Expect an early death — it will keep you busier.

Fischer’s aphorism uses the blunt prospect of mortality as a practical spur to action. If you assume time is abundant, procrastination feels safe; if you assume it is short, priorities sharpen and trivialities fall away. The line is not primarily morbid but managerial: it recommends a mental stance that treats life as finite and therefore valuable, converting anxiety about death into urgency about living. In that sense it aligns with older “memento mori” traditions, but with a modern, briskly utilitarian twist—death is invoked less to humble the soul than to keep the mind focused and the hands working.