Clock is Tickin’

The rest of our lives seems like an unlimited canvas with infinite possibilities, especially in the modern age. We are inundated with interesting career paths and life choices that just weren’t available in the past.

Sadly though, we are finite creatures — even if we don’t stay aware of it. Sit down for a second, and let’s get real with time and all you’ve assigned to “Tomorrow You”.

How many do you actually have left? 🔗︎

“Tomorrow You” is an awesome person with amazing habits, who eats all their veggies, and has time for those things you couldn’t squeeze in today after work and catching up on your shows. Despite being a paragon of human excellence, Tomorrow You doesn’t have infinite capacity for the staggering list of books, movies, projects, and ideas you’ve piled on them. Even they are eventually subject to the constraints of time. When you pick out a specific activity and actually calculate how much you have left (instead of the hand-wavey👋 “idk, a lot”), it often comes out surprisingly small.

“even though it feels like I’ll read an endless number of books in the future, I actually have to choose only 300 of all the books out there to read and accept that I’ll sign off for eternity without knowing what goes on in all the rest.” (5 books a year * 60 years) , Wait But Why

📔 📕 📘 📗 📙 📔 📕 📘 📗 📙 📔 📕 📘 📗 📙 📔 📕 📘 📗 📙 📔 📕 📘 📗 📙

300 books. That’s all you get, give or take a small multiple if you read faster. If you knew you could only read 300 books before you die, would ‘50 Shades of Grey’ really have made the list?

Maybe you don’t care about books, what about friends? For me, I a number of friends I would love to spend more time with, but the hustle and bustle of life get in the way and I only speak to them a couple times a year, too many “urgent” tasks take precedence. That gives me about ~100 conversations left. Knowing how few are left has made it much more pressing to reach out so I don’t let that number slip any lower.

Is your time spent with intention? 🔗︎

a million seconds is like 11 days. A billion seconds is 31 years.

As humans, we tend to squander what we feel we have in abundance. If you’re under 50 years old, you’re a Time Billionaire , which basically feels like infinity. It’s easy to slip into mindless scrolling on Twitter and feel like it has no impact — Tomorrow You will take care of it!

It does matter, though. You have a finite opportunity to experience whatever it is you care about. More specifically, what you will give your attention to . By recognizing the limited number of actions you have left in your life, hopefully it helps you spend your time with intention, rather than following inertia into a half-hearted Netflix binge. When was the last time you called your parents or a friend? Remember, clock’s tickin’ ⌛.

Clock is Tickin’

UPDATED ON APR 27, 2023 : 797 words, 4 minute read — TIME MANAGEMENT

#ATTENTION-MANAGEMENT, #TIME-MANAGEMENT

How many do you actually have left? 🔗︎

Is your time spent with intention? 🔗︎

See Also