Why Life’s Hidden Expiration Dates Are So Important

Let’s look at the life of a typical person and do some simple math…

• There are 52 weeks in a year.
• Let’s be optimistic and assume that medical technology keeps accelerating at its current pace. You look after your health and, as a result, manage to live to 100 years old.
• 100 × 52 = 5,200 weeks. If you live to 80, that’s 4,160 weeks.

I have created an interactive diagram below so that you can see how many weeks you have left. Change your Current Age and Expected Age below to see how it applies to you.

This diagram highlights the Stoic philosophy memento mori, which translates from Latin to “Remember you must die.” One day, you will not be able to pursue the things that really matter to you. Your time on this planet is limited, and therefore, passively ignoring your unrealized potential is unacceptable.

Since you have a finite number of days left to live, there are only a finite number of times that you will do each activity. At the time of writing, I have eleven-year-old twins. I take them to school every day. It’s hard for me to accept, but I know the day will come when I take them to school for the last time. Similarly, there will come a time when I see my good friends who live overseas for the last time. It’s not just that life is short. It’s that life’s most joyful activities have invisible expiration dates that only reveal themselves once they have slipped away.

When you become more aware of these expiration dates, you embrace these moments more fully. You pause to consider what truly matters, because some things really do matter more than others.

This article is an excerpt from Chapter 1 of Choose Your Work

Footnotes

It’s hard for me to accept, but I know the day will come when I take them to school for the last time: Oliver Burkeman had a similar thought, stating “Just as there will be a final occasion on which I pick up my son—a thought that appalls me, but one that’s hard to deny, since I surely won’t be doing it when he’s thirty—there will be a last time that you visit your childhood home, or swim in the ocean, or make love, or have a deep conversation with a certain close friend.” Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021), 132.

Figure 1: Your life in weeks: Inspired by Tim Urban, “Your Life in Weeks,” Wait But Why, May 7, 2014, https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html. Life expectancies are based on the typical life expectancy of someone living in North America.