This week I started thinking about death.
Not in a morbid way. In a life-and-death way.
Hear me out.
We all live with what I am calling a boxed time mindset. Each phase of life comes with its own set of worries, its own checklist, its own version of what we are supposed to be focused on.
In your 20s, it is career and finding the right partner. In your 30s, it is growing that career, making money, having kids or raising them. In your 40s, it is your kids’ education, raising them well, trying to hold everything together. In your 50s and 60s, it is health, retirement, finding your footing again as a couple. And your 70s, it is your health and the legacy you leave behind. The safety of the people you love.
We move through these phases like checkboxes. Like if we hit each one on time, we will have lived well.
But here is what I have been sitting with.
You want a career, for what? If you are not enjoying the process of the work. You want a family, for what? If you are not actually present with them. Phones down, eyes up, fully there. You want money for what? To prove your worth while you spend your days doing things that drain you?
Adding why you want something changes everything. It turns a deadline into a direction. It turns a milestone into a meaning.
A lot of what I wanted in my 20s I don’t want anymore. I don’t know whether that is good or bad. But I do know my definition of wealth has changed. And I think that is worth paying attention to.
Calculation That Changes Your Perspective
I did a calculation this week that I really made me think.
I did a calculation this week that stopped me cold.
The average lifespan is 70 years. Let’s say you spend your working years from 25 to 55 in front of a laptop. That is 30 years. 30 years multiplied by 52 weeks is 1,560 weeks. Five working days a week gives you 7,800 working days. At 6.5 hours a day, that is 50,700 hours of your life in front of a screen.
That is almost 6 full years. Gone. Staring at a laptop.
Now look at the bigger picture. If you sleep 8 hours a night, you have roughly 170,000 waking hours in your entire lifetime. And nearly 30% of every single one of those waking hours is spent in front of a laptop.
And that is before you count the scrolling. The commuting. The hours spent doing things out of obligation rather than joy.
So the real question is, of the time that is actually left, how much of it is truly yours?
That number changed something in me this week. Not to spiral into guilt, but to feel the weight of it. Because we move through our days like time is infinite. Like there is always more somewhere. There isn’t. There never was.
There are 96 days left in 2026.
Not next year. Now. And they are going to pass regardless.
The only question is what you do with them.
Don’t wait for the new year to change your life.
Start today. With whatever you have. With wherever you are.
96 days is nothing. 96 days is everything if you decide to use them.
What I’m Reading
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents -Isabel Wilkerson (Finishing)
This book made me question how much of who we become is truly ours, and how much is shaped by the systems we’re born into.
Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism (Starting)
A scathing whistleblowing memoir by Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former Director of Global Public Policy at Facebook (now Meta). The book pulls back the curtain on the company’s high-level operations, detailing internal decision-making surrounding major global crises, content moderation controversies, and big-tech influence. I want to read this before the movie adaptation of the book comes out: The Social Reckoning.
Things on my Reading Desk
Note to Self
You have been living in a timebox.
Worrying about the right things at the right ages and hitting the right milestones at the right time. Meanwhile, life is passing, and the things you actually want to do keep getting pushed to the next phase.
There are 96 days left in this year.
Free yourself from the box. Do the things you keep saying you will do later.
Later is not a time. Now is.
Be bold. Be real. Be Anomalous.
— Sai Menon
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