09/01/2026
It is September 1st. Summer is over, whether we like it or not, and there are 120 days left in the year.
Four months. That is enough time to radically change a life, but it is also short enough that you cannot keep pretending you have endless runway.
I want to play a game for the rest of this year, and I want some of you to play it with me. Imagine that December 31st is the end of your life. You are perfectly healthy, nothing horrible is happening tomorrow, but somehow you know with absolute certainty that you have four months left and then you are done. You have 120 days to get your affairs in order.
If that were actually true, how would you behave today? Not theoretically. Today. Would you spend the same amount of time on your phone? Would you keep having the same stupid argument with your spouse? Would you still be pi**ed at the same person? Would you keep eating like s**t, drinking too much, avoiding the gym, procrastinating the project, ignoring your finances, postponing the conversation, and telling yourself you are going to deal with all of it when life gets less busy?
I have been thinking a lot lately about the gap between the things I say matter to me and the things my actual behavior proves matter to me. I can say my health matters, my marriage matters, my business matters, my faith matters, my book matters, my family matters, but eventually the calendar gets to testify. The bank account gets to testify. The scale gets to testify. The people closest to me get to testify. My intentions do not get the final vote.
So if December 31st were really the deadline, what would you immediately stop doing? What would become embarrassingly unimportant? What excuse would no longer sound remotely convincing? What are you wasting hours on right now that you would be horrified to discover you spent one of your final 120 days doing?
And what would you absolutely start doing? Maybe you finally lose the weight. Maybe you call your father. Maybe you go back to church. Maybe you stop treating your wife or husband like furniture. Maybe you finally start the business, finish the book, pay down the debt, get sober, take your kids somewhere, tell somebody you love them, fire somebody who should have been fired six months ago, or have the conversation you keep rehearsing and never actually having.
I am not interested in the fake version of this where we all say, “I would cherish every moment,” and then go right back to Instagram. I want to know what would materially change in your behavior. What would I see you doing differently tomorrow morning if you really believed there were only 119 days left?
Maybe we all live another 50 years. I hope we do. But that does not change the fact that these 120 days are going to disappear. September will disappear, then October, then Thanksgiving will happen, then Christmas, and suddenly we will be standing on December 31st wondering how the hell another year went by so quickly.
I do not want another year where I explain what I meant to do. I want evidence. I want to be able to look at my body, my relationships, my businesses, my finances, my faith, my unfinished work, and know that I behaved like those things actually mattered to me.
So here is the game.
Pick something real and put it in the comments. Not “be healthier.” Not “work on myself.” Not “be more present.” Those are wonderful ways to commit to absolutely nothing.
Tell us what you are stopping, what you are starting, or what you will have finished by December 31st. Make it measurable enough that we can come back to this post in four months and know whether you did it.
I am playing too.
We have 120 days to get our affairs in order. Let’s see who we are on the other side.
