What If You Only Had Six Months?

​
My wife and I have been kicking around this question:
​
​What would you do differently if you only had six months to live?​
​
I know...not the most uplifting conversation. But it does make you think. And it's definitely not easy to come up with clear answers to the question.

So I've been pondering this and why the question has been so difficult for me. Maybe difficult for you as well?

Any questions or comments? Just shoot me a note.
​
JP
​

P.S.: You won’t find ads in this newsletter thanks to a generous donation from Lulu. Since 2002, Lulu has helped authors and creators publish, print, and sell their books. If you’re ready to publish in 2026, consider using Lulu.

Your Bucket List Is Too Small

On a personal note, I’m constantly agonizing over my current goals…so this article is for me as much as it is for you.

I recently caught an interview with comedian Jimmy Carr where he was asked a familiar question:

What would you do if you had only six months to live?

Carr said this:

“If someone said you had six months to live, well, what would you do? That’s what you should be doing anyway.”

It’s a great answer.

My wife, Pam, and I have been talking about this question lately. At first, I thought it would be easy. Surely I could create a long list of things I would do differently if I knew my time was running out.

Then I started thinking about the answers we normally give:

I would take that trip.

I would visit that place.

I would spend more time with my family.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of those things. We should take the trip. We should spend more time with the people we love. We should stop giving so much of our limited time to things that do not matter.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the six-month question might be too focused on what we can squeeze out of life.

Maybe we should also be asking what we can put into it.

Beyond the Bucket List

Most bucket-list goals are personal. They are about the experiences we want to have, the places we want to see, and the people closest to us. Even in the excellent Morgan Freeman, Jack Nicholson movie, The Bucket List, it was simply a glorified “to do” list (but a great one at that).

And those things matter.

But what if the biggest goals in our lives are supposed to extend beyond us? What if we are thinking too small because we begin with what we want instead of who we could help?

Pam and I learned this after our oldest child was diagnosed on the autism spectrum.

We went through early speech and play therapy. We had to find the right organizations, therapists, tutors, and volunteers. We had to assemble a team of people who could help our child develop the communication skills they needed.

It was incredibly challenging.

We were not rich by any means, but we had enough money and enough connections to get the services our child needed. We found a way to make it work.

As I met other families through organizations such as Easterseals Northern Ohio, something became painfully clear. Many parents were facing the same challenges we were, but they did not have the financial resources, insurance coverage, or network of people necessary to get help.

Their children needed speech therapy or communication technology. The services existed. The families simply could not afford them.

Pam and I wanted to do something, although we had no idea what that something should be.

Golf was one of my passions, so I suggested that we organize a charity golf event. We could invite some friends, raise a little money, and give the proceeds directly to families who needed help.

That first event took place in 2007.

The event grew each year. More golfers participated. More companies became sponsors. More volunteers joined us. In 2014, we formalized the effort and created the Orange Effect Foundation.

​Nearly two decades after that first event, the foundation has raised more than $1 million. It has provided grants to 516 children in 43 states, funding 146 communication devices and more than 8,880 hours of speech therapy.

What started as a small golf outing became an extraordinary community involving thousands of people.

I believe it worked because the goal was never really about Pam and me.

We were trying to help children we would probably never meet. We saw a real problem, knew we could play some small role in solving it, and started putting energy behind the idea.

The mission was so much bigger than us.

A Mission People Could Join

I see the same pattern when I think about the creation of the Content Marketing Institute.

Of course I had personal goals. I had written down specific financial targets. I knew what I wanted to accomplish professionally. I wanted to build a successful business and create a better life for my family.

But the idea behind CMI was much bigger than any of those goals.

We believed marketing could be better.

There were marketers all over the world who believed marketing did not have to be a constant interruption. Companies could treat customers like actual human beings. Instead of trying to sell something every minute of every day, businesses could create information and experiences that genuinely helped people.

We believed that approach could improve marketing careers, strengthen companies, and create better relationships between businesses and their customers.

I still get goosebumps thinking about it.

CMI succeeded because the mission did not belong only to me, Pam, or our team. It belonged to a worldwide group of marketers who wanted to practice their craft differently.

We were trying to help people we would never meet find better jobs, build better businesses, and do work they could be proud of.

People wanted to join because they saw themselves in the mission.

That is what happens when a goal becomes bigger than the person who created it.

The Three-Question Goal Test

You do not have to start a foundation or build a global company.

Going bigger does not necessarily mean reaching millions of people. It means looking beyond your own immediate success.

Here are three sample questions to test whether your goal is bold enough.

1. Who benefits besides me?

Imagine that you accomplish the goal.

Who is better off because you succeeded?

Perhaps your goal creates opportunities for people in your community. Maybe it helps others find more meaningful work. Maybe it gives a voice to people who have been ignored or solves a problem for a small group that desperately needs a solution.

A personal goal can become a meaningful mission when you expand the number of people who win.

2. Am I solving a real and specific problem?

“Changing the world” sounds wonderful, but it is not a strategy.

Pam and I did not begin by trying to fix every challenge involving autism or childhood communication. We saw one particular problem: Families with children on the spectrum could not afford the speech therapy and technology their children needed.

CMI did not attempt to reinvent every part of business. We focused on helping marketers attract and retain customers by consistently creating valuable content.

Big goals often begin with a small, clearly defined problem. But the goal becomes powerful when that problem matters to more people than just you.

3. Is the goal big enough that I need other people?

The most meaningful things I have been involved with could never have happened because of my effort alone.

They required partners, employees, volunteers, sponsors, donors, customers, readers, speakers, and friends. Thousands of people took some level of ownership because the mission gave them a role to play.

A goal that requires only you might be satisfying. A goal that inspires other people to contribute can become a movement.

And yes, some people will scoff. Over the past 30 years, I have had plenty of people tell me that my ideas were silly, unrealistic, unnecessary, or unlikely to work.

What would have happened if I had listened? What would have happened if I had made the ideas smaller so other people would feel more comfortable with them?

What Will You Put Into the World?

You are here for a painfully short period of time.

Take the trip. See the place. Spend time with your family. Eliminate the people and obligations that drain the life out of you.

But please do not stop there. Look outside yourself, your family, and the safe little space you have constructed around your life.

Somewhere, there are people you have never met who need something you can help create. They may need your knowledge, your story, your network, your persistence, or the strange idea everyone else keeps telling you will never work.

You do not have to know exactly how the mission will unfold. We certainly did not.

You just need to find a real problem, make the goal bigger than yourself, and begin.

The six-month question should not only be, “What would I do before I die?”

Ask a better question:

“What can I begin today that might continue helping people after I am gone?”

Life is short. Our goals should be bigger.​
​
​P.S.: A reminder that I'm giving away my book, Burn the Playbook, for free. Please share it with a friend. I'm finding more and more parents are reading this and then sharing it with their kids.

This Old Marketing Podcast

In this week's This Old Marketing, Robert and I talk about how LinkedIn and other platforms are trying to clean up the AI Slop mess that they helped to create.

Until next Friday, keep building something that matters.

JP (Joe Pulizzi)

Forwarded this email? Sign up here.​
​
Share The Tilt Newsletter with other content creators.
Your unique link: https://www.thetilt.com?rh_ref=[RH_CODE GOES HERE]

​Preferences | Unsubscribe​

Copyright ©2026 Z Squared Media, LLC. All rights reserved.
​17040 Amber Dr, Cleveland , OH 44111-2908