Gather ‘round the flame, boys and girls! It’s excerpt time! This is a wee snippet from my brand-spanking-new book called You Only Die Once: How to Make It to the End with No Regrets. (I promise I’m not just being lazy and shirking the task of writing an article this week; I love writing this blog! But I also love this topic of Not Murdering Your Life While You’re Still Lucky Enough to Have One, and so I’m quoting myself in this section below in service of my life-snuffing prevention campaign.)

This is from Chapter 7, HABITS: THE BLUNTING OF OUR ALIVENESS … in particular a section called THE HABIT PROS-AND-CONS LIST: FROM HELPFUL TO HOMICIDAL.

Ready? (Gosh! I feel nervous to be quoting myself from my Real Actual Book! I hope you like it.)

As Aristotle said, we are what we repeatedly do. So let’s shine the interrogation spotlight at ourselves (*squint up into the harsh, hot light*). Are we automatons traipsing between the office, the drugstore, soccer practice, and a scintillating evening of Apple+ TV…because that’s what we do, day in day out, year in, year out? Or are we vitality-filled versions of ourselves, because we’ve zestified our days and years with routine switch-ups, pattern-breaking excursions, and varied routes?

Our zestiest selves will still have mundane things to do—like completing spreadsheets, picking up the cough syrup, and toting offspring around—but it’s an and situation, not an or. Our vitally alive selves also pick up popsicles to eat in the park on a whim after T-ball practice. That version of us is willing to watch a documentary about psychedelics because we’d normally watch a sitcom. That person takes the long way home from work every once in a while, just to see the old neighborhood.

If you are what you repeatedly do, what are you? How does that sit with you?

How murderable are you?

We’ve all seen the Dateline-type shows where the guy on death row shares his tricks of the homicidal trade: he’d stalk his victim(s) for a while, get a sense of what time they’d leave their SoulCycle class on Tuesday nights, what Sweetgreen they’d stop in at to pick up their Spinach Florentine Bowl, what route they’d walk home after hopping off the #457 bus, what PJs they’d change into before plopping down to watch HGTV, what time they’d put their mouthguard in to hit the hay with Chuckles the cat.

I haven’t seen the studies on this, but a positive correlation surely exists between having a predictable routine and getting murdered. Stalked, at the very least. I’m a dick for talking like this, I know, but I ruffle your feathers because I care. Does your daily routine make you easy to stalk? Is your schedule of the rinse-and-repeat type? Would you be a slam-dunk victim?

Diversify your life—not so much because of the unlikely event of being stalked or offed by Jack the Ripper 2.0 but because you very much deserve to live before you die. You deserve to try different workouts, varied routines, new shows, and every now and then the Sweetgreen Shroomami Bowl.

[Okay so that’s the end of the book excerpt.]

Where might you need to throw a wrench in your routine?

What might you have to gain by shaking up your typical patterns?

What one small thing could you start with … first?

If you promise to throw your life a curveball this week, I’ll promise to do the same. I’ll make peanut butter toast for breakfast instead of my usual Rice Chex. Deal?