Take the inventory
Draw four columns for money, health, people and work. Under each, write where you stood five years ago, where you stand now and which way the line is pointing. The measures are net worth, fitness, the number of people you could call at three in the morning, and whether your skills are worth more than they were. Direction matters more than position, because position mostly reflects where you started.
The arithmetic of small habits
The case for consistency is numerical. Two hundred dollars a month invested for twenty years at a 7 percent average annual return becomes about $104,000, of which only $48,000 was ever yours. A thirty-minute daily walk adds up to more than 180 hours of exercise a year. Twenty pages a day is about two dozen books a year. None of these is impressive on any given day. The same arithmetic runs in reverse. A $15 daily habit you do not value costs about $5,500 a year, and a friendship you contact once a year will not survive ten of them.
What should exist by now
- You have an emergency fund of three to six months of expenses and no debt at credit card rates.
- You are saving for retirement automatically, at a rate near 15 percent of gross pay.
- You have a will, named beneficiaries, a health care proxy and a durable power of attorney.
- You have health, renters or home, and disability insurance, plus term life if anyone depends on you.
- You have two or three close friendships that you maintain on purpose.
- You have a skill that an employer or a customer would pay for tomorrow.
Missing items are not failures. They are next month's list.
What to stop measuring
People marry at 24 and at 44, change careers at 35 and buy homes at 40 or never, and the order has little bearing on how the life turns out. What you see of other lives has been edited. Research on regret is consistent on one point: over the long run, people regret what they never tried more than what they tried and got wrong.
The next twenty years
Pick one habit in each column and make it automatic: a transfer, a standing workout, a weekly call, an hour of study. Review the columns once a year, in writing.
Tip Write a one-page letter to yourself dated five years ahead, stating what you expect to be true by then. Seal it, set a calendar reminder and read it when the day comes.
