Read your coffee mug

My favorite coffee mug has an octopus on the outside, and inside the rim, where a right-handed person will see it every time he takes a sip, is the phrase, “Seize the day.”

When people reach milestone ages—usually decade changes (30, 40, 50, 110)—it’s often a time of deep reflection, and for many people a time of regret: Why haven’t I accomplished more? Why haven’t I done more?

We have notions of what our lives should look like by certain ages. Married by 25, house and kids by 30, first million by 40, semi-retired on an ocean-going yacht by 50, our own Playboy mansion at 80.

Then we reach those milestones, we’re not married, we have no yacht, and the whole semi-retired millionaire thing might have to wait until the next life.

I don’t think it’s missing the milestones that gets us—not really. I think it’s the realization, the apprehension, that it’s because we haven’t been applying ourselves toward what we truly believe is important. The momentary desires—going out drinking, binge-watching television series, years paying for a car that seemed so important, so cool, when you bought it—that didn’t actually contribute to the dreams you have.

That you…had.

If we’re not as good at self-reflection, then we might not even recall the weekend benders with their hangovers and brain fog, might never have considered the money lost to interest payments on things that really could have waited until you could buy them outright (or not bought at all), and you might have never even consider the opportunity cost of watching the entire Office series for a fourth time, instead of reading things that could have improved yourself.

We often do recall the hardship: The days at work, the hours in rush hour traffic, the conformity of a corporate job or the accumulating toll on our body from unskilled labor.

Those hardships are a necessity—at least temporarily. You have to get your start somewhere. You must learn what problems real people have, and you need to earn starting capital to fuel future ideas, ventures, and dreams, and you must understand what you don’t want to do for the rest of your life.

Many people—most of us, in fact—don’t take those hardships as lessons and rites of passage. Instead, we drive ourselves to get used to the pain, the boredom, the toll on our body and psyche, and we do things to distract us from the pain and discomfort.

The thing that’s missing is taking action. Just like you need to eat, sleep, shower, and brush your teeth to maintain your daily existence, you need to work a job. Unlike brushing your teeth, a job is something you can grow out of. Your job is supposed to be the training wheels for your productive life, not its entirety.

Get out and get onto doing something important. Important to you. Important to the future you, who will look back and want to see that you did the most you could to build the life you are proud of.

If your own mug isn’t reminding you that today is—always—the day to begin, then get a new mug.

Seize the day.