You Live Only Once (My Version)
Reflections on living life intentionally, making bold decisions, and finding purpose in the face of mortality.
There are many videos on YouTube where older people are asked “What is your biggest regret?” The answers are often about mindset or emotions, such as “I should’ve spent more time exploring the world”, or “I didn’t take good care of my health”, “I worried so much that I didn’t actually do anything”, or “I chose the wrong life partner”.
We know that this could also happen to us young folks. We may live in fear, anxiety, indecisive, or even a quarter-life crisis. Among the people I know, some feel directionless, some are happy with all the decisions they make and feel blessed. After years of feeling directionless because I had too many options, I finally made the boldest decision in my entire life—of course, realizing that every decision only matters until its time passes.
We all know we will die anyway.
Purpose
Here’s what I will do:
Save Less Money, Give More
Saving money in my current career stage isn’t really worth it. This might be my unpopular opinion or even controversial. Let’s say my salary right now is the average salary in Jakarta: IDR 7 million (≈ USD 425) per month. I’m still living with my parents so I can save 50% of my salary (while living frugally), which is IDR 3.5 million.
What can 3.5 million rupiah do in Indonesia? How much would that make toward buying a house in Jakarta? A decent house in Jakarta costs around 1 billion rupiah or more (≈ USD 60,800). I need around 285 months or 23 years to afford a house, whereas 23 years is enough to make the housing price go rocketing.
Investing all my money in my current state also feels pointless. Suppose I had IDR 30 million in mutual fund—and I will receive 4% profit a year, which is 1.2 million rupiah. That’s a good amount to feed one person for half a month, but not enough to move myself even an inch closer to buying a house. I don’t want to be 25 and only have 100 million rupiah in my bank account.
Giving more means sharing what I have—whether it’s money, time, or knowledge. Instead of hoarding resources for an uncertain future, I want to help those around me who are in need. Giving more will not make you lose; if anything, it’s the opposite. Expect nothing in return, and we’ll gain more by giving more, so there’s nothing to worry about. Also, there’s plenty of evidence that giving makes you happier.
The reason is simple. Throughout my life I’ve observed a lot of people from diverse economic backgrounds, social circumstances, and different mindsets. I have friends my age who are far more accomplished than me, have accumulated more wealth, and of course are smarter. They are rare, like finding diamonds in the rough. But most of the people that I’ve met are quite the opposite: living on minimum wage (or even less), living happily with a family of 4, feeding their family themselves. Some of them that I observed are older people in their 40s or 50s—never heard them complaining.
Right now I earn more than many of them, so why should I complain about anything? As long as I can live, I can eat healthy, I have time to pray, I have time to exercise, and I have time to study, it means I’m living my best life. It’s a perfectly balanced life—I can work on my mind, body, and mental altogether. It’s just a matter of how I would use my time.
This is how I define productive spending: either spend on things that bring me closer to my goals, or give to people who actually need it. Spending more money on food also counts as productive since my goal is to bulk and build muscles. It doesn’t mean I am allowed to buy food for Rp 100K a meal and label it as productive spending—cooking is always the better and more cost-effective option to achieve the same result.
Travel More
This is indisputable. The earth itself is God’s blessing. Buying experiences is always worth every penny we spend—even if it’s bad. Older people often regret not traveling because they no longer have the energy, even if they have the money now. They also prefer to stay home, keep a secure job to make sure they can feed their kids. There is nothing wrong with this; they just don’t have as many chances as young people do.
Also, there are a lot of benefits we can get from traveling, especially traveling solo:
- Connecting with new people
- Opening up to new cultures, which broadens my perspective and makes me more tolerant and accepting
- Boosting confidence
- Reducing stress
There are many more benefits you can read up on the internet.
“And it is enough to realize Allah’s beauty when we know that every internal and external beauty in this life and the next are created by Him, so what of the beauty of the Creator?”
Grind Harder
There are many achievable goals in sight that I would like to drain my energy for. I would categorize the goals into two:
- All-time goals — having a prime physique, healthy mind, and maintaining good social relationships
- Short-time goals — accepted to top universities for masters degree, landing better paying jobs, acquiring a new language, and upgrading my programming skills
I am a firm believer that I can actually achieve these if I feed and cultivate myself properly.
While I’m pretty content with my financial situation, my skills? That’s where I’m never satisfied—of course in a good way. I always feel like there’s so much more I could learn. Since knowledge is infinite, pursuing it gives me the most rewarding dopamine hits. It feels like I’ve moved beyond the Dunning-Kruger effect peak, where I’m acutely aware of how much remains to be learned.
Another reason to grind harder is because the job market really sucks right now. I have good fortune to have a job right now, because I know a lot of people who are still desperately looking for a job for months and returning with nothing. When job seeking is increasingly hard and pretty much impossible, it’s only the people with exceptional and extraordinary skills with a strong network who will be hired.
As job postings are quite scarce right now, a lot of them are created by AI, and applicants are becoming more desperate—they start to spray and pray using AI. It’s pretty much dead by now. At the end of the day, the hiring team interviews candidates through other channels, which basically goes back to nepotism. That’s a very good reason why I should travel more to connect with people and grind harder.
“Whoever cannot endure the fatigue of learning must be able to endure the pain of ignorance.”
My Daily Schedule
I have plenty of free time I can use at my best. I believe most people have free time as well, even if it’s as little as a single hour a day. I asked dozens of friends about how they use their free time. There are several answers I received:
- “I don’t have free time, I work all day long and it’s exhausting.” This is a valid reason to use the only free time to rest.
- “I have free time but I don’t know what to do.” People with this excuse often won’t actually do what I advise, even though I adjust my advice to what they actually need. They simply want to stay in their comfort zone and doomscroll reels until the apocalypse.
- “Actually there are a lot of things I want to do, I have a lot of ideas I want to realize—24 hours is just not enough.” People with this mindset are amazing. They make a lot of cool stuff that makes me think: how the heck do they have the time to make all of this? Most of them are fun, passionate, and really love what they’re doing.
The third type is the kind of friend that always inspires others without even trying. These people are really passionate when they talk about their strive. They are not the kind of people who say “it’s weekend, why are you still talking about coding” and proceed to talk about something else.
I work 9–6 daily and wake up at 5 AM. Here’s how I use my time:
| Time | Activity |
|---|---|
| 04:30 - 05:00 | Pray, breakfast |
| 05:00 - 07:30 | Grinding time (reading/writing/coding) |
| 07:30 - 09:00 | Gym |
| 09:00 - 12:00 | Work |
| 12:00 - 13:00 | Break, lunch time |
| 13:00 - 15:30 | Work |
| 15:30 - 16:00 | Break, pray, snack time |
| 16:00 - 18:00 | Work |
| 18:00 - 19:30 | Break, pray, dinner |
| 19:30 - 22:30 | Grinding time (reading/writing/coding) |
| 22:30 | Wind down for sleep (reading/writing) |
This schedule is perfect for me. I stripped all the things that are unnecessary for the sake of staying on the line. What goes on during grinding time? It can be anything that brings me closer to my goals or learning new things on a subject that I have been longing to learn.
I have used this schedule since I was in high school, which enabled me to create hundreds of open source projects—some of them have hundreds or even thousands of stars. People started noticing my projects. They appreciate it by saying it really helps their work, I got many donations from generous people on GitHub, and was even offered jobs! I did not expect someone would actually look into my projects, but that pleasant feeling boosted my confidence and the desire to realize all my project ideas even more.
Keeping Myself Happy
We live only once. If we spend our time feeling negative, everything will taste bad. To be happy, there are tons of research that link various practices with happiness. I do several things that are the most profound and undisputable ways to happiness:
- Exercise regularly
- Meditate frequently
- Practice gratitude all the time
- Having an ikigai or svadharma
“When your natural talents and passions (your varna) connect with what the universe needs (seva) and become your purpose, you are living in your dharma. When you spend your time and energy living in your dharma, you have the satisfaction of using your best abilities and doing something that matters to the world. Living in your dharma is a certain route to fulfillment.”
Emergency Fund
In Total Money Makeover book by Dave Ramsey, he wrote that the first baby step to financial freedom is to save money as an emergency fund. It’s said that saving $1000 is the initial step, just in case your laptop suddenly needs repairing or you need a new tire for your car. Others say that we need to follow the 6x rule, which means we should save money equivalent to 6 months of expenses.
Emergency fund is the bare minimum a person should have in their financial management. In the next steps, Dave always stated that installments and debt are the evil to our finances, so we have to get rid of them as soon as possible. There is a lot of evidence that holding debt and financial economic hardship had significant associations with depression, anger, and anxiety symptoms.
Having enough emergency fund and no debt is an amazing thing to have. If I want to have a peak YOLO life, then having debt is not an option unless there is a real emergency.
Conclusion
This is how I define YOLO life. No need to rush at anything; we will die anyway, so enjoy every bit of your life and make the most of each moment. Practice gratitude and maintain good habits. Spend more productively and smartly. Keep our job in this tough job market situation while continuously grinding.
There are infinite amounts of things that we can learn in this world—we should keep learning until we die. 🚀
What’s your version of YOLO? How do you make every moment count?