A Different View
This exercise wasn’t meant to scare or alarm. Mostly it was just an attempt to shift my perspective, take stock, and be realistic about what I have to work with.
Capital Thinking · Issue #947 · View online
I recently picked up a copy of Oliver Burkeman’s book, “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals.”
In the introduction, the author reminds the reader that life is absurdly short. Per the title, 4000 weeks short assuming an 80-year lifespan (4160 if we’re being precise, along with extra days for leap years).
I don’t often think of lifespan in terms of weeks or even months, but thinking about lifespan in terms of weeks is sobering.
Shifts in Perspective
David Papandrew | Mental Pivot:
I don’t often think of lifespan in terms of weeks or even months, but thinking about lifespan in terms of weeks is sobering.
It reminded me of a fantastic Tim Urban article from 2014, Your Life in Weeks, which included clever visualizations illustrating how much time we’ve been given, how much we’ve already used, and how much time we have left to live.
Inspired by Burkeman and Urban, I decided to take stock of time by trying out some tools that create a rudimentary “life calendar” that shows how much time you have left.
Bryan Braun’s Your Life in Years/Months/Weeks takes your birthdate and shows you how much time you have left using an (ambitious) 90-year lifespan. You can toggle between years, months, and weeks.
Zhenlai Xia’s Countdown to Zero app (iOS) takes your birthdate and lets you adjust your lifespan (I chose 80 years). Despite some silliness with the decimal precision, the app also shows amusing stats like remaining meals, weekends, and times to have sex (not sure how he calculates that figure!).
This exercise wasn’t meant to scare or alarm. Mostly it was just an attempt to shift my perspective, take stock, and be realistic about what I have to work with.
There’s a well-known mental shift experienced by astronauts and known as “The Overview Effect.”
The idea is that, the experience of viewing Earth from space changes your perspective on the world and your place in it.Astronaut Alan Shepard had this to say:
I realized up there that our planet is not infinite. It’s fragile. That may not be obvious to a lot of folks…we look pretty vulnerable in the darkness of space.
David Papandrew
Photo credit: Nadine Shaabana on Unsplash