Ask yourself who you’d want to spend the last day of your life with and then meet with them as often as you ca... — Derek Sivers

Ask yourself who you’d want to spend the last day of your life with and then meet with them as often as you can.

Author: Derek Sivers

Insight: We treat this question like it's about romance or family obligation, but it's really about priorities made visible. Most of us have someone we'd choose for that final day—yet we organize our actual lives around email, obligations to people we don't particularly like, and the assumption that deep connection will happen later. The gap between that answer and how we actually spend Tuesday is often enormous. What makes this advice sneaky is that it works backward from death to solve a present-day problem: we're terrible at knowing what matters until it's too late. By asking the question directly, you're forced to be honest about who genuinely lights you up versus who you think you should want to see. Then the instruction is almost offensively simple—just do it now, as often as you can. Not someday when things settle down or when you've achieved more. Now. The non-obvious part is that this isn't just feel-good advice about relationships. It's a practical filter for deciding where your limited time actually goes. Every meeting you accept, every evening you scroll instead of reaching out, every friendship you let drift—these are tiny choices that compound into a life that doesn't match your own answer. The people worth spending your last day with are telling you exactly how to spend your days right now.