By The Time You Finish This Book You Might Be Dead:

Changing and Improving Your Life
Through CUTLAS


By Eliot Greebee

Preface

Over the last 20 years, I have been hard at work.  I am a Certified Public Accountant by training, and by trade.  But my work goes far beyond merely adding numbers in columns.  I have, as you will see in these pages, spent a good portion of my life devising a system, which for want of a better term, I call a Cost/Benefit Unit-Based Transactional Life Analysis System (or, "CUTLAS"). 

I first came across the idea for CUTLAS many years ago, when I was a young CPA, working for a multinational insurance company.  I was assigned the task of studying the impact on revenues of certain modifications to the mortality tables made by our actuaries.  If you are unfamiliar with them, mortality tables attempt to predict the age of death of life insurance customers. 

Sitting at work late one night, as I delved deeply for the very first time into the mathematical complexities of life and death issues, a light bulb went off.  Not figuratively, but literally.  My desk lamp bulb popped, sending shards of glass flying over my papers and leaving everything just a bit darker, for there was still fluorescent overhead light.  As I brushed away the pieces of glass, I cut my finger, and little round drops of blood leaked onto the tables spread out in front of me, obscuring some of the numbers.  At first I held my hand away, but then I noticed how, completely randomly, the life expectancy of countless customers suddenly shortened by twenty years, just because a wet red circle obscured part of a number on the gray page. 

I sat and thought about this for a long time.  Life was unpredictable, uncontrollable.  Yet, at the same time, numbers don't lie.  Insurance companies make a fortune by predicting the lifespan of their customers.  So, what if I could devise a way to always be aware of how much time I would have left alive, while at the same time never losing sight of the potential for my own sudden and unexpected demise?  As you will see, CUTLAS allows for that possibility, and I have lived my life proving it. 

For years, I have used CUTLAS solely for my own personal benefit.  I saw no reason or need to share it with anyone.  After all, what difference does it make to me that the world is populated by fools who delude themselves constantly into believing that they will live forever?  And although I am confident that this book will sell millions of copies, I really am not writing it for the money.  I have plenty of that, thanks to living my life according to CUTLAS.  That being said, luckily for you, I have decided to write this book (which will no doubt be erroneously sold in the self-help section of bookstores) and give the world the gift of a new way of life.  I have not done this out of anything but what some might call purely selfish reasons.  In my view, these are the only reasons to do anything, and I would not have spent my time writing this book unless I received tremendous benefit from it.  It is my sincere hope that, as a result of my work, the world will become a new place, populated with countless other CUTLAS users.  Thus, it will become a world I want to live in, a world where I can more easily get whatever I want whenever I want it, a world where preserving life units (more on these later) would be convenient and easy.

Using CUTLAS, you can enjoy life to the fullest, maximize happiness, take advantage of the time you have on Earth, and basically do whatever you want without fear of negative reprisals.  You can eat two dinners at a time, as I do, drink as much as you want, smoke dope if you are so inclined, fuck and suck your way into dehydration if that's your pleasure.  The key is that you're in control.  You make all the decisions.

You may think that these are irrational ways of behaving.  But once you fully understand the way CUTLAS works, you'll see that it's based purely on logic, rationality and mathematics, which, by the way, is the most objective of all the sciences.

Now, you'll need a few things before you start.  One is a notebook, to keep a journal in.  Another is a calculator or adding machine that prints, so you can save your calculations.  You'll have to do your own computations, you can't use my examples for yourself since your own numbers will be different, based on numerous potential factors.  However, don't worry if you are bad at math, because, along the way, you'll learn how the system works in simple, easy-to-understand illustrations from my own life.

In addition to the notebook and calculator, you'll need to lose the desire to live a long and healthy life.  In order to do this, you will have to understand and accept what I call simply the "Truth."

A Word about the Truth

The most important message of this book will be disturbing, but is indisputable, and is the fundamental Truth underlying CUTLAS.  The understanding of the Truth was the genesis of the formation of the system.  Simply put, it is this: you will die.  I will die.  We will all die.

Now, I know this may cause controversy, but think about it.  Think of every person you've ever met or known, or ever seen, or ever heard of.  How many people could that be?  Hundreds?  Thousands?  Millions?  Billions?  Now, name one who you think will never die.  Of course, you can't think of anyone.  Now, factor in the most important person into that equation: you.  Can you say, honestly, that you expect to live forever?  I didn't think so.

I understand how you might feel, like I once did, at this realization.  Filled with dread, wondering how you could go on, etc.  But luckily for you, I've devised a way to turn the Truth to your advantage.  The beauty is that you use math to do this.

For example, take a guess at, estimate if you like, what age you expect to live to.  Age 50?  55?  65?  75?  100?  Let's say we pick, for the sake of argument, a so-called high number, like 100.  Now divide 100 into the sum of (a) the number of years the world existed before you were born and (b) the number of years everything will continue to go on after you are dead.  Of course, we don't know what this sum is, but let's be conservative and say ten million years, which in actuality is miniscule compared to the true number.

Are you with me so far?  We have 100, which, for our purposes, is the length of your life, and 10 million years, which, again for our purposes only, is the length of time itself.  Now let's divide your life by time itself to find out what percentage of time itself your life is equivalent to.  The calculation looks like this:

100	=	x% (10,000,000)
x%	=	100 divided by 10,000,000
x	=	.00001 or .001%

Don't worry if you had trouble doing the calculations, you'll get the hang of this.  As you can see, the answer is .001%, or one-thousandth of a percentage point.  Not very much, is it?  Let's put it in perspective.  If you make $50,000 a year, one-thousandth of a percentage point of that is equal to fifty cents.  You can't even get a cup of coffee or the New York Times anymore for fifty cents.  So your life, in comparison to time itself, is worth less than a cup a coffee is to someone who makes $50,000 a year. 

Represented graphically, it looks something like this:

Your life looks very small, doesn't it?  Now, what if we cut your life in half?  Using the above analogy, now you have a quarter instead of fifty cents.  Doesn't make much difference in the grand scheme of things, does it?  If a man who made $50,000 a year were to drop a quarter down a sewer accidentally, he would not be very upset about it, would he?  So this way, we can see how small, mathematically speaking, the numbers representing our lives are, and this is using a model that significantly beefed up the numbers in favor of our lives, and even more significantly downplayed the numbers representing time itself.  Take a look at the below chart, which has been adjusted so as to cut your life in half.

As you can see, there is absolutely no difference from the earlier chart.  Clearly, if you cut your life in half, it doesn't matter at all. It's essential that you understand how small and inconsequential your life is, so if you still don't get it, please re-read this section until you can't think about anything else.  Then read on.

* * *

So, now that you understand the Truth, you may be asking yourself, "Now what?"  So my life is equivalent to a tiny fraction of time itself - what does this mean to me?  My answer, again, is a simple one:  it means that no matter how long you live, even if you take good care of yourself, exercise a lot, eat right -- in short, deny yourself the true pleasures of being alive -- and manage to extend your life for a few years, it's meaningless.  In fact, the years that you may add by such so-called "proper living" have, on a life-unit basis, less value than they appear to. 

Let's say, taking into account all the factors that make up your life expectancy, you expect to live another 30 years.  Let's also assume, for example, you currently smoke cigarettes.  Now, let's say you decide to quit smoking so you can live longer.  The new, smoke-free you expects to live 8 years longer.

Of course, right away, being an intelligent reader, you realize that this figure of 8 years can't be exact.  I'm sure all of you know plenty of non-smokers who drop dead younger than expected, and life-long smokers who huff and puff their way well into their eighties, or beyond.  So you might interrupt me and say that the above 8 year figure could just as easily be no years or 20 years that one could save by not smoking.  Doesn't that fact render the above calculations meaningless?

Do you know what my answer would be at that point?  I'd lean back in my leather upholstered swivel chair, put my feet up on my desk, take a long drag from my unfiltered Camel and, as I blew smoke in the air between us, I'd look you right in the eye and say, "You're right, and that's further proof that my system's correct."

Here's why:  if you quit smoking you might gain 8 years of your life, but who knows, maybe you won't.  And even if you would gain 8 years, or more, (1) we've already proven how little, mathematically speaking those 8 or more years are; and (2) I propose that the quality of life you gain in your final 8 or more years has much less value than your quality of life this second.  Your years from 60 to 70 will most likely be filled with health problems, painful surgery, sadness as those you love (friends, family, pets, etc.) begin to die, and you probably will have little or no money.  Why not use those last 8 years now, when you're more likely to enjoy them?  And, if you do happen to wind up living longer than expected, each moment will be a bonus that you didn't account for and didn't expect, therefore will be more enjoyable than it otherwise would have been.

And after all, making your life more enjoyable is really is what is at the heart of CUTLAS, not only in those potential bonus years, but in the most important time, the only time that you can be assured you will be a part of.  That time, of course, is right NOW.  Not tomorrow, or ten years from now, or after you retire, or finish school, or buy that new car, or new house, or whatever it is that you're waiting for to happen. 

Please don't be too concerned if you don't completely understand CUTLAS yet.  I don't expect that you would after reading this introductory chapter which is meant to simply be an introduction to the basic principles behind the system.  All of this will be explained in greater detail in forthcoming chapters.  I will also provide a history of some of the many thoughts and events that contributed to my development of this new and exciting way of life.  And, as I have told you, CUTLAS is a living, breathing thing that will constantly be evolving.  It will be different for each and every one of you.  So please, if you are reading this in a bookstore, do yourself a favor, and go up to the counter and buy this book.  You will only truly understand its value after you've read it.  Perhaps you received it as a gift from someone who's life has been changed and has urged you to read it.  Don't be afraid, even if you notice changes in the behavior of your literary benefactor.  Read on, past your fear of changing the way you approach life.  Turn the page, and do it now, not later.  You can't afford to lose any more time.