Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
Key Takeaways
- Carpe diem encourages you to evaluate how you spend your finite time and whether it aligns with what truly matters to you.
- Authentic success is personal; chasing someone else’s definition can lead to regret and unfulfilling achievements.
- In business, seize the day by pursuing genuine opportunities rather than rigid plans, allowing for flexibility and spontaneity.
- In life, embracing carpe diem means prioritising moments that matter, rather than deferring joy for a ‘better time’.
- Design your business to offer freedom, preventing it from consuming every moment of your life.
Carpe diem in life and business
Carpe diem. Seize the day. I first came across the phrase at about 12 or 13, and something about it landed immediately. The idea of not wasting time, of actually doing the things that matter – it felt urgent and important in a way I couldn’t quite articulate.
Somewhere along the way it became a cliché. A tattoo. A Nike slogan. A Robin Williams film. And like most clichés, it stopped making people actually think.
But strip away the slogan and the question underneath is still worth asking: are you actually spending your time on what matters? Or are you running someone else’s definition of a successful life?
Steve Jobs put it directly in his 2005 Stanford commencement address: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.”
Whose definition of success are you chasing?
The regret research is consistent. Bronnie Ware, a palliative care nurse, spent years recording the most common regrets of people at the end of their lives. The number one regret: “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”
Not “I wish I’d worked harder.” Not “I wish I’d earned more.” The regret was about living someone else’s script.
For most high achievers, that script is inherited young and runs quietly in the background for decades. Work hard, get the prestigious job, climb the ladder, accumulate the markers of success. And at some point – a milestone that doesn’t land, a restructure, a new chapter that asks something different – you look up and ask: is this actually what I wanted?
That question is at the heart of everything I work on with clients. Not “how do you achieve more?” but “are you clear on what you actually want?”
Seizing the day in your business
For solopreneurs, carpe diem in business has a specific texture. It means following genuine traction rather than sticking rigidly to a plan that isn’t working. Going where the energy is – which conversations are landing, which offers generate real response, which work feels alive rather than forced.
Most of us are naturally risk averse. We focus on everything that could go wrong rather than everything that could go right – and so we hold back, wait for more certainty, wait until we feel ready. And the opportunity passes.
In practice, seizing the day in business looks like acting on the idea before it’s perfect. Raising the price before you feel confident enough. Saying yes to the unexpected speaking opportunity that wasn’t in the plan. Following the client conversation that opens a new direction rather than forcing it back into the existing offer.
The worst case scenario is almost never as bad as the waiting suggests.
Seizing the day in life
This is the part that gets squeezed out.
The solopreneur version of deferring life is common and insidious: I’ll take time off when the business is more stable. I’ll be more present with the kids when I’m less busy. I’ll head out when it’s sunny, take the afternoon, call the friend, once I’ve finished this.
My children are five and six. That particular version of them – curious, small, still wanting me around – is finite. It’s here now. And the business, with deliberate design, can work around that rather than consuming it.
Carpe diem in life looks like heading out when it’s sunny rather than staying at your desk because it’s technically work hours. Taking the afternoon when you have the energy for it rather than grinding through. Actually being on holiday rather than checking-in-from-the-pool. Saying yes to the spontaneous thing – the friend who calls, the walk that wasn’t planned.
This isn’t laziness or lack of ambition. It’s a refusal to defer the life you’re building until some future moment when everything is settled enough. That moment doesn’t come. The settling happens when you decide it has.
The business has to be designed to allow this. If you’ve built something that consumes everything – that demands constant availability, that expands to fill every available hour – you haven’t built freedom. You’ve built a different kind of cage.
A question worth sitting with
Jobs looked in the mirror every morning and asked himself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” When the answer had been no for too many days in a row, he knew something needed to change.
You don’t need to be quite that dramatic about it. But the question underneath is worth asking honestly: is today – this week, this month – actually reflecting what matters to you? Or are you living with the results of other people’s thinking?
Carpe diem isn’t a slogan. It’s a question about whether you’re spending your finite time on the right things. It’s worth asking it now, before the answer becomes obvious only in retrospect.
If you’re questioning whether your business is designed around the life you actually want – or whether it’s quietly consuming it – the free Solopreneur Diagnostic shows you in five minutes where your business is working well and where it’s getting in the way.
And if you want to work through this alongside a small group of established solopreneurs, Off Script is built for exactly that.
Carpe diem is a Latin phrase meaning “seize the day” – originally from the poet Horace, and made famous more recently by Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society and Steve Jobs in his 2005 Stanford commencement address. The word “carpe” can also be translated as “pluck” or “harvest”, suggesting something gentler than seizing – enjoying what’s available now rather than deferring it.
In business, carpe diem means following genuine traction rather than sticking rigidly to a plan that isn’t working, acting on opportunities before you feel fully ready, and letting go of the imagined fear that holds most people back. The worst-case scenario is almost never as bad as the waiting suggests.
The two aren’t mutually exclusive. Long-term vision gives you direction; carpe diem is about how you move within that direction – following energy rather than forcing it, being present rather than always deferred, taking the opportunity when it appears rather than waiting for perfect conditions.
In his 2005 Stanford commencement address, Jobs said: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” He also said: “Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
It requires deliberate design from the start. If the business is built on constant availability and hustle, it will keep demanding that even as it grows. Building in boundaries, working to your energy rather than arbitrary hours, and treating time as a finite resource rather than something to fill – these are the foundations of a business that works around your life rather than consuming it.
