Big Little ThingsYou’re on deadline
Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Wired, has developed a countdown clock to tell him how many days he has left to live, so he can make the most 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?
Via Boingboing.
September 26th, 2007 at 1:58 am
Why do that? How can you savour each coming day when it is a day off your DEAD-line?
Kevin Kelly seems to have forgotten about the joy of drifting, chillin’ and finding without looking.
September 27th, 2007 at 7:05 am
How did Kevin Kelly come up with the date of his demise? He could be dead wrong. A man I know (Axel knows him too), who has the worst possible genetic combination when it comes to pessimism (Russian and Jewish), used his math skills to predict the day of his croaking based on how long his parents and grandparents had lived. The day came and went and he is still around saying that he should be dead and probably won’t be able to make it to dinner on the day you invited him because chances are he’ll be a gonner by then. Oy!