Wired co-founder Kevin Kelly created a personal countdown clock that shows him how many days of life he has left to him. He made the clock to remind himself to make the best use of his remaining days, all 8500 of them.
I am now 55 years old. Like a lot of people in middle age my late-night thoughts bend to contemplations about how short my remaining time is. Even with increasing longevity there is not enough time to do all that I want. Nowhere close. My friend Stewart Brand, who is now 69, has been arranging his life in blocks of 5 years. Five years is what he says any project worth doing will take. From moment of inception to the last good-riddance, a book, a campaign, a new job, a start-up will take 5 years to play through. So, he asks himself, how many 5 years do I have left? He can count them on one hand even if he is lucky. So this clarifies his choices. If he has less than 5 big things he can do, what will they be?
I decided to take the idea of number days seriously, and to revisit my earlier experience of counting down my remaining time on this lovely mortal plane. My hope was that a reckoning of my numbered days would help me account for how I spend each precious 24 hours, and to focus my attention and energy on those few tasks and projects I deem most important to me. Indeed, it might help me decide which ones are most important, which is the harder assignment.
I’ve been using this system for several months now and it has been very powerful. Day to day I am aware — and can rattle off if I am asked – how many days I have left. I decided to post my project today because on my clock it shows a handily rounded off sum. So here is the news: As of today I have 8,500 days left to live. That’s not much in my book. I can almost hear them ticking away as we speak. I look at my lifelist of current dreams and I realize that in only 8,500 days I won’t get to but a few of them. And what of any new dreams?
Note also that Kevin’s blog contains all the posts he makes on all the other blogs he’s active on — Cool Tools, Geek Dads, The Technium, etc. He calls this his “Lifestream.” Cool idea!