Five Years From Now, You’ll Wish You Started Today
One of the most peculiar things about being a human being is that we are the only animal (that we know of) that can look into the past and ahead into the future at the same time.
And while it isn’t often a clear glimpse of what we’re seeing – it is a glimpse. The gift of “divine sight”, I call it.
The Gift of Divine Sight
This ability rivals the two faced god Janus, who could peer into the past and future.
And it’s through this ability, obviously, that we are able to learn lessons from our past and try to plan our futures.
However, we’re not always perfect at this – in fact, we are rarely ever perfect with it.
Many of us make decisions in the short-term that affect us in the long-term.
And it’s from this inability to act properly in the present to secure a better future , which is responsible for a significant amount of anguish and despair for many people.
And then come the “I shoulda knowns”.
And then you second-guess yourself, wondering if you will ever make a comeback. This makes it harder to take action the next time, so your entire life is a life of no action.
In this article, I will make the case why when you look back from where ever vantage point – you’ll have wished you started today, using examples from my own life.
In addition, I’ll give some actionable steps on how to do so.
This article is available as a podcast:
Why 5 Years Is the Perfect Timeframe
When it comes to this topic, I’ve heard this phrased commonly as 5 years from now you’ll wish you started today. I sometimes hear 10, I sometimes hear even 20, but when it comes to this – it’s usually 5 years.
Why is it 5 years?
Well, 5 years is enough of a time to go by to see the effects of doing or not doing something long-term. More importantly, 5 years is enough time to see the fruits of direction architecture, the deliberate design of your long-term trajectory and the alignment of your identity, standards, and actions with that trajectory
And the thing is, you don’t have to do it. You don’t have to do anything. All that will happen is that you must live with the consequences of your choices.
Exercising or not exercising.
Asking that cute girl out or not asking her out.
Accepting that job offer in another city or not accepting it.
These are all choices we have to live with.
Life Is a Credit Card
The thing is, we won’t really know whether we made the right decision or not until much later after the fact.
It’s like a credit card. Buy now and pay later.
But there’s a lot of things we want in life that only come from making a long-term stamp in the ground.
Do It Right the First Time
I remember growing up, my mom taught me an important lesson. She taught me a lot of things, but if there was one lesson that ruled above them all: “do things right the first time and you’ll never have to come back and do it again”.
Related to this topic, doing things right means doing the things you know will make your life better.
Doing things again means having to revisit something which you know damn well you should have done a long time ago.
The Secret of the Jacked Guy
And to illustrate this point, I’ll take a cue from the YouTuber Joey Schweitzer of Better Ideas.
In the video above, he said: you see a buff guy walking around, someone who you’re like damn – that man is jacked.
A stupid question would wonder how he got that way.
He’s a guy who showed up to the gym repeatedly over time on a consistent basis.
What doesn’t matter is how he got to the gym. What doesn’t matter are his reasons for going to the gym.
Maybe he does or doesn’t want to go on most days. Maybe he is super motivated to improve his physical fitness. Maybe he doesn’t even like working out.
But ultimately, it doesn’t really matter.
It doesn’t matter because all we see is the end result of that decision no matter how much mental resistance or whatever else was affecting him at the time.
Because at the end of the day, going to the gym or not going to the gym is a binary decision. Yes or no.
And if you do that for a long enough period of time, you will have the result of being a physically fit person no matter how you feel about it.
Binary Choices
And almost everything in life is like this.
You will either do it or you will not do it, there is no “try” as Yoda would say.
But again, you have to live with the outcome of whatever you choose.
The Pain of Discipline or the Pain of Regret
The pain of discipline, or the pain of regret as I like to frequently source it from Jim Rohn.
In 2025, I started waking up anywhere between 5 and 6 AM.
And one of the first things I do for the day is go to the gym to start it off, which is what I try to do most days.
In one podcast episode, I talked about how I went to the gym for an early morning session on 4 hours of sleep. It sucked, but I still did it anyway.
My Early Wake Ups
And I’m no stranger to waking up early and working out. The days when I used to work in an office, I did that for quite a long span of months. I didn’t do it every day, but I’d say on most days I would wake up before work and go to the gym.
Was it optimal? Not always.
Was it convenient? Not always.
Was I always 100% rested? Not always.
Several years later – what are the results of that decision?
For me personally, there’s several results.
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I proved to myself I can wake up early – that’s 1. Many people say “I’m not a morning person” but I thought that too, until I started doing it.
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I proved to myself I can wake up early and work out – I used to have a limiting belief where I thought I couldn’t wake up early and have a great workout, but that was false.
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I opened up more time and space in my day – by waking up early.
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I proved to myself that I am the type of guy who can do hard things.
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I was able to stack my gains – by consistently waking up early, by consistently going to the gym, I grew in both of those areas.
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I provided evidence that yes, I am that person. Many people wait for them to somehow “feel good” and they think that they will somehow think their way into acting. And many times, I’ve found that is simply not the case. You often need to act in order to feel good.
Action Comes Before Motivation
Regardless of what this did for and to me, there is nothing special about rising at 5am. There is nothing special about going to the gym.
But early rising and physical fitness together can lead you down a pathway that makes other things possible.
There is nothing magical about this.
But we try to make mundane things this magical, very emotionalized thing. We get in our feelings too much.
And again, most things in life are like this.
Why People Resent Their Lives
And of course, when you get to an age and a stage where you feel like things will “make more sense”, you’ll be like “damn – I wish I started this earlier”.
I guarantee you that will be the biggest regret (if you have any) of your life.
I myself am a person of few regrets, however – I STILL regret not starting or getting a jump on some things earlier.
I’d be like “damn – I coulda been much further along than I am now in X area.”
Like think back to where you were 5 years ago.
The Trap of Modernity
I remember Greg Plitt had a quote where he said “pain is temporary but pride is forever”.
And as you’re going through the pain and you get to the pride, you won’t even remember the pain – you’ll just remember the achievement, the accomplishment.
I’ve found that to be true.
Like I said – do I like waking up early? Do I like pushing myself in the gym? Not necessarily.
I can think of at least 10 other things that I’d rather want to do, but at the end of the day – life isn’t always about what you want to do.
It’s sometimes (or for some people many times) what you don’t want to do.
But the problem is that the things many people don’t want to do, they are forced to do at some level.
They are not choosing out of free will, so they end up resenting it.
They resent going to work.
They resent being married.
They resent raising children.
They resent having to pay a mortgage.
They resent being an adult and having responsibilities.
All of these things. Basically, what I call “the trap of modernity”. The standard suburbia white picket fence lifestyle.
The Secret of Success
And they end up resenting these things because again, they did not choose to do what they really wanted to do because the barrier to entry was too much for them.
It was too much to get the courage to speak up about something you didn’t like.
It was too much to learn a valuable skill.
It was too much to break away from your circle of friends who aren’t doing anything with their lives and encouraging you to do the same.
It was too much to learn how to date instead of settling for the first woman that showed you interest.
It was too much to invest in your personal and professional development.
But the thing is, again – there is never a time where these things just magically get easier. Unless you do them.
And of course, whether you or don’t, whether you will or won’t – time still passes.
And you must live with the outcomes of your decision.
I got directed to a pamphlet of sorts written by a man named Albert E.N. Gray.
This pamphlet was really written as sales motivation literature for life insurance agents, but this is something that affects everyone.
And he said in the pamphlet that for years he had been investigating and researching for years – why some salespeople were more successful in selling than others.
And after many years of striving, he came to a very simple conclusion:
The secret of every successful individual is making a habit of doing the things that failures simply don’t like to do.
That’s it.
It’s so simple that you can even scoff at it and be like “hah, that’s it?”
Yeah, that’s it.
But that’s also not just it. Because if that was just it – then everyone would be successful.
Think back on your own life. How much further along would you be if you made the decision to do the harder, more beneficial thing rather than taking the easy way out and taking shortcuts?
I can only speak for myself, but I’d be in another universe.
If I did the harder, more beneficial thing every single time when presented with a decision from the time I turned 18 to now at 33, I would be a completely different person for sure.
And you would be too.
Overcoming Fear and Laziness
So after all of this, what’s the solution?
What’s the solution to not looking back on your life 5 years from now and being like “ah shit.”?
Well, the only solution I’ve found for this is overcoming two things: fear and laziness.
I’ve found that those things are at the root of 99% of the problems that people go through.
So in order to find the spark to overcome these things on a daily basis, you need to ask yourself – what are you motivated by?
This takes self-knowledge and self-awareness.
Are you motivated by pushing away from something or being pulled towards something?
And I’d say for most people it’s the former. It’s about avoiding pain.
So if that’s where you have to start, that’s where you have to start.
Negative Visualization
And one practice that I’ve used to good affect is negative visualization. Negative visualization comes from Stoic philosophy and it’s the art of visualizing the worst case scenario. In this case, the worst case scenario of not taking action.
And I personally don’t think a lot of people really visualize the worst case scenario of inaction.
They visualize the worst case scenario of short-term inaction – but not the worst case scenario of long-term inaction.
All this does is keep you stuck in a hamster wheel of survival.
These days, I’m more pulled towards the things I want in life rather than the things I don’t want, but I still use this as a way to get me going into action.
And every day or regularly, when I’m presented with many things to do – I always ask myself, what is the consequence of not doing these things.
In the short-term? Probably nothing. I will probably be perfectly fine by the end of the day if I don’t do most of the things on my to-do list.
But what about a month from now? A year from now? Five years from now?
That’s something to seriously meditate on.
Conclusion + Wrapping Up (The Guy Who Never Took Action)
I want to close this one out with by reiterating that there is no future where everything will somehow “magically fall into place“.
I believe in synchronicity and serendipity for sure, because there’s many things in life that you can’t explain, but for the vast majority of our lives – unless you act, nothing will happen.
And that’s how you spend years waiting.
I have a friend that I’ve known for a while. When we were 18 and in college, he had massive regrets about not having a good social life in high school and that he was somehow “behind the curve” because he didn’t party or he didn’t date then.
I then asked him, what are you going to do now?
Then at 22, after we finished college, he regretted that he isolated himself too much in college and how he missed out on the so-called college experience.
And then I also asked him, so what are you going to do now?
When we were 25, he regretted that he still wasn’t very outgoing in his early 20s and now people were somehow “getting serious” in life and they didn’t have time for that.
And again, I then asked him, so what are you going to do now?
When he turned 30, he regretted that he “wasted his 20s“.
And again, I then asked him, so what are you going to do now?
This man is 35 years old and to this day, he looks back at his past and wishes he acted differently.
But this guy has been doing this for over 2 decades. Looking back at years and not acting in the present to avoid regrets in the future.
And I feel really sorry for him because despite me trying to help him – I look at him as an example of the cost of inaction.
Unless he overcomes his fear of failure and pretty much laziness, his life will be one entire string of regrets.
So whatever you want to do, whatever you want to be, whatever you want to have – start now.
Not tomorrow, not next week, get the wheels in motion right. fucking. now.
If you want to travel the world, start making a plan now. It may not happen right away, but start planning now.
If you want to start a business, start making a plan now. You will probably fail numerous times, but get those failures under your belt now.
If you want a girlfriend who will eventually become your wife, start going out and asking women out now. You’ll get rejected, it will suck – but start now.
If you’ve always wanted to play a musical instrument, start practicing and sucking now.
If you want to lose weight and look like a male model with a beach body, start exercising now.
If you’ve always wanted to cook and cook well, ruin your first few dishes and get feedback on your cooking now.
If you want to get out of a bad habit or an addiction, go through the deprivation and withdrawal now.
Basically – short-term pain for long-term gain.
You don’t have to be great to get started, but you do have to get started to be great.
Because in five years, you’ll have wished you started today.
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