George Kinder’s Three Questions
I came across these three questions in a blog post by Blair Duquesnay. They are designed to help you focus on your values and what you want from life.
Spending a bit of time really thinking them through can help you notice things you are missing or not doing.
The Questions
Question 1
Imagine that you are financially secure, that you have enough money to take care of your needs now and in the future. How would you live your life? Would you change anything? Don’t hold back on your dreams. Describe your ideal life. Consider in detail how you would spend the years, months, weeks, and days.
Question 2
You are still completely financially secure, but you visit your doctor who tells you that you have 5-10 years left to live. You will not be in pain or limited in any way by this disease, but it has limited your time on earth. What will you do with your remaining time? Would you change your life and how?
Question 3
Now your doctor tells you that you have one day left to live. Notice the feelings that arise as you confront your mortality. What dreams were left unfulfilled? What did you miss?
My Answers
I found it easy to answer Question 1. This is something I have given quite a lot of thought to over the years, and even started taking steps towards. Nothing groundbreaking here.
Basically I want to live in Sendai, more or less in the same area I live now.
I want to work on projects and do freelance work that doesn’t require a regular schedule. I want to spend time with family and friends but also have several hours to myself every day.
I want to exercise outside every day and travel several times a year, although I have scaled back the length of these trips. Recent experiences tell me that a couple of weeks away is plenty, and more than that might be a bit too long for my liking.
Question 2 didn’t change much for me. Once I achieve my ideal lifestyle, setting a limit to how long I will live won’t change much.
Financially at least, I would need to make sure that my wife has enough money to life on so I wouldn’t be able to spend down my assets in the same way I might if I were single and only had five years to live.
Question 3 also didn’t bring much clarity. I am fairly familiar with the idea of death, and have spent a fair amount of time thinking about it.
My parents died when I was fairly young, and my brother died six years ago. I had a rough couple of years as a teenager, and attempted suicide three times (came pretty close the third time). I’m much happier and more comfortable in my skin now, but the stoic practice of imagining my own death is quite familiar to me.
I am also not a fan of regret. I tend not to think about the past too much, even to the point of forgetting things. I seldom beat myself up over mistakes, or think about what might have been.
The idea of dying tomorrow is, intellectually at least, something I am comfortable with.
What does it all mean?
I guess this means that because I have spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff and am most of the way to implementing my desired lifestyle, the questions were not a particularly useful tool for me. They just confirmed that I am probably heading in the right direction.
They could be more useful for someone who has not given the topic as much thought, or for someone who is just starting out and needs to find a goal to motivate themselves.
Really understanding yourself, your likes and dislikes, and your goals is a key part of optimizing your finances. If you don’t know what you want, how can you get it?
The journey not the destination
And at the same time focusing too much on your ideal future risks missing the point: we live life now, in the moment.
Ideally you are going to be iterating as you go, making small improvements that make your life better. This is the Japanese concept of kaizen, which I have found so valuable in both work and my personal life.
It’s not ‘I will reach my goal and then be happy’ but rather ‘I will become happy and then reach my goal’.
It’s the doing, not the achievement. Learn to enjoy your day to day while moving in the right direction.
This will make present you happy and give future you a good chance to be happy too.
How about you? Did you try working through the questions? Any insights?
Love this. Appreciate all you do on this website. I read every month. Thanks for all your hard work. I enjoy reading your posts. I’m sorry you went through so much in the past. You are brave to admit to attempting suicide. But it helps others who also struggle so thank you.
That is why I talk about it. Things get better if you give yourself some time.
Wonderful article. Thank you. I read your website without fail every week and benefit so much from it.
Thanks for sharing your personal perspective. It’s refreshing to read such candor about mental health which so are suffering from, mostly quietly.
As to the questions, nothing would greatly change.
Q1: I am already retired and living close to my ideal life of being happily married and maintaining a balance of physical, mental and financial health.
Q2: much of the same although an expiry date would definitely cause an uptick in travel, eating out and making more plans to get together with friends and family. I would be eating a lot more of those expensive Miyazaki mangoes.
Q3: Today there’d be a lot of the very best food on the menu. I would not be hitting the gym today. Instead, I would watch Robin Williams on YouTube and go out laughing. (And trying not to think too much about his hidden mental health problems.)
I’ve seen these questions at least a couple of times over the years but I don’t quite understand the context for using them. #1 seems the most useful to imagine and dream of your ideal life, especially in retirement, and then aim for that goal. A goal-setting exercise
#2 this feels like a Tim Ferriss-type question to push the limits, think outside of the box to achieve your goal faster. I can’t say that this helps but rather puts so much pressure on your work that you will probably burn out and quit
#3 I’ve never really understood the purpose of this question. You would just scribble out the passwords to your accounts to love ones and then just hang out with them I guess. I see how it sheds like on what’s most important which is hopefully going to be family, but then I feel that this just takes away from the focus on the goals that you already set in #1 and trimmed the fat in #2. So #3 is just screw #1 and #2, don’t even try aiming for the goals that you just set. It’s so short term like: rob a bank and give the money to my mom type influence before I kick the bucket.