Can Your Lifespan Performance Be Improved By Measuring?

Tim Urban, author of waitbutwhy.com, wrote some years ago that "humans are good at a lot of things but putting time in perspective is not one of them."

To help in understanding this shortcoming, Tony Del Monte, a Christian motivational coach specializing in lifespan awareness and time stewardship, developed a 24-hour life-clock.

His clock equated 24 hours with the average life-expectancy of 75 years; we would have 24 hours of clock life-time that will take us 75 years to live out.

When your life-clock pointed to 3 a.m., you would be about 10-years-old. Each life-clock hour was calculated to be about 3.3 calendar years.

Urban went further with the metaphor and wrote that if the entirety of human history were contained within a 24-hour equivalent --from midnight to midnight-- modern humans will have existed since 11:59 p.m. on the life-clock.

Whatever has humankind been doing for one minute? Many would say quite a lot. Still others might say more harm than good.

But as Walter White, the Breaking Bad TV character observed: "We know we could do better but the day-to-day has a habit of getting in the way. We'll change our routine tomorrow, research a new career next week and look for greater meaning in our lives once the kids have gone to bed."

Walt, as viewers know, was facing limited lifetime from a lung adenocarcinoma; maybe two more years. To secure his family's financial future, he begins to manufacture Meth.

His perceived foreshortened life-horizon begins to drive his behavior in this drastic way. What does he have to lose with only two years remaining in his lifespan?

One way to learn from this fictional example is to know that we do not need a terminal illness for enhanced motivation. We simply need to acknowledge early the length of the life we have received and earnestly make it count for things beneficial.

Consider the assertion in Jake Heillbrunn's article in 2016: "Openly acknowledging, thinking and talking about death, should help to bring alive the purpose of living. We should meditate on mortality and talk openly about it. There's a reason why so many who have had near-death experiences suddenly change and emerge a better person."

We can surmise that there are tens of millions who agree with mortality researchers and yet seldom speak openly about their beliefs, mostly for lack of supportive audiences in friends, family and others. Who, after all, wants to be labeled as having a negative personality?

Thinking on this topic requires a strong curiosity and open mind. Next, it requires a willingness to know the science-based estimates of our life-expectancy... In which year will we likely expire?

Knowing the time-distance from our present to the end of our future will give us the much needed measurement within which to fit the contributions that fill our legacies.

There are special free tools designed to do all of what is suggested here by visiting: www.athetalife.com.