[krschultz]

The problem with the cliche "look in the mirror and ask yourself if you are happy doing what you are doing today knowing you could die tomorrow", is that for any day I'm not spending the entire time with family & friends, the answer is NO. You can be sure if I was dieing tomorrow I'd not go to work and spend the whole day lieing on the beach. Unfortunately you can't do what you'd do on your last day on earth, because it doesn't pay the bills. And it is kind of a trivializing question for those who are facing their last day on earth, which I might be somewhat sensitive to because one of the engineers in my company lost his fight with cancer this morning.

So far better to ask the question: "is what I'm doing today getting me closer to my career goals?", becuase the conclusion to that (less melodramatic) question might actually yield actionable results.

[pg]

He's proposing this as a test, not as a recipe. He's not saying "do what you'd do if this day was your last," but rather "consider what you're about to do, and measure how close it is to what you'd do if this day were your last."

[sophacles]

Perhaps you are misunderstanding the question. What if instead it was rephrased:

"If tomorrow you died, and someone in the afterlife[1] asked you: 'Are you happy[2] with what you did yesterday?' could you truthfully respond 'Yes.'?".

In that case I would suggest that doing good work, but not to the point of neglecting friends and family, is a good thing to do. It doesn't ignore the reality of the situation but also doesn't lose the forest for the trees.

[1] Ignore here any and all disingenuous BS about the (non)existence of an afterlife, since in this case it does exist strictly as a rhetorical tool. Sadly I must include this disclaimer to prevent random strawmanning from the peanut gallery.

[2] Happy is a pretty nebulous word. Lets say it means roughly: content, satisfied, and generally pleased.

[zwischenzug]

I think you're very much missing the point: if you want to spend all your time with family and friends then find a way to do that - start up a family business, go live in the woods, live on benefits. I suspect the reality is that you want to do more than simply spend time with family and friends.