How Many Sundays Do You Have Left? Don’t Waste Your One Short Life

“My brother Simon is thirteen years older than I am. When I was a child, he used to sell life insurance, and he later went on to become a financial adviser. I dedicated my book The Dream Manager to him, because in many ways he was the first person to play this role in my life in a more formal way. He has a lot of stories, analogies, and paradigms that he uses to illustrate his philosophy about life and business. This is one of my favorites:

How many Sundays do you have left?

I am 48 years old. The actuaries at life insurance companies tell us that on average an American male lives to 78. On average an American female lives to 81. These life-expectancy statistics are always changing. For example, in the year 1900 the average life expectancy was just 31 years.

Anyway, Simon loves to talk about how many Sundays are left. At 48 years of age with a life expectancy of 78, I have 1,560 Sundays left. It sounds like a lot, but they go quickly.

As Simon loves to say, “Don’t waste a single Sunday. If you don’t waste Sundays, you will be less likely to waste Mondays Tuesdays, Wednesdays…”