Sorry, it’s a late one this week. I have been extremely busy and have just walked off the train back from Cambridge, where I was at a medical conference. So, I have tried to keep this short and sweet.

I was clearing out / re-reading some old newsletters I had from other creators in my inbox and came across this newsletter by Jack Raines.

The newsletter, in a nutshell, is about living life now so that you don’t have any regrets when you are 80 and looking back.

And this newsletter really struck a chord with me on a few different levels…

Before I share my thoughts, I want you guys to think about this quote the Warren Buffet that I have stolen from Jack:

‘You should write your obituary, and then try to figure out how to live up to it.’

My previous newsletter was all about self-belief, and if you are still looking for motivation, I think that quote does a great job, or at least it did for me.

I had been floundering with the videos I wanted to create, and I had been slacking with the shorts and reels, too. And it really got me motivated to make progress on those projects.

More importantly, the quote resonated so strongly because I believe in it, and I have read similar things before about starting with the ‘end in mind’. Unfortunately, many of us get hung up on fears or worries about whether things will work out, and we end up not acting upon our instincts.

If I weren’t doing any of this, I would have a very conventional and well-trodden route from medical student to consultant in a medical field somewhere and be living happily ever after.

Now, I don’t particularly know what my ‘end’ is, but I definitely know that I want to experience this content creator curve I am on at the moment fully. I want to give YouTube and other platforms a go properly. I also know I don’t want to focus 100% of my time on medicine. I want to spend time in other areas that interest me, like tech, finance and building a business. But if you have that brief picture of the end in mind, you can ‘reverse engineer’ it like Jack says.

I know this all sounds cringe, and it’s questions like what do you want to do, where you want to live, how do you see your future working out and so on, but I think actually the entire logic behind these questions is deeply empowering and allows you to take control of your present.

My best advice on tackling this is to journal or write a diary. It will feel like a long process at the start, but it will start to make sense, or at least it did for me. Once you know, start working backwards to find out what you can do today to help you get that one step closer.