Stef coined the term ‘Mortigo’ that refers to the feeling of adrenaline and confusion you feel when you are vividly aware of the shortness of life. Mortigo is a fast track to big picture clarity. When we die, the elaborate tapestry of priorities that we’ve spent decades weaving combusts literally into stardust. This is certain. Its time is not. So we’re left with the question: what should we do with the time we have left?

19. Being Interested

Everyone loves to be interesting, but the most interesting people are the most interested. They are relentlessly fascinated by the world. You can’t fake it, but you can choose to orientate yourself to be more curious.

20. Smugness

Nothing compares to the delicious smugness that comes from serenely sitting at an airport gate, watching crowds hustle and bustle to board the plane. You, however, sit there. Sipping coffee, wearing a permagrin smile like the Dali Lama squared — secure in the knowledge that yes, you will still be getting that elusive window seat.

21. Temporal Cartography ⏰

If you spend long enough in a place, your internal metronome will adjust to its rhythm. Tangible time is actually a relatively recent invention, in fact, seconds didn’t start appearing on clocks until the 1500s, and the second wasn’t formally defined as a scientific unit until the 1800s.

22. Buddhist Teaching

We spend so much time and mental energy fretting about ourselves, only to realise that in the end, there isn’t one.

23. Four Words

Language is a superpower. To quote the infinitely wise Albus Dumbledore “Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it.”

24. Language of Love

Our vocabulary of love is impoverished. The Greeks had six varieties. Curiously, they valued ‘philia’ or deep comradely friendship more highly than ‘eros’ which referred to sexual passion and desire.

25. Worthiness

Dr. Brene Brown interviewed lots of people about shame and vulnerability. Amongst other things she learned that “…the only difference between the people who feel a deep sense of love and belonging (and those who don’t), is they believe that they are worthy of it.”

26. 2.95 Degrees of Separation

According to Facebook, you might now be less than 2.95 degrees of separation away from every other human on the planet.

27. Amor Fati

Nietzsche’s formula for greatness in a human was ‘amor fati’. This translates to ‘love of fate’, that “one wants nothing to be different… not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it — all idealism is mendacity in the face of what is necessary — but love it.”

28. Enlightenment

Enlightenment isn’t a cosy place of invulnerability. It’s a daily practise of showing up in the arena.

29. Ambition

We have a weird idea that people will love us based on what we achieve. This toxic definition of ambition, taught at school, should be reframed from getting ahead to coming alive.

30. Three-Step Formula for Greatness

Making a dent in the universe is simple. Step 1: Realise that everything in the world was first imagined by someone likely no smarter than you. Step 2: Identify a gigantic problem and conjure up an outrageous solution. Step 3: Commit yourself so much to testing this, such that backing out would have disastrous consequences.

31. Calendar > To-do lists 📆

Love to boost your ego with epic to-do lists? Open a calendar app and schedule everything into blocks. This helps to curtail the internal over-optimist and prevents tasks from expanding to fill all the time you have.

32. Reading

Tempted to buy a book, do it. Paying £14.99 for a book that might have taken between one to three years for the author to write (and could expand your emotional and intellectual horizons) is surely worth it.

33. Empathy Chasms

There is a two-fold empathy gap in our world. We fail to feel compassion for others across national borders and are biologically disposed to lack moral imagination for future generations. The internet, however, through storytelling, enables us to ‘outrospect’ — to feel adventurous empathy for those outside our blood, religious, and geographical tribes.

34. $3340

According to givewell.org, $3340 is approximately how much it would cost you to save a life today. You have the opportunity to effectively save a child from the proverbial burning building.

35. Boldness → Magic

When you make a courageous decision, the universe has a funny way of conspiring in your favour.

36. Tomato Timer 🍅

Tempted to hire a girl to slap you in the face to increase productivity? Halt. Download the beautiful Pomodrone and outsource permission to give yourself a break. Single tasking for focused 25 minute sprints, lets you get twice the amount done in half the time.

37. Type Faster ⌨

Learning to type at the speed of thought or investing in the transition to the Dvorak layout might double the amount of work you’re able to do in a day.

38. Accountability

Set a deadline and a price. Put your ego on the line. Losing $50 is also a powerful motivator.

39. Boredom

15 minutes of enforced boredom is not the worst thing that ever happened to a human.

40. Genetic Lottery

Approx. 115 billion people have lived before you. 95% of the 7 billion alive today don’t have access to the resources, education, and people that most people reading this have been privileged to pick up through no effort on their part.

41. Kindness

Every time we do something good for someone else, we make a connection, and so our world becomes a slightly bigger place. Conversely, when we focus only on ourselves, our world becomes very small. Being kind matters more than being clever.

42. Passion vs. Curiosity

If you have found the one thing that lights you up, this is terrific, keep going! But if you’re still searching, put passion to one side and follow whatever makes you curious.

43. Genuine Gratitude

It’s phoney to say that you should be grateful for everything but in every moment there is always something to be grateful for. Taking five minutes to jot down three highlights from the day before going to bed makes a disproportionate impact on your quality of life.

44. True Freedom

Viktor Frankl had everything stripped from him in a WWII concentration camp, but even in some of the worst conditions imaginable he writes: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

45. Press Pause ⏸

Build pockets of stillness into your life to reflect on the trivial moments or seemingly inconsequential events that you might otherwise have steam-rolled past can unearth a buried treasure trove of subtle wonder.

46. Thought experiment

Imagine you are now the 80-year-old version of yourself. You’ve lived a great life, but your time is soon. Imagine how much that old man/woman would give to rewind the clock to where you are sitting right now with the opportunity to relive all those years and experiences.

47. Vous Ja De

Is the art of seeing something you’d seen many times before with fresh eyes.

48. Pain 2x

When we stub our toe we feel the pain twice. The first is the ‘ouch’, the second is the story we tell ourselves for being such a fool and kicking the corner of the table.

49. Learning to Receive 🍲

If someone really wants to pay for dinner, and you refuse them, consider that you might be robbing them of the chance to feel good about that gift.

50. Exhaustion’s Antidote

According to Irish poet-philosopher David Whyte, the antidote to exhaustion is not necessarily rest, but wholeheartedness.

51. Befriend Fear

Living a fearless life would be painfully boring. Vulnerability and courage would be impossible. Strike up a conversation with your fear like it was a stray animal instead of shooting it down. Above all, strive to be real and remember that we are all gloriously frail creatures.

52. Taming the Elephant 🐘

Your mind is an elephant and a rider. The elephant makes the decisions, the conscious rider is able to influence these every so often. This accounts for why learning something intellectually is very different from internalising the same thing emotionally.

53. Enneagram

The Enneagram is an intriguing and somewhat useful collection of archetypal characteristics. What number are you?

54. Teenage Internet

In 2016, the internet resembles a small child’s brain and has a similar number of connections. If this is the case, it’s fun to imagine what character traits might we wish to infuse it with? Or what a moment of great insight might look like?

55. Last First Adventures

There aren’t all that many ‘first’ adventures left, but circumnavigating the world via the Taiga biome is one of them.