Live backwards

Amazon taught me how to work backwards: we start with imagining the final product is ready to ship. We draft a press release announcing the product’s availability. We try our hardest to describe, in the most concrete way, how our customers are delighted. We quote customers’ exciting comments about their experiences in the press release. This process may feel quite new age at the beginning. I certainly thought so in my first few press release writings. But gradually I started to appreciate the power of the working backwards process - it allows us to focus on customer’s need, or customer’s pain: the “what and why”, without being distracted by the technical details of “how”, or the project schedule details of “who and when”. The working backwards process becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Even when we fail to get the right solution, as long as the problem is right, we can just keep trying. In the last couple days I’ve been thinking seriously about a different “backwards way”: live backwards. I am 49 years old. With my family’s life span history, it is realistic to expect I will live to 79, which gives me 30 more years. But It is unlikely I can have full good health until the last day. If I live a healthy life - exercise physically mentally and spiritually on regular basis, I hope to be in good shape by 75 years old, that gives me 25 years. I probably want to spend at least 10 years of that on full time leisure with dignity - there are many places on this planet I wish to experience. So that leaves me 15 years at most to grow my career. 15 years! A little depressing? It depends on our perspective of life. To me the quality of life is defined by the density of experience, rather than the sheer quantity. Would I be happier if I fall into a long sleep of 50 years, like a hibernated turtle? What if I just repeat the same old for another 50 years, a longer life, is it happier? 15 years are short, but also long. Steve Jobs turned a company at the brink of bankruptcy to the current Apple, from 1997 to 2011. That was only 14 years. I could spend the next 15 years regretting about the past, worrying about the future, complaining about people could be better doing their jobs … or I could build a few more things that are interesting, useful to society, make me proud, make this life worth it. I will dive in the great barrier reef; if I train hard enough I may qualify for Boston Marathon before I am too old; I failed to summit Mount Rainier last year because of a storm, maybe I will try again… this world we live is tremendously interesting. We have to remind ourselves: with all the problems we face, we are living in the peak of human civilization. No generations before us have been given so many possibilities in life. “I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again.” ― Benjamin Button