I used to manage my life like a product backlog. Everything was a ticket. "Learn Spanish" was in the Icebox. "Travel to Japan" was in Q4. "Be happy" was... well, that was a milestone I kept pushing back.
I’m a Product Manager. I optimize for efficiency. I optimize for output. But one Tuesday night, staring at a ceiling fan that needed cleaning, I realized I was optimizing for a future that might never arrive.
So I did something terrifying. I opened a spreadsheet and calculated my remaining weekends.
The Math That Broke Me
If you live to be 80, you get about 4,000 weeks.
That’s it. That’s the budget.
I was 32. I had already spent 1,664 of them. I did the math on how many "healthy, active" weekends I likely had left before my knees gave out or my energy dipped. The number was shockingly small.
We treat time like it’s infinite. We say "I'll do that when things calm down." But things never calm down. Entropy is the only constant.
Seeing that number on the screen didn't make me depressed. It made me angry. Angry at how much time I was spending on things that didn't matter, trying to impress people I didn't like.
The "Someday" Trap
In product management, we have a term for features that we keep delaying but never kill: "Zombies." They clutter the backlog, drain mental energy, and give us a false sense of productivity.
My life was full of Zombies.
- "Someday I'll write a novel."
- "Someday I'll take my parents to Europe."
- "Someday I'll learn to surf."
The problem with "Someday" is that it's not a day of the week. It's a lie we tell ourselves to avoid the pain of prioritizing.
I realized that if I didn't put a date on it, it wasn't a plan. It was a fantasy.
How I Visualized My Mortality (And Why It Helped)
I needed a way to see this reality every day. Not to scare myself, but to orient myself.
I looked for apps, but most were either too morbid (countdown clocks to death) or too complex (GTD systems). I just wanted a simple visual: Where am I? How much is left?
So I built a feature in BucketPal called "Life Progress."
It’s a simple bar. It shows your age, your estimated lifespan, and fills in the progress. It sits right there on my home screen.
Every time I unlock my phone to doom-scroll, I see it. It whispers: "Hey, you're 40% done. Is this tweet really how you want to spend the remaining 60%?"
It’s not about productivity. It’s about intentionality. It forces me to ask: "If not now, when?"
Conclusion: Death is a Feature, Not a Bug
The Stoics had a practice called Memento Mori—remember you will die. It wasn't meant to be morbid. It was meant to be liberating.
When you realize the project has a deadline, you stop bike-shedding the minor details. You ship.
Your life is the most important product you'll ever build. Don't leave it in the backlog.
If you need a gentle nudge to start living, give BucketPal a try. It might just be the reality check you need.