The book “Four thousands weeks” by Oliver Burkeman profoundly impacted me when I blasted through reading it this past year and I’m currently considering picking up the book and reviewing my hand written annotations marked on each pages, notes I took: summaries, quotes, questions, etc.
But before reaching to grab the book, the following thought emerged: if the average life spans 4,000 weeks and I was born in 1988, how many weeks left do I have left on this earth?
Well, according to the date calculator website, 4000 weeks from May 16th 1988 (my birth date) lands on January 13th, 2152.
Given that today is September 13th, 2025, that leaves me about 16,932 days left. Or, put differently:
- 2417 weeks and 4 days
- 46 years, 4 months
- 556 months
That’s … somewhat confronting.
But from my current perspective, the above time frame, oddly enough, feels like a substantial amount of time left. I mean, sort of is.
All the meanwhile, I recognize how precious and tender life is, how an instant, your world can turn upside down. So, I ask myself: how do I want to spend my remaining days?
Or, perhaps if I take one piece of advice, a suggestion, from the Four Thousand Weeks appendix, I might want to “Decide in advance what to fail at.”
Deciding in advance what to fail at, to me, makes me radically realize and accept that, as a finite human being, I have limits. I can’t “have it all”. And instead of sighing with disappointment, I breathe out tension, some tension in my body washing away. Right now, I’m resisting and fighting the urge to enumerate a long list of things I want to do however, for the purpose of this exercise, let’s list some of my pre-planned failures:
- A stand up comedian
- A magician
- A father to additional children
- A psychologist or psychiatrist treating patients with mental health
- A principle software engineer for a major tech company
- A famous book author
- A world class break dancer
- A digital organization dad
- A touring DJ
- A politician
- A medical professional who works for “doctors without border”
- A professor or teacher of children
- A world class dog trainer
- A touring dancer
- An entrepreneur running a 7 figure business
- Living quietly in isolation on a farm raising a bunch of animals
The above list seems silly. However, at some point in my life, I wanted to do the above. And if I’m being honest, a part of me resists the idea of human limits and part of me is drawn towards working towards ALL of the above at the same time.
But as I type these words out, trying to tackle more the a dozen ambitious goals in a single life time, seems ridiculous.
And so while I no longer know exactly what I want to do with the remainder of my life, I do have a few ideas on how I’d like to spend the next few years:
- Raising Elliott as a single dad – this has become my #1 priority in life. Had you asked me if I ever envisioned living as a single dad in a foreign country, I would’ve thought you were crazy. But here I am.
- Dive deep into mastering myself within the craft of dance and contribute the street style dance scene
- Work part time as a tech lead and sharpen skill set – prepare for the storm of artificial intelligence (AI) take over
- Connect and limber my body and calm my nervous system down
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