no habit tracker, no app. Five questions, answered once. That is the whole method.

Your Plans Keep Failing

You have done the five-year vision. The new-year goals. The habit list taped to the fridge.

They failed, and not because you are lazy. Forward planning asks you to predict your own future performance. You are bad at that. Everyone is.

We overestimate our discipline, our energy, our free time. The plan collapses. We blame ourselves instead of the method.

Now flip it.

Ask What Breaks, Not What Wins

Failure beats success on three counts. Easier to observe. Easier to diagnose. Easier to remove.

Ask “how do I become brilliant?” and you get fog. Ask “how do I avoid being stupid?” and you get a to-do list.

“You don’t think about what you want. You think about what you want to avoid.”

Chase the avoidance list. The wanting rides along. You will go back and forth between the two. That is the point.

Remove the catastrophic mistake first. Gains compound on whatever survives.

The Five Questions

Sit down. Five minutes. Answer honestly.

1. The hospital. Imagine you wake up in a hospital. What could have been the most likely reason? Is there anything you can do today to prevent that?

2. The breakup. Imagine your partner breaks up with you. What could have been the most likely reason? Is there anything you can do today to prevent that?

3. The firing. Imagine you lose your job. What could have been the most likely reason? Is there anything you can do today to prevent that?

4. The lawsuit. Imagine you get sued. What could have been the most likely reason? Is there anything you can do today to prevent that?

5. The midnight call. Imagine you are on a business trip. You receive a missed call from your family in the middle of the night. What could have been the most likely reason? Is there anything you can do today to prevent that?

Do It Now

You are not building a better life brick by brick. You are removing the wrecking balls. What remains stands on its own.

You do not need a better plan. You need fewer catastrophes.

Tonight you will spend more time choosing a show than answering these five questions.

The wrecking balls are already hanging. Cut one down today.