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Ransom Riggs
A handy little death countdown application
by Ransom Riggs - September 25, 2007 - 7:06 AM

dayleft.jpgThere are forward-thinking people, and then there’s Wired co-founder Kevin Kelly. Talk about overkill: Kelly modified a daily countdown application for the Mac to tell him how many days he’s got left — on Earth. He’s 55 now, and using this Life Expectancy Table, he set his countdown for 8500 days, when he’ll turn 78.68 years old and, there’s a fair chance, be dead.

According to the chart, I have 47.77 years left to go, depending of course on my lifestyle choices. (Let’s see: I could eat better, but I exercise and take Omega 3 oil pills to fend off the demons of heart disease. I don’t smoke, I drink in moderation (usually) and I don’t enjoy downhill mountain biking or base-jumping. So 47 more years sounds about right.) That gives me until the year 2054, which doesn’t sound all that far away given that it feels like just yesterday we were all partying like it was 1999 — because it was. Jeez, if I’m going to walk on Mars and be president before then, I’d really better get on it!

So how am I going to get everything done in such a short time? Kelly describes one approach:

“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?”

Seems like a good way to approach the time you’ve got left whether you’re 69 or you’re 29. Does anyone else organize their lives in chunks? If so, what’s your 5-year plan — or your 75-year plan?

Via Boingboing.

countdown.jpg

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Comments (7)

  1. I spent the second half of my childhood growing up on Kent Island in Maryland. There are quite a few crazy families on the island. My boyfriends grandfather was telling me there is a guy there who bought his grave stone with the death date engraved. He is certain that is the day he is going to die.
    Haha – He’ll probably show us all by actually dying on that day.

    posted by Janet on 9-25-2007 at 8:40 am

  2. Janet: Unrelated but interesting, I spent my early years in Centreville, just down the pike from Kent Island.

    posted by Ransom on 9-25-2007 at 9:19 am

  3. Wouldn’t it be better to live each day like it was your last?
    If you give yourself a 5 year window you risk the potential of never having said sorry, taking things/people for granted, delaying changes, etc.

    posted by Sweet Pea on 9-25-2007 at 10:18 am

  4. Small world right?

    posted by Janet on 9-25-2007 at 11:50 am

  5. My grandmother planned on living to age 94. Three of her relatives “keeled over” at the age of 94 and she was sure she was going to walk in their footsteps (or would that be “drop” in their footsteps) and follow in a tradition (so to speak).

    She missed it by five years. [R.I.P]

    posted by Tdave on 9-26-2007 at 12:39 am

  6. Yes, this seems to be the only way to stay sane. I think everyone does this to some degree. Time itself is measured, so when someone is thinking of “doing” something, they are really setting a time block to get it done. Anyhoo, just a thought. “do ya smoke?>

    posted by Mark on 9-26-2007 at 8:22 am

  7. I’m going to be a doctor specializing in geriatrics, adolescent medicine, and psychiatrist, and a social worker, and a zoologist, and a nobel prize winner for one of several books I’ve written. I’m also going to have a zoo and re-write the DSM and reinvent Western mental health.

    posted by Kat on 1-9-2009 at 9:25 pm

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