Similar to this, I created an android wallpaper that shows what percentage of your life is already past. This helps me ensure that I'm spending my limited time in the most valuable way possible, and really helps put things in perspective.
I think it's exceedingly important to recognize that life is finite, and to reflect upon this regularly. I think its so important that I created an android wallpaper that shows what percentage of your life is already past. This helps me ensure that I'm spending my limited time in the most valuable way possible, and really helps put things in perspective.
This isn't the first time I've shared these links, but I hope it doesn't come across as spammy because 1) I'm not selling anything and 2) articles like this keep getting posted, which implies this is a topic some people are just discovering
Memento mori may be depressing, but once you embrace it I know no better way to gain the motivation to do the things I truly want with my life.
How many Sunday afternoons with my young children do I get? That's not even about death, just that they will grow up one day soon. How many of them do I want to spend getting paged about some bullshit database problem? Or scrolling mindlessly on my phone?
People beat themselves up about this a lot. White people love to hate themselves.
Sure, your employer will reward your commitment by laying you off once you're of age, but it doesn't take much to end up estranged from your adult kids despite a lifetime of effort expended there either.
Hold out for grandchildren. It's the fun part of parenting without the responsibilities.
I don't beat myself up about this. Hating myself is why I let myself be abused with obscene on-call for years. Respecting myself and deciding what I cared about in life is what allowed me to quit that job, even though it was secure.
Tomorrow is not guaranteed - but that recognition doesn't have to be a morbid or depressing viewpoint, it can just as easily be a motivator to stop procrastinating.
Still not sure if I'll keep it, but like another commenter said, perhaps I'll embrace my percentage and just make the most out of what's left.
Cowardly (or cunningly?) I set the background to pure black like my regular wallpaper and the text to almost-black. So I think I'll forget about the wallpaper and every now and again, the percentage will jump at me late at night. Let's see :)
Memento Mori is a surprisingly popular topic on HN. This Wikipedia page or some other blog post on the topic gets posted here fairly often. It's kinda interesting because when I bring this up with people I know they usually say it's depressing and strange.
I like this idea so much I made an app that makes my wallpaper show what percentage of my life is already gone by, but only one person (a good friend) that I've shown it to IRL has actually liked it.
Part of me was expecting one-star reviews from people with really dark senses of humor about how their loved one had the app installed and died when it was only 31.244% full.
It's even worse when you consider your perception[1] of how much of your life has gone by. At age 20, you perceive that 50% of your life has gone by. That is, you feel like time passes equally slowly (or equally fast) between 0-20 as between 20-75. At age 40, you perceive that 75% of your life has been lived.
[1] I don't recall the source, but it was a psychology or neurology article. I don't claim that the study is flawless, but it does feel to me like there is merit to the argument that a decade in your youth seems like a long time but a decade as an adult passes quickly.
Time is fleeting. I made this android wallpaper so I would be reminded of that fact. Every time I look at my phone I think "am I doing what I really want to be doing? am I making the best use of my limited time?"
Perhaps a bit morbid, but very realistic. Death comes for us all, even if you ignore it. By consciously forcing yourself to confront it you can reduce the chance that you'll wind up with a ton of regrets when you're old.
It's mentioned in the article, but doesn't go into detail about why it hasn't caught on
> Continued problems with vinasse-dumping marred the sugar-ethanol industry’s environmental image, even as specialists encouraged repurposing the nitrogen-heavy byproduct as a fertiliser. Today, compliance with anti-dumping legislation is still not effectively enforced.
Yep, ESG investing causes distasteful companies to be underpriced, which creates a sort of morality arbitrage. If you're okay with funding climate change, you can make a quick buck or two.
"Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders"
App: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.machineryc...
Source code: https://github.com/ethanmdavidson/DeathProgress