What Legacy Will You Leave: Whatever You Build Today
Leaving a legacy is one of life’s intangibles. By definition, a legacy is something for others to appreciate once you are no longer, making it impossible to evaluate accurately.
Legacy can be something material, like a house or even a more impressive building. It can also be wealth, but it could be a revolutionary idea, a work of art, or the lasting impact you’ve had on those around you.
Whatever it is, there is one key to it:
What legacy you will leave behind depends on how you live today. Your example, how you treat those around you, your wealth and health, and where you put your energy will shape your legacy. A lasting legacy cannot be built in the last hours of your life. Every day adds to it, in one form or another.
Let’s untangle this statement.
This guide examines how daily choices create our life stories and the impact we leave once we are no more.
Let’s Define Leaving a Legacy and Whether It Matters at All
Legacy is what stays behind us. It can be myriad things, both material and immaterial. It would hold different meanings to different people.
A poem you write may stir strong emotions in those who read it, but the way you are at home will be the memory that matters to your children.
Is professional success more important than a strong, united family?
Is wealth more important than health?
Everyone will have a unique answer to such questions. And all answers are perfectly valid because personal circumstances shape our unique views.
The good part is that the above examples of legacy aren’t a binary choice. Life is complex, multifaceted, difficult, and exciting. It is essential to understand ourselves, what drives us and to live according to it.
That’s why legacy matters, it is a manifestation of what we believe in and what we want to achieve in this world.
Finding your legacy is how you live, which is why it is hard to define and turn it into something concrete and achievable.
How Do You Leave a Legacy Is Asking How to Live Well
Living well, following one’s principles and values, isn’t always easy. Circumstances often pose serious challenges, but not knowing oneself is another major obstacle.
Other online resources about leaving a legacy advise to ask yourself deep questions that will help you determine the desired direction of your life.
Here are some examples of questions that can form a view of the legacy you want to leave:
- What defines a good person?
- Which life lessons have impacted me the most?
- What lasting impression have I made to other’s lives?
- What do I regret the most and why?
- When did I lead with my heart?
- What tombstone inscription do you want?
- What helped you overcome the toughest moments in your life?
- What do you want to accomplish?
- Do you want to be loved?
- Do you want to be respected?
- Do you want to be feared?
These are good, important questions. Pondering upon their answers will shed some light on what matters to you and will help you create your legacy. But the problem with answering a bunch of questions is twofold.
First, finding the answer is difficult. Most of us struggle to recognize what our calling is and what is truly important. Everyday life tends to get in the way. Responsibilities, social media, friends, family, and other distractions war for our attention and energy.
The second issue is that, even if you know what you want to do, you probably don’t know how to do it. Life changes require strategy and discipline.
Willpower alone is not enough to change our behavior.
You need a system.
How to Build Your Legacy
It seems that the desire to leave a legacy is part of human nature. But so is the tendency to forget we have limited time on Earth.
Here’s a helpful visual aid made by the insightful Tim Urban. It shows just how much time we have should we live to 90 years of age. (Tim breaks things down in his unique style here, a worthy read.)
This reminder of our mortality may spur us into action, but without a system to sustain the impulse, it would be a short-lived attempt against all odds.
There are many ways to become a woman or man of legacy, but here’s a flexible, reiterative, and actionable system.
Holistic Discipline to Discover Your Values
Having a system doesn’t make it easy, but nothing worthy comes easily.
The system will help you devise concrete steps to become a capable human being. Capable of doing things that aren’t strictly necessary and doing them at a high level.
More importantly, it will increase your capacity to do those things that truly matter to you, while helping you define and refine them.
The system is devised by Cal Newport and he’s named it the Deep Life Stack 2.0. You can watch his detailed explanation, but here is a summation to get started:
The system is split into two iterative stages, with four layers each. You should practice the first stage before moving to the second, but revisiting the layers of each stage is part of the process.
- The first stage is divided into:
- Discipline — Measurable, actionable, yet not trivial regular activities that encompass fitness, mind, and social connections.
- Control — Organize your time and take control of your life through planning short-, medium-, and long-term objectives. In other words, daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly plans.
- Craft — Learn how to do something really well. Practice getting better and learn what it takes to get better so that you can apply it in other spheres of life. Learn to learn.
- Simplification — Shed activities that consume your energy and time and don’t move the needle in either of the previous three layers.
- The second stage, building depth and understanding, is comprised of:
- Values — As your capabilities grow, the things that are truly important to you will start to crystalize, as you’ll be practicing them.
- Service — Your increased ability will help you lead others, as a true servant leader. It is a direct way to make and leave the world better than you found it.
- Transformation — This is the most attractive aspect of pulling your life together, but it can happen only on a solid foundation. As your values become obvious and you start living according to them, you will come to radical decisions that will change your life for the better.
- Legacy — Initially, you might not know what your legacy would be, but the more times you go through the previous seven layers, the clearer the idea will become.
Going through these layers takes time, but it doesn’t take a lifetime. Iterating and revising them every few months is an intrinsic part of the process.
It may seem like a lot but focus on the first step. Which, not only proverbially, is the hardest.
How to Start Building a Legacy — Actionable Steps Toward Your Values
The idea behind Cal Newport’s system is to teach you to do things that aren’t obligatory, to build your capacity to do hard but meaningful work.
However, changing even the smallest habit is hard.
The most efficient way to start doing new things is to write them down. Take a piece of paper and write down what you will do, exactly when. If you want to practice Spanish, thinking “I’ll do it on Wednesday.” will hardly ever work.
Writing down in your agenda “Spanish practice, Wednesday, at 13.30, for 15 minutes.” is a much more effective approach. By blocking a specific time slot you commit to the task and make it a concrete part of the day, not an abstract thought.
Another piece of advice on tackling new endeavors is the two-minute rule. Block the time in your calendar and dedicate two minutes to it. Even if you are tired or the task is particularly challenging, two minutes won’t kill you.
But they will get you going.
Two minutes are much more than zero minutes.
The other neat thing is that once you start doing something, even if it is very difficult, your brain will start working toward mastering it. We are problem-solving machines.
Ultimately, leaving behind a legacy is relatively easy — reaching the point where you are capable of building one is the challenge.
Conclusion
To understand what legacy you will leave behind is to understand yourself. Asking meaningful questions won’t help much without the capacity to do hard but meaningful things.
The Deep Life Stack 2.0 can be the structure necessary to build a better life. Better, as in completely aligned with the things you believe in and value. Starting is hard, but this gem of a book can get you going.
Once on the path toward depth, anything becomes possible. And the best part is that your example will be contagious, adding to the reach of your legacy as you are building toward it.
